Monday Morning Spit
Monday, bloody Monday. Here is a link that should lead to some entertainment, though. It is all about how to make an
annoying web page. It will give you pointers on how to reduce your traffic to an absolute crawl so that nobody will really annoy you at your site anymore.
I guess it has some practical purposes as well, as you could choose not to do what the page suggests you do and in that way avoid annoying those people that surf through your page. That might be asking too much of you though, so I suggest you ignore that. (via
Gravity Lens)
Toilet Humour
I was sitting on the toilet, taking the children to the pool and enjoying it, when I heard this voice coming from the cubicle next to me
“Hello?” it said.
Now this was slightly disturbing, as I wasn’t used to being talked to while I was releasing the chocolate hostage, but being a friendly person I said, “Hi.” Hoping that the tone of voice I used made it abundantly clear that this wasn’t making me too comfortable.
“Hi… How are you?” the voice asked.
Now somebody saying ‘Hello’ to you in the toilet is already a bother, but then you expect them to ask a follow up question like ‘do you have any extra toilet paper’ or ‘is it you that stinks so bad?’, but not ‘How are you’, as that raises all these uncomfortable realisations about what you’re doing and what that means. Still, now that I had started the conversation I couldn’t very well stop, could I?
“Fine, yourself?” I answered back, hoping that that would be the end of it.
“I’m good” the voice answers back, but then doesn’t stop there and asks “What are you doing?”
Now this was a decidedly below the belt question. I thought it was pretty clear what I was doing and that he had now thoroughly disturbed my faxing attempt.
“I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing, would you be quiet?” I loud whispered back angrily. This was insane! If he kept on talking to me any longer I was going to give him a piece of my mind. Then the voice said.
“Look, I’m going to have to call you back, this guy in the next stall keeps answering all the questions I’m asking you.”
As you can well guess, I didn’t come out of that stall for the next half hour.
Academic Blogs
Found a group of essays on the nature of Blogging, called ‘
into the Blogosphere’. I’ve read one of their essays and started in on another. I noticed one thing, for people trying to write about blogging these people haven’t understood one of the most fundamental aspects of it, namely the ‘down to earth’ nature of the successful Blogs. These people discuss the amazing potential and usefulness of blogs, with the very ivory tower loftiness that has made it so difficult for the universities to communicate with the majority of the people that attended them (ignoring, for the moment, the 80% of the population that hasn’t).
Though I know - especially in this case - that it isn’t true, I can’t help but feel that in using the language they to actively keep people out of their conversation. Especially since I’ve learned that it is possible to write about the thing discussed in university without having to rely on their academic lexicon. As long as they continue to write in this manner, they will never be able to tap the blogging potential that they speak so highly off and they will never achieve the things that they believe blogging has already placed within their grasp.
Blogging is just a tool, not a solution. It is up to the individual to learn how to use it.
Abandoned
I’m collecting pictures and images of derelict and deserted buildings, so I was quite happy when I stumbled across
this page, which is all about derelict buildings in London, as seen by an amateur photographer. Deserted spaces always have a mysterious quality. Something about the life that went on there before but does so no longer. History, or memory, or something like that, lingers there.
Oh,
here is another site with abandoned buildings.
I’ll try to avoid becoming too poetic and just let you get your own impression.
Indonesian Election
Here’s a blog from a person that took part in the election process in Indonesia as an observer. Opinions and ideas aplenty, but I’m going to refrain from commenting until I have a better idea of what I think (too tired to actually try thinking right now).
Accepting Eastern Mumbo Jumbo
So now even major online publications are talking about
Self-healing through mental stimulation. Something that was rubbished less then two decades ago as ‘mysticism’ and ‘eastern mumbo jumbo’ is finally being accepted as a pretty neat idea.
The Placebo effect, it turns out, has an actual physical influence on our bodies, releasing natural chemicals into our bloodstream that can mimic the effects of a full on operation, especially if done well.
I’ve always wondered how western doctors of the 80s explained how Eastern people often managed to live to such a ripe old age. Luck? Chance? Statistics? I can imagine some western doctor going ‘of course somebody is going to reach the age of 120 over there! There is so many of them that statistically that is bound to happen’.
Relaxation seems to be a very useful tactic to help the body along. They suggest meditation, counting and yoga. I think I’ll just stick with one or two beers, some good friends, pool and a lot of laughter (which, they say, is one of the best medicines). If that can’t relax me then I don’t really know what will.
Managing the Information Torrent
An
article in the economist about using unobtrusive gadgets to monitor important information about the outside world in your own home gives us an idea of what is to come. These people apparently want to make it possible to know information without having to read or look at screens, instead they want to colour code objects and such.
A good idea, considering how much information is out there to confuse us. Of course it still doesn’t do what we really need and that is to have it intelligently sort information so that it figures out what we need to hear and tells us, rather then forcing us to sit down and program these devices.
Computers have given us unrivalled amounts of information, now they have to help us sort that information for easier access. Yes, making the information less obtrusive and more intuitively understandable would be nice, but that only deflects the smallest percentage of the informational torrent. What we need is something that will deflect the great majority of the information we don’t want and to give us access to the information we do want.
It will doubtlessly happen, it is just a question of time.
Predictions from fifty years ago
Isn’t that nice, a mock up
from 1954 of what a computer was going to look like in the year 2004. That’s fifty years ago, imagine what things will look like fifty years from now? Most of us are going to experience that and that means that some technologies we can barely conceive of today are going to be a reality then.
Oh what surprises the future will hold and what technologies our grandchildren will take for granted while we mutter and groan, complaining how anybody can ever understand it. (Picture nicked from
Gravity Lens (again)).
One Million Footnotes
Alright, found a site worth seeing (and linking to, for that matter). It was suggested on Blogspot, so most of you have probably seen it, but I link it here if you haven’t. It is a blog of ‘one liners’ (not exactly one, but you get what I mean) called ‘
One Million Footnotes’ and the author has a true way with words.
I’m impressed and I think you will be too. It is short and sweet, making it perfect for consideration with your morning coffee.
Don’t give this one a miss, if you click on any of my links today, I think it should be
this one.
Lets just hope he can keep the energy going and doesn’t falter or surrender to the forces of apathy (a bit melodramatic, but that’s why you read me, yes?).
The Rumour Mill
So the Blogsphere (yes, I use that word two now) is abuzz about the new
Novak story that suggests that Bush will pull out within a year of the election, if Bush wins. Something about the new guard within the white house wanting to do things differently and leaving the Iraqis to fend for themselves.
I think I agree with
Joshua Micah’s astute judgment on this one. It sounds to me, considering the source (a right winged reporter known for his continues bias), that it is just an attempt to create rumours out there so that potential voters against the war and against John Kerry have a third option. They can convince themselves that the rumours are true and then vote for Bush, even though Bush has no intention to pull out (if he would pull out his remaining international stock would become worthless as well, as he would then have invaded a country for no reason and not stayed to clean up the mess that he had created).
Just wanted to mention that, still trying to keep away from politics.
Ebay's amazing offers
Uhrm, want to
buy an American Football team on e bay? I’m not exactly sure if this is real or not, it has a whole lot of legal terms, so it might just be. I don’t really know what to say. Is this a great day for capitalism, or a horrible day for the Indiana Firebirds? Both?
In case anybody’s wondering, the buying price is 3.9 million US.
Interesting fact: According to the Guinness Book of World Records the greatest height from which a fresh egg was dropped, without breaking was 213 meters. Don’t ask me how!
A walk in the woods
Walking through the woods a man comes up to another man hugging a tree with his ear firmly against the tree.
Seeing this he inquires, "Just out of curiosity, what are you doing?" "I'm listening to the music of the tree."
"You gotta be kiddin' me."
"No, would you like to give it a try?"
"Well, OK..." So he wraps his arms around the tree and presses his ear up against the tree. With this the other guy slaps a set of handcuffs on him, takes his wallet, jewelry, car keys, then strips him ass naked and leaves.
Two hours later another nature lover strolls by, sees this guy handcuffed to the tree, stark ass naked, and asked, "What the hell happened to you?"
He tells the guy the whole story about how he got there. While he was telling his story, the other guy shakes his head in sympathy, walks around behind him, kisses him behind the ear and says...
"Sweetie, this just isn't going to be your day."
Redefining ‘Face Lift’
So what are the ethical implications of a
face transplant? Taking the face from a dead person and then placing it on somebody who has suffered from a severe accident, such as burns, scarring; or somebody who might have a birth defect or a disease.
When I first read the idea I have to admit it made cold shivers run down my spine, I don’t know why, logically I can’t think of a reason to object to it, except for possible criminal reasons (like in the movie
Face Off), which would be very unlikely in a controlled legal medical environment. Emotionally, however, I’ll admit it did disturb me.
I think what got me most was the idea of wearing the face of a dead man. That reminded me straight away of that scene from
Silence of the Lambs, which caused me terrible nightmares when I was a kid (the idea of him wearing the other guy’s face to impersonate him was, to say it lightly, disturbing).
I think it stems from our natural fear of somebody stealing our identity, which would leave us without a proper identity. That, in turn, links into our fears of being meaningless and, quite literally, faceless. Just another insignificant ‘average Joe’ that we always see, but vow never to become, all the while fearing that we are just that.
Or at least, that’s what I think it is in my case.
What do you think?
China's new leadership
So former Chinese president and (now former) leader of their military, Jiang, has
decided to step down and let current president and current leader of the Communist, Hu, party take over leadership of the army as well. I don’t know if any of you remember, but I talked about the rumours of this possibly happening a couple of weeks ago, discussing that as long as there was a power play going on between the supposedly more militaristic Jiang and allegedly more socialist Hu there was a serious risk of instability for the region.
This stemmed from Jiang’s unwillingness to step out of the lime light and let Hu take over fully, which could have resulted in violence on China’s neighbours, in order to show the upstart (Hu is younger then Jiang) how much power Jiang still wielded. Of course that is just speculation on my part, based on the few magazine and newspapers I’ve read on the topic over the last few days.
It seems, from the article, that Jiang has been soundly trounced in the internal party politics, as his deputy and side kick didn’t even win a seat in the military after Jiang stepped down. That seems to imply that Jiang seriously misjudged something and was punished for it.
The only thing I can think off that might garner such a reaction would be the Honky elections. Maybe Jiang warned about the dangers of an election in Honk Kong and how resistance there must be crushed and Hu said ‘let them do their thing’ and then when the election turned out pro China (to everybody’s surprise) Jiang’s had the mat pulled out from under him.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to get a better look into Chinese politics? For now, at least, let's hope that China will take a more long term aproach to their 'one China' policy.
Another Comic
Ok, not a lot of time in my weekends to update, but I felt I had to put at least something up (actually, Liana forced me into it), so
here is a link to a cool comic strip that I stole from
Gravity Lense. Yes, I do realise that you can look at that person’s blog all by yourself, but I couldn’t be bothered to really look for something original. Come back tomorrow and I might have something better. I did read the comic and I thought it was quite funny. Anyways, see you later (tomorrow in all likelihood).
Oh, I got the 2005 collection of World Records (how ever that is called) so expect some very interesting 'interesting facts' in the next couple of days (wheeee!)
New Search Engine
Google’s got competition. Amazon subsidiary A9 has started up a
new search engine that offers you a lot of extra features, including offering internal book marking, commenting, etc. on the pages you search, for future reference. You can also toggle what you’re looking for on the right side of the screen. So you can look for books, web pages, images, movies, etc.
You register an account and then everything you do is remembered (which is kind of cool, because it means you can go back to the pages that you want to look at again). I don’t know if what it finds can rival Google, but it might be an interesting alternative search engine to use when Google isn’t giving you what you want, or you want to start performing searches that might require multiple pages (as you can always go back, right?).
The tools on the internet are improving, I’ll give you that, now I just want to see actual AI that will do the damned searching
for you, just pop in some vague instructions and it comes back with the data you’re looking for. Imagine the time that would save! (Hey, we can all dream, can’t we?)
Oh yeah, here is an
article about it from the
New York Times.
Dickie Pilager
A new character enters the political system in America. His name is
Dickie Pilager and he stands for family, the great out doors and values.
He’s also fictional.
Go see the site to the new movie inspired by the 2000 election and what happened in Florida. I don’t know if the movie is any good, but it makes fun of Bush and is satirical, so it has a lot going for it in my book.
The site is not hilarious, but funny enough and the movie has been dubbed, along with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and the day after tomorrow, as Hollywood’s contribution to the Kerry campaign by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox news (which, in turn, is a bastion for the right).
Drunken Diplomacy
Last night I was in Fez bar, on Boat Quay, meeting up with a couple of guys from the band
Pug Jelly (who have a record coming out upcoming Tuesday, I might add) and just as we were leaving I walked up to the owner of the place, Matt to say bye. In the cupboard, next to the bar I saw the game ‘
Axis & Allies’, which I hadn’t seen in a long while. I blurt out ‘oh you guys have axis and allies! Great game, not as good as Diplomacy though’ he says ‘Diplomacy? You play diplomacy?’ ‘Yeah’, I shout enthusiastically (he might have been standing right in front of me, but it was late and I had had a couple of drinks). He says ‘Well I’m proud to say, well actually I’m not proud to say, I’m a bit embarrassed to say, but we have a diplomacy get together here once a month’ and thus I found a diplomacy group. What is even better, they were one player short of a full team (the game can optimally be played by seven) so they could use another player.
Now what most of you are probably wondering ‘yeah, that’s nice, but what the hell are you talking about?’
Diplomacy is the predecessor of Risk. It is also far better then Risk. Imagine Risk without the luck factor (no dice), without as many armies (you can only really have one per country), with slightly more difficult moves (you have to support armies with other armies, you have navies, etc.) and simultaneous moves.
The game is called Diplomacy for a good reason, that’s because you sure as hell never know what anybody else is going to do except by talking to them and reading the subconscious clues. People can agree to everything, but sure as sin don’t have to keep to their agreements. The simultaneous moves (done with pieces of paper) make everything highly unpredictable and the no luck factor makes you truly dependent on your gut instincts (cause luck can’t come save you).
It is, by far, the best board game I’ve ever played and one of the best ways to lose friends (screaming matches often result as somebody steadily marching towards victory suddenly gets backstabbed by their closest ally (I played it with both my ex girlfriends and they both betrayed me brutally(no that’s not why their exes, or is it?))).
Though I doubt most of you go for this kind of thing, its still something I have to try and pitch, as it is an experience in itself. (Diplomacy guide supplied via
Diplomatic Pouch)
Interesting Fact: Guatemalan women work the hardest of any woman group, with 11.5 hours a day, while South African men work the least hard of all men, with only 4.5 hours.
Super Sized Blog
Hurrah! I’ve found the
Blog of Morgan Spurlock, the guy that ‘did’ (wrote, directed, played in) ‘
Super Size Me’. Found it on the
Guardian’s Blog. For those of you who haven’t watched it, go see it and if you can’t, go see it anyway (and if you really can’t go look at the Blog) you’ll probably get scared of McDonalds for a while (which is a good thing, if you’ve seen the movie).
I’m still trying to keep off of it, including all other junk food, really. Have to admit it’s hard, which makes me think that I really
am addicted, as the movie suggests.
Help fight obesity, go see the movie (and indirectly aid the documentary creators).
Interesting fact: You would have to walk for seven hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fry and Big Mac.
Blogs and other ramblings
Quite a good writer,
this guy. Found his site by accident while strolling around the internet, looking for other sources and thought you might like to read his stuff. He’s got a good rhythm to his stuff, writes about what he wants to write about and is anti Bush (did I just say that?).
I’m quite taken up with a couple of ideas swarming around my head that I can’t share with people (as you’ll steal ‘em! You cheap bastards!) so you might notice a slight lack of long posts these last couple of days. That’s what happens when I go into ‘deep thought’ mode.
That’s also when I accidentally pee into waste baskets, thinking them to be urinals (yesterday, at work, fortunately it was only a little and nobody else was in the bathroom). Truth be told I had never been that distracted by my thoughts before Though I do seem to vaguely remember pouring tea into my toaster.
Oh well, time to dream some more.
Iraqi war illegal
So Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, has finally
said that the Iraqi war was illegal. What we’ve all known for who knows how long ends up being truth. America’s argument that they fought a war off self defense never held any water after no WMD were found, so the Americans have launched an illegal war on another sovereign state.
Not that that will make any difference, of course, apparently the Americans are a superior species to the rest of humanity and get to break rules that they would punish others for neglecting.
Very similar to the fact that they get to have nuclear weapons, but everybody else doesn’t and gets sanctioned fort trying to acquire them. After all, the Americans are much safer with their red buttons then any other country. Now I’m not for nuclear spread, but does anybody else’s mouth have the tangy taste of hypocrisy when they think about these things?
Inflatable pub
Woohoo! Inflatable pub!
"I’m dying for a drink”
“don’t worry, darling”
pfffft…. Inflatable puuuuuuuub!
House of the future
Cool
article about house technology of the future. It talks about nano tech, smart houses and the rest. The cool bit about the article is that everything mentioned already exists, though it isn’t necessarily commercially available yet. That means, hopefully, that some of it will be in common use within the next five to ten years. (got it from
Gravity Lens again)
Kitty Kelley's The Family
The
Dirt on the Bush family released in a new book by Kitty Kelley called ‘The Family’. It’s all about Bush’s drug habits, the family’s way of working and how low down and dirty they work. Interesting article and from what I’ve read in the press so far parts of it ring true.
Will it make any difference? No other book has, so far, so I doubt it. It’s so strange that dirt slides off Bush like grease of Teflon, while dirt sticks to Kerry like shit on wool. Why is that? (via
Andrew Sullivan)
Query Count
A few days ago I introduced you to ‘
Word Count’, which keeps track of what words are used how often in the English language. Today I’m going to introduce you to ‘
Query Count’ which keeps track of the queries thrown into Word Count. The most queried word? ‘Fuck’, obviously. The second most queried word? Go see for yourself, but I bet you that you would never have guessed it.
Twenty years...
Here’s a
bizarre news article about a guy that died in his apartment in Tokyo twenty years ago, but was only recently found. Apparently the company that had owned the building this man had died (and rotted, and decomposed and fallen apart) in had gone out of business just as the building was completed and had never found renters for the building. Surprising, considering how limited space is in Tokyo.
Twenty years!
You're special, just like everybody else
I think one of the biggest flaws off our species is that we’re so damned full of ourselves. I don’t know if it’s nurture, or nature, but it sure is damned annoying. So many problems spring forth from our belief that we are oh so special, as individuals, as a nation and as a race.
Just look at war. There are only two reasons one country starts a war on another, Resources and Pride. Wanting more resources signifies a belief that we (the survivors) are so important that our improved lives will be worth the lives lost. Pride, well, pride is pride. Pride is some arrogant c*nt deciding that his lofty theoretical mind games are more important than the lives of a country’s citizens.
Fame. A desire for fame is fueled by an individual’s belief that they should be (or want to be) more important than the others. The belief that they should stick head and shoulders above the rest, that it is important to be important.
And religion. The majority of people believe that God created the entire universe
and that God is paying special attention to us. Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty contradictory to me. God created billions upon billions of stars in millions of galaxies and yet (s)he is paying special attention to us? A species that can barely get off their own planet and even that took thousands of human life times is
important? If God would have wanted us to be significant in the universe, (s)he would have given us the ability to travel the stars.
Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean we should all give up, shrivel up and die. That we should lament that God has forsaken us. I am not a pessimist, far from it. I am very optimistic and ambitious. There is a lot of things I want and a lot of things and like. I will not make ambition into expectation, however. I would like to reach high, but if I don’t that shouldn’t destroy my life.
Lower you’re expectations to where you can actually meet them and you might just find that you can be happy some of the time. Lower them even further to where you’ve already met them and you’ll find you can be happy all of the time.
God doesn’t care. So what? God has never cared and we’re doing just fine as a species. In fact, we should be proud of ourselves. Look how far we’ve managed to get without a safety net. Look how far we’ve biked without our side wheels. So ‘dad’ isn’t cheering us on from behind. That’s alright, we weren’t looking that way anyway. We were looking forward. Forward to see what we can do, while remembering not to get upset when we can’t do it.
Alter Ego
Good link! Here is a link to a life simulator called ‘
Alter Ego’, which allows you to simulate life from birth till death. It’s a very old ‘game’ (sixties?), but that makes it even more impressive. It might not have the replayability of the Sims, for instance, but it is certainly more interesting the first time through (though no snazzy graphics).
It has been provided by
The Underdogs, which is a great organisation that provides abandoned games for free on the internet (as in those games that are no longer in print, but people still might want to play).
Alter Ego is great in that it keeps track of your ‘health’ in a huge number of stats, based on the decision you make and decides, based on those, how successful you are in the things you want to do. You spend your childhood running around being irresponsible, experiencing life and, most importantly, shaping yourself for the future. Then later you can experience how well you do.
It is often tempting to take the ‘right’ choices (which aren’t always obvious, but can be spotted), but I’ve found the game is far more entertaining when you take the realistic choices (that you, or the person you’re trying to be, would take). If you decide to try to play as yourself (and try to be honest with yourself) you just might find out some interesting things about who you are.
I played it the ‘best’ way once and ended up with nearly full stats in all disciplines (except physical health, I could never manage to by physically fit). Then I played it honestly and the flawed pathetic creature that resulted was far more enjoyable and formed a far more emotional attachment (I was a bit pissed that he couldn’t get himself hitched, though. Ah, the choices we make).
Interesting fact: The first computer game ever invented was a game called ‘Space war’ which required a computer the size of a small car to run it. The first arcade game was called ‘Computer Space’ while the first commercially available game for the home computer was ‘Pong’ (by the same designer) and it came out in 1981.
Yet another side in Iraq
Here’s an
article from the guardian about a terrorist in Iraq that does not fit into any of the normal classifications of the resistance. He is not pro Sadam, he is not a foreign jihadist and he most certainly does not like the Shia Militia.
He resists on his own, with his friends. They are a small group of resistance fighters with no serious ties to any of the other groups. Sometimes they get general directives from a Sheik and a bit of money from abroad in the form of cars they can sell locally. They buy their own weapons, intelligence and equipment. They have had no training, except for those who used to be in Sadam’s old army.
Many of them used to be pro America, but their opinions and ideas shifted as the ‘Coalition’ bungled the occupation and turned the common day citizens against themselves. These are, without a doubt, enemies that the Americans have created for themselves. These guys do not fit into ‘we’ll attract all the terrorists and then kill them on our terms!’ theory, as they weren’t terrorists before.
But then this was predictable, in fact it was predicted. It would have happened anywhere if the invasion had been that bungled. It was even more likely to happen in a country where political dissent has always been shown with guns, rather than with a vote. It’s just such a shame that governments world wide are taking our rights and freedoms as citizens away because events like these make the world less safe.
Googlewhack
So yesterday (Sunday)
Boobs showed me an
article in the New Paper about
Google Whacking, which is the art of taking a combination of any two proper English words (how ever obscure, as long as they are recognised as words) and seeing if you could get only one hit. You can then send that hit in and it gets added to a list of google whacks. Of course that then generally means the word gets two links and isn’t technically a googlewhack anymore.
That reminds of me of the most elementary paradox I was taught in high school:
A group of scientists decides to make a database that includes all incomplete databases in the world (impossible, I know, just bear with me here). They go around everywhere and get all the databases that aren’t complete and put them together into their own database. They are coming along nicely until right at the end. They have to add one more database, but they can’t.
Why not? Well, because it’s their
own database. As long a they don’t mention their own database in the database of all incomplete databases it had to be mentioned. But the moment they place the name of their own database within their database it is completed and therefore it needs to be taken out again.
Paradox.
Interesting fact:
Hummingbirds can beat their wings at approximately 200 beats per second. To maintain this they need to take in the human equivalent of 1300 hamburgers per day (twice their body weight). What’s more, if a human would move at that speed they would need 1200 hard beats per minute and their body temperature would rise to nearly 400 degrees Celsius, causing them to burst into flames.
Monday morning blather
I wasn’t within reach of the Internet for most of the weekend, so I didn’t manage to publish anything here. Don’t worry though, because I’ll be making up for that. This weekend my mind was fertilized nicely (read: we talked a lot of shit) and a lot of that will appear up here over the next few days.
Most prominently there will be a new essay up here in the next few days that will hopefully be the introduction to a new publication that looks to be getting underway with the potential contribution of three of us. It isn’t done yet, but look out for that (I like it, we’ll see what everybody else thinks).
For right now lets start you off with something related to politics (though I’ll refrain from commenting as much as possible).
This link (that I stole from
Andrew Sullivan’s Blog) allows you to write speeches for president Bush and then have him speech it out for you. For those of you that have heard him speak you might realise the humorous potential inherent in that.
(Yes, not the best link I’ve ever provided, but if I start on a low note then I can only go up, right?)
The message tree
Quick link to something cool. This thing is called
ecothonoha and it’s a new visualisation of message boards (by those crazy japanese). Got this link from
memepool.com (credit where credit is due). Its not easy to oversee, but it is definitely a cool way of representing conversations.
Neil Gaiman
Interview with Neil Gaiman about a new up and coming movie with the working title ‘Death and me’ (based on his short story Death: The High Costs of Living) and his almost finished movie ‘MirrorMask’ which is part drawing, part live acted.
I love Neil Gaiaman so for me this is pretty good stuff. Apparently it’s pretty cool stuff for Warner Brothers as well, though they complained that a budget of 15 million was too little and they didn’t do that kind of small stuff (go figure).
I do have to say that he does sound slightly arrogant in this interview.
Word Count
Very cool, here is
a program with how often words are used and where they appear in the list. This applet holds a grand total of 86800 words and ranks them according to what people use most often. At the top are the words you would expect, of course, like ‘the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it’ and so forth. It gets more interesting when you look further down. ‘Like’ is 67th, while ‘only’ ranks 68th. (probably because they are used together so often in some American states, I imagine). Go look, you’ll be entertained (for a few minutes, anyway)
Your foot print
Find out how much of the world’s resources you use up, versus how much you’re supposed to use up, with
this quiz. I’m trying to keep my consumption down and if everybody lived like me we would need 2 and 1/2 worlds to support everybody. Find out how much you use?
Here’s my list Global Hectars
Food 1.7
Mobility 0.5
Shelter 0.9
Goods/ Services 1.1
Total Footprint 4.2
(We’re supposed to use 1.8 if we would all want to fit in the space we’ve got)
Fiction Bonanza!
I’m not exactly sure, but
this guy seems to have thousands upon thousands of links relating to SciFi, Comics and everything else related to fantasy and weird fiction. I’m going to have to give it a couple of days of surfing before I put it up on my ‘Blogs of note’ page, but what I’ve seen so far is pretty impressive, simply for the number of links, if nothing else.
Oh, the guys blog is called ‘
Gravity Lens’, in case that matters to you.
Hyperlink Poetry
And why not? Hyperlink Poetry. I’ve just looked through the Internet and though it is mentioned on occasion, I can’t really seem to find anybody that’s
doing it. Using hyperlinks within poetry to add new layers of meaning. Associating words with completely different concepts, or explanations, or linking one poem to another, or to texts, or to images. Damn interesting, if you ask me.
Does anybody know of anybody on the internet that has already tried this idea? Any links anybody?
Introduction to Memes
I came across it yesterday, again. Somewhere out there the idea of the web based Meme (pronounced MEEm) was mentioned. So I got thinking about the original Meme, again. It’s such an interesting idea, yet so unknown.
Memes are thought based organisms.
If you don’t understand that, don’t worry. It took me a while to get it as well. Let me try to explain (and ignore that sentence till I’ve explained). Charles Darwin invented the concept of evolution (i.e. organisms try to out compete each other and survive; the fittest survive and evolve, while the weak die out). Richard Dawkins then took that idea and expanded on it in his book ‘The selfish Gene’ and mentioned at the back of his book ‘What if something like genes - a self-replicating unit - does not only exist in the biological sphere, but also in the abstract sphere of the consciousness?’. That idea was taken by Susan Blackmore, in her book ‘The Meme Machine’, and created the idea of Memetics. (All of this is taken straight from the link above, so if you don’t get it read the expanded version).
Memes are basically ideas that jump from mind to mind. They’re all around (and in) us. More importantly they, just like organisms, experience competition, mutation and survival of the fittest. I’ll explain, lets go back to the invention of cooking. Somebody realised the use of fire and thereby significantly improved their chance of survival (as the most important facet of cooking is that it kills germs). Cooking Meat advocates had a better likelihood to survive than Raw Meat advocates and thus through survival of the fittest the idea of Cooking spread and the idea of raw meat died off.
Lets take a modern day Meme that is considerably different, yet nonetheless a Meme, Blogging. Blogging is a Meme that is grabbing around itself, leaping from mind to mind and ‘procreating’ as species. In some ways it is out competing such Memes as the ‘hand written journal’, the Meme of ‘professional news’ and the Meme of even ‘Traditional Political Campaigning’. In many other ways, of course, it’s finding its own niche. Like, for instance, the Giraffe who found food where most other animals could not reach.
‘So what?’ some of you are now saying ‘an idea is nothing new’(pun intended). The difference between an idea and a Meme is that an idea is seen as just that, while a Meme is seen as an organism that ‘wants’ to survive and procreate. A being (made of thought) that doesn’t care about the damage it does, but ‘tries’ to leap from mind to mind (i.e. suicide bombing). A meme is a separate entity. The reason that makes a difference (in case you haven’t figured it out) is that you can then start examining the spreading of Memes as an actual organism and separate entity, regardless of who is its ‘host’.
Once that idea has been realised it becomes possible to track the growth of Meme ‘populations’ much like we now track the original spreading of humanity across the globe.
Then we can participate in observing Memes and, the fun part, starting and tracking Memes. That is where we get back to the beginning and come back to web based memes and Heward Packard’s ‘Blog Epidemic Analyzer’, but I’ll talk about that in my next entry as this one is getting a bit long. (I was made aware of these sites by ‘Sylvie’s HCI Blog’ to give credit where credit is due).
Interesting Fact: The idea of Memes is, in turn, a Meme which I've just helped spread (just to confuse you a bit more).
More Blogging Tips
Remember when I was talking about how to increase traffic to your blog? Well I’ve now found an essay (in plain sight) that discusses what I discuss in much greater detail. I’ve read the
article (while I was supposed to be working) and have directly started to apply some of the ideas there. I don’t know if I can actually keep to all the ideas proposed, but there good and they should increase traffic. The next question, of course, becomes ‘do you want to increase traffic?’. In my case I think the answer is rather obvious, but it might not be so blatant for everybody.
The thing I’m going to have the most trouble with is getting my entries shorter. I’m not sure if I want to make my entries shorter. I guess I could put in a little less blather and try to be more succinct. Grammar is another good point, I could really try to write better English (I read back something I was writing over the last couple of weeks and I was appalled by the level of the grammar).
Anyways, read and be enlightened.
My Poetry
I’m rather busy was work right now (and I’m not working on an apple without an internet connection for the next couple of days) so I’m going to leave you with something I haven’t looked at in a long time. When I was in high school I started writing poetry. I actually still did it till about a year and a half ago. I never produced very much, but people always said what I did produce wasn’t bad. So, to tide you over for a while, I’ve decided to put up a link to my poetry collection on another site (about ten poems).
It can be found at the
The Star Lite Café under the name of
Symbol. That second one’s the link to the poetry list. I hope you enjoy the products of my earlier years. I’ve basically lost everything else that I wrote before that (computer crashes are rather frustrating, aren’t they?). Maybe I should even try to write something again?
For those of you who do not have the time to click on my links, here’s one.
The Dance
The soft breath of the shifting wind
Leaves of last Autumn
Drifts of Fallen memories,
Lifted from their resting place
In this hall,
A dedication
to romance and old Rome.
Feet moving to a rhythm of soul music
Between pools of moonlight, splayed
Splintered by a high set glass dome
Each tile hinting at past dreams and hopes
An eye of the world,
gazing down.
The thousand smiles of Luna.
Two, almost moulded into one
Their words forming two hands, fingers intertwined.
Graceful circles on the cracked floor
Their dance a delicate counter balance
To the stretching sea,
As it leaps to grasp the sky.
Singing of their raging passion
A flame, by candle light.
Their movements,
The soft breath of the shifting wind.
Interesting fact: Pigs have orgasms for nearly 45 minutes (that redifines the word dirty pig, doesn't it?).
Underground Cinema
Very bizarre. They have found a fully operational film cinema underneath Paris in a formerly undiscovered cave. The place had been protected by film cameras, a tape of barking dogs (to scare off trespassers), electricity and phone lines. They were able to cook food and had alcohol on location. There were also a heap of movies, some of them old, some of them new.
When the police came back later to find out where the phone lines went, they had been cut and a piece of paper with the words ‘do not try to find us’ had been left behind. Apparently a group called the Perforating Mexicans claims responsibility. It seems a bit pointless to regurgitate the rest of the article here, so I’ll just let you
read it.
Interesting fact: The sphinx has experienced extensive water erosion, giving rise to the theory that at one point Egypt was actually a wet and green continent. (Which ties in with the theory that our planet might not be at its original tilt or even original orbit).
The colour of Culture
Culture is like colour. No one colour is better then any other colour. Yes, you might like a colour better then other colours and many people around you might agree, but that doesn’t change the fact that your colour preference is opinion and nothing more.
To impose your cultural preference on somebody else is the height of arrogance. It is saying that another people’s mental faculties are weaker then your own and that therefore they should be altered to suit your thought pattern. It is saying ‘you are wrong, I am right’ when so many things aren’t about wrong or right but about personal preference.
I do not deny that there are certainly some things that are ‘better’ about one culture then another but who are we to decide what those things are? Have we toppled perfection from its perch and taken its place?
We judge everything.
‘This is good, that is bad and what you do shouldn’t be done, instead do what I do, for I know better, for I am wiser.’ We judge others by our moral code and act surprised when they don’t measure up. Of course they don’t measure up, they scale is different, based on other ideas, created with different principles.
When we alter another culture to our own and take away their beliefs, subsuming them with what we believe we are committing one of the most atrocious acts believable. We are destroying history. We are taking the learning of thousands of generations and millions of people and erasing it from our collective unconscious. Rather then learn from their ideas we erase them so that if they did have an essential lesson to teach us we can’t learn it.
Western thinking has only been around for a few centuries, half a millennia at most and yet we continue to crush belief systems that have existed for millennia after millennia.
Why do we get to impose our will? Because we have bigger guns? Because we are better at stripping the resources from mother earth and leaving less for the next generation? Because we consume so ferociously that alarm bells are ringing everywhere?
If we are so much better then how can you explain rising obesity, growing wealth gaps, nuclear weapons, environmental degradation, extinct species, hunger, AIDS, drugs, alcoholism, thinning Ozone, Serial Killers, Suicide, stress, prejudice, Napalm, Racism, Slavery or Poverty?
How can we believe that other people will not resent our intrusion into their lives? How can we be surprised that people will reject our ideas as superior and ask us to butt out of their lives? Is it really that surprising that when we don’t leave them alone they retaliate?
Wouldn’t you do the same if the roles were reversed?
Think about it.
China's silence
The New York Times
reported that ex-president and current head of the Chinese military, Jiang Zemin, has announced that he is going to resign. According to the Times this might very well be a ploy to actually get more power, but it could be a sign of the end to a power struggle that has been consuming China for the last few years and also a possible softening of foreign policy towards such ‘provinces’ as Taiwan and Hong Kong. Officials were forced to take a hard line with these countries as otherwise they might be accused of being un patriotic or sympathetic to these upstart’s causes.
It could theoretically mean that the ‘One China’ policy could go on the back burner and China could truly focus on achieving economic success instead of having the most land. It would also mean there would be more effort spent on reducing poverty, corruption and wasteful spending. Important, considering how much of the World’s resources China will both produce and use up in the next couple of decades.
Far more interesting, however, is the continued secrecy of the Chinese government. Take, for example,
Jiang Yanyong who was the hero who made the world aware of the SARS epidemic raging through China, which the authorities tried to deny. He was almost imprisoned for putting the Chinese people’s concerns before that of the red party. Then, when he wrote a letter stating the Chinese government should apologise for the Tiananmen Square Massacre he was detained and exposed to propaganda material for a month, before international awareness and internal pressure forced the authorities to release him.
It gets even better, Jiang Yanyong was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which is the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, recently. Unfortunately he was not allowed to leave China and his daughter (I believe) had to go pick it up in his stead.
China is still trying to avoid receiving bad publicity by silencing the voices that speak it, rather than fighting the original cause of the bad publicity. This can be seen back in Singapore, to some extent, as well. Though admittedly Singapore prefers simply tossing those people that badmouth it out, or sewing them in a court of law for liable. Do these governments really believe that they make things better by silencing the people that point out what is bad? I guess they don’t even consider that what these people are pointing out is bad, do they?
Interesting Fact: While we’re on the topic of China, a widower in Beijing kept 200,000 cockroaches as pets, according to the Hong Kong’s mainstream press. (this fact was drawn from
news of the weird, which is very interesting and entertaining.)
The French Journalists
In case anybody is wondering about the two French Journalists that have been abducted in Iraq, I thought you might be interested in
this. It is a letter sent out by Mohammed Bashar Al-Faidhy, who is the spokes man for the Association of Muslim Scholars that addresses the Iraqi resistance.
In the letter he asks the resistance fighters to reconsider, as France is not the enemy and by threatening the people of France the Iraqi Resistance is helping out the American side, by driving the two opposing sides together.
“France as an anti-occupation country has been helpful to our cause... You might say that the French stance is not an altruistic one and that they have their own political interests that caused them to disagree with the Americans, and I am not going to say that is not true but it is also our goal to turn them against each other to serve our cause so France has a strategic importance for us... Killing the two hostages is also not helpful to the 6 million Muslims in France...”
A few days later the group that was holding the French Hostages released them to a group that was considered friendlier towards the French cause. The Guardian reported on it
here. That was positive enough and now the most influential Sunni Muslim Organisation, the Committee of Ulema, has said that
the French Journalists are about to be freed.
So now the Iraqi Resistance cares about its image. Well, I guess Chirac can be proud as his anti war stance have now saved two Journalist’s lives. It is also a major blow to the Coalition, as it basically means that terrorism can be bargained and worked with, showing that war and murder is not necessarily the only way to defeat them. I wonder if any major magazines and/or newspapers in the US will pick on this?
Interesting Fact: If you’ve been drinking too much vodka and end up vomiting then don’t despair! In the problem also lies the solution. Spray vodka onto the stain, scrub with a brush and blot dry. Now if that damned spot would just stop movin’.
Blog Links
All right, I’ve been wondering these last couple of days why I’ve been getting a whole lot less hits and comments than I was before. Decided that it was largely based on the fact that I was spending so much time talking about the US elections. I guess my obsession with it is a bit strange for most people. Oh well, that will be done in a couple of months anyway, so I’ll just live with the low hits for that time (after that I’ll have to find a new topic to write about). Still, in an attempt to keep my blog at least slightly interesting and make sure people check back sometimes I’ve decided to dedicate a few more ramblings to other things.
Today I don’t really have the time to write anything properly long and interesting, so instead I’ll give a link to somebody that does. I’m not sure how many of you actually read other unknown people’s blogs, but here is one that might strike some fancies.
Prison Pete is an incarcerated felon, whom writes letters by hand from his prison cell. Those get picked up by his friend, who then puts them on the Internet in Blog form. He’s been in Jail for eight years and apparently his attempt at appeal has failed, so he’ll be spending some more months there. Are you interested in the life of a felon? Warning, he does seem to be very sure of his own intelligence, so I hope a bit of arrogance doesn’t bother you too much.
Oh, if you’re wondering, he doesn’t tell what he’s in Jail for.
Then lets do another link, here’s
one to a guy that works as the clerk in a porn store. What he experiences, what happens and what he learns. This one might have popped up on your radar before, but hey, I can’t always find stuff that all of you haven’t seen before (I do have something that you could vaguely compare to a life). So with that I’ve probably lost a couple more readers to more interesting Blogs, but at least I know I’ve helped somebody somewhere find something interesting to read, which isn’t all that bad (no, I don’t know either).
Anyways, the writing is succinct, the style is interesting and the subject is engrossing. I hope you’ll find it enjoyable (and slightly disturbing).
Interesting fact: Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the world, with only 4.5 people per square mile.
Flip Flop
So
apparently number 10 (that basically England’s white house, for those of you that have head your heads in the ground for the last fifty odd years) is for Kerry. Understandable, considering Labour in England generally supports the Democrats, but interesting for the fact that Blaire was such a staunch supporter of Bush.
I wonder if it would help if countries actually spoke up against Bush? It might and it might not. For one thing, the American people are worried about the repercussions of Bush’s policies abroad, so they might care. On the other hand they might also feel that foreigners are getting involved in their politics and, after all, it’s
their politics, so everybody else should piss off.
I imagine it would work well if everybody did it (Europe, asia, south America, Canada, etc.) but if only a few countries did it (especially France and Germany) it would probably be counter productive. Of course that’s all wishful thinking, because I severely doubt anybody would commit potential political suicide by supporting Kerry. Bush’s allies would still be very capable of ruining somebody’s career regardless of who wins.
I seriously hope the Kerry campaign can pull some killer ace out of its sleeve, because right now they are behind and struggling. The current focus on Bush at the GOP is probably a godsend for them. At least they can now go back on the offensive. They already got one good one, where they caught Bush
flip flopping on the war on terror. Which was nice, especially the bit where they turned Bush’s own line against him:
"Bush: Against Winning the War on Terror Before He Was for It."
(Bush originally had ads broadcasted that had Kerry saying ‘I voted for the war in Iraq, before I voted against it’ which he used as the main argument to say Kerry was flip flopper.)
But I seriously wonder if that will be enough. The race is close, but it’s probably going to be a little less close after the GOP convention. Let’s hope that Kerry can score some points in the debates. He should, he’s smarter. The only problem is that the American people aren’t necessarily smart enough to grasp that.
Oh well.
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Interesting fact (I forgot these this week): Cockroaches can survive for two weeks without their head, after that they die from starvation.
The Middle Kingdom
So China. China? Yes, China. What am I going on about, you wonder? China, obviously. The right question would be
why am I going on about China. Asking that question would generate a more revealing response. The reason I’m going on about China is because on an international scale China is probably at least as interesting right now as America.
China is changing the world.
As she (is China a she?) rises up we can start seeing the impact on the world economy. Not just in manufactured goods, either, in everything. Take
this article in the Straits Times, for instance. The Chinese government has finally okayed tourist trips to European countries. This is expected to boost the number of Chinese tourists world wide to 100 million, per year. That’s twenty times the number of people in Singapore and this from a country that is still, in all respects, second world.
Imagine what it will be like in five years, ten, twenty? What if they develop a wanderlust like the Irish and the Dutch, who have more than half their people leaving their country every year? One
billion tourists. Countries would end up catering to the Chinese market and the Chinese market only.
As China rises up to rival the US (which it can, easily, especially with all the untapped resources all just outside their borders) how will the world change? How will relations slide the world over? At least some semblance of balance will be restored. A single super power is just not a good idea, how ever benevolent that super power might be (and the US isn’t all that benevolent).
Lets just hope that for right now Chinese government doesn’t get any funny ideas, as a good portion of the world’s economic growth right now is fueled, fed and maintained by the Chinese boom. If China would enforce its ‘one China’ policy, for instance, the world (and China) would be fucked. The instability that would result, the pulling out of investment that would occur, the military build up that would happen, would be bad for all concerned.
China, who woke up the sleeping Dragon?
