20040129

Qui tacet consentit 

Who that is silent, consents.

To be a liberal is to be free, not in the sense of money, but in the sense of freedom of thought. My Spanish professor, to whom I give great admirance for her fortitude, intelligence, tenacity, and perseverance, presented this Latin phrase.

She translated for us. "He who is silent gives his consent." From there, I embarked on my own to translate literally what each word means. Qui is who. Tacet is to be silent. Consentit, is to give consent. Therefore, qui tacet consentit (KWEE TAH-keit cohn-SEIN-teet).

She went on to explain that the true meaning of liberalness is not, as we see them now, to be on the far left.

I took this to be interpreted as that to be liberal is not to be an activist.

She said that liberal came from the Latin word that meant "liberty" or "freedom." It means that you are no longer a slave. Once something happen, it becomes a time that you must set a slave free. However, once free, that slave, usually a man, must be educated to become a true Roman citizen.

That is why in college, we have these classes that we call liberal education or liberal arts. To be liberal is to be learned in the ways of math, arts, history, language, etc.

It is for this purpose that the American colleges have the general education requirement, because we have such a desire to impose education, bring the pupils out of the darkness, the ignorance in which they dwell.

I know how many people hate the general education requirement designed to expose the students to the world of social science, of the humanities and arts, and of the natural science, of the world in which they live.

These are the people that need the future to show the usefulness of liberty to them. That is why it is not good to force people to vote, because voting is predicated on the notion of making an informed decision.

So those who say that they don't want to vote, or don't care about the political system, should not vote. The voting percentage may be depressing, but it shows the people's true nature is to be silent, and in silence, consent.

There is a problem, naturally. Some people may want to keep it [the non-voting part] this way so that they may keep control of the political process. The young people are just a variable factor that they don't want to deal with. They could vote one way or the other, and cause an upset.

Now.

Sometimes I wonder why I am writing this, because I think it devalues my blog. Many people have already written--and read--about this, so why am I writing it?

I'm stupid. What the heck is this blog for? I feel so empty inside now. Maybe I need to say less, and more in less. 1 + 1 = 1/2.

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20040126

CNN.com - Dean predicts comeback, takes swipe at media - Jan. 26, 2004

To all those who hate Bush so much, the so-called "arch-liberals" and "far left," can rest assure that the arch-conservative and the far right feel the same way about Clinton. Now I understand what it must be like to see Clinton, a Democrat, win re-election when they have been frothing at the teeth to destroy him. The Republicans led a great comeback to re-take control of both Houses of Congress two years after Clinton's first term, but failed to beat Clinton himself in 1996.

Now to have seen Bush, who might or might not win re-election, parading himself before the Southern states to help the Republicans there beat the Democrats, the liberals are now in so much fury at what Bush has done, to the environment, to women's rights, to minority's rights, etc. In fact, the liberals are so caught that they cannot move forward, that they have become the new conservatives, struggling to keep things the same even while the conservatives are making great stride to remaking the government in their own image.

I shudder at this political brinkmanship, where both sides expend time, energy, and money to no ends to achieve an end result that will last only two years before the cycle starts again, before the campaigning begins anew. Here is President Bush, the man, whose only goal are to win re-election, protect the country, and satisfy the conservative base in some cases. It is laudable and cannot go far without contradicting themselves. Bush will never propose a tax increase, that much as I can be sure, just as Arnold Schwarzenneger has promised never to raise tax, and so far, he ain't gonna!

What I was saying was that I admire Bush for still being popular with half of the American population. He's like Lincoln, only instead of slavery, he has nothing going for him except the country's safety, and also, he's definitely less eloquent than Lincoln. He's trying to satisfy his base, just as Lincoln tried to satisfy the radical Republicans while still trying not to destroy the Southern economy.

Of course, there's been plenty of times when the President had to tread between two separate and equal powers. He needs his conservative base to sustain him, but go too far right, and the liberal and the media that listen to the liberal, will never let him hear the end of it. The press pays attention only to whoever listen to them.

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20040125

~ ~ Kingdom Hearts ~ ~

Now having played through the Kingdom Hearts game, though I haven't yet fought all the bosses like Sephiroth, Kurt Zisa, etc. nor found ALL the trinities (I'm missing one), I fell qualified to review the game because I want to be part of those people who review games.

The game is entirely playable, but I felt inconvenienced by the fact that I had to, in the middle of a battle, go through the manual using my right analog button and selecting options through pressing 'X'. How can I be fast enough to select all the options before the enemies get a chance to hit me? Not only that, in trying to select a magic or an item, if I try to jump, I automatically cancel my choice.

It's pretty stupid to put cancel and jump on the same button. How the heck am I supposed to jump and cast magic at the same time? And don't get me started on the camera angle. I couldn't even see what I'm doing because the view is too close to Sora, the main character, or at the very least, his buddies, Donald Duck and Goofy, are too close to me to see anything. When magic and munnys are exploding everywhere, the only recourse I had was just to keep mashing that 'X' button.

If they gave other buttons the ability to fight 'differently,' that'd be great. The triangle for lunging forward, the square for jumping back, etc, while also allowing me to cast greater variety of magic by just holding down different L buttons with pressing the controls. The only option I had was L1 + 'triangle' or 'square' or 'x'. I could assign different magic, but it wasn't fun at all!

If there are going to be only Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Stop, Gravity, Aero, and Summon, what's wrong with assigning the first class of magic to L1 + any X, triangle, square, circle and the second class to L2 + any X, triangle, square, circle. That way, there's little need to go through the menu to cast magic that I didn't assign, and so the right analog stick can be used to control the camera angle.

The story was okay, not exactly brilliant, and sometimes repetitive. I basically replay, in almost every world, the plot that I've already watched in the movies. Sure, there were some worlds that was unique, like the Hollow Bastion, Traverse Town, and the hard but fun Olympic Coliseum.

I enjoy the game because it was a fusion of two things, Disney and Squaresoft. I got the chance to fight Squall, Cloud, and Yuffie, while also meeting such characters as Aerith and Cid.

The visuals were good, and I enjoy the game. It didn't last very long, and for that I am glad, because it's not an RPG game like Final Fantasy. I would have been terrified to have to play 80 hours breaking my thumbs to fight all the enemies that show up. And also, someone said that it's not an adventure game, and I'm inclined to agree. It's not a game that makes the most use out of the controls. After all, the Devil May Cry was unique in that each button had a different control that makes it fun, that makes you think which to use when attempting to fight a certain boss.

In this case, Kingdom Hearts is basically like a simplified version of Jax and Daxter. All you pretty much do is jump, attack, or spell cast.

Lastly, what was unfortunate was the last few moments that had no caption. The ending sequence, when it changes to a FMV cinematic animation sequence, was not subtitled. So I had no capability of understanding what was spoken in the exchange between Sora and Kairi when they were separated by the worlds after locking the final keyhole to the Kingdom Hearts of the world, or the universe, whatever.

It was great to see Mickey, though he wasn't what I was expecting. Not only was the scene featuring him was short, I had expected him to be wearing that kind of robe and blue pointy hat with two stars and a moon in Fantasia. Or, if not, I expected him to wear the crown of a king, as he is the king of the Disneyworld.

Overall: 7/10

By the way, I'm not a hard-core gamer. So if I've given someone that impression, I apologize. I was just explaining my views of the game, fully articulated by many other gamers' review that I read.

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