Tsunami

Jesus... the Tsunami death toll is now estimated at over eighty thousand. I don't have anything substantive to say about this... it's just too much to fathom. They're not even finished counting. As if it hadn't been ravaged enough by the Indonesian War Machine, the people of East Timor have been badly affected by this... and it seems possible that, grotesque as it is, the Indonesian military may use this as cover to further tighten its brutal grip on the region of Aceh.

It's also possible that the disaster will give the impetus required for the US to 'normalise' relations with Indonesia and pave the way for a restoration of all military aid to Jakarta. It doesn't take a particularly pessimistic turn of mind to see that this disaster may only be the tip of the iceberg for the people of the region.

Seti@Home

I decided to start running seti@home again. Alas, it seems that I have forever lost the password to my old profile, so I must either start again from scratch (which I'm going to do), or continue gaining credit on an account I have no way of authenticating (should my computer be the one that discovers an extra terrestrial signal).

It's a shame too... even tho' it's been over two and a half years since I completed a work unit, I'm still ahead of 92.575% of all users. That's a lot of Geek Street Cred. I guess I'll just have to give up on being able to impress people at parties by saying 'Yeah, I've completed more work units than 92.575% of all Seti@Home users'. It's a sad day that that particular arrow has been lost from my conversational quiver.

Slashdot moderation

In this thread about pet cloning, there's the following series of comments:

and I used this service, would the clone be "owned" by me? Could I force it to have sex with me whenever I wanted?

Why do you think the first thing the Scottish scientist cloned was a sheep?

A girrrrllllll sheep...

That's pretty funny, and indeed is modded +5 funny. It's then followed up by:

"Why do you think the first thing the Scottish scientist cloned was a sheep?" ...look, it's the Welsh, not the Scots...the Welsh! :)

Which isn't very funny, but the funny part is... it's modded +4 informative.

Hoho... I'm just glad to see that there are people out there wondering which ethnicity it is that has sex with sheep... and that these people are also willing to reward quality information on the subject through Slashdot moderation. I can just see them at home, slamming their hands against their desks and saying 'The Welsh! Thank you... all the pieces are now falling into place!'

Alas

One of the few blogs I regularly visited, MelbourneLefty, has now Shut Up Shop. The relationship between on-line presence and real-life presence is somewhat difficult to quantify... I took my previous web-site offline because it had been located by a number of my students, and I felt that the arguments expressed in that web-page were no longer representative of what I now believe... if it hadn't been for the spilling over of real-life into online-life, it would have just sat there, in stasis, probably forever.

Occasionally students manage to find this web-site, and I get comments now and again about it... I'm careful not to blog about goings-on in my workplace (of which there are many that are worthy of comment) very much on the grounds of my professional obligations. It's a shame that I should have to censor myself in this way, but the lesson of MelbourneLefty would seem to be that it's the only way to maintain a blog of this type and still be able to function effectively as a professional. On one hand, it's good - after all, anonymity means unaccountability, and that's not a desirable state of affairs... the internet is replete with examples of anonymity being used as a salve for all past transgressions (I'd quote some examples, but that would mean blogging about my 'other workplace', Discworld). On the other hand, if online comments impact on otherwise unrelated real-life activities, then there's a problem in that accountability being misapplied.

Anyways, I'm rambling. It's just sad to see another casualty in the war against the Machine.

Garden State

We went to see Garden State tonight... I had no idea that Zach Braff was so talented. I'm a big fan of Scrubs, and he plays his role as JD very well (even if the character himself makes my teeth itch sometimes)... but that's just acting. However, he wrote, directed *and* stars in this excellent, poignant tale of self-discovery and redemption. By turns it is moving, absorbing and hilarious, and Braff shows an assuredness with his direction that underpins the execution of the whole. I'll definitely be on the lookout for his next movie, whenever that appears.

On another note, today I began (and finished) reading Mark Twain's 'The Diaries of Adam and Eve'. Don't let anyone tell you that Twain was merely a lightweight humourist who produced nothing of substance - this is a love story as heart-warming as any ever penned. The edition I read was stitched together from many different drafts, some published and some unpublished - towards the end it gets a little dark as Eve rails against the injustice of their expulsion from Eden. The last few pages are moving in a way that reflects some of the grief that the author felt over the death of his wife. The last sentence written by Adam echoes a comment he made about his own wife:

Wheresoever she was; there was Eden

I do love the works of Mark Twain - the only problem with this one was how quickly it was finished.

The Statue of Liberty

Engraved upon the base of the Statue of Liberty is the following passage:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Once upon a time, this was true... America was the destination of many of the tired and the poor, and they were welcomed with open arms[1]. However nowadays, Americans seem to forget that almost all of them are immigrants, at least if this poll is to be believed.

Funny, I don't see any cries for the civil liberties of Christians to be curtailed because of the Ku Klux Klan. There was once a big push to have the Jews treated as a class of secondary citizen. Their properties were seized, and eventually they were sent off to die in massively efficient death camps. History tells us that it never starts out with mass exterminations.

The majority of people still vote against any kind of restriction... but a margin of 4% is beyond the pale. Discrimination is not okay just because it has been sanctioned by the words and actions of the government, and by the complicit propaganda of the international news media.

[1] Occasionally those arms were open so that they could swing the club harder, but hey - I'm eulogising.

American Democracy Hangs by a Thread in Ohio

Ohio continues to be the source of troubling revelations regarding the integrity of the final count. This article has a pretty good summary of the state of affairs as things stand - any claims by the Ohio Sec. of State that he will ensure fair elections in his state have been given the lie by his unconscionable behaviour over the past few weeks.

It's not that a recount will definitely show Kerry is the winner - it's that there is enough ambiguity in the results, and there are enough troubling accounts of misdirection, computer malfunctions, and outright fraud to make a full inquiry the only acceptable course of action, even if it delays the anointment of Bush's next four years. This is nothing to do with Bush vs Kerry... it has to do with a basic accountability in the election process that is being undermined by the prevalance of partisan hacks being responsible for the administration of an election.

Of course, some of the testimony suggests that the actual tallies have been compromised also, meaning that a recount will be meaningless - the fight now isn't for a recount, the fight is for there to be a full, non-partisan investigation into the process. It seems like those responsible for justice in Ohio have little interest in pursuing the truth behind these worrying stories.

Creepy

Wow, I'm just watching a download of the Daily Show's coverage of the 2000 Presidential election. Steven Colbert draws parallels with the race in the '60s between Nixon and Kennedy. Jon Stewart asks: 'Are you seeing parallels with tonight's election - a country flush with prosperity - two young, energetic candidates perhaps ready to lead us back to Camelot?'

Steven Colbert answers: No, I'm getting more of a 'Nam vibe. You know, unwinnable wars, inescapable downward spirals, chaos in the streets... that sort of thing.'

Obviously this was delivered as a joke, but it's pretty creepy, four years on, to see how close he came.

Tower of Babble

I just saw the author of this book interviewed on the Daily Show. He makes the point about the lack of standards in the admitting procedures in the United Nations, particularly with reference to the security council. He raises a point: 'It turns out that Syria, even though it supported international terrorism, was accepted to be a member of the security council in the year two-thousand. What are you supposed to do to be on the security council? What do you do on the security council? You're supposed to safeguard international peace and security. So Syria, who has been on the terrorism list since the 1970s, is safeguarding international peace and security. It gets admitted to the number one club in the UN - the security council. No standards'.

This is an undeniably valid point - but why raise the issue of Syria? Why not raise the issue that all five PERMANENT members of the security council have committed acts that, by any objective measure, are terrorist acts? Why not raise the fact that the United States has vetoed a security council resolution calling for the termination of its use of unlawful force against Nicaragua? Why not raise the fact that the US has been responsible for any number of vetoes of resolutions conndeming Israeli terrorist actions?

There's no denying that the UN is a flawed organisation - but let's not pick on the 'usual suspects' just because the prevailing orthodoxy makes them acceptable targets.

Nearly half of Britons never heard of Auschwitz

Don't tell me that the standard of education in this country isn't plummeting.

Bisexual Playground

I was googling myself (you know, as you do), and I found this page. I'm fairly sure it isn't me, but you know - how many Drakkoses *are* there?

Perhaps I created the page in a Tyler Durdenesque fit of insomnia and nihilism. At any rate, it's a rather interesting metaphysical experience to see yourself whoring for bisexual companionship.

Matrix Lawsuit

Say, this is pretty interesting... apparently the Matrix movies are the result of Wachowski brother plagiarism. The fact that the second and third movies were unmitigated crud[1] suggests an alternate genesis for the sublime original, and this would seem to explain it nicely.

You have to ask yourself tho'... yeah, it's a lot of money... but would you want your name associated with the second and third matrix films? It's like being paid a billion for orally servicing a syphilitic camel.[2]

[1] They didn't have to be... the second movie setup a potentially excellent third movie which explored the philosophical themes of knowledge and knowing. Alas, they went with a stupid Christ Reborn motif that any six-year old from could have shat out in an especially projectile bowel movement.
[2] Or Dick Cheney.

Age Away!

I've said quite often, to various people, that our generation will be the one that conquers death... it seems like Esteemed Scientists agree with me. I suspect though that this dramatic potential increase in ages will lead to an increase in retirement age. The glass is always half full, isn't it?