Results for 2004-11
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
and no doubt there are many, many more. This is not a series of books. All of them are by different authors and published by different publishing houses. But of course there's no denying the fact that a lot of things have risen and fallen in the course of history.
Anyhow, I turned in my paper today. It was entitled Perception vs. Reality: A Matter of Consensus. It wasn't very good, so I don't see it fit to be put online, but the position I took was fundamentally sound: that the difference between a delusion (or illusion) and a 'veridical' sense-experience is fundamentally one of acquiring consent from others that the given experience is a correct representation of 'reality'. Thus, outside his social context, the solitary man becomes the ultimate arbiter of what is real and what is not (while certain standards, such as reproducibility and predictive accuracy might, of course, prove more efficient in terms of survival).
The most unlikely thing happened this weekend. I was out in the shelter smoking a cigarette and I got into a discussion with this Canadian girl, and it turned out that she had been an exchange student for a year in Copenhagen, Denmark, and spoke fluent "Københavner-dansk". I had a chat with her in Danish ("Hold da kæft! Det er sgu utroligt!"). To think, the chances of running into someone who speaks Danish around here must be very small indeed.
Also, see this article in the Guardian: The ignorant, racist, prejudiced, right-wing Christian, inbred redneck fucks in Alabama have refused to strike a school-segregation passage from the state constitution.
I was on a boat watching someone make sandwiches, and they'd placed a tiny puppy-dog on top of one of the sandwiches. He'd been skinned, etc. I of course refused to eat this, and howled bloody murder, so the cook transferred all responsibility for making the sandwiches over to me, and for some time I was struggling with frying an egg. Then things kind of degenerated into hand-to-hand combat aboard the boat between me and the cook, who was also some sort of military official. Anyhow, in the end I stabbed him in the throat with a some scissors. At that moment someone else appeared and explained in tears to me what an excellent man I had just murdered, and that I must pay the price for it. He said that I had to take a bunch of sleeping pills and never wake up, as retribution for my foul deed. I ate the pills, and ironically enough, at this point I suddenly woke up....
What would Freud, that great quack, make of this? No doubt he would say that I had paranoid, semi-schizoid superegoistical tendencies combined with delusions of grandeur and multiple personality disorder...
To think, out of roughly 40 people in Watson Hall (three quarters whom are girls), there are three out-of-the-closet lesbians. One of them has a "boyfriend", i.e. a girl who has undergone the whole sex-change thing (i.e. breast removal etc.). I met "him" yesterday...and he's just like a regular guy except for the voice, which of course doesn't have the male timbre.
I will be holding my traditional birthday-slash-New-Year's-Eve-party on the 31st of December, and if you're reading this, the chances are that you're invited :).
Apart from my school work, I've got a new software development project running. It's called "AppHack" and it's a hacking tool to mess about with Mac OS X applications by modifying property lists, icons, associated document types, nib files and so forth. Here's a screenshot of the latest build.
Canada: Pros and Cons
I've been in Guelph, Canada for roughly three months now, and I have discovered that I miss things that I least expected to be missing. I would like to give a rough summary of what I miss about home and what I like about Canada. Apart from the usual cliché stuff about missing friends and family (which nobody wants to hear about anyway), here's what I miss from Iceland:
1. Being able to smoke in bars
This is so unbelievably lame that it's actually on the top of my list: It is forbidden to smoke in all bars in Canada, except in the occasional joint which masquerades as an "Exclusive Club". There is no way for me to enjoy a beer and a cigarette simultaneously within any drinking establishment for miles around.
2. Being able to (legally) carry open alchoholic beverages in public
Yessiree, it is forbidden to carry an open alcoholic beverage of any sort in public. It is therefore impossible for me to go outside for a smoke with my beer, an incredibly nuisance. Although I have been known to violate this law on occasions, it is unwise to engage in it on a regular basis since the fine is quite stiff. I regard this Nazi law as nothing less than a violation of my fundamental rights as a human being present on the surface of the Earth. You would think that a country as cold as Canada would adopt some sort of vodka-swilling public drinking orgies to stem away the frostbite, but this is obviously not the case.
3. Being free from that horrible Politically Correct attitude
I've alread touched on this topic before in these online revelations of mine, but it bears mentioning again because it gets so badly on my nerves. I have to watch every word in case I offend someone: of course, being the arrogant loudmouth that I am, I have already (metaphorically) tread on several mines. I miss being able to make crude jokes. People here are so easily shockable that my *hundred-carat-solid-gold* nasty jokes are lost on them. Instead they eye me with shocked bewilderment.
4. Eating good food and drinking good drinks
Let's just say that the University caféteria was tolerable for the first couple of weeks. At this point, the very thought of going in there makes me want to vomit. Granted, there are other places to buy food around here, but it is all of the junk food variety. I could, of course, theoretically go downtown with the bus and buy something good in a restaurant but it is difficult to persuade my impoverished fellow students to join me since it is not possible to use the University meal cards outside of the campus.
As far as drinks go, both the Coca-Cola and the water available around here tastes like shit. The only beverages that really meet my standards of quality is imported beer and I can't very well go about swilling Stella Artois (which, apart from causing inebriation, is also illegal in public -- see Item 2 above).
Now, let's turn to the things that I really like about Canada:
1. Low Prices
Stuff here is cheap. By cheap I don't mean USA-cheap, but almost everything is very inexpensive in comparison with my *beloved* home country, the Racketeering Business of Iceland. I would say that things here cost roughly 55-60% of what they cost back home. They're practically giving away food here -- I can get a good, filling meal for the equivalent of 300 Icelandic Kronas.
2. Amazon and Internet Retailing in General
Yes, this is actually number two because it is so amazing: You visit a website, you pick the stuff you want (be it books, films, digital equipment or whatnot), click a few buttons and the stuff ships directly to you, Free Of Charge (US or Canada only). No VAT, no *International* shipping costs, no extra crap which inflates the price to twice what you originally thought you were going to pay. Truly, this is a consumer heaven for an online geek such as my humble self.
3. No Evil, Hateful Looks From Strangers
As most of my fellow countrymen (at least those with a modicum of honesty) will readily acknowledge, our little shoal in the North Atlantic is not home to the friendliest people on earth. It is a thoroughly enjoyable surprise to no longer receive unwarranted hostile glances from strangers, or get treated like a piece of human offal by people in various levels of the service industry.
4. Animals
I like animals. They're so much nicer than human beings. Of course, my harshest critics would say that I like them because I don't have to justify my superiority to them -- an accusation I received when dwelling on this topic recently -- but I shall let that be for the moment: Guelph has tons of little animals scurrying about. There are squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and skunks crawling around everywhere. In fact, the entire campus is infested by squirrels. There are two different species, the Blacks and the Grays, and they fight each other with a vindictiveness that one would more readily attribute to one's fellow human beings. The Blacks seem to have a secure upper hand in this evolutionary struggle, for they are far more numerous. However, the University campus is hardly a *State Of Nature* by any reasonable standards: there is so much offal and so many leftovers everywhere that the squirrels have degenerated into fat, bloated creatures so clumsy that they occasionally fall out of the trees (and that is no exaggeration, I have seen it with my own eyes). Apparently they don't hibernate around here either anymore, which is quite understandable in light of the circumstances: Why hibernate when there are plenty of scraps to go around during the winter?
Yay! I received another donation for my software, bringing the grand total up to $60 over a period of roughly 6 months. Profitable work, this free software development business. It would be suitably ironic to invest this money in a "Getting Rich for Dummies" handbook.
Well, I'm not in the gutter so no complaints.
Speaking of the gutter, I am reminded of a story of Diogenes of Sinope, recounted by the greek historian Plutarchus in his Life of Alexander. Diogenes was a Cynic philosopher in the 4th century B.C. It is said that an interview took place between him and Alexander the Great (which, incidentally, they are now making another horrible Hollywood film about) in the city of Corinth. At this time, Diogenes was living in his infamous "tub", and as one of the city's better known characters, he was counted missing in attendance of the great conqueror. Alexander went with his retinue to find this man of such remarkably brave and independent spirit, and finally found Diogenes sitting in his tub in the sun.
"I am Alexander the Great," he said, "ruler of the known world".
"And I am Diogenes the Cynic" replied the philosopher.
"I have heard you are a man of great wisdom. I am willing to grant you any wish that is within my considerable power." Alexander said.
Diogenes then replied: "Would you kindly step back. You're blocking the sun".
Alexander, impressed by the reply, said to his friends, who were ridiculing the whimsicality of the philosopher, "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."
I don't know how much credibility we can ascribe to this little anecdote, but it amusing nevertheless. Personally, I'd have asked for wealth, power and women ;). I suppose that's the reason why I don't live in a tub.
A Critique Of Pascal's Wager
I'm sick and tired of Pascal's Wager. I find it to be stupid and misguided-- it just so happened that it was brought up in my "Philosphy of Religion" class today. This is probably the billionth time it has wormed its way into the whole "Does God Exist?" discussion.
All right. I'll give you a short exposition of the whole thing. Blaise Pascal, 17th century mathematical genius of "Lousy Programming Language" and pressure measurement fame, turns his high-strung and finely tuned mathematical mind to the problem of religious belief and comes up with the following argument:
If we combine the factors of living a Christian life or not, with God's existence or non-existence, we have four different possibilities, suitably demonstrated by this chart:
Pascal, being the sensible, rational man that he was, argued that we should always choose to lead a Christian life. If we lead a Christian life, we will either go to Heaven or nothing will happen. If we don't, we'll either burn in Hell or nothing will happen. If we are forced to choose between the two, it is obviously, in light of this, more sensible to choose to live the Christian life.
This argument is superficially convincing, until we start looking a little deeper into things. Is that chart truly an accurate depiction of our options? My answer to that question is a firm NO (I just love making that word bold -- lends it such an outrageous tone of finality). I believe that the chart below is a much more accurate depiction of our options.
There we have a more realistic chart of the whole scheme. We can choose to live a dreary, boring goody-goody-two-shoes Christian life, devoid of even the rudimentary sinful pleasures, on the off-chance that that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent creator of the world truly does exist (sounds implausible doesn't it?) and wants us to be miserable, or we can just say "What the hell!" and go have a good time, risking aforementioned creator's eternal wrath and potential unimaginable suffering in the afterlife.
So what will it be? Well, I think that we can write off the existence of the omnibenevolent creator right away -- an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity wouldn't have created Christians in the first place. If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent, I could most certainly come up with something better than Jehova's Witnesses, Mormons, teetotallers, Gideons, the Inquisition, Pope Innocent II, witch-burnings, persecutions, the Crusades, misogynist oppression, pro-life doctor-murdering assassins, queer-bashers with tire jacks, the Bubonic Plague, Benito Mussolini, Ignatius Loyola, George Walker Bush and Britney Spears. Yes, I could do a MUCH better job.
Having provided a plethora of empirical evidence which seems to strongly suggest the non-existence (or at least mistaken attributes) of such a deity, we have a choice between the Christian life of dreary conformity, obedience and dogmatism, as opposed to the vivacious, audacious and, above all, roaringly entertaining rock'n roll lifestyle of the Sinner. Which are we to choose? For my part, I don't think I will be converting any time soon...
getfcomment: prints out the Desktop Database "Comment" meta-data of files.
rcmac: descends into directory structures and lists all files in the style of 'lsmac'
In addition to these new tools, there have been some updates to the existing ones.
mkalias can now be set to create relative aliases, and some of the man pages have been revamped. The next release will have some juicy extras -- I'm thinking of creating a tool called hfsdata, which allows the querying of any HFS+ attribute of a file, including label, file and creator, flags, comments etc.
In other news, I'm working on my own terminal client. I'm sick and tired of the horrible shortcomings of the clients I've used so far, in terms of user interface and features. I like the cold ascetic austerity of full-screen command line interfaces, so I've adapted CocoaTech's TerminalView NSView subclass, and with a bit of tweaking I'll soon have something akin to what I want.
And yes, I was bored today.
In other news, Vilborg has returned to 'the land of the ice and snow, with the midnight sun where the hot springs flow', while I linger on, studying J.L. Austin's critique of sense-data theories in epistemology. It's fairly interesting stuff. Austin most definitely had a sense of humour, though. His book is called "Sense and Sensibilia". Just think about it. We have these two books:
J. L. Austin: "Sense and Sensibilia"
and then we have:
Jane Austen: "Sense and Sensibility"
Those of you familiar with Black Adder The Third will recognize Jane Austen as the pseudonym for the great, big, roaring, bearded Yorkshireman.
I shall soon have to turn in a monstrous 12-page essay on "Propaganda and Manipulation", which is a fascinating topic.
As the end of my Bachelor of Arts program looms on the horizon, I have been giving some thought to what the future holds. I think I'll either move abroad and finish a PhD in Philosophy, or undertake another Bachelor degree.
Back in Guelph now. Vilborg leaves tomorrow.
A detailed examination of these statistics revealed the following:
The typical Bush voter is an old, married white, gun-owning conservative Protestant with medium-to-high income and no college degree who furthermore attends church at least once a week and lives in a rural community. This person is very concerned with terrorism and believes that most important attributes for a President is that he be religious and have strong moral values. He thinks that abortion should be banned, approves of the war in Iraq, and disapproves of same-sex marriage.
Sounds like your average bigoted southern hick, doesn't it?
The typical Kerry voter, on the other hand, is a poor, young, unmarried black college-graduate union-member with low income who never attends a place of worship. Furthermore, this person believes that most important issues are education, the economy, and Iraq and thinks the most important attributes in a leader are intelligence, caring about people and a will to bring about change.
Seems like we have quite a dichotomy here...
Everything seems to indicate that the world will have to put up with that piece of shit Bush for another four years. A sad day indeed.
I also have a new pet project to work on: I'm going to undertake a port of Larry Herzberg's Bertrand, a symbolic logic problem-solving program, over to Mac OS X. It shouldn't be too hard to bring it over to the Carbon APIs.
Furthermore, I've just finished some feature-work on everybody's favourite website maintenance program, the infamous Mentat. It is now possible to edit news items. For those of you who would like the upgrade, let me know.