You can’t be perfect all the time.

Time for a lousy topic. Memes.

The subtitled pictures have been around for a very long time, but in the last few years they’ve emerged from the caves of 4chan to the mainstream media. Some people still remember cats and ‘cheezburgers’, but the main source of meme intake appears to be 9gag. In a relatively short amount of time, kids on messageboards geeking out and complaining about everything became trendsetters for something… peculiar.

The main thing a meme is, is transitory. It’s here one moment and gone another, sometimes even using current events as background for the purposed of sharing a pun or subjective criticism. But even if it happens to be entertaining or funny, it is only so the first time you see it, very rarely a little longer. Afterwards you simply ignore it as it offers no new information, no new joke, no new emotions. Just a reaction ‘I’ve seen that one already’. And so they disappear, sometimes getting dug up a few years later just to bring scorn to whoever dug it. However, since people in general are not very creative (sure there are some brighter crayons around) and thus the same memes or concepts of memes get perpetuated ad nauseam.

So a meme is something you enjoy for a mere moment, later it simply becomes obsolete thrash that the Internet is full of anyways. It comes in many shapes and sizes, and yet it is annoyingly repetitive in its nature and its content. They rarely offer new ideas, new points of view, they only have so many words to use. Quite frankly, it is more interesting to read ancient blog posts or listen to old videos of TEDtalks or at fora(.tv) than attempt to enjoy captioned pictures, one of a dozen maybe creating some kind of reaction, if you’re lucky.

 

Moreover, it might actually be more interesting to old (false) advertising than keep checking for new content.

“Why is it that every time I mention faith you think I’m talking about God?”

“The pragmatic survive, and the determined thrive, but faith manages.”^[1]

It is kind of the basic message that echoes through Michael J. Straczynski’s creations, be it the space opera Babylon 5 or the post-apocalyptic drama Jeremiah. It’s a powerful message, and it applies in most cases. Exceptions always exist, as long as sociology is involved.

Pragmatist – you want to do something, you find a way, you get along. You will not suffer from much ordinary trouble as you only aspire as much as is practical, as is necessary or effective in terms of your survival or the continuation of your gene line. You make do, but never become anything truly great, never progress beyond the level of an average person in terms of material value, reputation, life quality, etc. They are the average Joes in our community.

The determined have a different point of view. They set their eyes on something really, really hard to get, and then they work to achieve that goal. Often enough they are successful, because they work for the goal practically non-stop. Their actions are generally methodical, thought through and purposeful, as opposed to the immediate, short-term decisions of pragmatists. They thrive because their aim tends to be idealistic, even unreachable. But that doesn’t stop them from being noble, from doing their best just because they can try to make the world a better place, because they have a mere chance that trying hard will move them an inch closer to their goals, that a little extra effort makes a change.

But both of these are outdone by people with faith. Not because they have someone watching over them or karma treats them better, but because they are even more motivated in their actions than the determined, and their devout belief in their ability to achieve their aspirations is nearly unshakeable. This means they are effectively impervious to drops in motivation due to unsuccessful attempts (or miserable failures, as one might put it), because, as previously mentioned, faith manages. A person with enough belief in something is like a wrecking ball that keeps on going. This can, at times, be a problem. Once upon a time there was a failed German artist that believed he could make the world better by getting rid of all people who infected a pure nation. While his belief lead to many scientific discoveries and an interesting tactic, nowadays better known as ‘zerg rush’, it also caused a significant drop in human population. This was generally received as a really bad thing to happen. But he showed the power of faith, of belief.

In general, faith has a way of making a person happier. You can take all the math in the ‘verse, but undertake a task that you don’t believe in and it will shake you down just like the turn of the worlds. Faith keeps the task possible, tells you you’re losing before you fail, makes it a goal. And in the end, faith manages.

“Don’t nobody go nowhere”

Inactivity. It drives us up and down the wall, we constantly need to do something, anything. All is fine as long as we keep going.

It can be as simple as doodling or checking Facebook during a lecture, playing cards or learning for something more than a week ahead of time during breaks. But it is something we do, even when we are with other people, we do it while talking to them about all kinds of subjects, but we still do them. We search for things to do. We’re used to multitasking, we don’t even think twice about it. But isn’t there something we’ve lost by always multitasking?

Most of our conversations have turned either information-specific (we ‘need’ to talk), boredom-related (there’s nothing else to do anyways), or simply ridiculous (‘sarcasm’). Talking for the sake of talking is gone, it’s a thing of the past. Thus now we learn more factual information about the people we converse with, we find out about their lives, about their wishes and aspirations. But we often miss what could be considered the most important part of a person – the essence. Who is the person really, how does he or she think, what are the simple things they ponder about daily? The factual information gives us the background of the person, the ‘essence’, so to say, tells the story of who the person is on the inside. And to know that one must talk to another person for the sole purpose of talking to that other person, of enjoying his or her company for a while longer, of finding out more about the person than many other fellow peers. It’s a simple enough thing to do, but it is rarely done. Time is a diminishing resource and we all have things to get done. Just talking is no longer a must.

Perhaps now the only solution is walking while talking. It’s still multitasking, but it is very likely to be less of an attention hoarder than, say studying or playing Monopoly. So perhaps it is better to take a long walk for the sake of conversation, for the sake of getting to know another person. It can be in a random direction, it can be aimed, but it is a slow walk that keeps away the impending case of ADD and does its best to avoid interruptions. It keeps us going.

Times, they are a-changing

Generally, time travel is thought of as a negative thing. Change one thing in the past, perhaps as simple as making somebody arrive someplace a few minutes later than they should or stepping on a butterfly, and you unleash a cascade of events eventually leading to extremely negative consequences. Not to mention the high risk of creating a paradox, an event that prevents you from travelling back in time in order to create the event preventing you from doing that. It's a risky business.

But is it really all that bad? We think it is bad or impossible because we are not exactly happy with the situation of... well, pretty much everything right now. If someone could change the situation by going back in time and altering events, they'd probably have done it, perhaps prevented Bieber from becoming a hit, and we wouldn't feel so bad. Or would we?

Suppose there has been a time traveller. Suppose that time traveller averted a huge catastrophe. We wouldn't know. Suppose he increased our life quality significantly. We wouldn't know. We would still be stuck in our ways of complaining about Status Quo. When we do not know what we've lost, we can't know what we're gained. In a way, it is the reason why the Doctor is so little know within the people who have not yet quite grasped time travel in its entirety.

The main problem with time travel though is getting back. If you go to the past, you will have inherently changed it and the future you will go back to will no longer be the same. Keeping the machine with you could also be found slightly problematic - this would mean that the distortion field is outside the time machine, not inside. Even if you don't want to come back, you don't want somebody else coming after you or messing up your plans using your machine. And when you've solved that problem, you are still in a strange time where you have to survive somehow. That ain't easy.

Time travel poses many problems, but whatever you do, there's a pretty slim chance anyone will ever find out about it.

Sometimes even warmth can feel cold.

By now, it has become apparent that logic is almost always more practical than emotions. But what are the advantages of being stiff, cold, calculated person (like Sheldon Cooper, PhD used to be), as opposed to someone really perky and loose?

Well, the first thing would obviously be the lack of emotions clouding your judgement. If you do not show what you feel, what you feel becomes less important within you as well. It is the age-old psychological effect, which is why when you stand up straight, you start feeling more confident; why when you wear clothes you don't like you feel down; why when you wear a bow tie and a brownish jacket you want to pull out a screwdriver from your jacket pocket. The upshot here is that when you make decisions, you think them through, you are more likely to avoid impulse decisions which are more likely to bring negative consequences.

The external effect is that it, in theory, decreases ambiguity. What you say is what you mean and nothing more. No hidden meanings, no snarky comments, no subtle hints. This has a couple of issues as you need to word what you say a little more carefully so as to not accidentally say more than you wish to mean. Unfortunately, with such careful wording and of habit, people try to find hidden meaning in what you say. Fortunately, this is usually not a problem as generally these false-positive hidden meanings tend to be either implausible (they don't make sense in the context at hand) or irrelevant enough not to matter. But there are a few cases when people read too much into, for instance, a proposition.

There is an additional effect that could be negative, but with enough logic on your side, you can turn any negative part of it positive. Being rigid means being predictable. If practicality and logic are your weapons and whatever you strive towards is your aim, then your actions will be, in one way or another, connected with reaching your aspirations. It does not take a genius to work out that a binary thinker can be used as any other person, but a strictly straight arrow will have a hard time doing anything against being used. Any move can be anticipated using the rules of logic. Fortunately, as you know someone wants you to do something that benefits him and not you, and you know what he expects you to do, according to the same laws of logic, you can go one step further - you know what the other person will do in order to get you to do the thing he wants you to do. A mighty game of psychology, but it works. It is like giving your enemy your communication codes during a war to direct him to insignificant targets and clear the way of his forces so that your main strike team can simply walk in without any opposition. Diversion.

The downside is also evident. Appearing cold and emotionless inherently means people will have a hard time reading your emotions. People won't know if you're interested in the topic or them, unless you explicitly state so. Then again, if you don't state so, people have a tendency to assume quite a bit. These assumptions are also the reason why even when you do state something about your interests, your words will be met with scepticism - did you say that because you meant it or because it is of use to you?

All in all, it is quite clear that being rigid is quite effective and practical. After all, it is what most of us are like online anyways, for others at the very least. If nobody can read your emotions, you are rigid. But it has to be understood that nobody is absolutely completely emotionless, something has to remain. Something that lingers, that influences the person, that makes the person accept certain people as friends, something that makes the person move closer to a few people that he considers special to him. You might not see it, but it is there. And when it shows, it's worth it.

"Keep yourself alive, keep yourself alive, it'll take you all your time and a money to keep you satisfied."

Sometimes it is better to do things that damage you, as it may slow down the diminishment of your soul. Taking care of your life is important, one should preserve one's life. But one must not forget the age-old saying 'To live is to risk.'. There is no way to live in a safe bubble all your life, so why not try something risky on purpose?

Many people who practice extreme sports say that the danger gives them a sense of freedom, a sense of mortality, a sense of change. In a way, it enriches their souls, it adds to their life experience. It might not be sensible and is definitely something one should not recommend others to do, but it is a way to break the barriers of everyday life.

To achieve this goal, one does not necessarily risk one's life. Sometimes a small risk is enough to create change, to keep your mind sharp, to keep your emotions functional. Saying 'yes' when one should say 'no', making good friends with people you barely know and can't relate with, keeping in touch with lost causes... all perfectly innocent ways that have the potential to increase drama, drive emotions up, keep you alive and kicking. Just about enough to stop the regress of the soul, the ever-constant decay that happens due to daily stress and routine. Have a little colour in your lives.

The road we walk is not easy, but it is the only road we are on.

Fate. Karma. Tao. Different ways of saying things are the way they are supposed to be. They are also things people decide to either believe or not believe in.

It is actually quite difficult to explain how it works. Simply saying 'it is so because it is supposed to be so' contains a logical fallacy, saying 'our actions lead to a preset result that cannot be foreseen or changed' does not explain why the result cannot be changed. Divine intervention?
In a way, fate merely states that every action has a result, a consequence bound to that specific action in the specific conditions in which the action is performed. Hitting a gold ball results in it flying off (unless it is nailed down) and posing danger for anyone near its landing area. In the same manner a failure to be present at a subjectively important event results in a change of social status. It's the laws of physics expanded to include sociology, thus departing from science in general.
Since the laws of physics work (well, they have worked pretty well so far), there is a good chance the same concept can be used in other places with relative success. The main problem is the abundance of variables that tend to be unknown to the observer. Even when the variables, such as people's actions, are known, it remains a game of bridge - you know the odds and you play the best you can with the knowledge you have. But there is always a chance that the odds are in your favour but you get blindsided by extremely uneven hands. You may know the probable result, but you can never take every single thing into account. Fate is unpredictable, it can only be confirmed in hindsight.
This makes fate kind of a smoking gun. You observe an outcome, you know what caused it, but firing a gun does not always result in smoke coming out of it. It is chance, luck, or simply someone's diligence that caused the weapon not to jam. You only know it works because you witness the result.
The problem with fate or karma or whatever you wish to call it is the lack of evidence that results are definite events. Believing in fate means believing in predestination, that we simply live out whatever tape deck we were born to follow and have no choice to change our future or present. Every decision, every impulse has been marked down by someone or something somewhere.

"We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?"

In such a case, even the knowledge of fate has to be preset by fate itself. This poses yet another problem: things don't exist for no reason. If fate has a purpose, it most definitely does not have one for us. That leaves outside influences. There is very little point in pondering about the identity or essence of the influence or influences, it would be highly theoretical and based on a wild unproven theory. But the possible purpose of causing our world to work based on 'fate' is quite a nut to crack. After all, if 'fate' was created by something that knew all the variables and the purpose of it is to calculate the ultimate question, so many of us probably wouldn't have read about it.

In conclusion, saying 'things are so because they are meant to be so' has a hitch of an undefined entity that 'means it to be so'. To be more precise, the problem is less in the nature of the aforementioned entity, but the motive of the entity, the reason it 'means it to be so'. If you can think of a logical reason why anything or anyone would create fate that makes us believe or not believe it, feel free to comment.

"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"

Explaining emotion with logic is easy as a lion.

Some people fear computers and robots. There is actually a relatively good reason for that - they can't think of a reason why a robot would act altruistically. To be more specific, what would motivate an absolutely logical entity to save a random person from harm or death?

The three laws of robotics, proposed by Isaac Asimov, include 'a robot must not let any human being come to harm by action or inaction' (paraphrased). It was a preset knowledge, an axiom, not a logical conclusion derived from something else. This law caused quite a fuss in the movie 'I, Robot', where a learning and thinking artificial intelligence finally understood that humans are a problem. They tend to be very self-destructive and for their own benefit they should be devoid of freedom and succumb to the care of robots. Some people will lose lives in the transition, but after the event, life loss should become minimal. It was the logical conclusion, a reasonable transaction.
The 'will' to live is an emotion and insufficient. We don't always get what we want anyway, perhaps death is what we need? Proving that life is 'good' and death is 'bad' is quite a problematic task. After all, let's keep in mind that whoever said 'death is merely a part of life' was probably not dead at the time he said it.

People are not snowflakes, there is a finite number of personalities. By allowing a single person pass over to the other side, odds are that there is someone just like the dead guy or girl somewhere still living. Thus, the world as a whole does not lose anything unique by a death. And it's not like there are just a few hundred people around, there are billions of us on this tiny planet. And even so, we destroy snowflakes, sometimes deliberately. We catch them on our warm gloves or mittens and enjoy their demise as they melt away. It is partly because we know snow to be transitory, of the moment, it will stop existing soon anyways. But the same applies to human beings. Death is inevitable, sooner or later it will catch up to any person. So why not let people 'melt away'?

Sure, there are instances in which letting someone die can cause future problems to the self, one can be accused of criminal negligence and might even be publicly crucified. Jail time is nobody's favourite pastime and bad publicity can cause hindrances in one's professional and personal lives. But if the inactivity (or activity, for that matter) goes unnoticed, why do anything to save a life?

The question here is, and I stress this, about the logical justification of preventing death (per first aid, calling help, moving someone out of danger, giving a warning, etc.), not the justification of causing death. Negligence, not murder. Although manslaughter does have its problems in the same logical department, it also requires motive, which generally is either emotional in its nature or derived from an emotional component. Anyone can justify action or inaction with mere feelings.




Naturally there are exceptions, especially if the person dying is not simply a 'random' person, but someone of some use (material or emotional). But the problem is in the general sense.

Check-in.

Ah, it's been a nice weekend.

After a huge amount of time, I've had the pleasure of using Linux (Ubuntu, to be exact) again. To my surprise, it is pretty decent. WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) really helps it.
However, it has faults, things that it lacks but Windows has. One would most definitely be a blogging client. Now, after a long search, I did find one that was able to connect to Blogspot, but it has no (embed) code support - text only. The result: blogging in a browser.
Secondly, and more importantly, there is a huge lack of .one support. Sure, most Linux users probably don't use OneNote all that much, but if the file contains information about the stuff you wanted to do for which you started using Ubuntu, it is a slight problem. Now, for clarification, the details of the action are the file, the large plan is in the head, and the action itself should result in a mix of the two. Why that needs Ubuntu, let's leave that be as mysterious as the nature of 'that'.
Thirdly, a lot of settings are not available via the UI. What I, personally, miss is the ability to change scroll speed on the mouse. A basic thing to expect, but lacking nonetheless.

All in all, Ubuntu is relatively smooth, integrates many applications (like the mail client, any IM clients, music player, even a Facebook status reader (really, that this is even installed as default)), even Optimus works (the NVidia method that switches between the Intel graphics chip and the NVidia chip, with the purpose of increasing battery time when powerful graphics is not needed). It is surprisingly intuitive (12.10 is, a couple versions back it was a nightmare), but I cannot help but think that Microsoft as a company has made some really good choices. They have made extremely nice programs (such as OneNote) and made sure that the practicality of them would not be surpassed by freeware or anything on other platforms. The toolbar is minimalistic in Windows and takes only the space it requires, unlike the Ubuntu one that consists of two bars and has a huge ribbon thing that has things only at the extreme ends.

Well, back to fiddling with it.

Politics and afterlife. A kind of double post.

So, the news are in. Obama^[1] won.

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“Take away death, what remains?”

Being immortal in the present is quite complicated. The main problem would naturally be the paperwork – pretty much every person is on record somewhere, more and more people have their private information (fingerprints, DNA) stored somewhere. Sure, you could head to somewhere less civilized, but then there’d be little point in being immortal. The perk of being immortal is that you can enjoy life with lessened risk. That means you can enjoy more stuff, you don’t have to worry about dire consequences, unless you really, really manage to mess something up.

Now, one might say that being tracked is not a problem, let someone find out you are immortal, why not? Well, anyone with such an incredible ability would soon find himself in a dark laboratory being tested on. That means poking around in your body, introducing you to new methods of inflicting pain, testing your capabilities of regeneration, etc. That research would go to create more immortals, the first test subjects would probably be supersoldiers, capable of causing mayhem of epic proportions. Something you would generally like to avoid. I, for one, would prefer not to be the cause of some mad-hatter’s world domination, but that might just be me.

Back to the topic at hand, avoiding being noticed and stuck in a box for testing, poking, and probing. There’ll be probing. Obviously that rules out most types criminal activity, that would create a high chance of somebody finding the same fingerprints at a crime scene or on a criminal (you) more than just a couple decades apart, and that would raise a red flag. Residing in the U.S. is also problematic because of their insistence on giving people information about your fingerprints when you try to enter the country. The new ‘bionic’ passports or whatnot complicate things further. In the old days you could simple move around, take up a new identity, none would be the wiser. After a few identities, you could start the loop again, the people who knew you would have died of various causes, including old age, by then. But now… now one could pull a Helen Magnus – stay hidden by either getting rich and building a hideaway underground in the middle of civilization, or simply building a hideaway in the middle of nowhere.

It’s actually quite unpleasant to be immortal. Getting a job is a hassle, voting a complication, buying a flat an inconvenience, having a valid driving licence a nuisance, carrying around valid identification a bloody bother. You have no job history, no (believable) birth date, no (believable) social security code, no (valid) birth certificate… all in all, it would be easier to die. Then again, as this logic (‘if I had died some time ago, I would not have these problems’) applies to everything, and precedent states that death should not be considered a viable way of avoiding problems, one must just accept life on the sidelines, hiding in the shadows, staying behind the curtain, travelling incognito, and remember that everything is transitory, of the moment.

Broken identities.

We are all damaged goods.

None of us can really say we are normal. We all have our quirks and issues, there most definitely is something wrong with us. It could be apathy or trust issues, being a glutton for punishment or being overly sceptic. Or having great difficulties talking about oneself without seeming very smug.

This is why we seek out the shortcomings of others. We seek weakness that would console us, something that would make others not be better than us. Sure, all of us are not dealt the same cards, nobody is really equal. But just knowing that others are at least as messed up as you really let’s you know you are not an anomaly.

There is nobody perfect for anybody else. Just compatible mistakes. People who ignore the shortcomings or play them for strengths make good friends or life partners.

There is something in each of us that qualifies us for dismissal from a relationship as far as somebody is concerned. But we make do with what we got. We live our lives, some become someone really great, some become people we never want to meet again. But we continue to live our lives nevertheless, we find friends, create families, start new life. We are all damaged goods, but that is merely what we are, not what we do. And it is as general as saying we are all human.

In your face. Literally.

The skull is an amazing piece of construction. There are ridiculously many small pieces it consists of. The outline is pretty much a few larger bones, but the face, oh the face, the face is like a jigsaw puzzle. Lots of pieces that barely fit together, mostly by leaving huge gaps between one another.
For instance, take the eye hole, the small place where one of your eyeballs is located. A half-sphere hole that is made up of 7 bones. The nasal cavity has even more bones, but that’s because it is called one hole even though it has a bone wall smack in the middle of it, dividing it into two, but it is still called one nevertheless. Pretty much all of the bones are connected to a single bone right in the middle of the skull. This bone is somewhat peculiar – it has two sets of wings.
To make matters worse, there is a set of tiny holes and a horn of sorts right inside the forehead. One of those holes may or may not be a hole. It may or may not contain a vein. That vein that may or may not be there also may or may not reach the nasal cavity and drain it. That may or may not be a problem as the nasal cavity can contain all sorts of bad stuff you don’t want heading towards your brain^[1]. It’s not an exact science.

This should be about it.

“As the EU brought along ERASMUS and Schengen, it also brought along a new age of international cooperation for many new member states. It has also brought up the problem of having many different languages in a relatively small area. One of the many topics that have been raised due to this has been learning different languages in school - whether it should be mandatory or voluntary, should it be done at all?

People in Eastern Europe have no problem answering this, on the one side, there are countries that have German or something extremely similar to German as the native language, and most of the English-speaking world. On the other side they border with the enormous Russia, that has at certain points in history forced Russian culture, including the language, to be incorporated local cultures, sometimes to extreme extent. Most young people in these countries learn English and Russian at school, however well pupils actually communicate in these languages differs a lot, dependant on the pupils' personal background (nationality of self, or of parents, or of closest acquaintances, for instance), motivation, abilities, etc. Often enough, by the end of secondary school, the young graduate will have learned at least 3 foreign languages.

But countries where the native language happens to be a popular language throughout the entire world, or our small corner of it at the very least, can be reluctant to 'force' their young to study a foreign language that many would probably never use. This is painfully obvious in the United States, but for the sake of this topic, let's limit ourselves to the EU.

Since English is the most popular language within the EU, most young Frenchmen and Germans learn it anyways, but England is a problem. For every other country, the foreign language that should most probably definitely be taught at school would be English, but in England, that is no longer a foreign language. While learning Welsh would be interesting, it probably would not be very practical. The languages that could be of use for more than an insignificant minority, would be French and German. But even so, learning French would perhaps yield better results than learning German. After all, learning more languages before adulthood has proved to be an excellent method of developing a systematic mind that can cope with huge amounts of input even at old age. Furthermore, polyglots generally have higher IQ. This may lead to other perks, such as long life^[1] or increased rate of learning new techniques to keep up with the changing requirements for certain positions of employment.

All in all, the EU has played an important role in opening borders and encouraging cooperation beyond borders, but it has barely changed the need to learn languages. The languages taught may have changed, but foreign languages should be taught at all times (in the sense of past, present, and future) to schoolchildren, from primary school to secondary school at the very least. Often enough during university studies, one has to learn an additional language, such as Latin, anyways. Perhaps the language that is taught is not that important as a whole, but the process of learning a language most definitely is important and has significant positive consequences.”

 

The quotation marks are there for a reason yet again. The Status shall be Quo again soon.

Enjoy the magic of computers: