Someone has had a great idea: let’s build a 13-story mosque 600 yards from “Ground Zero” at the World Trade Center in New York City. The keg of worms opened up by this proposal had to have been foreseen, yet the project was launched anyway.

I don’t really care to argue or reiterate the points made by the plan’s proponents; they are right to want to expose people to a more fair and balanced examination of Islam than what the average American gets from watching television. It is also incorrect, in the factual sense, to view the proposed mosque as a monument to terrorism. Any educated brain knows that the terrorists who flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not terrorists simply because they were Muslims, just like Timothy McVeigh did not bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City just because he was a Republican, a Roman Catholic, and a member of the NRA.

The true evil of terrorism lies in the acts themselves and their perpetrators, and not in the core beliefs held by millions of people which happen to be shared, supposedly, by these terrorists. How many homosexuals have been beaten to death on a city street somewhere by people who consider themselves to possess Christian values?

So, with the blatantly obvious out of the way, why do I agree that building this mosque at Ground Zero is a bad idea, even though I don’t see an equation between celebrating Islam and propagating terrorism?

Because it’s a bad idea, and everyone involved knows it, yet they decided to pursue it anyway. This is not a matter of differences in religious or ideological stances. Racism, homophobia, women’s suffrage – these were and are valid social issues, and yes, sometimes reform in these cases is not achieved through quiet contemplation. However, many Americans equate terrorism with Islam, and they fear Islam because they don’t really know much about it. In other words, they are not necessarily objecting to specific values held by Islam, they are simply afraid of what they don’t know.

There is no reason that I am aware of why this mosque has to be built at Ground Zero. I guess the sentiment is that if we build this mosque, and people will be more readily exposed to it, in time we will learn more about Islam. Perhaps. But these good intentions will eventually be overshadowed by public outcry and eventual vandalism. This “building of peace” will be a magnet for every local yahoo. It has not even been a full decade since 9/11. While it may be true that it’s unfair to blame Islam for 9/11, it is nevertheless illogical to proceed with this plan and expect an outcome that is of a different nature than what we are already seeing

President Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night has garnered some negative reviews, not so much due to the message itself – that’s inconsequential, after all – as much as the difficult language used by our Commander-in-Chief. Paul Payack, the president of Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based company that analyzes the cultural impact of word choices, considered President Obama’s speech to have been written at a 9.8 grade level.

In other words, you probably had to have gone to high school in order to understand it.

Here’s a sentence from President Obama’s speech, chosen by Mr. Payack as particularly difficult to follow:

“That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”

On the other hand, a phrase like “oil began spewing” was supposedly more comprehensible.

Perhaps it is because English is not my native language, or that I never experienced the American public education system first-hand, but I did not find President Obama’s speech difficult to follow. In my opinion, that sentence which Mr. Payack singled out, is simple and to the point.

I am, quite frankly, disturbed by the notion that the President of the United States should dumb down and simplify his speeches to match the intellects of the academically uninspired. I would go so far as to suggest that the “leader of the free world” should be speaking at a 10th grade level or higher.

Perhaps we got spoiled by those eight years with Bush.

I was around 29 or so when I started taking my very first college classes. The college experience is pronouncedly different, I think, when you start it ten years later than most kids who are fresh out of high school.

One thing that I found particularly interesting and delightful about the campus were the many organizations that students were running and participating in. It was inspiring to see so many young people truly involved in things that many of them were only just becoming aware of.

One such organization that repeatedly caught my eye was the campus’ “Atheist Agenda” organization. And true to their name, an agenda they did have – one that they were not shy about. Each week a new poster was hung on a wall in one of the central campus buildings. The poster was slightly different each time, but the message remained the same: there is no God, the Bible is fiction, and Christians are idiots. Not in so many words, but that was the gist of it.

I get people knocking on my door on occasion. Mormons, Jehova’s Witnesses, what-have-you. I admire their enthusiasm, but none of them get a foot inside my house, and it has nothing to do with my lack of interest in religion. In fact, I’m a fairly spiritual guy. I was raised Lutheran; I’m not a complete stranger with the Bible. But I do have a problem with others trying to shove their beliefs down my throat.

Unfortunately, for reasons I fail to comprehend, this seems to be the common approach among atheists: shove their “there is no God” message down people’s throats. It is almost as if every Christian believer they come across is a personal insult being slung their way. It is not merely enough for them that they have themselves found a dogma which does not acknowledge the existence of a deity – they have to bring everyone else on board as well. Yet, at the same time, any Watchtower-offering well-wisher that knocks on their door is told to “go sell Jesus someplace else.”

When it comes to Christians wanting to “enlist me” into their midst, at least I can understand it; Jesus told Christians to spread the word. Many of them, I think, are sincere in their belief that unless I do this or say that, I will be facing an eternity in a fire pit somewhere – and they want to save me from that. Okay, maybe I’m not buying, but at least I can appreciate their motivation for selling it.

With atheists, I don’t get it at all. Why is it so important that I see things their way? Furthermore, why is it necessary to literally attack a religion for the purpose of denying it?

I joined the Atheist Agenda’s website out of curiosity. One of the first things I posted in their forums about was the weekly poster. I suggested to them that spewing insults at Christians on that poster, not to mention occasionally defacing “pro-Christian” posters elsewhere, was not doing their “agenda” any favors. If you want people to hear your point of view, don’t try to outshout them. You can shout louder, they will hear less, and all you get for your troubles is a sore throat, and a lousy reputation.

Another thing I asked them was, what exactly was the point of the annual “pornography for Bibles” event. Each year, the organization set up an event where they handed out pornographic material in exchange for Bibles.

I honestly did not understand the point. Or, rather, I did, but I was hoping there was more to it than just going for cheap shock value. Judging by the response I got from the organization, cheapness was precisely at the heart of it. Cheapness and lack of real ideas. Ideologically speaking, these guys were shooting fish in a barrel, blindfolded. Any fish they were hitting were dead already.

Changing teams doesn’t mean you’re playing a different game. If you want people to subscribe to your beliefs, as opposed to those offered by others, then you better have something deeper running under your idealism than just going for shock value. Because the guy at the door will see right through you, and will close the door in your face.

Trust me.

Fox News commentator Brit Hume is of the opinion that the extent to which Tiger Woods can recover from the recent scandal depends on his willingness to embrace Christianity instead of Buddhism – a faith which (half Asian) Woods inherited from his mother – because according to Hume, Buddhism “does not offer the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.”

It is clear to me that Mr. Hume knows precious little about Buddhism, and I have to wonder if he really knows all that much about Christianity, for that matter.

At the core of the Christian belief is faith in God, acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as one’s saviour, and the ongoing effort to try and live according to the Christian ideals and values set forth by God and the Son of God through the Bible.

It is people like Brit Hume that make it seem as though Christianity can be summed up as a set of moral values; that if you act like a good Christian, you will be forgiven and you will redeem yourself. To a Christian, faith should be more than a means to an end, should it not? Why is this guy talking about Christianity like a car salesman? “That Buddha will get you where you’re going, most of the time, but Jesus here will provide better gas mileage, better forgiveness, and a lot more redemption in the long run.”

You can make the argument that Tiger Woods can only get to Heaven (as defined by Christianity) by accepting Christ as his saviour and putting his faith in God, but you cannot suggest that Christianity is the only religion through which one can seek personal change.

Bromance is one of those relatively new, made-up mash-up words that I just cannot get on board with. For the uninitiated, the term implies a close but non-sexual relationship/friendship between two or more men. The term has become particularly popular in Hollywood, where movies like I Love You, Man have become a mainstay of brainless summer popcorn siestas.

My problem with the term is twofold.

First, there is the way it sounds: bromance. A pseudo-clever combination of “bro” and “romance.” By its definition, bromance has nothing to do with romance, and I was never crazy about the term “bro” to begin with.

My second issue with this word is more complicated. Allow me to explain, and potentially digress:

I Love You, Man is a comedy about a guy who’s getting married, but does not have a close male friend that he could ask to be his best man. He ends up intentionally seeking a friendship with another man; the trouble is, he’s not very experienced when it comes to relating to other men, so he has a hard time of it. The plot struck a certain chord with me, because I’ve always had  a difficult time forming and maintaining friendships with guys.

Unfortunately, the movie was uncomfortable for me to watch. In the recent years, with titles like I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Hollywood has made a cash cow out of the assumed awkwardness of close male friendships. The undertone in these types of movies suggests that men, in general, have a difficult time relating to one another in a close, [slider title="homosocial"]homosocial = non-sexual relationship (friendship) with member(s) of the same gender[/slider] relationship. This can undoubtedly be true, but not usually for the reasons these comedies would want you to believe.

The universal assumption these days seems to be that men have a difficult time expressing their feelings for one another because of some idiotic notion of not wanting to appear the least bit “gay.” I honestly think we have, as a society, extracted all the juice out of the whole homophobia concept, and that it is now time to move on to being afraid of some other abstraction.

I’m not going to go on a tirade here about the social pussification project our society has well under way for young modern men – that’s a story for another day. I will, however, suggest that men do know how to communicate with one another; they do know how to express themselves in a homosocial relationship; and they do it all the time if you just leave them well enough alone.

My father-in-law and I are very different people, culturally, politically, and in many other ways. However, in addition to our love for computers, technology, and science fiction, we find a common ground because we’re guys. There are fundamental similarities built into us that allow us to communicate the way men do, and I object to the idea that somehow this isn’t enough.

Bromance suggests that there is an uncomfortable vacuum that exists between close male friends, one that they cannot fill or remove because of some misguided notion of homophobia. It is that very sense of discomfort that these comedies like I Love You, Man play on, because it is supposedly funny. We like to watch other people feeling awkward, and what’s more awkward than male friends who share a platonic affection and have no way of verbifying it. Right?

Here’s the thing: the reason we (as in guys) don’t end our phone calls to our buddies with “love you, bro” is not because of homophobia; we don’t say it because it doesn’t need to be said, and it serves no purpose to say it. If my close male buddy doesn’t know I love him, it’s not because I’m too homophobic to let him know – it’s because I’m a crappy friend.

My wife and I watched I Love You, Man together and had a few laughs. I think she enjoyed the movie more than I did; I spent most of my time feeling awkward and embarrassed for the characters. Not because their behaviour was “so gay,” but because it felt like they were catering to some nondescript fallacy of how women think men should relate.

What does this have to do with my objection to bromance? To me, the term is just an epitome of sexism made a-okay through the use of humour. The use of the term bromance as a description does not – to me – strengthen or underline the depth of a close male friendship; it debases and weakens the perception of it.

If men don’t profess their platonic love for one another, it’s not because we have a difficult time of it – it’s because we don’t need to.

It is not just a happy coincidence that Netflix is doing so well despite the poor economy; the company has repeatedly turned fresh and clever thinking into a successful business model.

A couple of months ago word got out that major Hollywood studios were considering the possibility of delaying the release of future new DVD or BluRay releases to rental services. The logic behind this proposal is that if consumers cannot immediately rent the new hot movie for a few measly bucks, they will go out and buy the outrageously overpriced buy-to-own copy instead.

At least this is how the studio executives envision it.

Perhaps, if these honchos stepped for a brief moment out of their cigar smoke-filled boardrooms and into the real world, they might see just how badly this plan is going to backfire. Delaying the release of new movies to rental agencies is going to amplify the illegal online sharing of movies. Big time.

Netflix’s streaming service is a huge draw because it’s easy, affordable, and convenient. You can watch a movie in the comfort of your home, and you can stop watching a movie you’re just not enjoying that much without having just wasted a bunch of money.

Who’s going to buy a movie they haven’t already seen for $25, hoping that they will like it and even want to see it a second time?

The magnitude of illegal file-sharing of movies has grown exponentially, and my personal opinion on its popularity rests on convenience rather than price. People who take the time and assume the obvious risk to illegally download movies love motion pictures, and they watch large numbers of them. They are not so much audiences as they are consumers of movies. The movie industry does not have a working business model to service this growing consumer base. They really don’t. That is why companies like Netflix and Redbox flourish; they fulfill the demands of those consumers with instant, or at least near-instant gratification.

For years I have been passing the DVD aisles at Wal-Mart with an incredulous expression on my face. Standard edition, widescreen edition, limited edition, unrated edition, special edition, director’s cut, anniversary edition, extended edition. $25 for a copy of the latest Harry Potter movie? Are you kidding me? Six months later I can find it in the $5 bin. Or perhaps $60 for one season of The Sopranos? That comes to about 5 bucks per episode. Sure it’s a great show, but… $60? Seriously?

Of course, it’s the studio that takes the financial risk of producing a movie – not Netflix. And sometimes successful movies have to cover the losses of less successful ones. It’s a business, after all. An industry. They’re trying to make money.

However, while studios seem to like to think that the big motivation of illegal downloading and uploading of movies is the lack of a price tag, I maintain that it must be convenience. If a movie is a successful one, a huge hit, it can take half a year for its DVD release to come out. If it does poorly in the theatres, it gets released considerably faster. Some movies even go straight to DVD. Meanwhile, people are not waiting around for a DVD release that’s set into the distant future. They download it now, even if all they can get is a poor-quality camcorder version shot at a movie theatre. If a movie is out, it’s out. Is it legal? No. Is it moral? No. But it is the reality.

While Hollywood may be cooking up unrealistic business models, Netflix is turning a potentially hazardous plan into something beneficial. The company is attempting to negotiate a decrease in licensing costs for movie rentals. Some rumors suggest that Netflix is seeking to cut licensing costs down as much as half. This works out great for Netflix, if this materializes, because the company does not really rely on the most recent releases for that much of their traffic.

It is good to see that at least someone is using their brain.