Just another day

All I got from the previous post on reddit was, basically, "LOL, utopia". Well, the question didn't get too far, and it hit the obvious obstacles.

Without bothering to go into the details I'll just go ahead and say that all current systems are utopias, just not very good ones. They all started from the desire to improve a previous system. We no longer live in the stone age, or in a feudal system, imperial Rome, or whatever. So it's not that utopias are impossible, it's just that the vast majority of the constituents of a system think that the system they live in is some sort of god-given, always-been-here reality, and not something men and women fought and died for in the past, that is to say nothing short of a full blown utopia.

I also went ahead and propositioned the telepathy/empathy thought experiment and most of the reactions were quite predictable in the realm of "OMFG, people will know my deepest darkest secrets, I should lie and make up all sorts of counter arguments rather than admitting that everyone will know the real me, hell, even I don't know the real me". Suffice to say that hypocrisy is here to stay and it won't go away, not even in an imagined world.

Anyway, since it's that time of the year (no, not that one, the other one) I should cast some hopes into the future.

Oh, and I also postulate that the question coming from the guy sitting in the chair is valid for no matter what time period.

Just an idea

I repent, we should stick to whatever the blind forces that govern the world have in store for us.

Eye candy! Yay!

I've just realized that I haven't had a desktop computer in over five years now. Yup, I'm a laptop person, and right now I have four of them. Two died of old age , another by drowning, the last one is still holding up quite nicely, and I can't gather up the strength to bury the others, I keep them around, like half rotting zombies, or something.

Everyone loves gadgets, they call out to the kid within, here's a little toy you can play with as a grownup and not get laughed at. It's great, everybody wins, or do we?

I'll let you in on what has been my gadgety wet dream for the last few months, so I'll give a sort of review/preview based on my nigh fanatic following of the forums and every bit of news I could get about the product.

Lately, and by lately I mean since March 2009, I've had my eye on a little netbook, developed by a new company called AlwaysInnovating, and the moment I saw it I knew it was everything I wanted in a netbook. Small, 9" screen, instant tablet switcheroo, 10 hour battery life, Linux, and the best thing, judging after some nasty personal experiences, it wouldn't turn into a radiator, venting heat like a some sort of a crazed boiler, thanks to its ARM architecture. Perfect I thought.

See what I mean? Oh, and the screen is detachable, lovely, isn't it?

Well... it sort of isn't, so far. I did the reasonable thing and ordered, or pre-ordered, and then waited, and then waited some more. On the forums it is sacrilege to question the delivery schedule of AI, but overall the ones who did get the product are mostly happy with the product, even though some say that the quality control is horrible and one in three has some defects. Oh, and if you tilt the screen a little more than 90 degrees the netbook falls flat on its back, and now the're shipping little pieces of plastic to glue them to the product to counter balance problems. That didn't stop me from still loving and wanting it.

What did stop me was that the 'massive early December shipment' was a massive disappointment in that it hasn't happened yet, and since I had to order through some friend who would then have to send it over to me, I definitely wouldn't get it by Christmas. And in January, I'm not sure where I am going to be, so I had to cancel.

I'll just have to wait till things settle and maybe TouchBook v.2 shows up.

I'm so sad I could cry. I could but I won't because I mend easily, and lo and behold another temptress is on the horizon.

And here we go again...

Reboot

I'm not out to make a statistic but the last few years have seen quite a large number of reboots (don't you just love the term?). Not that there's anything wrong with reboots in general but it's just that as with any new fad it tends to border on the ridiculous. Such as a month or two ago they were thinking about rebooting Galactica, which was only rebooted in 2004.

I guess that what really bothers me is the "dark and gritty" part, I just cringe whenever I hear the words. Maybe there's something there though, I mean, imagine you're a guy dressed in a BATsuit, driving a BATmobile, throwing BATrangs at BATcriminals (okay, so that last one I made up), you'd find it hard not hearing BATlaughter(TM) if you couldn't maintain an allure of rough and gritty darkness.

Last week I've read on io9 that someone is planning to turn the Forbidden Planet into a TV show, and if memory serves they did have such a thing until it was rebooted by J.J. Abrams' fun (very true) but brain dead creation, it was called Star Trek. The Forbidden Planet is a masterpiece and having re-watched it recently I can say that even after more than 50 year (yes, that's half a century) the movie is still better than most S.F. today. But who knows, maybe they'll do a good job at *quote* rebooting *unquote* it.

What I'm trying to say is that crave for something original, and I've grown tired of hearing about reboots. But I guess that there's truly nothing new under the sun, and we're all just walking tropes, so I'll leave you with www.tvtropes.org which is one of those Internet black holes that will swallow up all your free time.

Atheist for President! Sort of

I assume most presidents around the world are atheists but it's a rare sight, even for a president wannabe, to see a political figure not don the cape of Captain Hypocrisy, especially when engaged in country president related stuff.

I must say that I have little true (as in being moved by pathos) interest in what is generally considered earthly affairs. I do take note and have something that might be called opinions but otherwise I try and stay as far as possible from politics and all related areas.

Even more, I don't even really consider myself as a citizen of this country, this is because it was very confusing when growing up to decide who to hate the most: those dastardly neighbors on the third floor, those guys from that bad neighborhood, that annoying little city next to ours, that country who stole some land of ours (who or what is this ours anyway?) some ages ago (and the horror only increased when learning in history class about all other sorts of thievery, not to mention that I wasn't sure whether my ancestors were the thieves or the robbed).

It is obvious that I had problems in assimilating the otherwise very simple concept of 'them vs. us'. It's just that it was very difficult holding all those contradictory ideas about who is us and who is them. So I try to see myself as a human being (the definition there being very fuzzy) or, my latest find, a product of the Verse, whatever that means.

But when I see something like this, I just have to raise a Spock-like eyebrow, I mean:

See what I mean?

Remus Cernea is the presidential candidate for the Green Party here in Romania. I mean here you are sure to get all sorts of monkey business when election day is close by, but this is very different from the grotesque spectacle that floods all media outlets.

On one hand we have the cliché candidates with their snoozefest speeches and attitude, making the sign of the cross like cross-making automatons, and on the other we have a plain, straight to the point man who doesn't fit this hypocritical picture.

I mean, during one debate (which he attended in casual wear) the moderator asked if he can rise to the level of etiquette required of a president. He rolled a saving throw by pulling out a tuxedo out of a bag, but that was an easy one since all things politics are dead boring predictable.

And it's true, just like in the 'I'm a PC, I'm an Apple' commercial when asked who would you hire, most people would chose the suit over the hip guy. We are slaves to appearances, and it's not always a bad thing, just that sometimes it becomes really ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, one blogger (I cannot be bothered with looking up the link) said that his main objection against Cernea was all the hair and looks, which according to him would somehow lead to women no longer shaving or something. This comes from a twenty year old hip guy (vanity photo was included in the blog), but still better than those from the right wing 'Heil Hitler' youths that have grown in number the past few years (get off my lawn you damn dirty kids!). Anyway, if I were to reply in kind I'd say that all that hair gel seeped through and reached his already malfunctioning brain, damaging it even further, I recommend lobotomy.

It's no surprise really. It is in human nature to react as such to all things different, but I think we've made progress. So far this year only two strangers more or less kindly suggested I get a haircut, and only one was mildly aggressive and implied that rockers (though I prefer the term metalhead) should be involved in some sort of oral activities pertaining to his persona. And I'm not kidding, this is progress.

And I view this whole thing as progress too. To put it in the 'faith in humanity' meme (is it a meme? it should be) mine has increased two points. Not because I believe that he can win (that I do not know but 2% in the polls doesn't give much hope) but because it shows a possible future where reason, science and tolerance are not just words, but realities embraced by all humans, and compared to all the misery this world has to offer, I don't see that as a far fetched dream, we're already living the nightmare. Or something like that, like I've said, I don't really care that much.

Oh, and two more things.

First, this one goes to /r/atheism and in case you still have to ask 'yes, he is an atheist'. When I first saw his some months ago on a talk show the host asked 'are you an Orthodox Christian?' to which Cernea replied that he is a humanist, or something. The host, a man in his fifties, then proceeded to put on his good ol' condescending father figure. Those poor kids, they are so rebellious when they're young. We all know there is no such thing as an over forties atheist.

Second, the ground for metalhead presidents has already been prepared by the straight-out-of-the-dungeon goth daughters of president Zapatero of Spain.

See what I mean? Again?

I can haz posts?

internet article about what the net is doing to our brains

maybe good maybe bad, your choice, i guess

we skim, frugally collect information

think i read this before somewhere

dave, my mind is going, i can feel it

That would be my attempt at providing information in a fashion that would suit the prototype of the Internet user these days. Short, concise bursts of information that provide just enough to get the idea.

I had to stop and laugh when I got to the part of the article (and a very long article at that) that said that we no longer have the ability to read full texts, we just skim. I had to laugh because that's what I was doing, having decided that the article was bit too long for my taste (this coming from someone who's read Ulysses) and then I got back and read the article properly. But the author is right, we can no longer read War and Peace, at least I can't, and I also have to agree with the author that maybe that's not such a bad thing. Which reminds me of a Woody Allen joke which goes something like 'I took a course in speed reading and I've read War and Peace, it's about Russia'.

So I took a course in Internets, it's about LOLCats.

On a side note, Stargate's back. Even if just for an episode, I'm not holding my breath for the next one. *spoilers* I guess that what cut it for me, and for others as well, was killing those whiny characters within the first 10 minutes, "whine some more about that, now will you? oh, you can't, you're dead!" They did pull the old time loop thing and it seems everything will be okay.

Also, Cleverbot rules!

Introspection and Gratitude

I was following my own suggestion from a previous post and I picked up The Demon-Haunted World in order to give it another reading. I got to the point where Sagan wrote that when he told his parents that he wanted to be an astronomer he got all their support, and I was thinking that maybe the 'failed' part wouldn't have been appended to failed.nerd had my parents listened to me when I was 10 or so drawing all sorts of schematics, writing programs in BASIC and dreaming of working at NASA.

Now before you go out for your little violin, I have to say that I turned out quite okay. I'm just saying that maybe I would have been a lot better if had not been for my parent's divorce and the several years worrying about getting something to eat the next day. And I can't help but wonder how many broken dreams go down the same path, how many missed opportunities.

'All things science' this is what comes to my mind when someone asks me what my interests are. But the answer seldom is as imagined. I do have other interests which are more suited to the environment I live in, and I know and love my friends enough not to pester them with my rant about how cool the 3D Mandelbrot Fractal is or how much I love Python. That's not to say that I can't have intellectually stimulating discussions with them, just that they are on a different level. It's just that sometimes I wish I had someone else to talk about these things, someone who would get my obscure Futurama and Firefly references.

This has long left me wanting to reach out and find a place where I can be truly me, and thankfully the Internet has maintained my frustration at low levels. I imagine this is true for many others, wouldn't you say so?

So I guess some thanks are in order, thanks which will go out into the vast space that is the Web, home of the socially awkward and all sorts of interesting human beings.

thank you Internet, thank you Wikipedia, thank you Reddit, thank you all you bloggers out there for sharing who you are and what you do