Saturday, June 30, 2012

I don’t always cite the source, but when I do, it’s worth it.

A while ago I got a comment about me using fictional examples to illustrate my point. This is because fictional and theoretical examples are, for better or worse, more widely known. Nowadays it is difficult to find a person who has not read Douglas Adams or watched Doctor Who, but it is nearly impossible to find a person up to date with professor Denis Dutton’s Darwinian theory about beauty. It is logical that a person cannot be up to date with every interesting bit of science, hence in the softer points I prefer examples of a more… theoretical kind. This way either most people are aware of what I speak and understand my point better or everyone is able to recreate the situation in their mind.

This is not a statement to defend my right to use non-factual illustrative examples. I know they are good. I know they convey the point better than any actual fact that I should start explaining.

This merely explains why perhaps it is best to use fictional examples in a public statement.

As many people are aware, popular science tends to warp facts and actual scientific theories. What The Bleep Do We Know is a shining example of that. Words and terms are constantly twisted to fit the needs and wants of ignorant minds. You could just try to filter out plausible and implausible theories but you would end up making mistakes. This is why if examples are brought, it is very important to make sure that these examples are reliable, nobody wants a Planet X situation again. Nobody wants incredible works of fiction interpreted as factual information. This is why it is more reasonable to use fictional examples as opposed to so-so-factual theories. Fiction can be interpreted in different ways, doing that with facts is just twisting reality.

Now arises the problem of credibility – anything could be written in a piece of fiction. Hence, it would be easy to claim that people are reborn all the time and they only understand it when they find the Tree of Life – the symbol for eternal life, bliss, redemption. And they die again to be reborn once again. All this because The Fountain depicts it in a very realistic (awesome nova) and emotional way that simply connects with the person watching it. Or that the first cure for cancer will be universal and will treat all kinds of cancer because several fictional works have the invention of the ‘cure for cancer’. That is why I try to bring several examples whenever any examples are involved. Fiction does not come from cosmos, it draws its inspiration from reality. It takes parts of our lives, of past events, of our world, and it changes them, it translates them to a world of wonder. But if you understand where exactly the inspiration comes from, you understand how the human mind works a lot better. And The Fountain is a pretty cool movie.

To sum it all up, I end up with the same claim I have used over and over before. It is the unknown that drives us. It makes us dream of better (or worse) worlds, but the dreams always link with the real world. Fiction toys with our beliefs and fears, but it is always supported by some innate ability of ours. Whether it is the effect rage has on us that makes us beastly, the constant need for gentleness that makes us fragile, the search for patterns that makes us predictable or our love for love that makes us emotional and irrational. It is never the big plot of fiction, it is not the story of fiction. It is what supports the story, sells the story, makes it believable. It is the link to the real world that I seek and support using as examples. Often fiction is more truthful than the currently accepted facts.

So be safe. Dream.

 

 

This video illustrates the point of the dream I had[1]. It is what I see the future as, what I hope it to be.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

“Because you were born.”

I want to ask you your thoughts. I want to know your positions about certain topics, the reasons for such opinions, and perhaps even your evaluations on certain subjects. I admit I am a little lazy, but I’m not as lazy as most people sound nowadays. I want to know about the ‘grey zone’ as well.

I am sick and tired of constantly hearing how Americans political arguments go off to fields of mud. They get sticky for everyone involved, staining every single one of them. And one of the main culprits – the ‘team’ effect. Instead of everyone being allowed to express their own ideas, they are forced to express the party’s ideas. All republicans appear to hate Obama for the same things democrats hated Bush for, and there is no constructive criticism in sight. One side simply hates the other, nobody apparently in the middle. This is impossible! Since the two sides apparently conflict in every aspect, the tables turning roughly every 8 years, it is impossible that the majority of people agree with this dance and have no personal viewpoints or perspectives at all. And since the sides oppose each other, they can be classified as ‘extremes’. It is not wise to propagate two extremes and leave nobody in the middle – compromises are necessary for an efficient government. Then again, the ‘Fast and Furious’ program (in which Americans (ATF) sold automatic rifles to Mexican druglords to find out where the druglords have been getting their automatic rifles for so long, it turned out to be Americans (governmental program), in the process they lost track of a few thousand rifles, but they recovered one that was used to kill an American citizen) depicts that government as not very efficient. But it has worked so far.

In fact, the very same situation can be compared to Team Edward and Team Jacob. A completely arbitrary competition wherein the result is in the book, yet people rooted for the side that was predetermined to lose. And these sides conflicted, sometimes violently. And I dare to add yet another example of stupid, arbitrary conflict: Team Catholic vs. Team Muslim. USA appears to be inhabited by many loud-mouthed violently religious people who hate all other religions, but mainly those stinky rural Muslims who want to destroy the world. So the *United* States decided to strike down those pesky peace-loving Muslims, thereby unleashing a wave of destruction. I have previously mentioned how the Republicans decided to disallow an American citizen to join their party because the man was a terrorist. There was no proof of that other than the fact that the man admitted to being a Muslim. Hence for no apparent reason there is a conflict between two religions, neither of which has proven to be better than the other. Though, on second thought, perhaps Islam has caused less death.

Another thing that I hate about some Catholics is their constant belief that science is blasphemy or always wrong. Not just do they want to ban evolution being taught in schools, even those that watch TEDtalks comment how they find talks on evolution ‘perplexing’ because ‘God created man perfect’ and any changes would be a ‘step backwards’ (these excerpts are from actual comments). The latest news was about North Carolina banning accurate sea level rise predictions. It is ridiculous. I am not against believing in Jesus or Mohammed or Ra just because I do not believe in them, they are positive Gods that prohibit manslaughter and tell you to act responsibly. I am against the bigots who refuse to accept that their point of view might not be wholly accurate or even faintly correct. And this classification of ‘Team Jesus’, ‘Team Mohammed’, ‘Team Bieber’, is simply propagating senseless conflict with violent outcome. It is as arbitrary as punching a person in the face for wearing orange.

The only good thing that I can think of that this constant misclassification and creating contrasting sides is that if one of those sides is abolished, eliminated, eradicated, got rid of, then the side that remains can aim for Unification – every person thinking as the whole. But with bigoted people I doubt very much that is something worth aiming for.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Inspiration.

And to top off this short post, CLANG!

 

It is the question ‘where we must go?’ that drives us, it is innovation that shows us the road, it is the practical application that pushes us towards the destination. The destination: whatever you can dream.

Monday, June 25, 2012

“Impossible is nothing.”

I had a dream of the future, a vision of what is to come.

A world where corporations rely more on people’s will to work – more open offers for work. If there is something they want to get done, they ask for it – they call for specialists internationally, not just locally. For corporations and employees, borders no longer matter. A world where discrimination is limited to class warfare, not racism or sexism. A world where innovation is a perspective, not part of a hipster movement. A world where start-up companies no longer exist – any new ideas must be pitched to large corporations for support. Governments as such exist only as watchdogs for automated processes – law enforcement, healthcare, education – everything is preset and run by enterprises.

Large cities that reach up to the skies, chaos constantly tearing them down. High daily death tolls combined with high birth rate. Long lifespan is improbable. Not due to diseases, but due to constant civil unrest.

The dream is sound, the future possible. Whether it is a good future, is a question of perspective. Whether it is the future, is another. With this little detail anything is possible.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

“The universe puts us into places where we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are is the right place and the right time. The pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born.”

It is the time of graduations, the time we leave what we know once again. It is time of reminiscing, the time to look back at what we have done and what we have experienced. It is the time to look at how we have grown in the past few years.

Have we become more mature, more self-sufficient, or perhaps more dependant? Have we grown more bold due to great achievements or have we become more scared due to humiliations? Have we made friends with people we used to consider our enemies or have we created enemies from our past friends? Have we experienced something we want to remember? Have we met people we want to keep in contact with or never hear from again?

Even if we didn’t achieve the goals we set for us, we have learned from our mistakes and from the experience as a whole. We have grown from our blunders, we have invented ways to streamline our responsibilities. Many of us have become amazingly good at lying, to oneself or to others, many of us have realized the value of honesty. All of us have been redesigned, made better. As always, it is where we go from here that decides who we will be.

Are we ready to pass this milestone?

 

Yes.

“But we can’t be free, until we learn to laugh at ourselves. Once you look in the mirror and see just how foolish we can be, laughter is inevitable. And from laughter comes wisdom.”

Monday, June 18, 2012

“We all do what we do for the same reason: because it seems like a good idea at the time.”

The past is the future, the future is the past.

If reality is something we perceive, can it be manufactured? If we stuck some people in a house, locked the door and barred the windows, made sure they could not get out, yet they would be fed properly, would their reality be limited to the house? If the house is all they know, the house is all there is for them. Mysteries such as where the food comes from or what are the things that can be seen from the window are similar to the mysteries we have: where did matter come from, why does it exist, what is beyond what we know?

It would appear that reality can be artificially created and manipulated. Yes, the truth is fluid, it is a river, or a wave of particles. It is subjective to our experiences. We do not need to remember the past to build a future, probability will work that out on its own. We need to use the past to build a better future, whatever that may be.

The past is prologue.

It can always be considered as such – it explains how we became what we are, it shines the way for the future. It shows what we are, what we want, and what we can. It paves the way for the story, the tiny story that is the present and our immediate plans, hopes, and dreams. The story that is yet unwritten and ends up as prologue for future stories. The end of the story is clear – death. Nothing afterwards.

How the prologue happens, how the story evolves, is up to us. Even when the present doesn’t look too shiny[1].









Sunday, June 17, 2012

Alas, once again.

I recently happened across a CNN interview that explains faith and religion remarkably well: [1] 

The whole point of having faith is that you don’t really have proof. If you had proof, you would have knowledge. When you know something, you no longer believe you know something. Well, sure, one could argue that all knowledge is merely an illusion, in which case you cannot ‘know’ anything, or that you can know something that is actually not true, in which case you cannot ‘know’ it. But let’s leave Gettier’ problem aside for now and explain things in layman’s terms.

Claiming that there is no such action as ‘knowing’ is as arbitrary as saying that nothing is random[2] – it is language philosophy that means nothing. It is a play on the definitions of words to muck about, there is no purpose in it. Sure, you can say that you don’t actually ‘know’ anything, but how can you really know that? We’ll still be using the word in its proper context, whilst ignoring the specific definition in its every shiny detail.

Knowing something that isn’t true is still knowing. As far as the observer, you, are concerned, you have no or very little doubt that something is true, hence you ‘know’. I believe all people can behave logically, but I have no real proof. Still I do not doubt and I believe this to be true. I have faith.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

“Like a tree!”

We all have potential to do something, to be someone else. We have potential to become suicide terrorists, we have potential to become politicians or scientists. What we can be, is an endless amount of knowns and unknowns. What can be defined, is what we are.

Hence if what we are is not defined by what we can be, it must be defined be what we have been, what we were. After all, we are a result of what has happened to us and the actions we have chosen to do.

When we mishear, we still hear real words. When we see something we cannot precisely make out, we see something that ‘probably’ fits. We improvise what we think we perceive by recalling past experience – what could be said in the specific situation, what could we be seeing in a place we are looking at. We look for familiar patterns in strange places to find ‘probable’ objects to perceive. Objects we have seen, sounds we have heard. In the past.

We learn from past events, from experience, and we change through time. These changes can be subtle, such as picking up a new hobby could cause bias towards a different kind of thinking, or huge, like moving to a new place can change how we see the world. The result of these changes is us, our personality, our essence. Even our own actions change us – when we say something, the words often come back to haunt us, to make us change our minds or reassure us of the correctness of our opinions. We think about our decisions time and time again after they’ve been made and the consequences have been observed. We keep thinking, and that changes us.

Once we have experienced something, we have changed. Perhaps so little we cannot even notice it, perhaps more. And the result of these changes is us. What has happened to us and what we have made happen are the things that define us. We are what we were. Regardless of potential.

I know you’ve read similar talk in parts before on this blog but not as a whole. And it is about time to piece it together.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

“We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile and nothing can grow there; too much, the best of us is washed away.”

Artists.

“Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.” – Alan Moore

Art and literature can be used to convey a message, it is what revolutionaries can use to weaken a regime or conservatives to explain to the people why the regime is necessary. Politics, on the other hand, require the skilful use of warping and twisting the truth to keep the representatives of the regime popular and in power.

Being an artist is not a shame. A writer, a poet, even a philosopher can be of use, of value. If they use their talent for saying something, if they try to propagate thinking of something logical. But if all they do is tinker with nails or something of the ilk, what’s the point?

Modern art has perverted the cause of art – instead of conveying a message or an emotion, people do their best to stand out, to get attention. Not to make a statement. The only message they have is ‘WTF’. Nudity hardly says anything meaningful, paint splatters even less.

Sure, there are those who do not wish artists to speak, those afraid of the truth, or just wanting to tinker alone and not become star artists. Creating is a pleasant pastime that kills time very efficiently – in the sense that time flies. But that is simple doodling, drawing without purpose. While it does not harm anyone, it hardly benefits anyone as well.

Sure, the person creating can be entertained. But it is one of countless ways to be entertained. It is a squeak in a crowd, a hush in a busy train station. It is redundant.

So what is the point of creating art without a point?

Whether or not journalists nowadays serve their purpose is an another question for an another time. Let’s not forget, their work is to report the news. But doing it superficially doesn’t report anything. Sure, knowing *that* something happens could be of use, but it is more interesting to find out *why* that something happened. And that is something they keep missing. And where does it leave us? Uninformed.

Knowledge is power.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Apologies for any randomness you encounter

What is random?

“I have no idea. I'm trying to figure this out while I'm playing my mp3, which is probably pseudorandom”

Every decision we make, we make for a reason. If we have a choice, we are still biased to choose one of the options. The human mind is incapable of making a random choice. Arbitrary is not a problem, unpredictable perhaps, but certainly not random. Even the result of a coin toss depends on the specific technique of the person tossing it, on which side was on top in the beginning. This you can try for yourself – always put tails on top and see how the result goes biased, it doesn’t remain a 50/50 chance. Sure, this bias can be reduced by alternating between heads and tails, but deciding according to an even number of tosses should result in a standstill.

Computer engineers keep trying to create algorithms for random numbers generators, and they claim they have met success. I refuse to believe that they have found an algorithm, a rule, that defines randomness. These number generators generally rely on using the timestamp of the current moment as a source group of numbers. Since a moment is extremely tiny and never repeats, it is quite a good start. But once the moment is known, the number becomes deductible. And a deductible number is hardly random in my very humble opinion.

 

So, if every single choice is biased, what is random choice?

Sunday, June 10, 2012

May God protect us despite our sins?

Oh, America.

The country that propagates its stress for personal freedom and the people’s power. Indeed, the power is so great that they vote on everything. They even make sure judges are placed in power according to their spectacular sense of popularity. Because, you know, those who know what’s popular also know what is morally justified.

America is the poster child of democracy and liberties. They do not discriminate according to religion or skin colour, they discriminate according to the assumptions they can make by a person’s religion or skin colour. They don’t call all Muslims evil, they call them terrorists. And terrorists are evil, always!

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

This holds especially true for the current state of USA. Everybody not happy with Americans invading sovereign countries, everybody who dares resist their military forces, everybody who even dares speak out against the needless invasions and mass murders, are dubbed terrorists by default. The fact that it was the American military that gave terrorists a cause, a reason to ‘terrorize’ (that means ‘fight back’), is completely by the point for them.

“What we should do doesn’t lie in the past.”

It lies in the future, and I know that. But to know what we should do, we must take a look at the past. Learn from our mistakes. If invading a country, say Afghanistan, was a mistake, and we know that, the next step is not to go to an another sovereign country, say Iraq, to do the same. Or a third place, say Iran or Pakistan, as the step after that. It is idiotic to keep doing the same thing again and again and expect different results each time. But it is the ‘American dream’.

Friday, June 8, 2012

“You don’t fix faith, faith fixes you.”

Jump, take a leap of faith

It's a question that drives us
To where we must go, It's
the unknown that drives from us
what we want most but
the firefly sits in the corner and rest

“Firefly” (Eurovision 2009, Cyprus)

 

As Captain O’Neil said in SG-1: “We are a curious race.”. We look for the unknown, yet we fear it. Today I watched an interesting new TV show called ‘Saving Hope’. It was about a surgeon that is involved in a car crash en route to his wedding and ends up in a coma because of it. While he is down, he provides commentary to events that happen in the hospital as a spirit while trying to find a way to communicate with his wife-to-be to stop her from losing hope and getting it on with an another surgeon. He, naturally, is portrayed by Michael Shanks of SG-1, Burn Notice, and much other greatly deserved fame. He does a magnificent job with the limited role of ‘spirit’.

But what got me thinking was one of his monologues about doctors. They are thought as much as possible about the known, they get tons of facts. The learn to do tests to get all the information that they can, and act after they review the information. They fear the unknown, jumping into the water in a strange place, cutting somewhere they have no sufficient information about. It is risk they do not want to take. It is a risk nobody wants to take. But it is human curiosity that makes one stick one’s hand into the body of another without being even remotely certain of achieving something of value.

It is a risk they have to take. It is a risk they are willing to take. It is the risk of being human.

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”

Today in The Daily Show an important point in today’s society. Public criticism is very often aimed at morality – what is fair game, what is the right thing to do. These are subjective, especially in a country where most publicly speaking people are in two large groups, parties, which conflict with each other at every possible step – they actually try to oppose the other side even if there is no actual point in conflicting. Subjective commentaries, decisions, and assessments rule the open media with an iron hoof. The closest thing to empiric measurements or fact-searching is open polls – after all, isn’t science a democratic virtue, hence democratic in itself?

Opinions can be turned, they can be misunderstood, they can be manipulated. Facts cannot. They are solid, that is why they are facts. They tell us very little and are almost never useful as they are, it requires interpreting for them to be of any use. And for some reason or another people have stopped interpreting. Perhaps because they keep misinterpreting the facts, perhaps because they don’t *need* to. Perhaps because they cannot differentiate between fact and fiction. In the modern world, I have no choice but to admit that the overabundance of information does make it rather difficult to process the information perceived.

But that is why there are movies like ‘What the Bleep do we know?’ where facts are twisted, where conclusions are drawn illogically, where false interpretations are shown as extremely convincing arguments. It is why there are shows like ‘Continuum’ where the bad guys have a ‘good’ cause and the good guys have an ‘evil’ cause. It is why in ‘Babylon 5’ the most barbaric character ended up a philosopher and the friendly guy became the wolf in sheepskin. It is why this blog exists.

To make you think.

 

Also on The Daily Show: NY plans to allow 25g of marijuana for carrying around but large sugary drinks would still be illegal…

“The truth is fluid.”

So, who wants to live forever? Why should someone want to live forever?

There are a number of options what to do when you have a little time in your life, from world conquest to science, any long-term project is possible. Even waiting around for a time machine can easily be achieved, it’s only a matter of time (oh, pun).

However, what are the conditions of prolonged life? Immunity of sickness is kind of an additional perk that should not be added to immortality, hence anyone living very long would probably be ill beyond measure. Just think of someone really old, say 80 or 90. They are obviously deteriorating. Now imagine being worse than that for about one eternity. Not a pretty picture. Now I ask again: who wants to live forever?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Zip it, canhead!

It is so nice when someone remembers the old classics. Sure, there are Babylon 5 references in many comments about modern sci-fi shows (“Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom tomorrow.” etc.), and old games are references in ‘geek shows’ (Chuck, VGHS, The Big Bang Theory, etc.), not to mention all the cosplay events (though I really hate that I do not remember anyone portraying George Stobbard). Nowadays ‘viral’ videos push the memories and remind you of shows from years ago. Firefly lives on because its actors are stars, but underdogs like Jack of all Trades and IT Crowd hardly get any love. And that is why it is so nice to see someone remember those small shows.

Also, after trying out Fedora and Ubuntu with GNOME, I’ve set on Kubuntu instead, GNOME is seriously limiting. Which reminds me what I really, really hate about Windows 8 – one of the things that really, really bugs me in GNOME. The full-screen Start menu. It is a menu. It is not supposed to take the whole screen, it is supposed to be a tiny distraction. The size-to-practicality relation is an important aspect of UX (User eXperience) for me. I want to be able to continue watching a movie while running through the programs list trying to find additional distraction from the things I am actually supposed to be doing. I want to be able to use the menu using my keyboard so that I can open some other program whilst blogging without having to resort to using the mouse or touchpad, all of my fingers are already on the keyboard! I want to be able to use *windows* without having to resort to *tiles* every time I want to start something. And I most definitely do not want to resort to using the file explorer to run programs. Why Windows 8 is still called ‘Windows’ and not ‘Tiles’ is an another question that the people in Microsoft have trouble answering, my guess is it is because of continuity – to keep the series consistent. However, I still believe they have lost their way, the main revolutionary change that Windows originally implemented was windows.*gasp!* Windows allowed running programs side by side, many programs in one’s sight that one could use. Losing those windows and replacing them with tiles and full-screen apps is a huge step backwards. A gigantic leap, even.

I understand Microsoft is desperately trying to push into the increasing tablet market, but they are killing their desktop and laptop markets by doing so. I understand them, but it still sounds like a very bad idea on their part. Imitating GNOME is just a bad, bad, bad idea. Really bad.

“Big black nothing?”

[1]

There is nothing quite like building a flying machine out of a dead pet.

 

DELL is not quite the peach I would expect it to be. By that I mean that they have a very small focus group – the people who buy the biggest and meanest machines. Those are practically the only ones I’ve seen that keep getting updates, the cheaper buckets get nothing. Well, they get a bit for a couple of months, a few bits and pieces that correct a couple of bugs, but not nearly as much as the bit things.

I shall bring you the example I faced today – the latest GPU drivers DELL offers are version 268. The latest NVidia offers are version 301. Those numbers do not increase quickly. But the fact is, DELL optimizes the drivers for specific models, fixes compatibility issues and stuff like that. It is just they don’t do it nearly as often as they should. At the very least they should offer the newest NVidia drivers… Oh, and the DELL drivers had problems with handling Optimus.

In today’s world it is important to be tech-savvy, because maintaining proper function for your electronic devices requires thinking and knowledge. The tech support is nothing like it used to be.

I think, therefore I have a headache

A very simple way of finding out if an OS is indeed usable, try changing the colour of the taskbar. If you cannot find a way to do it, stop using it immediately. This way you know whether the OS is user-friendly (easy-to-use, flexible, customizable to suit every user’s needs) or restricting, such as Ubuntu.

 

What is reality?

Is it the same as what we perceive as reality?

If so, do we create it in our minds?

In that case, what do we miss out on, what do we not perceive? What does our brain refuse to perceive?

The simple answer: what we do not understand. Hitchhiker’s Guide named it SEP – somebody else’s problem – something that can only be noticed from the corner of one’s eye, because looking straight at it would crash your brains as it is not able to comprehend or accept what it sees. Hence it gets filtered out. Doctor Who gives a similar explanation – people ignore the big blue police box popping up everywhere not because it is a simple blue box, but because it does not belong there, it cannot be there from people’s perspective.

What we think is completely impossible, we cannot see. Completely means completely – there can be no doubt in our minds because we cannot comprehend it. It is deeper than our mere thoughts of ‘completely impossible’.

If you do not believe me, just keep this in mind: whenever we see something we cannot precisely outline (we cannot tell what it is), we automatically give it a probable shape. We look for familiar patterns in places there might not be familiar patterns. We look at white noise and see shapes. Our mind is programmed to define and simplify what we see, what happens when it is unable to do so? I would say it should ignore it.

Our mind sets the rules for the world. In the words of J.M.Straczynski: “Our thoughts form the Universe, they are always important.”. Everything happens at the same time, every reality exists, the question is ‘which one do we choose?’.

And there comes an another question, who are ‘we’? Who actually is the observer that sees, perceives and interprets the world around us? If every single one of us creates a reality, then how can it be the very same reality that is created?

And in the end, how do our thoughts change our reality, how do they change us?

 

The facts in the movie are mostly true, the interpretations are mostly exaggerated or simplified, dumbed down. If you think hard enough and know a bit about the subject you will notice that… electrons do not grow charges when they are bounced around, for example. But touching on the atomic level is still pretty hard to achieve on a basketball field, that is why ‘touching’ is defined as it is, not as it is not. However, it does raise quite many important points about reality, philosophy, religion, quantum physics, et cetera. It want you to think about these things, and quite frankly, so do I. Thinking and discussion are what keep our society evolving.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

“(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

The Economist always cheers me up.

Their confidence is simply unshakeable. Though I do like Germany’s results as well, unfortunately they are not as ironic.

 

Grabbing people’s attention is not always difficult. There are many options, from poking and tapping to vocal signals demanding attention. But the one I am really digging right now only works for young tiny people:

Monday, June 4, 2012

“That’s all folks!”

Yes, I know, the voice gets really annoying but the words are worth it.

 

Anyways, this is a quick update before I shall start listening to Broken Sword intro song and messing with Fedora to get my head back in the game. Fedora is cool, if a little hard to manage.

 

“Swedish Chef is a Vorlon agent! Bork bork bork!”

Sunday, June 3, 2012

“This is what going mad must feel like.”

Aye, it appears some browncoats have shared a wee bit of Firefly!

If you haven’t seen it, do so. It is quite entertaining.

Though I recommend you start from the beginning, you could watch this one first – one of my favourite episodes – and then watch the rest of the season (it only ran for one season and a movie). It deals with various problems, including faith and destiny. What makes it special is that it does so in a comedic, yet deep way that really gets to you.

Just doing my part spreading the signal.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

“And the rock cried out”

In connection with the previous topic, I present

, a story of deception, betrayal, revenge, and a black guy talking about tolerance and friendship despite differences. And some suitable music.

Friday, June 1, 2012

“Pain comes from neither the hand nor the heart. It comes from the mouth.”

Racism.

Not a pleasant thing to come in contact with, even worse if you are the butt of the discrimination. While we have not all been discriminated due to our skin colour, we have all been discriminated in some form or another. Perhaps very little, if we’ve been lucky, but discriminated nonetheless. Perhaps fairly, perhaps without sufficient reason. But it has happened. Don’t forget positive discrimination is still discrimination, the only difference is that instead of the aim of harming someone or limiting someone’s rights, it aims to benefit an another group of people.

So yes, discrimination exists, it is quite necessary to avoid equality, and as far as I can tell, very many people think equality equals socialism and socialism equals terror. Not precisely how it works, but for the sake of my point, this misunderstanding can be ignored.

Racism is one of those types of discrimination where the harm is directed according to arbitrary characteristics of human beings similar to sexism, but more negative due to increased arbitrarity. And here we come to the reason this topic popped into my noggin’ in the first place:

FYI, later on the Drazi stopped wearing the sashes. Also a great method of decreasing the population.

But the point remains, racism targets an arbitrary characteristic – skin colour (untanned skin, no less). Nobody can choose a race to be born as, though appearances can change after a few treatments, just look at Michael Jackson. Sure, his aim was not to look like a ghoulish white woman, he had no choice, it was all part of his cure. But change is possible despite the discomfort. Discriminating purely on the principle of arbitrary difference is the same as bugging people for wearing red, or for having hair. Not exactly rational, practical, or even neutral – it causes more harm than gain.

Discrimination per se is quite okay, as long as it is founded on something significant. So quit bugging people because they happen to have a lighter or darker skin colour than yours and enjoy some really good music. And as suitable Jackson would be here, fat chance for that, I have something better to share.