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The Knights of Columbus are a Catholic group of no small renowned, their number of members totaling somewhere around two million.  The organization does plenty to help with a variety of charitable causes, but they also like to spend their money to promote political agendas.  Apparently, more than $16 million of their dollars have been spent since the year 2005, all of it to fund anti-gay marriage movements.

This money often goes to very questionable groups, including the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).  In case you didn’t read my previous post on NOM, they’re the ones that were exposed for trying to manipulate racial tensions to their advantage in order to fight against gay rights. But NOM is just one group that takes the KoC’s money.  Some of these alliances are similarly questionable, so much so that a large group of Catholics has become concerned about what the KoC is getting involved in.

As was said before, the Knights do a good job of putting other money to good use.  But still, $16 million over the course of seven years could have done a lot to help people who actually need it.  If they really had faith that God’s will directs all things in the world, they would leave the politics to God and trust that if gay marriage is an “abomination” he will stop the laws from passing.

Well, even if the KoC doesn’t spend their money wisely, at least they have their convictions, right?  Although I wonder at what sorts of convictions would lead them to choose the promotion of oppression over charity.

Every election year in the United States is the same thing.  The two people who are slugging it out for the position of top dog in the country make it a point to slam on the one that happens to be our biggest rival - China.  The hopeful politicians try to sound strong by insulting the Chinese government and doing some name calling.  But while it may garner them a few votes, does all this trash talking really serve any purpose aside from pissing China off?

The list of insults this year is pretty much the same as they were four years ago.  Both sides talk about China being a currency manipulator and stealing jobs from the U.S.  What they don’t address are the issues that are actually important to China’s improvement, such as human rights and political corruption.  The decision to stay away from these subjects is based primarily on voter demands, since more people are worried about their pocket books than the state of living conditions in China.

But in the end, no politician that has ever promised to “get tough” on China has done anything significant.  They call names and then, once the election is over and done with, return right back to trading freely with them.  This symbolic attack is mostly pointless and serves only to rile the anger of Chinese politicians and make the next four years more difficult for whoever happens to win.

Strangely enough, it’s only the politicians that seem to get angry over these attacks.  A look at Chinese social networks and those who watch our elections shows that most Chinese citizens take the insults in stride.  Either they don’t care at all or they express the opinion that they expect it from us.  Apparently, we have become so insulting to China that they’d probably be more surprised if we stopped attacking them.

Making China the bad guy during out political election process is essentially harmful.  They are a rising superpower and we feel the need to disdain them because we currently can.  Not looking at the long-term may produce some strained relations down the road, once they’ve reached a level of economic power that equals our own.  We’re using China as a tool instead of trying to actively work through these problems we perceive and it will, one day, come back to bite us.

Now as a die hard Star Wars lore buff, I'm constantly getting upset when decades of amazing lore gets largely ignored or brushed away by Lucasfilm. It got to the point that there had to be a sliding scale on what level of canon things are on. Some of the things in "George's canon” flat out spit in the face of things largely accepted and loved by millions of fans.

Yet there are times when that's really a good thing. It was nice seeing Selkath, the aquatic species from Mannan from Knights of the Old Republic make an appearance in the Clone Wars TV series, which is on the same level of canon as the films, as well as the force unleashed games. 

This, in a way, sort of indirectly validated the game series as more or less an accepted official canon for many. When I think about it however, imagine what may have happened if Lucas had gotten his hands on the Revan lore. Considering what he seems to have done to his own legacy is more than enough to cause some reason to be concerned over anything else he may have attempted to work with. 

Could you imagine a "GL reboot of the Thrawn series? Or any of the other countless books? * Shudders* So while yes, I'm sad that some of the lore created by others gets ignored most of the time, a huge part of me is thrilled it's kept largely out of Lucasfilm hands. Last thing we need are sith purebloods being replaced with Gungan-like frog people so they are more kid friendly.

Five years ago I flew to Quito Ecuador with a friend for a three-month trip in South America. He went as far as Cuzco, Peru, the gateway to the famed ruins of Machu Picchu. From there, I traveled alone across Bolivia and Brazil by bus to my final destination of Rio de Janiero.

The diversity of landscapes and cultures that I saw was astonishing. From Quito Ecuador to La Paz Bolivia I traveled through the Andes, a mountain range of huge views, small towns and curious native people. A highlight of this was Cuenca in Ecuador, a dynamic colonial town surrounded by eerie high-altitude nature.

When we first dipped into Peru we headed for the Pacific coast and the beach town of Mancora. I didn’t know that the Peruvian coast is all desert, full of beaches and dusty, hard-times concrete towns. Lima was one of the rougher big cities I saw, its saving grace an attractive seafront.

Machu Picchu ranks high on the lists of all travelers to South America, and it didn’t disappoint – ruins on the top of a steep mountain surrounded by jungle. But Cuzco is a destination all by itself, another colonial gem built on one of the most important ancient Incan cities. Take a bus in any direction from Cuzco and you see ruins everywhere on the terraced mountainsides. Humans have lived and farmed there for thousands of years.

A bouncy train takes you through the super high Andes to Lake Titicaca, the highest large lake in the world. It’s on the Peruvian/Bolivian border, and the change in culture between the many small towns on the lake is noticeable, though most inhabitants are native people descended from the Incas.

Things got really crazy from La Paz onward, but that will have to wait for part two of this story.