Imagine that you've observed some facts about the universe. Now you develop a hypothesis to explain it. Your next step is to test that hypothesis, to see whether it holds up. If the hypothesis is untestable, then it is of no use because there is no way to determine its validity.

Religion observes the fact that the universe exists, and usually hypothesizes an intelligent (or, sometimes, animistic) creator who exists outside the universe. However, it cannot test this hypothesis, because there is no condition which could prove or disprove it.

All other explanations for the universe are similarly unprovable, including nonreligious explanations. The difference between them, as far as humans are concerned, is that those who hold nonreligious views of the universe's origin do not usually threaten the well-being of those who do not agree with their views, whereas those holding religious views tend to do so. This includes threats of divine retribution, not just direct threats of violence (e.g. telling someone that they'll go to Hell for not believing, vs. telling someone that you'll kill them if they don't start believing Right Now).

What I wonder is, why is that behavior considered acceptable?

"What does death feel like?"
"You should know. You've been dead before."
"I have?"
"Yeah. Remember the fifteen billion years before you were born?"
"No."
"Exactly."

A lot of people seem to think that the only rules that matter are the ones codified into law. They ignore the fact that social rules can and do exist, and are rarely codified -- usually they only exist by common agreement. But they can be as powerful as real laws as far as coercion of behavior goes.

I see this in a lot of online games. Someone will claim that because a particular behavior isn't specifically prohibited by the game's rules of conduct, the behavior is therefore acceptable, polite, or even encouraged. For example, there's a behavior called "killstealing" in games like EverQuest and Earth & Beyond. In these games, whoever does the most damage to a monster gets the credit for killing it -- they get the experience point reward, and the loot rewards. If I start attacking a creature, and then someone else starts attacking the creature, and manages to out-damage me, they get the credit, and I will have wasted some of my ship's energy and ammunition. This is killstealing. (If I'm in a group, everyone in the group is considered the same unit with regards to damage dealt -- so if my group as a whole does the most damage to a mob, we get the kill.)

In a game like EQ, mobs are almost always first engaged by walking very near them, striking them with a weapon, or at least throwing something at them. When a mob is aggro (i.e. angry at a player and trying to kill them), it is very obvious, because mobs always move faster when aggro than they do when wandering about normally. Also, even the longest-range attack in the game isn't very far. And once a player or group is fighting a mob, it's usually dead obvious that someone's fighting the mob -- you can see the warrior right next to the orc, hacking away at it with his sword. So accidentally killstealing someone is very difficult in EQ. Doing it deliberately is against the game's rules of conduct, and if a GM catches you doing it, they can suspend you.

Aside from the codified rules, there is a very strong social taboo in EQ against killstealing. It's seen as immensely rude and arrogant. (Yes, this is going somewhere with regard to social pressure.)

In Earth & Beyond, killstealing is not (currently) against the rules of conduct. In other words, you can go around deliberately killstealing all day long, and the GMs will not punish you. (If you are following a particular person around and harassing them by way of killstealing, they can punish you for that.) However, there already exists a strong social pressure against KSing in E&B. On one of the servers (Andromeda, I think), there's a union of traders, and they collectively refuse to sell to anyone who is a known killstealer. This is an example of social pressure in a game like this. There are no rules put forth by Westwood or Electronic Arts (the companies behind E&B) saying who you have to be willing to sell merchandise to, so a player can refuse to deal with another player for any reason, or no reason at all.

So even though there are no "laws" against killstealing, there is (at least on one server) strong social pressure not to do so. No one will suspend or ban you for killstealing, but you might find it more difficult to get new equipment for your ship if you go around killstealing people. The thing is, a number of people think that it's wrong to exert social pressure like this, or at the very least totally unaware of the concept. They'll say things like, "If it's not against the rules, then why do you need to be mean to them (i.e. not sell to them)? They should be allowed to play the game the way they want!" without realizing that they're setting a double standard: they suggest that the killstealer should be able to play the way he wants (i.e. killstealing), but that other players should not be able to play the way they want (i.e. not getting killstealed from). They also ignore the fact that just because something hasn't been made illegal by the authorities, doesn't make it a nice or acceptable thing to do. Is it illegal to cheat on your girlfriend? No. (Not in the U.S.A., anyway.) Does that make it an acceptable thing? Of course not. Same goes for farting on people, saying mean things to people, not bathing, etc.

In EverQuest, the amount of numerical experience it takes to gain a level goes up exponentially as you raise levels, specifically with the cube of the level. The amount of experience you get for killing a monster goes up with the square of the monster's level, so the amount of time it takes to raise a level basically goes up linearly (although at higher levels, the slope goes up dramatically). No matter what level you are, killing a monster of a given level always gives the exact same amount of experience (although if a monster is too low-level, you get no experience at all; and monsters in different zones may give different experience, but the base value is the same).

In Earth & Beyond, the amount of numerical experience it takes to gain a level seems to be more or less constant from about level 5 onward. This is true for all three experience pools -- combat, exploration, and trade. My calculations indicate that it takes about 90,000 experience to go up one level. Killing a monster your level gives you 1,000 combat experience. Discovering a new nav point in a sector designed for your level gives you 1,500 exploration experience. Doing a full-cargo trade run on a run designed for your level gives you anywhere from 5,000 to 9,000 experience, but that takes a bit longer than killing a single monster or exploring a single nav point.

As you go up in levels, killing the same level monster starts giving you less numerical experience. The level 10 monster that you killed at level 10 and gave you 1,000 exp, only gives you 850 exp when you're level 11, 700 exp at level 12, 625 at level 13, and so on. Similarly, killing a level 30 monster when you are level 30 gives you 1,000 exp (and 850 at 31, 700 at 32, etc.).

So I was wondering, which is better: EQ's system, where the requirements and the rewards both grow, or E&B's system, where the requirements remain constant, but in order to proceed as quickly, you need to keep going after higher and higher-level creatures? Mathematically, the systems are more or less interchangable: it still takes the same amount of time to proceed either way, given appropriate values. But E&B's system serves a roleplaying purpose: the things that gave you good rewards when you were level 10, will no longer give you any reward when you're level 30, because you've learned enough to move past that point. It gives a better sense of having progressed, of having learned something.

In the last year we've seen a lot of articles about cellphone legislation and related technologies. Legislation tends to fall into the "ban cellphone usage in certain circumstances" category (like while driving, or where the transmissions might interfere with aircraft flight operations), and the technologies tend to fall into the "figure out ways to disable cell phones in certain areas" category.

The former is based on the hypothesis that cellphone usage during certain times is distracting, and therefore dangerous. The latter is based on the idea that people are often impolite when using cellphones. My wife has theorized that in Japan, this is all a nonissue, since cellphones have permeated society a lot more than they have here in the U.S. Everyone in Japan has a cellphone; people get new cellphones quite often. Nobody feels important because they have a cellphone, because everyone has a cellphone.

In the U.S., by contrast, not everyone does have a cellphone -- and our social etiquette has not yet evolved to deal with cellphones properly. It's beginning to move that way, over time, just like all social rules do. We don't need to legislate politeness; it'll work itself out, I think, over the next couple of years.

I've seen a lot of manifestations of the idea that it's okay to intentionally deceive someone, so long as your words are literally true. Or, to put it another way, as long as you don't actually lie, you didn't do anything wrong.

Why is this so often considered acceptable? Why is it that literal lying is not okay, but other forms of deception are just fine? Leaving out an important piece of information, or saying things that are literally true in and of themselves (but not true in context), are both ways of being deceptive without the taint of "actual" lying.

Advertising in the U.S.A. falls into this category. There are truth-in-advertising laws; an advertiser cannot make a claim that they know is false, but they can make a claim which can't be proven (such as, "Our product is the best!" which doesn't specify what it is the best at). Or, they simply imply things, especially visual ads -- drink this beer, and gorgeous women will throw themselves at you. Drive this car, and... gorgeous women will throw themselves at you. Wear this makeup, or these clothes, and men will drool over you. Buy our product, and people will think you're cool.

Of course, nobody actually says that this will happen, and the images in commercials are usually so stylized that they're not clearly claiming that A (drinking beer) causes B (beautiful women will have sex with you). They just show some guy drinking beer, and he just happens to be at a nightclub full of beautiful women who make eyes at him. But they're not actually lying, so it's okay.

Why are we okay with deception? "Nuh-uh, I didn't actually lie, what I said was true, it's not my fault if you assumed I was talking about something else!" only washes if A) your intent was not to deceive, or B) you're six years old.

"I'm a Republican."

"I'm a Democrat."

"I'm a Libertarian."

"I'm a person who sees the world in terms of black and white, because reality is just too hard."

Does anyone seriously think that a word like "Democrat" or "Republican" is adequate to sum up their political beliefs? Ask detailed questions of any two people who call themselves a "Democrat" and you'll find that they disagree on a lot of things. Minor points, most of them, but there are major issues that people calling themselves "Democrats" do not agree on. Same goes for "Republicans," or "Libertarians," or whatever.

Yet we humans really like to categorize things. We like to have convenient little slots to put people into, because it makes thinking about them easier. It's easier to deal with the world if everyone's divided into "us" and "them." "Us" is all the people who look like me, who think like me, who believe what I believe. "Them" is everyone else -- and "they" are evil. "They" want to destroy my way of life. "They" want to do horrible, unspeakable things to our women and children. We must fight "them"!

We don't just put people into convenient slots. We do the same with issues. I keep thinking about the whole "global warming" issue -- is there really global warming? Is it overblown hype? And so on. I don't have a position on the issue, mostly because I've read countless words on both sides, vehemently disagreeing with the other, and for the most part, launching useless ad hominem attacks. Nobody seems to be interested in finding out what the truth is -- everyone just wants "their" side to be right. Why? Presumably so they can gloat, and live contentendly with the issue nicely resolved.

Think about a politician you really find odious. Someone who is always on the wrong side of issues. Now think about them as a person. They have family. They have friends. They laugh at things. They get bored. They think things are dumb, or tasty. They're human beings.

Most people don't like thinking of them that way, or at all, if possible. Life is difficult enough to get through without spending lots of mental energy thinking about the stuff that doesn't directly affect you. So it's kind of understandable. But until the majority of humans can't see beyond their own little world and problems, I don't think things will get much better -- because those who have the power (politicians and the rich) will be able to abuse the system as long as everyone else lets them get away with it.

This political rant brought to you by Ninja Burger. Your food in 30 minutes or less, or they commit seppuku.

One interesting aspect of online games is the fact that even if your avatar is killed within the game context, the person behind the avatar (you) is not killed. Your motivations, wants, desires, and thoughts remain. So you can always come back and keep doing what you were doing. Compare this to real life, where once someone is dead, they're dead; they don't come back.

This means that the punishment for misbehavior in online games is, at worst, a temporary inconvenience. Players who get a kick out of harassing other players or keeping them from enjoying the game are called "griefers," and in general, the most you can do to a griefer is ban him. But he can always find a way to get another account, and continue griefing.

Pascal's Wager says that you should believe in God, because if you believe and are wrong, you lose nothing, but if you disbelieve and are wrong, you lose everything.

This is known as a false dichotomy (also called "false dilemma"). To summarize, a false dichotomy is a situation where two alternatives are presented as if they are the only choices, when there are in reality other possibilities. The classic is the old kids' taunt, "Do you still have sex with your mom?" The instinctive response is to say, "No," which implies that you no longer have sex with your mom (but you used to); the counter-instinct is to then say, "Yes," which means that you DO have sex with your mom. (The case where you actually have had sex with your mom is ignored for simplicity.)

Pascal's Wager is a false dichotomy. It is balanced around the idea that either Christianity is the "correct" religion, or there are no correct religions. It does not take into account other religions, for one thing. Doing so changes the situation quite a lot: WHICH god do you believe in? If you pick one god, and it's the wrong god, then presumably the "right" god is going to be pretty pissed. Picking no god is probably a safer bet in that case, since if there is a god, he'll probably be less annoyed that you reserved judgment than if you worshipped a false idol.

To learn more about logical fallacies (which are important to understand if you ever want to win an argument on the merits of your position), go here. Don't be dissuaded by the big "The Atheism Web" at the top; the page isn't any kind of propaganda, just a list of logical fallacies.

I used to play EverQuest a lot. From April 2000 through March 2002, actually, I played very frequently. In April 2001 I switched servers, from The Nameless to Test Server, and started over. My main was a rogue, and I got him to level 60 by March 2002. Once I hit level 60, I more or less lost interest in the game. I had achieved my goal, and my other activity (high-level raiding with the "uber" crowd on Test) had gotten repetitive.

I've also spent a lot of time reading EQ message boards. These are fan boards, run by the players, to discuss the myriad aspects of the game while offline. There are thousands of message boards; some are dedicated to discussing specific classes (monk, rogue, cleric, warrior, etc.), some are guild boards (for the discussion of guild activites), some are server boards (community boards for all players on a given server), etc. The class boards are probably the most active, individually; as it happens, the various class boards have mostly been whittled down to one or two "major" boards for each class.

The "major" board for monks is Monkly Business. Recently, EQ's developers decided to make some major changes to game balance. Among other things, they decided to decrease monks' defensive abilities. Monks now take more damage when they get hit (although that has been offset a bit by an increased ability to avoid getting hit in the first place).

Naturally, a lot of monks are upset about this change. More specifically, a lot of players whose primary character is a monk are upset about this change. The more obsessive EQ players tend to get very possessive about their class; anything which is perceived as a negative change is greeted with outrage, anger, flaming, screaming, and so forth. (Positive changes are usually greeted by similarly strong cheers, happiness, joy, etc.)

On some of the threads discussing this recent change, there were a lot of monks threatening to quit EQ if these changes were not rescinded. There are always a number of posts like that, whenever a negative change (also known as a "nerf") is made. How many of those people actually end up quitting is unknown; a lot of the time, I suspect, people bluster in public but have no intention of really quitting; or they're angry at first, but then they calm down shortly and decide that the change isn't so bad after all.

Mostly what I'm interested in is the player-company dynamic between the EQ developers (Verant) and the players. Obviously, the company's well-being is dependent on having lots of players play the game. Doing things which makes the players happier is a good thing, in that respect, because it increases the number of players. Doing things that piss off the players is a bad thing, because they get angry and quit. Ideally, the things Verant does should be tailored to the long-term retaining of large numbers of players; if Verant was to do things which are "cool" in the short-term, but take away from the longevity and replay value of the game, that would harm them in the long run.

It's fascinating how attached people get to "their" class. This happens because most players pick a class to start with, and then play that class and only that class for a long time. Some players will have a secondary (or even tertiary) character that they play frequently. These players tend to be much less obsessive about "their" class, since they have play experience from another perspective (i.e. that of another class). A negative change to their "primary" class won't be taken as harshly, since they don't see it as a personal attack.

So when players feel thus attacked, they take it out by threatening to quit the game. This I don't mind; what bothers me is when these players make claims that are equivalent to, "If Verant doesn't do what I want, they're going to lose all their customers and go out of business." Usually it's couched in other terms, saying for example that if Verant doesn't do what its customers want, then it will go out of business. Of course, this is always preceded by a rant about this particular change, which harms this particular player.

This is not to excuse any stupid actions by Verant; but the mere fact that so many people have played EQ for so long, and are so passionate about it, shows that they are doing something right. It bothers me when people assume that any change which weakens their class is a change that will somehow bring about EQ's downfall. (These exact claims were being made when I started playing EQ, and the game has many more members now than it did then.)

Yeah, I know I can edit my journal entries. But I'm talking about messageboards like Slashdot, where you can't edit your posts after you write them. (Those who have access to the /. servers can edit them, but I'm assuming security is maintained.) A lot of people bitch about the lack of an edit function, but you know what? I'm glad there isn't one.

EZBoard (www.ezboard.com), by default, allow editing of already posted messages, and what ends up happening a lot is that someone will post something, be refuted or embarassed by someone else, and then either edit their original post to make it look like they said something else, or just delete the post entirely. It allows people to say things, and then change the record of what was said -- which makes things worse, because then other people reading the thread later will be confused about (or ignorant of) what was actually said. The nice thing about /. is that users can't retroactively edit their words. Once you post it, it's there for everyone to see, essentially forever, and there's nothing you can do about it.

One reasonable conclusion is that this makes people more cautious about what they post; however, I don't think this is the case. There's altogether too many /. posts that were obviously not thought through (not to mention neither spellchecked nor grammar-checked), and posted even without previewing. However, combined with /.'s moderation system, such posts tend to remain below the radar of those reading at +3 or above (as I do). Nonetheless, it's reassuring to know that what was posted is fixed, and will not be changed if someone responds and proves the original poster incorrect about something.

How much better do you think the world would be if every response, every action (aside from reflexive reactions) were thought out for an additional 5 seconds? How many spur-of-the-moment things that turn out to be bad ideas would be averted? People would still act with confident conviction, but a lot of mistakes that got made would, hypothetically, be avoided.

A lot of mistakes that get made are later defended because of pride. If you do something that is ill-considered, admitting you were wrong can make you "look bad" -- it can hurt your pride. Pride causes people to defend decisions, words, and actions that were foolish. If fewer such actions were taken to begin with, there would be less need to defend them pridefully later on. Politics is run by pride; how often does *any* politician admit to having made a mistake, let alone deliberate misdeeds? Almost never. Perhaps it could be explained by saying that politicians are much less fallible than normal people... but that's not true. Politicians *are* normal people; they make mistakes just like the rest of us.

There's a saying: "An error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it." (Or maybe the words "error" and "mistake" should be transposed; I've seen both versions of that quote.) Only two things cause mistakes to occur: actual fallibility (honestly thinking that a bad idea is a good idea), and pride (defending a bad idea because admitting it was a bad idea will make you lose credibility).

How much damage has been done to the world because someone refused to admit they were wrong?

Yesterday I was listening to 105.1 (KMZT), a classical music station here in Los Angeles (they call themselves "K-Mozart"). At the top of each hour they recount a few news headlines. One of the ones they mentioned was the bombings this weekend in Bali, where 181 people were killed and several hundred more injured.

When the DJ read the headline, he referred to "the bombings in Bali in which two Americans were killed." (That's not an exact quote but it's close.) There was no mention of any other deaths or injuries. What he said was factually true: two Americans were killed in the bombings (although I've heard another source say three, but it's a small enough variance to be considered accurate), but it's what he omitted -- that about 180 other people were killed -- that's telling.

Always keep in mind: even the most "unbiased" news source has a bias, because news sources are always generated by humans, and all humans are biased. Even me. Even you.

Imagine if you had a device that contained millions of tiny robots inside. The robots are each only a few hundred atoms in size, but have the capability to manipulate almost any kind of molecule in very precise ways. For example, they can take a mound of dirt, which is comprised of mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and silicon, disassemble the molecules in the dirt, and reassemble them into something else -- say, sucrose (C12H22O11), i.e. ordinary sugar. The nitrogen and silicon are placed into storage containers, bound into some harmless form like N2 (atmospheric nitrogen) or SiO2 (silicon dioxide, aka quartz), or perhaps others.

The entire apparatus is computer-controlled, so you can specify exactly what it is you want the machine to make. The machine is instructed, for example, to create cubical sucrose crystals 1mm on a side.

If the applications of this machine are not yet obvious, then let me expound. This machine can take something relatively worthless -- say, dirt, or plant mulch, weeds, rocks, etc. -- and turn it into food, clothing, whatever. As long as the inputs have enough of each type of atom to build what you need, the machine can manufacture *any* physical object.

So you wouldn't need to buy food at the supermarket. You wouldn't need to buy clothes at the store. All you would need is a computer program to specify how to make a given item, and some energy input -- plug the machine into the wall, or maybe the device will be solar- or wind-powered. Give it some material to work with, and it will make lunch for you.

Whether such a device is practical is still unknown; this kind of atom-precise nanotech is barely into its infancy, with a long way to go, although I think that if such devices are practical, we'll begin seeing them within 20 years. That said, what would be the social effects of such a device? I saw an article a few days ago where someone was talking about this very topic, but then they began lamenting what would happen to those whose livelihoods depend on manufacturing -- farmers, steel mills, etc.

The point they completely missed was that a machine that can make anything, can even make more of itself. So once you have one of these, you give it the atoms necessary to make another one. Now you have two machines. Have each one make another one. Repeat ad infinitum. Now everyone has one. The farmer doesn't need to sell his crop for money; he can manufacture all the food, clothing, and amenities he needs. Everyone would be able to endlessly replicate any physical object.

When scarcities like that are gone, the things that will retain true value will be things that cannot be replicated, and the only truly finite resource on this planet is land. (Yes, the planet consists of a finite amount of matter, but the amount of land one person can "occupy" is much greater relative to the total amount of land, than is the amount of matter one person can use relative to the total amount of matter available.) Information can be copied at an infinitesimal cost; a nanotech replicator would allow physical objects to receive the same treatment. Other things that will retain value will be mostly artistic skills, like musical skill, acting skill, artistic skill, and so on. Understanding of particular things will retain its value, or the ability to convince people of things. Knowledge will be very important, because you will no longer be able to rely on being able to buy and sell possessions.

I don't claim it'll be a utopia; there will still be stupid, ignorant, arrogant, rude, selfish, credulous people out there. But I think that entirely removing survival pressure from the equation would be a mighty useful thing.

The MPAA Lectures on Copyright Law

The Motion Picture Association of America, joined by other entertainment industry groups, has sent a letter to more than 2,000 university presidents enlisting their help in stopping the use of high-speed campus networks to download movies, records and games from the Internet. "We believe there must be a substantial effort, both disciplined and continuous, to bring this piracy under control," the letter said. The trade groups compared the practice with "walking into the campus bookstore and in a clandestine manner walking out with a textbook without paying for it."

The funniest part is that they sent this to "more than 2,000 university presidents," people who are, generally, smart enough to understand that stealing a physical object like a textbook is distinctly different from duplicating bits of data without permission. Either this is part of some (theoretically) more clever ploy, or they're complete idiots.

I post this every so often, and I'm going to keep posting it until everyone understands. It's very simple. If you have a book, and I take the book, you no longer have the book. If you have a book, and I copy the book, you still have the book, and I have it, too. The same goes for music, movies, or anything that can be compactly represented with digital information.

Yet organizations like the MPAA and the RIAA want us to believe that copying is identical in every way to theft. I think this is going to hurt them in the long run, since most people are smart enough to understand, once the distinction is made clear, that there is a critical difference.

None of this is to say that there's anything wrong with the principle behind copyright (and other forms of information control law, like patent and trademark). The principle is that granting a temporary monopoly on the distribution of created works (like books, movies, music, etc.) will encourage citizens to create more, since they are guaranteed (by law, at least) to be able to profit from their efforts. The fact that the monopoly is temporary is critical; copyright is a give-and-take between the goverment (i.e. the people) and individual creators. The people give a temporary monopoly to the creators, and in exchange, at the end of that period, the copyrighted work is taken by the public domain. In theory, the fact that any individual can trivially make copies of a copyrighted work is irrelevant, because doing so is illegal -- the copyright holder maintains the legal right to control the distribution of the work.

The emergence of certain technologies has, de facto, obsoleted this theory. It is trivial for just about anyone to copy just about any information (such as the contents of a book, CD, movie, etc.) and distribute it at will for very little perceived or real cost. There are far too many people doing this for a content creator to sue, or the government to prosecute, more than a tiny fraction of them. Now one might think of two obvious responses to this situation:

1) Since the hardware that allows this copying is made by a relatively few entities (large hardware companies), it is possible and feasible to pass laws that restrict general-purpose computing hardware, so that they cannot copy copyrighted content without the content creators' permission. However, as a technical matter, this is totally infeasible; end-users will still find ways around it, even if the hardware creators conform strictly to the letter of such laws. Edwards' Law tells us, "You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem."

Furthermore, laws like this will end up crippling the computing industry, which has revenues somewhere north of ten times that of the entertainment industry. We should destroy one industry to protect the business model of another industry that's one-tenth the size?

2) The entire copyright paradigm should be changed to deal with individuals' abilities to copy content at will. The problem here is that people are willing to copy and distribute content that they have no legal right to; this is not a technological problem, but a social one. Something new will have to replace copyright, because the technology that has made it obsolete is not going away.

There are a lot of suggestions out there, but I'm not very familiar with them yet. The truth is, we have no experience with the large-scale deployment of other methods, and the only way to really tell what will happen will be to try them out.

I only watch three hours of TV a week. As it happens, all three hours are shows created by the same guy: Joss Whedon. The shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. When they go off the air, unless Joss starts some new shows, I probably won't watch any TV at all. I'm just not that interested in it. I used to be, but ever since I graduated college, I've found it less and less interesting.

My wife says she's not that fond of passive entertainment like TV and movies. I think the main reason is that she doesn't like to sit there, motionless, watching things unfold. She prefers to use her imagination, and enjoys even the minimal amount of effort it takes to turn a page. I love movies, myself, mostly because of the scale of the experience; I also enjoy watching TV, although less so, partially because it's not that communal of an experience (usually only one or a few people there with you, whereas in a movie theater there can be hundreds), and also because it tends to be small-scale.

All that said, my wife and I both enjoy those three shows, but that's all the TV we watch. Some people have suggested that we'd watch and enjoy TV more if we got a TiVo or similar system, but in order for me to watch more TV than I do now, I'd have to do less of other things, and I'm more or less content with my current entertainment ratio. Others have asked why we don't have a DVD player or DVDs, since I like movies so much. It's not so much that I'm into movies, or having movies; it's that I like to go to the movies. I like the experience of it. It's fun, even if the movie isn't very good -- one of the best moviegoing experiences I ever had was when I saw the big-screen adaptation of Wing Commander, which was an awful movie, but the audience (including me) started mocking it mercilessly, which was loads of fun.