October 20, 2008

Jacob, Sometimes I find the world scary too.

Work

In an effort to not run out of money before I run out of things to do I took on some freelance work. So far my project has over run a bit but in general I am happy with it. I have developed a chess game for an online gaming web site. The development of the game has been taking quite a bit of my time lately. This week it seems like that is about all I have done. The happy news is that it is almost done. I don't own the artwork on the game but I did arrange the licensing such that I own the code. I think that after my customer is happy with the delivery I will develop some new art work and put a chess game on the mindjump web site. I haven't developed a single player version of the game only a two player version. I have learned a lot in the project. Getting the multi player game communication to work correctly is quite challenging but at the right level, such that the challenge is quite fun. I haven't decided yet if I am going to go for a single player mode or not. The current project I have isn't funded for a single player mode but it would be a nice thing to have. I think in the end the practicality of getting back to my main project the spell castle or onto other directly funded work is what will rule the day.

It has been healthy to take a small project front to back. Projects are so so much easier to start than they are to finish. I know I have some huge psychological mountains to climb to get through the release of the spell castle. Going through some smaller hills on the chess game has been a nice warm up. I have hired an artist to do the cover work for the spell castle game and I am very excited with what he has done so far. I would love to have him do a lot more in the game but for now I think I am going to leave my expenditure on his contribution to the game to the cover and maybe a couple of internal characters. After I sell a few copies of the game it might be nice to go back and upgrade things.

World Hunger

A few months ago in the blog I remember expressing dismay about the fact that we live in a country where one of our leading causes of preventable death is obesity while we all but boarder countries where people die for want of food. Since that observation I am a bit ashamed to admit that I haven't done much more than reflect on that thought every now and then. A couple of days ago I was reading an article in the National Geographic (the September issue I believe) about Haiti and the problems with their soil. People are so poor there that one in five suffers from malnourishment. In place of food they eat a mixture of mud, vegetable oil and salt to stave off starvation with rising grain prices.

This is far from a new problem. Somehow the awareness of the problem has hit me in a new light. Growing up in a country with such abundant food and so many resources to reach out people without food I somehow let my mind drift into the ignorance of thinking that death by starvation was a problem of a more primitive world. The fact my mind got to that state really is inexplicable in that I know I have read news reports exactly to the contrary about North Korea. In fact during the time I was serving to do missionary work in South Korea people were starving to death in mass numbers just over the border while I was totally unaware of it.

Food aid really is tricky. I can't get my mind straight about the issue. I hope to make some progress as I write this entry but I am not overly optimistic. The problem of a person dying for want of food is an inexcusable problem in my mind. Until that problem is solved it seems that all other problems bear much less significance. The frustrating thing is that as an individual the problem is unsolvable. Also it seems that it is so difficult to get clean information describing the problem. I know as a child when I saw commercials asking for aid money for starving people in Africa I was told that many of the organization were frauds and that even among the ones that were legitimate only a small portion of the money actually translated into aid money and the rest was used to fund the ads I was watching. Later I heard that aid money actually funded the war in that resources that were freed from food aid received in the country were simply diverted into weapons which were used to perpetrate the civil wars causing the food shortages in the first place. The idea of getting my money ripped off by a greasy guy in Miami or the idea of my money being used to buy bullets to kill people does not appeal to me.

Another internal conflict I have that confuses me is that my social education centered around self sufficiency. Handouts work against self sufficiency. I think it is pathetic to watch a stray dog or cat beg for food. After the animal receives the food it is as if they have lost their will. The attention and focus of the animal becomes centered in an effort to reproduce the behavior that brought the hand out. In a human being I believe the human's most valuable possession above their daily breath is their will. I would certainly not support any activity that would work to rob a person of this divine endowment.

So I begin my journey toward contributing my part to the solution of the problem of world hunger. As I do so I navigate my fears and preconceptions of fraud, war and decimation of human will. In the end I believe that my fears really are a blanket that I have used to wrap my mind into that inexcusable state of ignorance that has overlooked the problem, that state that says "I can't do everything, so I will do nothing", or "I might do something wrong, so I will do nothing", or "someone else is taking care of the problem".

I think I will take the last three poor ideas on one by one. "I can't do everything so I will do nothing" is a fraud that I have suffered from many times. It is so easy for my idealist, perfectionistic self to not want something that isn't exactly the way I think it should be. The next idea of "I might do something wrong, so I will do nothing", I know slows me down but at a more subconscious level. Usually when I consciously recognize that I am holding myself back because of fear of failure I get a charge of motivation that pushes me to action. With that said in this case as I am writing I am realizing that I am in the state now that I have held a subconscious fear I am just now recognizing. While the thought of my dollar going to the wrong place is a scary one, as mentioned before doing nothing really is inexcusable. Lastly it is easy to see through the last poor idea with the slightest bit of thought. If someone else were taking care of the problem, there wouldn't be a problem. My last statement in no way discounts the efforts of people who are working on the problem of world hunger. Those people are truly heroic. The statement is intended to point out that the resources are not stretching far enough. There is more that needs to be done.

In the little bit of research I have done the organization represented on http://www.foodforthepoor.org/ seems pretty good. They claim that for every $1 donated they can acquire $4.69 cents of food. They also claim that a $36 dollar donation can support three families for a month. That seems like a really good use of money. I want to do some more research. I need to look to see what programs my church has in place. I think that the local aid support program of the church is very good. I don't know anything about their international aid.

So with the decision to do something the next decision to make is how much to do. I would never look at a person and say "Well that is really unfortunate for you that you are starving to death. I do have enough money to prevent your demise, however I am in the mood to see Disney World so I am going to put my resource in that direction instead, good luck to you, hope someone comes along." Without looking at a person it is abominably easy to do the former. The thought puts me into an overwhelming state of guilt wondering if it is moral to spend money on anything above the barest necessities until all others in the world have their barest necessities met. Honestly I don't think I have the internal discipline or fortitude to do that. So for now I will acknowledge my selfish, greedy and fearful tendencies and appease my mind with the thought that even though I can't be perfect right now, I can at least look in the direction of perfection and take a step that way. If people have recommendations of charities or organizations I would love to hear about them.

Kids

A couple of cute things about the kids ... I hope Natalyn is still young enough that this doesn't embarrass her later... A few mornings ago Lexie got her out of bed and exclaimed "Natalyn, your blanket is wet!" Natalyn very matter of factly immediately replied "Mom, I did not wet the bed, I just sweated too much."

Tyrell invented a land that he calls Camelia. I am not sure if that is how he spells it, that is how he pronounces it. The land is somewhere near Antarctica. He has a panel of stuffed animals that serve as judges in his land of Camelia. Last week I was sustained by him and his stuffed animals as a guest judge. Dallin was also promoted from assistant judge to judge. I hope to get Ty and Dallin to write a bit more about Camelia when they get back to home school. Chamelion is the language they speak. They have their own way to write as well. The boys have had this imaginary land for at least three years now. They have expanded on their ideas of it a lot just recently.

Yesterday the kids efforts were spent building a plane so they could fly to Camelia. The result didn't look very flight worthy to me. The kids apparently thought that most aeronautical principles could be ignored if you had a good enough engine. In this case their engine was made from three number ten cans full of leaves which they intended to light to get their take off thrust. (They knew better than to really lite the thing so they just sat in it and talked about it).I thought it was wonderful later in the day to overhear Dallin talking to Tyrell. In the tone an engineer would use at a design review, while looking at a crude schematic he had drawn, he was saying "Ty, I have been thinking we should move the engine room right here (on the wagon) to get better speed at take off." Another one of their ideas was to make a crude steam engine with a glass bottle filled with water. They had Grandpa Gordon light a fire in a number 10 sized can to boil the water and then they used a wire to connect the water to the wagon. I was grateful that the boys new they were not allowed to experiment with fire by themselves. Grandpa sure was a great sport to help them with their ideas. Another stage was tying a rope to the wagon, having Lexie pull on the rope really tight and then letting go super fast when given the signal from Dallin. The last experiment of the day was to prop the wagon up to an old tree stump and "scoot" off of the stump in hopes that it would give him (Dallin) enough lift to be airborne. Unfortunately for his efforts the wagon just tipped one way or the other and spilled him out each time. Tonight his protest about going to bed was "Mom, I need to figure out how to fly before tomorrow, so I don't have to ride the bus or run to school."

Boarded and waiting to taxi onto the runway.

Notice the triple thruster engine.