Aris Katsaris

Google plus

2011-07-21T20:57:23Z

If anyone wants a Google Plus invite, let me know.

So far I like its style and uncluttered look -- unlike Facebook.

Various political thoughts

2011-01-09T20:10:02Z

Various political thoughts:

- There is no hope for Greece, none whatsoever. The last hope I had for it was when Bakoyianni was striving for the leadership of her party -- and even if she had succeeded, I'd only call it a roughly 15% chance that Greece would have be saved. When Samaras got it instead, all hope failed that some sort of productive, progress-friendly, economy-friendly opposition might even slightly halt Greece's fall.

There's no hope for it on the fiscal front, where private investments and economy keeps on getting sabotaged by the government itself, whose only tactic is to borrow even more heavily from abroad, so that people a couple years from now will have to borrow even more heavily to repay the money being borrowed today.
And there's no hope for it on the democratic front, where Neonazism (not just plain chauvinist fascism anymore, but full fledged Hitler-lovers) is on the rise everywhere -- from the court systems where the Nazi Plevris (the guy who said that Hitler's fault was that he was too *nice* to the Jews, and that he let too *many* of them live) was acquitted, and his antiNazi accusers then prosecuted, to the local elections where the neonazis got a 5% nationwide, and a 20% in certain areas, to the Orthodox church where prominent bishops are telling their flock that the Greek economy is down the crapper because of Zionist plots.

2011 is going to be worse than 2010, 2012 is going to be worse than 2011, and I don't know if Greece is still going to be here in 2013. And even if it is, it's going to have neonazi members of the parliament whenever the next national elections come. Because nobody in the political establishment opposes Nazism, nobody in the political establishment has any reason to oppose Nazism. As long as Jews and international Zionist conspiracies can be blamed, nobody blames *them*.

- There is little hope, middle-term, for the world in general. Even if Europe manages to survive, hopefully by amputating the Greek gangrene from its midst, the whole world everywhere outside it is heading towards fascism. Pakistan has been killing every progressive voice, Iranian revolution got suppressed, Koreas are going noplace good.

Also, Koreas, please if you're gonna have a war, arrange it for 2012, the time I predicted it for in Dreams of the Kisei. I missed the Harry Potter prediction, so it'd be nice to be accurate on the Panasiatic War prediction.

- More than a year ago (September 2009 or thereabouts), I had involved myself in a controversy about the Lambda awards -- I hadn't even heard of them before then, but the controversy was that they now required their GLBT awards to be awarded not just to GLBT books but to GLBT books by GLBT people, essentially excluding straight writers for receiving them by writing GLBT books. I voice opposition to this, calling it ghettoization, which word produced strong sentiment against, though little coherent argument. And then the thread got deleted, and attempts to discuss the issue elsewhere also got shut down.

It took me a couple weeks to realize that at least some of the people reacting negatively may have wrongly thought I meant that gays were ghettoizing straights by this. I, of course, meant that gays were ghettoizing themselves: isolating themselves in a small community, rather than trying to integrate it in the wider world.

Of course I still don't know if my true meaning would have been better received than the false meaning. Probably not. And on the whole I do not care, I failed to care enough that I didn't post this realization here for more than a year since I had it. The thing about self-imposed ghettoizations is that outsiders stop caring.

- There is some hope for Sudan, and by extension there is some for Africa. The African peoples ought follow the Sudanese example and start rearranging their borders according to saner lines, not the colonial relics that have caused endless unending civil wars. I'm all in favour of the union of nations and ethnic groups, but it needs be voluntary. So divide first, hopefully peacefully, *then* come together again, voluntarily.

Methods of rationality

2010-09-16T11:20:48Z

Last couple weeks I ended up seeing one particular piece of fanfiction mentioned in three different places (LJ friendslist, tv tropes, hatrack.com forums), so I'm guessing it's the new sensation that's taking Internet by storm.

Thankfully it's a really really good one, so let me add my own recommendation to the bunch: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Less Wrong (Eliezer Yudkowsky)

The only known AU fic in which Harry systematically tries to figure out the logic behind magic.
The only known AU in which Voldemort was intelligent enough to make the Pioneer Plaque into a Horcrux.
Also the only known fic in existence in which Voldemort ends up saving Harry Potter's life from a horde of yaoi-loving fangirls, without it being a crackfic!

A warning though: Harry Potter is a horrible and arrogant little jerk in this fic, not the sweet and humble kid of canon -- to me it only makes those few moments of sweetness that remain (e.g. his annoyance at having Hermione's genius not recognized by her parents) all the more potent. But even so: if you can't tolerate jerk protagonists, the fic may not be to your liking at all.

So looking forward to this...

2010-07-30T15:33:32Z

Sequel series: Avatar: Legend of Korra

"Avatar: the Last Airbender" is one of my two favourite animated series EVER (the other one being "Gargoyles")... so, yeah. Definitely looking forward to the spinoff. Especially since it seems it'll be slightly different in style with a bit of steampunk thrown in for good measure.

Failed...

2010-07-13T11:56:45Z

The octopus was right and I was wrong.

Curse you, psychic cephalophod, curse you.

World Cup predictor.

2010-07-07T21:16:01Z

I've discovered the perfect predictor for the knock-out stage of the FIFA world cup.

A>B>C with:
Group A supports same-sex marriage.
Group B offers civil unions, registered partnerships or some other kind of recognition to same-sex couples.
Group C offers no recognition to same-sex couples at all, atleast not on a national level.

So...
GROUP A: Netherlands, Spain, Portugal
GROUP B: Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, England
GROUP C: South Korea, United States, Ghana, Slovakia, Chile, Paraguay, Japan

A defeats B or C: (Netherlands-Brazil, Netherlands-Uruguay, Spain-Germany, Netherlands-Slovakia, Spain-Paraguay)
B defeats C: (Uruguay-S.Korea, Brazil-Chile, Argentina-Mexico, Uruguay-Ghana)

When (A) faces (A) or (B) faces (B), earliest recognition means victory.

So Spain (SSM since 2005) defeated Portugal (SSM since 2010) and Germany (registered partnerships since 2001) defeated England (civil partnerships since 2005) and Argentina (unregistered cohabitation since 2008)

---

This gives us the world cup winner: Netherland (SSM since 2001) rather than Spain (SSM since 2005).

It also proves beyond a doubt that the God of Soccer supports same-sex marriage.

katsaris @ 2010-04-19T04:28:00

2010-04-19T01:29:06Z

Well here's one of the indirect results of the icelandic volcano's eruption. Since my brother's flight was delayed we had the time for yet another bad fight this weekend which finally brought me to realize that I've had enough with his bullshit justifications of his intentional parasitism. I'm done with him as he's hopefully done with me. I will be taking steps to avoid having to see or talk to him ever again.

Unfortunately as he has my phone number I doubt it'll be the last time I hear him.

A diagram

2009-12-08T01:25:55Z

A diagram I made a week or two ago, to help clarify some of my political thinking:

The grid's leftmost column and its central colors are based on the colors of the flag of the French Revolution - blue for freedom, white for equality, red for fraternity (solidarity).

The grid is circular -- the history of many revolutions shows us how egalitarian ideas have transformed to group loyalty, which transforming itself into privilege eventually creates a new aristocracy and a new tyranny. (Social Fascism).

On the right of that, ideas of unrestrained competition based on sheer meritocracy, fail to take into account that the accumulation of wealth, experience, position, inevitably tilts subsequent competitions towards the already powerful, thus eventually creating again a new aristocracy. (Corporate Capitalism).

The only model that may avoid aristocracy is that of Social Democracy -- in which the prosperity created is used in a spirit of solidarity to support the weakest members of society so as to level the field as far as possible for subsequent competition. (Social Democracy)

---

Some hasty definitions:

The MERITOCRATIC column.

COMPETITION: The conflict over limited resources.
-Contesting: Most common in athletic competitions, a conflict with a clear winner or loser, without the choice being dependent on an external judge (who, if they exist at all, take a limited role). The faster, or the stronger, or the most capable wins, regardless of what either the establishment or popular will demands. The purest form of Meritocracy.
Problems: Instead of increasing one's own potential, one may choose to sabotage the adversary's potential instead. In the international arena this form of contesting becomes known as WAR.
-Electing: Any form of competition in which the winner is decided by popular will -- or any form of competition in which the electors are larger in number than the contestants and who elevate the winner above them. Most common in democratic processes, but also in situations such as companies competing over market share.
Problems: potential of deception and deceptive populism, manipulation of ignorance and group loyalty.
-Bidding: The converse of electing: any situation in which the number of potential contestants is larger than that of the decicion-makers - and possess a higher position than even the one offered. Most common in job-hunting.
Problems: Nepotism and other such favouritism (e.g. party membership), personal biases (racism, sexism, etc), exchange of personal favours taking advantage of both the winner ("I had to sleep with the director.") and disadvantaging the losers ("I wouldn't sleep with the director.").

MERIT: Any productive ability or quality.
-Talent: Morally neutral inborn abilities which one either has or lacks to a lesser or greater decree. Eventually DNA manipulation may move this aspect of life rightwards - where the rich could genetically gift their children with extra potential at a genetical level.
-Experience: All abilities, especially knowledge, which can be trained or grow with use. The accumulation of experience becomes an asset which can tilt subsequent competition.
-Virtue: Using one's asset according to society's value-system. Sometimes a work-ethic that directly boosts own's capabilities, other times just useful to pretend to have in the case of elections. But in contests and biddings, true virtue is often detrimental as it prevents one from unethically taking advantage of rivals' weaknesses.

ACHIEVEMENT: The fulfillment of personal desire.
-Prosperity: All aspects of quality of life which usually can't be easily traded away or hoarded: Health, longevity, leisure time, availability of information, communication, and transportation. When prosperity spreads to the whole of society, it becomes practically indistinguishable from the square on its left: freedom, especially from fear and want.
The abundance of prosperity has the potential pitfall of SLOTH.
-Wealth: Material possessions which can be exchanged or hoarded. The accumulation of wealth creates one of the potential forms of aristocracy (plutocracy) - material dominance, which is the square on its right.
Accumulation of wealth beyond one's actual benefit is GREED.
-Recognition: Which unlike prosperity can't be infinite, not even potentially, but unlike wealth can't be easily hoarded, exchanged or even lost. Many times it's indistinguishable from position, which grants a benefit to the owner of such -- other (rarer) times it becomes a detriment.
Its lack of clear benefits means that its accumulation is an issue of PRIDE.

---

It's getting late, ended up writing up only about one third of what I planned. Will complete this in a future post, with possibly one more diagram.

Two events of great political significance tomorrow

2009-11-03T00:50:28Z

Two important decisions tomorrow: First, the Czech Supreme Court has to decide whether the Treaty of Lisbon is consistent with their constitution. If their decision is negative, I'm guessing the European project will be stalled for a decade or so -- both in its enlargement and in its integration (widening and deepening).

The second is the referendum on the state of Maine in the United States regarding same-sex marriage. It has the best chances of affirming SSM from any of the referendums that have taken place so far -- and it'll be a first for the USA if the people of Maine so maintain SSM.

Here's hoping.

Dreaming mythology and zombies

2009-10-30T00:37:51Z

Had a dream last night, about a war between zombies and the leftovers of humanity. It also included some gender-related commentary: the chief defender of humanity was Wonder Woman, and the battle started turning in favour of humanity when a friend/mentor of hers (at the cost of her own disappearance and possible death) summoned Goddess Athena via a portal. Athena subsequently took charge of the war and routed the zombies, but there was simultaneous commentary that some few of the "boys" had defected, because they couldn't tolerate both the leaders of the war being female.

My point of view alternated between being a reader (I remember figuring out like a reader that in this alternate universe Batman never existed, and Superman did exist but he seems to have been originally a villain and so was generally mistrusted and thus incapable of leadership) and a participant (being instructed how to distinguish between zombies and simply "angry people" :-) Some details I'm also forgetting. I'm pretty sure there were some other deities in there, some in the opposite side. Hecate on the side of the zombies? I don't really remember much more.

The end of multi-party democracy in Greece.

2009-10-26T22:23:23Z

In Greece we're currently seeing the attempted murder of multi-party democracy. A vast portion of the political establishment + media is arguing about how it'll be all for the good if the new leader of the "New Democracy" party is elected not only by its members, but also by the "friends" of the party.

Meaning no restrictions: Any Greek citizen ought vote for who the leader of the ND party is. Because obviously what's more democratic than the fascists of the far right and the far left helping determine the leadership of one of the two centrist (and major) parties.

This logic leads inevitably to one-party regimes. When every citizen votes for the leadership of every party, then the very meaning of the words "political party" disappears, and multi-party democracy is defacto dissolved. We might just as well be voting for different committees of the same party.

Much of the point of multi-party democracy had already disappeared with Papandreou's own utter lack of opposition to Karamanlis during the last 5 years. Now with Karamanlis departure, the political establishment is terrified that Bakoyanni might gain the reins of ND and offer some actual opposition to Papandreou, instead of the "national" ethnic co-leadership that Samaras promises.

LAOS wants Samaras because he's a fascist just like them. KKE and SYRIZA want Samaras because Bakoyanni is friendly to Europe. And PASOK wants Samaras because Samaras has already handed them victory once back in the 1990s when his departure caused the collapse of the ND government.

So basically every party wants Samaras, except New Democracy itself. Her own party perceives, however dimly, that Bakoyanni would be a genuine political leader, whereas Samaras is a muppet. That's why the election process of the party leader must be perforce extended beyond the actual party! Because the actual party would vote for her, and the rest of the political establishment knows it.

Of course the three philo-fascist and/or philo-terrorist parties themselves (LAOS is the former, SYRIZA is the latter, KKE is both the former and the latter) never extend this grand invention to themselves. It's only the two semi-democratic parties that must be corrupted by the fascist ones, not the fascist parties that should ever be moderated by the input of outside forces. The fascist tiny parties must remain pure and unsullied, even as the centrist parties ought open their gates to welcome them.

Though I'd say they act less like Trojan horses, and more like parasitic wasps.

an old blood donation, and a future possible laser surgery

2009-10-23T08:33:01Z

I was searching though some old medical papers, and was somewhat amused to discover that I had donated blood on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

Of course it had nothing to do with the twin towers -- the morning of 9/11 on Greece was still the previous night in the United States. It was about my grandmother's leukemia, instead.

--

I've pretty much decided that I am gonna have laser-eye surgery done. I'm gonna meet with my ophthalmologist this evening after work to discuss it with her, though am probably not gonna set a date for certain yet.

EDITED TO ADD: Turns out my astigmatism is high enough that it'd be a more complicated and tricky procedure than I originally thought -- and since my myopia has also risen some since 3 years ago (my last visit), we'd have to monitor it to see if it rises more. So the issue will be revisited in 6 months or so :-).

Till then I've got my prescription for my new glasses.

Gunnerkrigg court fanart.

2009-09-20T17:52:41Z

Gunnerkrigg Court has become my favorite web comic by far. Though art and storylines begin off very simply in the first few chapters, these keep improving -- and the increasing set of characters and ever-developing plot and art all have something unique to offer.

The SP Studio is a lovely site that allows you to create South-Park style characters.

I decided to use the latter to make some fanart tribute for the former -- a tribute for all the young couples of Gunnerkrigg court to be exact, whether romantic or just close friendships (or anywhere in between).

The bad poetry is *very* knowingly bad -- I considered improving it, but I figured that bad poetry fits better with teen relationships.

Clicking the image would take you to my DeviantArt page -- though currently there's only this and my Penny & Aggie piece there.

Here's the primary references I used from the comic, for each couple, in the remote possibility anyone interested:
Parley & Smith: #370, #386, #586
John & Margot: #474 (and the links underneath the comic)
Winsbury & Janet: #238 & #615
Gamma & Zimmy: #453
Blue & Red: #330
Annie & Kat: #93 & #144

Temporary style/icons change

2009-06-16T05:37:19Z

Temporary colors/icons change in solidarity to Iranian protests.

Dreamwidth and Worlfram Alpha

2009-05-18T17:24:12Z

I have created a dreamwidth account for myself -- thank you very much giandujakiss for the invite code! I had started to get displeased/annoyed with LJ for a long time, and I decided to follow everyone on the mass exodus. Useful crossposting feature. Very useful importing feature: If nothing else, it'll serve well as a backup of post and commentary.

I haven't set it up fully yet, mind you -- there's hardly anyone in my subscription list yet, for starters. Still learning about all the features.

I now have two invite codes to give out as well, if anyone else wants an account. Let me know if anyone's interested. First come, first served.

--

I tried out "Wolfram Alpha" a bit :
Question #1: "kirk vs picard"
Response #1:'Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'

I decided to try out something a bit less fannish:
Question #2: 'murder rates in the united states'
Response #2: 'Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'

Too many words I thought.
Question #3: 'abortion rates'
Response #3: Basic dimensions: '[time]^-1 [abortion]', Standard unit for abortion rate: abortion per year

How very utterly useless.

Is there anyone out there who has discovered anything useful (even infinitesimally so) to do with Wolfram|Alpha?

Watchmen and Dollhouse

2009-03-21T16:35:33Z

Yesterday's Dollhouse (1x06) was both the first good and the first EXCELLENT episode of the series -- the first episode that made me feel I was getting two episodes' worth for the price of one, rather than a 10-minute idea stretched to hourly lengths.

5 bad-to-okay episodes followed by an excellent one. Let's see how the 7th one goes.

---

Saw Watchmen last Sunday. Excellent or mostly excellent faithfulness to the characters and the story. Even those plot points that changed (notably one near the ending) were changed mostly for the better.

The thing I didn't like was the aesthetics: Too much blood and gore - It's notable how some OFF-panel killings in the comic (the prisoner whose hand gets cut off, or Rorschach's first murder) are turned into ON-screen killings in the movie.

This increase in onscreen gore also has the side-effect of the probably only characterization violation between comic and film: in the comic it's implicit that Nite Owl and Silk Spectre DON'T KILL (they're the more standard sort of costumed hero, not the barbaric sort that Rorschach represent), and it's explicit they didn't know Rorschach was about to kill someone in the toilet.

In the film on the other hand, it seems explicit that they do kill (atleast in self-defense), and it also seemed to imply they were aware of Rorschach about to commit murder in the toilet.

The sex-content was also over-lengthy in the film. A few panels in the comic are stretched to minutes in the movie. And seriously, I love the song "Hallelujah" but it should NEVER be played during a sex scene. That's the apotheosis of lame.

The increase of needless sex and gore not withstanding, which is an aesthetic choice I dislike, I felt it to be a very good movie, and an EXCELLENT adaptation.

Scans Daily, and the strife of the classes

2009-03-01T20:23:21Z

I was actually was about to write a post about how the impermancy of the Internet is depressing: my main instigation for this feeling, was that I was no longer able to locate what's probably my all-time favourite fanvid, "Higher than Hope" by Freddo, which beautifully chronicles Willow's magical, psychological and romantic arcs in seasons 4, 5, and 6. (I have it saved in my hard disk, but I can no longer locate it on the Internet)

Then just so as to make my thoughts even more relevant, Scans_daily is now taken down, after Peter David notified Marvel about copyright violations of its "property".

Here's what I posted in commentary to Peter David's blog:

--

My point of view on this is strictly strife-of-the-classes: I don't see why I should care about the copyright claims of the same CORPORATION that has trademarked the word "superhero" (alongside DC) and is forbidding any others to use it.

I wouldn't have a problem if Peter David took down SD over copyright violation of his own work. But he simply sided with a corporation instead. He seems to consider that a reason to blame him less: I see it as a reason to blame him more.

I don't see why I should care about the copyright of CORPORATIONS that want to extend their rights to perpetuity. The corporations that force the deletion of some "derivative" works of art as fanvids, because they use a song. The copyright laws that forced e.g. Sluggy Freelance to remove the lyrics of songs from its "Fire and Rain" chapter, even though those lyrics perfectly set the mood.

The enemies of SD all speak about the intellectual property rights of ARTISTS, but we're not talking about the property rights of ARTISTS here, we're talking about the property rights of a corporation.

Yes, Mr Peter David, the law is on Marvel's side. The law is on the corporations' side, we knew that already.

Then the revolution comes, and the law will no longer be on its side, or the state is powerless to enforce it.

I recently donated $20 to Gunnerkrigg Court, a webcomic offered freely on the internet: more than I've paid to Marvel my whole life. I've donated to Penny & Aggie, I've bought books of Order of the Stick. The model of comics is changing, Mr. David, away from the corporations -- the Internet has empowered the individual, and the revolution is upon us.

Yes, the sales of Marvel and DC will fall, perhaps both corporations will collapse. Are you sure that will be bad for the artists involved? (And even if it's bad for the artists, I'm not at all sure it will be bad for the art)

Yes, you have the law on your side. That's exactly your sin: you sided with a law benefiting the corporations.

Writer's Block: Know by Heart

2009-02-09T03:21:00Z

Have you ever thought you knew the words to a song and then been shocked to find out what the lyrics really were? What was the song? Did you like your version better?

View 501 Answers

I'm still surprised that every lyrics page I've ever seen claims that Tanita Tikaram's "Twist in my sobriety" says "timid smile and pause to free" rather than "timid smile and poised to flee". I'm even more surprised that Tikaram actually does seem to sing "pause to free" rather than "poised to flee".

I have no clue what the former is supposed to mean. I like my heard version lots better.

Things i've been watching and reading

2009-01-26T00:17:34Z

The past year I started watching many series that previously I had only been hearing about: preeminent among them Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural, but also Farscape, Medium, Jonathan Creek, and the more recent Mentalist and Sarah Connor Chronicles.

In December I saw the whole of "Death Note" and the first three seasons of "Dexter" (only the first two seasons of the latter were any good, btw). Both these series were vaguely depressing, with the serial-killer protagonists and all, so near the end of December I decided to switch to something lighter and checked out "Kim Possible" instead. But Kim Possible won't be the one animated series to stick to my mind from this past season.

- Most people in my friendlist already know that Avatar the last Airbender is gonna be made into the most blatantly whitewashed adaptation in the history of movies, surpassing the previous champion, that one being the adaptation of EarthSea.

The grand achiever of this will be none other but Shyamalan, the same director who made Lady in the Water, my personal all-time Worst Movie Ever -- and which ought have convinced everyone to keep Shyamalan as far away from moviemaking as possible.

In retrospect he had already revealed himself to be a little racist gnome from back then: That movie used made-up Korean myths, and the funny foreign-speaking people were depicted as even more Other and hard to communicate with (more varelse to use a Speaker for the Dead expression) than the actual non-humans in the story.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say is simply this: After the initial fuss was made about this whitewashig, I had a look at the Avatar the Last Airbender series, which I had not seen up to that point. It's absolutely fabulous, among the two best animated series I've ever seen (the other one being Gargoyles): and I'm not sure which of the two is now my all-time favorite. Its style is actually very different from Gargoyles, that one having been much more episodic and open-ended despite its long character arcs, while Avatar is a single finite story told in 61 episodes. But in worldbuilding and characters Avatar excels, same as Gargoyles once did.

Since, I'm not likely to find the series in DVD stores here any time soon, I thought of subtitling it in Greek myself, but happily just yesterday I saw Greek fansubs for it starting to appear in www.tvsubtitles.net -- in turn that led me to www.subs4free.com where I saw pretty much all the episodes having been subtitlesd There's some issues with the synchronization in some eps that will have me need to partly correct them or figure out the correct rip before I can use them, but still: great coolness.

- Speaking of the benefits of the modern anarchist economy, I had my first real encounter with DRM when I decided this weekend to use Fictionwise to download three books. I'd already used Fictionwise to buy e-versions of Analog and Asimov's magazines, but this times the only formats available were ones secured with DRM. Having bought them, eReader needs my credit card to allow me access, and Microsoft Reader not only needed me to register and then "activate" but Microsoft's activation services are "down for maintenance".

So I did what every good conscientious citizen ought do, said "Bollocks on that", and then used EMule to download unlocked versions of the books in question for free. Good job encouraging me to buy more books, DRM. Next time I'll be just downloading DRM-locked books for free from the start: there's no moral sense in rewarding people that go out of their way to increase the levels of annoyance in the world.

- I saw City of Ember with my brother during the Christmas holidays. Kinda liked it. It didn't ever "wow" me, but it was quite pleasant. One thing I rather agreed with him was that it seemed almost incomplete: The point they end it could very well be the beginning of a book, not the end thereof.

Of course the reason for that ended up being that it's based on a series of "Young Adult" books, and there are indeed sequels to the story. And that's why one of the books I bought/downloaded for free being the first in the "Books of Ember" series, by Jeanne DuPrau.

The other two books I bought/got for free were Nation by Terry Pratchett, and Freakonomics by some people I never heard of.

- Last but not least: fanvidding. I've been getting into it, right now only as a watcher, hopefully eventually as a creator thereof. I've already got some ideas, but I've been hitting barrier after barrier software-wise, and it's frustrating that I won't have the time to do anything until at least after February. Either way I'm guessing it'll be be many many months before I have something watchable.

I'll need do a separate post with vids I recommend people watch for their sheer awesomeness.

Post-election thoughts.

2008-11-06T02:19:48Z

Post election thoughts:

- The relief and joy for Obama's victory is diminished by the defeat of gay rights via Proposition 8 in California. Sigh... Steps forward accompanied by steps backward, always, always. So very frustrating.

- Barack Obama's comment some months back about bitter people clinging to their guns and religion was probably the one he was most bashed for throughout the campaign. Of course, now, after his victory, one can visit conservative forums and see the two main things urged by bitter Republicans: "Pray" and "Hold tight onto your guns".

Yeah, no correlation there.

- This map is both amusing and significant:

Other than the very minor expected gains by the Republicans in Arizona and Alaska (the Republican candidates' home states) -- the gains for the Republicans this election have pretty much only been in Appalachia. And the most concentrated ones have been in Arkansas (homestate of the Clintons).

That Clinton's homestate shifted more towards the Republicans than McCain's homestate did... Um, I don't know what this means, but it's amusing nonetheless.

- Either way, the Republicans have now diminished themselves to the party that caters solely to Straight Christian White Males (SCWMs?). Even their attempt to attract woman voters with Palin backfired since she has absurdly anti-female policies (e.g. so anti-abortionist as to want raped women to carry their rapists' children to term).

Where do Republicans go from here? They've so far been the alliance of four separate forces:
A) Fiscal libertarians
B) Hawks
C) Social conservatives/religious nutjobs/anti-intellectual.
D) Racists. Their power and significance is decreasing with each passing generation, but they remain strong.

One thing to keep in mind is that there's nothing that made this alliance inevitable -- and there's lots of things that make it contradictory (fiscal libertarians ought hate the way tax money is used in distant wars, for example). It was only some decades ago that the *Democrats* were the party preferred by racists, for example.

But there's not yet motivation enough for these forces to split. McCain who was mainly known for B appeased the Cs with the anti-feminist pro-moron candidacy of Palin, and raised Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbachel as his flagbearer to satisfy the As.

Both the "rising stars" of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal, come from faction C. Both are choices that would completely fail to appeal to anyone except the Republicans very narrow base. (And Jindal wouldn't satisfy the Ds either)

The Republicans would have their best shot with Schwarzenneger in 2012, but their D faction again would never agree to an amendment permitting non-natural born citizens. Unless they decide to break with said D faction, which I don't see likely.

Much depends from how Obama's presidency will go. If he's a halfway decent president, and assuming no nuclear attacks happen anywhere in the world, he ought easily win a reelection in 2012.

- Lastly, this also amused me:

final thoughts before election

2008-11-03T21:34:35Z

I have detailed commentary on the "Prince Caspian" movie which has been a few paragraphs away from posting for the past half month... but honestly now is not the time, just before the US elections.

Random thoughts about the election:

- Obviously I support Obama. Not because I'm certain he'll be a good president (nobody can be sure of that about any candidate), but because I am quite certain McCain/Palin would be horrid ones (and that's something one can be reasonably sure about -- certainly Palin at least seems to WANT me to consider her a terrible candidate).

- I expect many exit polls to wildly screw-up at the beginning: Too much early voting done by Democrats. I'm guessing some exit polls will hand states to the Republicans (e.g. North Carolina) that may very well go to the Democrats once the actual votes are counted. So, please, nobody panic if some exit polls show a much closer election than it's likely to be.

- I like reading conspiracy theories. My favorite one this time around was not the "Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, he was really born in Kenya, and thus is ineligible to run for president", (which is a rather lame conspiracy theory as conspiracy theories go) but rather the "Obama is actually the son of Malcolm X, and his mother married Obama Sr. as a mere ruse to hide that fact" which has it all: secret romance, hidden bloodlines, political drama, etc. Not to mention that it cancels out the importance of the former conspiracy theory (as the child of two citizens is a natural-born citizen no matter where it was born). It's fun when conspiracy theories cancel each other out. :-)

- Recently Adam Cadre posted an article which pretty much epitomizes the reasons I read his articles -- when he makes observations that combine psychology/sociology/mythology/current, medieval and ancient politics and elucidates points of history in a unique way. http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12682.html One minor point I'm not certain I agree with (Medicine as a "Mercurial" profession? Mythologically that doesn't make much sense to me - Asclepius was the son of Apollo) but on the large: YES.

This essay provided datapoints which support my position and which I wish I knew about when a few months back I was arguing with my brother about the role of Jewish communities in America and Russia. (My brother was basically arguing for a religion-related POV which claimed that Protestantism and its focus on the Old Testament was one of the reasons the Jewish community prospered in America.

This was making less than zero sense of me. It was making NEGATIVE sense. I was making the class-related argument instead: it's very reasonable for a highly educated class of people to thrive in a new land which didn't deny them opportunities -- same as it was reasonable for such a class to strive in Russia for the overthrow of the old older which had them as perpetual 2nd-class citizens.)

But I lacked datapoints to further support my view -- this essay provides them, by referencing similar success stories by the Indians in East Africa, the Lebanese in South America, the Chinese in Southeastern Asia, the Armenians -- and framing them with the Apollonian/Mercurial division of professions -- which once upon a time were divided between the insiders of the community and the outsiders.

- Which reminds me also this -- how the older Olympians seem like forces of nature (Zeus - sky and lightning, Poseidon - sea, Hades - death, Demeter - earth and the circle of seasons) while the younger Olympians seem more related to professions and human behavior: Ares for the warriors, Dionysus for drunkenness and maniacal destruction, Apollo for sober toil, Hermes for services. Hephaestus for the smiths, Athena for all craftsmen.

The article I linked to notes the decline of the Apollonian professions, and their replacement by Mercurial ones as the backbone of current society. But it seems to me that as the Apollonian professions declined with industralization, most Mercurial ones will also inevitably decline with sufficient computerization. What will remain then?

Perhaps:
Athena - for the scientists and teachers (and programmers :-)
Hercules - for the athletes
The Muses - for the artists
Aphrodite - for the sex workers and supermodels.

- Which brings me back to the topic of the current elections. I bet a small amount of money in Intrade -- it's one of the longshots, Obama winning Georgia, so I fully expect to lose it, but that's okay, I didn't bet much. But in retrospect, as I turned it around in my head, I didn't much like it either way. It's not wealth-creating toil, it's not artistry, it's not craftmanship. It's not even a Mercurial "service" in the sense of actually helping someone out, it's Mercurial in the sense of "god of thieves and gamblers". I still hope I'll win the bet, of course, but it feels distasteful even as a principle.

So the main thing I learned? Though I have nothing against Hermes, I'm definitely not his. I still belong to Athena.

VP debate

2008-10-03T03:04:03Z

Stayed up late to see the VP debate.

Up to now I hadn't seen Palin speak. As such I had thought that the SNL/Tina Fey sketch was a caricature of her. But no, the caricature is actually nicer and more intelligent than her actual self. When she started with the "doggone it" and such stupidities, I couldn't believe my ears.

I hope I'm not totally off-base but I think Obama/Biden just secured the victory -- not because of the Palin-stupidity thing: half the American population seems to have a great fondness for stupidity after all (they elected Bush not despite it, but because of it). But rather because the whole "liberal are so aloof and can't connect" thing was the Republicans' sole remaining card on the table, after they chose to ditch the "experience" thing.

And in this debate, you get Palin being almost contemptuous towards Biden and Obama while performing some sort of elaborate comedy sketch, while on the other hand you get Biden choking up in memory of his own dead family. I'm sure it'll make Palin look like a complete ass in retrospect -- and even she seemed to figure it out since her behavior in the remainder seemed to me to be slightly more serious afterwards, less comedy routine-like.

Anyway, enjoy:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Google Chrome, Mystery series, Sea of Insanity

2008-09-28T23:27:19Z

Google Chrome
Gave Google Chrome a few minutes' try when it first came out, but some oddities gave me a bad first taste of it -- bookmarks only appearing when you click the "new tab" button for example. I wasn't in the mood of fiddling with it, so I dropped it and went back to Firefox.

A few days ago I gave it another try. This time I fiddled with the options -- added the things that were not present in the defaults: bookmarks now appearing as a toolbar all the time, homepage icon added. And voila -- I'm suddenly loving it. Chrome is fast, elegant, and I keep loving that Google-style simplicity of its interface. I made it my new default browser.

Only one major failing compared to Firefox, and one minor one. The major failing is that when I'm downloading a file it doesn't seem to store the location for my next download -- that makes it a burden when I'm e.g. downloading five dozen wallpapers into one particular folder - I ended up switching to Firefox for that task.

Minor failing is some search-engine oddity. I've not seen yet as easy way to search wikipedia as there was in Firefox.

Mystery series
Ended up downloading several crime/mystery series lately. "Jonathan Creek" - a British series about a magician's assistant solving mysteries. "Numb3rs" - a series about a mathematician using the power of um, mathematics to solve crimes. And "Medium" - a series about a psychic using her own powers to solve (or prevent, or punish) crimes.

I abandoned Numb3rs after a few eps, once I realized that the *only* thing I liked about it was the application of the math, skipping everything that wasn't math. I disliked pretty much every character, with the possible exception of the mathematician's physicist mentor.

Jonathan Creek had both great and lame eps -- at its best an ep has several interconnected mysteries, none of them with obvious solutions (or with several obvious solutions, none of which are actually workable), and punctuated with humor. At its lamest (and the writers' laziest), an ep only has one mystery that I solved in five secs flat -- and it was utterly implausible that Creek wouldn't solve it even faster. Creek's female co-protagonist (Maddy) is utterly unlikeable to me though -- a lying manipulative scumbag who lies more often than tells the truth, even to Creek himself. I'm glad they switched her away eventually, though I'd have been even gladder if they'd had her, you know, apologize to him, grow as a person, forgo her evil ways, etc.

I've only seen five or six eps of Medium so far, but up to this point I seriously like: Much more likable characters than either Jonathan Creek or Numb3rs -- the medium's daughters especially are cute as hell. But in that series there's *nobody* I don't like so far. The medium, her boss at the DA's office, the husband, the kids... all great characters.

Sea of Insanity
Sea of Insanity is back. This was one of my top favorite webcomics some years back -- but it suddenly and inexplicably stopped updating. Turns out the reason was the creator's personal life meltdown. Anyway, it's back now. Enjoy.

First lines meme

2008-09-17T08:55:53Z

"Post the first line from your 25 most recent fanfics and try to find a pattern." Gacked from homasse.

Well, I've not written nearly that many fics, not even if I include ficlets, but here goes:

1) Europa held her new-born baby next to her breast and sang to it, sometimes in her own Phoenician tongue, half-remembered songs of her childhood, sometimes in the alien tongue of the Cretans which she was quickly learning, in fragments and hesitant pieces.... ("Names and Forms" - Gargoyles fic)

2) It had been more difficult for Simon than for anyone else. ("Reticent Confessions", HP fic set in Barbara Purdom's "Psychic Serpent" universe)

3) "I have been here before... " ("Dreams of the Kisei: A Prologue" HnG fic)

4) She had moaned his name once, in the throes of passion, as he was thrusting inside her, as he was bringing her to the cusp of orgasm. ("Broken souls: Entr'acte, in the dark" HnG fanfic, sequel to the previous)

5) “My father said what?? Oh father, father! You can be so unthinking sometimes.” ("Mighty" Tolkien ficlet)

6) "Please, some money, dear sir! Our mother is sick, we need--" ("Traits Revealed" HP 100-word drabble)

7) She cuts herself, she screams names at teachers, she burns her diaries and runs away from home. ("Hateful Memories" Buffy 100-word drabble)

--

Common element in all of the above? I guess that I tend to begin with a scene indicating the emotional state of an individual: Europa's parental love, Simon's desolation, Hikaru's uncertainty, Akari's need, Luthien's amusement, some random kids' despair and poverty, Dawn's complete emotional meltdown.

I think I miss writing fics.

back to IF

2008-04-24T00:16:50Z

This amused me: Hillary Clinton's path to victory

On other news, I'm getting back into interactive fiction -- past few weeks I've tried some of the best games that have come out (and I've therefore missed) the last few years, at least as judged by the results of the annual IF competition, the XYZZY awards and the Spring Thing.

Next few weeks I'll try to start again on a rather *big* idea for a work of interactive fiction that I've had for several years now.

Somewhere in between the two, I'll be writing a lengthy criticism/suggestion list for Inform 7, which despite its several flaws will almost certainly be used by me in aforesaid game, as it's pretty much the defacto replacement for Inform 6, which is the only IF language I'm familiar with.