Three Discussions

#1: The Pokewalker

The good folks over at the Pokemon company put out a reiteration of their second-generation games a few months ago. Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver (renamed HeartGold and SoulSilver) lets gamers like me, who may not have played Pokemon at all since the originals came out, go back to the Johto region and relive the familiar fun. Although I swear, if Entei doesn't stay in that Pokeball the next time I try to capture him, I am taking out the cartridge and throwing it into a wall.

Like most video game updates, this one brings with it tweaks to the original system, new areas, updated graphics, and many other twists and turns to differentiate this new iteration from the source material. What is far more noteworthy than anything they did within the game, however, is what they give you when you buy it. The Pokewalker; a small, Pokeball-colored (half white, half red) pedometer which you can hook onto your belt loop.

The Pokewalker allows you to transfer one Pokemon from your game into the pedometer, where you can then take a walk with it. Doing so earns experience for the Pokemon, and also confers upon you rewards that you would not be able to find easily within the game itself, if at all. You can receive these rewards in exchange for "watts," the virtual currency of the Pokewalker. Every 20 steps you take earns a watt, and enough watts will unlock new courses where you can go after even greater prizes. The most expensive of these currently costs 200,000 watts - the equivalent of 4,000,000 steps. Keep in mind that the average person walks 3,000-5,000 steps a day. Ever since I got the Pokewalker, on my days off I try to take between 10,000 and 20,000.

The Pokewalker makes you want to exercise - it encourages you and rewards you for putting down the actual game and going outside or getting on a treadmill. And while some people have come up with ways to cheat the system, the real victory here is that the video game industry, or at least Pokemon Inc., is making a real attempt. In a nation suffering an outbreak of obesity and overwhelmed with sedentary lifestyles, they have made a tool that helps fight this trend, even if only in a small way. This is not a game made for the purpose of physical activity, like the WiiFit titles, it is an add-on to a game that would otherwise have children sitting still for hours instead finding excuses to get outside and run around.

That, in my opinion, is a step - or twenty - in the right direction.


#2: The State of the State of Israel

Now, I didn't attend synagogue services as often as I should have growing up, but I know a few things about Jewish history. I understand things were pretty rough in the times up until now. The existence of Israel is the only major victory Jews have had as a people since the Old Testament (or as Jews call it, the Testament). It is a story positively rife with oppression, enslavement, hatred, bigotry, and occasionally genocide.

So when I read the news and see Israel pursuing exactly that kind of agenda against Palestine, it makes me a little uncomfortable, to say the least.

Of course, there's nothing here really that separates Israel from many other of the world's powerful nations. Russia built its foundation off of oppression ethnic minorities, and when that wasn't enough, its own people. Great Britain only let India become its own country after World War II weakened them too much to say otherwise. The United States, lest we forget, is one Native American slaughter after another edited from our history books. Israel is not doing anything that is altogether out of character for a nation - morals aside - just not one that chooses to call itself the Jewish nation.

It's definitely a larger conversation than what I intend to write here, but the government of Israel is completely out of character for the beliefs of the religion they represent. As the state of Israel, an independent nation for a people called Israelis, they're doing what they feel is necessary to protect themselves. As the Jewish State, they're doing more to spread anti-Semitism around the globe than any other group active today. So should Israel reform its domestic and foreign policy to stay more in-line with Jewish ideals, or should it simply drop the pretense of being the Jewish state? There's already a separation of Church and State within Israel, why not extend that distinction to the national stage?


#3: I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Toys 'R Us is still a place I visit occasionally, just to walk through it. It would probably lose the appeal if I were a more frequent visitor, but if I keep these nostalgic journeys down to once or twice a year, then there's still rush when you walk through the sliding doors and enter a gigantic (though it appeared much bigger when I was younger for some reason . . .) toy store.

But on my last trip, walking through the aisles, I noticed something.

One side of the aisle had Action Figures, the other side had Dolls. Past that, the next row had Sports on one side, and Dress Up on the other. Above these aisles, bright red signs featuring boys playing next to the Action Figure and Sports, soft pink signs with smiling girls above Dolls and Dress Up.

Alright, I get it. There's a target audience there. Their educational toys, stuffed animals, and other things like that are not so obviously gender-organized. Still, should that kind of thing really be so blatant? I don't even know if I think it's wrong, necessarily, just odd in this day and age for a company to so clearly state "these toys are for boys, these toys are for girls." My shock is less from that they do it and more that they haven't been sued by someone for it. Maybe the kind of people who would typically blow their gasket over the distinction being made get the same feeling I do when entering Toys 'R Us, and of COURSE it makes sense that girls would want the dolls and not boys. D'uh!

Or maybe they just don't have kids.


AND FINALLY - you have probably noticed the lack of activity here at These Gentlemen lately. The problem, it seems, with organizing a group of people all roughly around the same age and station in life is that the large transitional periods which happen in life all happen to these people at the same time. When dealing with law schools, internships, full-time jobs, travel schedules, etc., etc., trying to find suitable material to fit the These Gentlemen standards - and time to write it - can be difficult to say the least.

Regardless, so long as there exist topics in this world with the need for a gentlemanly perspective on them, These Gentlemen shall continue to exist. Plans are already being made for the Gentlemen to come back later this summer, bigger and more ambitious in our goals than ever. We promise, if you stick around, we will too, and you won't be disappointed at the outcome. Until then, I bid adieu.

Keep it classy.

Wow! Anger evolved into . . . Outrage!

It is things like this that drive me nuts.

Texas may start teaching against Evolution

How is it that the people who most vocally oppose science end up in positions to influence it on a national scale?

I'm going to be perfectly frank on this issue. Some ungentlemanly language may arise. I don't know, I'm not planning it, but I feel fair warning is warranted as the issue of how we continually re-elect people intent on undermining education, the single most important element in the framework of our country, is one that outrages me.

Teaching Creationism to "let kids understand the argument" is bullshit. BULLSHIT. We are talking about a class in which we send our children to learn science. That is why it is called science class. Evolution is, to the best of our knowledge, the strongest scientific argument for how life arose on the planet. Creationism is not science. It has no scientific basis. It's teaching children that we should be skeptical of what science tells us if there's a religious precept contradicting it. The textbooks in question are meant to teach our students biology; that is, the biological functions of the plant and animal life on Earth as we best understand it. Not "Here's 500 years of painstaking research OR we can just say it all magically appeared one day."

Goddammit, my Pokemon EVOLVE, they do not have their prayers for better stat growth answered by a kind and benevolent deity.

Is Evolution that hard to reconcile with religious beliefs? Do any of the people who argue that dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan to test our faith (and yes, those people are real) believe that God falls under the same constraints as the typical Roman calender? It does not actually state the age of the Earth at any point in the bible. Is it really that much of an affront to suggest life was made to adapt on its own? "Intelligent design" has us believe God planned out every stage of existence for us. Doesn't that run completely contradictory to the idea that we were given free will? Is it that impossible to believe that God created life, gave it the ability to adapt and survive in changing environments, and then left us to our own devices? Wouldn't that actually work out a lot better?

I digress. Evolution and Religion walking hand-in-hand as some Creationists would have you believe man did with dinosaurs (which, remember, by another school of thought, were buried there by the devil) is not the issue. The issue is that there are people in our society actively trying to push our education system backwards and pollute the institution of science because they don't think it gels with what their invisible man has to say. If we want students to question evolution, why don't we teach them the holes in the theory and the unresolved issues with the fossil record? Maybe that will inspire more biologists and archaeologists, and fewer television evangelists. Maybe it will make people want to learn. A friend of mine put it best; "The "Darwin made errors" argument simply shows that the person is ignoring hundreds of years of research since his publication and perhaps assumes that science, like religion, is an archaic dogma that is against change. Rather, science embraces new theories and corrections and well, it becomes clear that the person using this argument is not even aware of how the scientific method is intended to be put into use."

This isn't about promoting discussion or argument. This is about mandating religious beliefs be taught in a scientific course. That's the kind of education we would send children off to college with. Could this be a contributing factor to 25% of high school students in America not graduating on time - or at all? Maybe not this specifically, but things like this, definitely. Because this kind of thinking contributes to the idea that there are forces too complex for us to understand, therefore we shouldn't even try. It doesn't just stymie knowledge, it prevents it from ever being formed in the first place.

Creationism is not a bad thing to learn. Not by any means. If your school teaches a class on Comparative Religion or Religious Studies, it's the perfect venue for it. Not biology. Evolution, imperfect as the theory may be, can be supported by scientific evidence. There is no part of Creationism that lines up with any ideas other than those which are religious doctrines. That is not science, and should not be taught to our children.

Please, for all of our sakes, let's keep try and keep our education system from getting worse. Teach religion at home, or let children learn it objectively in the classroom. Don't let them believe that it has any basis in science.

And can we convert to the fucking metric system already?!