To Kill or Not to Kill?... (the Video)

Or, learning how to bow before fundamentalism Islam.

    "Sam Bacile" is famous over night. His clip on YouTube is a big hit. I saw it, and it is plain rubbish, artistically speaking. But that doesn't matter, when it is about Islam and its Prophet it is like dropping salt on a wound and the muslim world goes crazy. we should have gotten used with this by now, nothing offends them more then a bit of a mockery. Not the hideous crimes produced in the name of islam, not the injustice it spreads, but a cartoon, a movie or a declaration. Is there a word to express this out of scale hypocrisy? If not, we can call it islamic.

    Some say, it is a calculated attempt to inflame, by an Israeli agency, some say it is the product of a deluded mind, while I say it doesn't even matter who and why made the movie. It's a bad movie, no one would ever see it outside this particular inflamed situation, or give it any particular attention. It's so bad that it feels like kids trying their hand at theater for the first time, at the first rehearsal, in kindergarten. But nobody has the right to call for murder over this, NOBODY!  And one person thought to be involved is investigated, for issues unrelated to the content of the clip (investigating him for bad taste?!... or, maybe a little intimidation?). And this is done not by Syrian authorities, but by American. We claim to be living in a free world, we claim to have free speech, we claim to be the very tip of civilization, and this should not happen, it is an right that defines (or should define) our society. Moreover, freedom of speech gives fundamentalist the freedom to call for murder (a criminal act itself), the very right they want to suppress.We cannot evolve with a fist deep in our mouths.

It gets even more ridiculous.
    Not long ago, one title in the news drew my attention about a possible "help" to Egypt worth around 700 millions euros could come from European Union. Even with the situations developing in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy, Europe has money to spare. Aren't we in a deep crisis? Let's even assume that we can call it a strategic move and Egypt needs the help. But don't we know enough already about the Muslim Brotherhood? Is Europe ready to trust such entity?
How about the United States, Egypt and Libya? Egypt is a lost cause, and America knows it... in Libya, just recently, support was given to groups that now will probably become a new enemy. One ambassador is already down, victim of the first open engagement. Chris Stevens is only the first open, high ranking victim, but he is not the first, nor the last.. Will that chain of victims of fundamentalism ever end?

    Will we ever have reasonable people on that side of the religious wall? Will they be able to stir extremism within the boundaries of reason, universal morality and real desire for peace and understanding? Will we be able to make really bad movies and not get killed? I am laughing while tears fall down my cheeks...

In the Name of Charity

We all heard about refugee camps, we all know they exist, we all know how people live there, or how people die there. We all have been approached by  charitable organisations at some point in our life, trying to impress us with what they want to do for our human fellow. In fact, on brief visit to a European city (name is not important), I was approached too, but I declined. Not because I am bad person or that I don't care, it is just because i don't trust those organisations nor their means. The cause of this mistrust? The Holiest of them all in the past century: mother Teresa! Asking for big bucks to build a house of dying, not just dying, but dying an absurd way that brings salvation.

I do not believe in just feeding and treating. Call me narrow minded, but I believe it is just a waste of resources, it is just a "problem not solved" continuously growing burden on everyone's shoulders. It is just an extension of the suffering of those in need. One case of smiling, fed and vaccinated child is just not enough; a week later he may become a victim of the system, war or religious quarrels he was trying to escape. It looks god on the camera when he receives a loaf of bread, and the kid smiles thinking he has enough for three days, its fantastic when he gets medical treatment, but almost nothing is made to fix things that brought him in that situation, and here is where I think a different attitude is necessary. That leaves out natural disasters, in those cases the best humanity can do is to offer temporary relief and support.

Now, you will call me a war-monger (some might say a "republican"), but democracy can be enforced (even to the middle east), it just takes patience and commitment, and a proper "World Police Organization". You might say we have one: UN. OK, but I don't see them in Syria, they were not very effective in former Yugoslavia, not very effective in Palestine, not very effective in Darfur... and all three of them huge humanitarian disasters. I even dare to ask a question: how would Syria look like today if it was governed by the before mentioned "World Police Organization"?  Disarmed rebels, disarmed army... the only way forward would have been for them to find common ground and move forward, once the armed struggle is eliminated. And all this while cities would still be habitable, and the victims numbers much lower. But we are afraid we will not get the vote next round of elections; we know that many times decisive action is the best answer, but we chose to stay put and pay the charity bill.

World Today: How We Stopped Loving Our Freedom

Arguably, we, as a society, have reached a peak. A highpoint that a century before wasn't even in our dreams. And humanity had its visionary men looking anxiously to the future, pushing it hard, dragging everybody else along with them...

Electricity, road and air travel, the way we made business, or killed each other, art, technology and science, everything had such an accelerated pace, that compared with the previous 6000 years looks like an explosion that keeps growing.

But, there is a black spot, a huge one - stamped on our faith like a tattoo that won't come off. We still didn't learn how to live with each other. An uneducated opinion that "my way" is better than "your way", and "your way" must die, that has its roots in religious or nationalist extremism. Involution? Maybe... The mechanics of hate feed heavily on those two components, and even heavier on our acceptance of it, as part of the freedom culture. By acceptance of freedom of expression, way is given to hate. The hate bubble grows and one day it will burst, straight in our face, and there will be no more liberty. No more liberty to smile when I'm happy, no more freedom to love when my heart's on fire, no more liberty to read, to think... the only way, the only explanation, the only voice will be the sanctioned one. I am afraid of those times.

On the Way to Damascus | Seriously, I'm joking!...

On the Way to Damascus | Seriously, I'm joking!...

"Revolution! Revolution! Revolution!... What a wonderful way to gain freedom!

Hiding in the mountains, harassing the government troops, destroying checkpoints, just like Che Guevara himself would have done it! Confronting tanks without weapons, avoiding capture so many times, what a romantic way to live a revolution! Apart from the thousands of dead, it is the best thing that has happened in Middle East, apart from Israel! And religious extremists... and suicide bombers... and Saddam Hussein... and Iranian revolution... and oil.

We all know what is brewing in Syria, but somehow, one dickhead thinks he can fool anyone. Defending Syrians from a band of saboteurs?!... All revolutionaries are saboteurs until the revolution succeeds, and than, they become heroes. No revolution was legal, until it succeeded.

The voice of the world shouts: Stop the violence! Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it? People died already, and voicing your condemnation is not going to change anything. You can try shaking hands again with Al Assad, giving him praise and support (well, not directly - what is the rest of the world going to say about it?). Just like the world did with Libya, and Egypt. Gaddafi was thought to have converted to western way of thinking when he fell of his horse...pardon, his throne! Mubarak was the great defender from the dangers of extremism (the religious one, of course; policing his great country was never seen by the west) to the last day of his rule.

Yes, the opposition won in both cases, but what part of the opposition? That is the million dollar question! And at what cost for the rest of the world? I know the answer, you know the answer, and I am dead sure Obama knows the answer too. Must be embarrassing to see former allies, regimes you shook hands with, kiss their asses at times, falling like flies, leaving behind them corpses and terror. Terror to see that behind them emerges the very similar kind of idiots, but of different colour (political.... or religious, or... better said, political. Shit, I can't tell the difference anymore between them two!). All that, while holding those many, really wanting freedom, hostages through threat and kidnapping and murder. All that while claiming the heroes to be from their ranks. And they will tell you in your face that you have to obey the rule of God, or your beautiful head will be carefully separated from your body, being filmed in the process. If you're naughty, you might get the massage therapy with stones. Not any stone, only holy stones. Live, on national television! You'll be a star in an educational clip. The education they will want to teach us all."

'via Blog this'

Reading - a dying hobby

  Most of our posts in this blog have been directed towards some problem that we have encountered in day to day life, or something that has annoyed us greatly. But today I'm feeling good. I thought I'd give a go to something that I seem to enjoy a lot, lately. Reading. 


  It's easy, it's accessible, it's free and most of all, it's fun! You don't have to buy books, or spend time at the local library if you don't want to. Get online and you can find anything that you want. I was thinking, since I moved abroad I haven't actually held a book to read. But wait! I do read. At work mostly. In 10 hours of work I think I spend most of them reading something. I read the news, I read scientific articles that interest me, I read forums, jokes. But I also read books. Granted, the last one I read wasn't something published by a known writer, but for me it was still good. My last book was the 3rd volume from the hit game Diablo 3, "The Sin War - The Veiled Prpophet". I love their Diablo series and thus, I enjoy the lore books. Most of the books that Blizzard released I have set time aside to read. It's my thing. Fantasy attracts me. 


 For me, reading is a good way to pass the time and keep my mind occupied. I can imagine the characters, the actions however I want. See the scenery in my mind how I wish. In so many ways a book is better than a movie. A movie will already present you with the details, but it is how the directors saw it, not as you have imagined it. If you have ever read a book before seeing the movie made after the book, you will probably say to yourself :"This is not how I imagined that. Or this...or those." That's because books give us the freedom to use our imagination how we want. And they don't have commercial breaks.


That being said, why do I have the feeling not too many people read in our times? It seems there are no downsides to reading, yet people don't do it any more. Have video games, movies, social networking and all of today's technologies taken up all our time that we don't find any left for something as beneficial as growing our imagination, vocabularies and mind from books? From the looks of it, on forums, boards, comments and such, even typing words correctly or using grammar have become outdated. I really hope that will not be the future for our civilisation. 

Corruption, Meritocracy and the People

   Corruption, seems to have developed a self-sustaining , indestructible system that perpetuates infinitely in the administration apparatus. I cannot help to believe sometimes that a autocratic political system is needed for 10 years during which a corruption-proof administration can be built, with working paths independent of person, with clear processes and procedures, with penalties and responsibilities for each action and each individual involved in it, with control systems that oversees it, making it independent of politics and outside influences. BUT, here lies a bigger problem: finding that incorruptible involved  individual to do it. Humans are subject to corruption and compromise.

   One can argue that some political systems leave less room for it, and it is true (in part). But one loophole is one too many.

   Not advocating extremism here, examples from history cannot be clearer against it, starting with Roman Empire and ending with North Korea, and who forgets history risks repeating history and failures of the past. There must be a way around it. Having shared time with a Process Engineer, I learned that everything can be optimized, everything can be improved, including administration and political environment. But a designer of it is not enough, will is what we lack. When well structured and compartmented governing structures are in place, the influence of political parties are minimized to the point where it doesn't even matter their participation, which will render their existence useless. And if they do not exist any more, what will the structure look like, what will it be, meritocracy? Hmm... there is another aspect, maybe the most important: public opinion. Can it be harmonized with a meritocracy, or better said can one engineer a symbiosis between an administrative system based on merits and public opinion? Otherwise it will be just another dictatorship using a different name...

Civilisation types - Evolution of mankind

Evolution.

   It's a subject that has always caught my attention wherever I heard it. If we only compare our civilization with the same Homo Sapiens Sapiens that lived through the 11th century, the difference is overwhelming. Personal Computers, cars, television, flying, rockets, skyscrapers. The list is endless. All this came because we managed to use and handle most of the resources from our own little planet. 

In 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev theorized that a civilization's technical advancement directly correlates to the amount of energy its citizens can manipulate. Along these lines, he defined three classifications for advanced civilizations in the galaxy:

1. Type I civilizations are masters of planetary energy, meaning that they can harness the sum energy of an entire world. 
2. Type II civilizations can summon the power of an entire star system. 
3. Type III civilizations command energy on a galactic scale. 

While we are not yet a Type I Civilization, we are very close to achieving it. The "only" thing that keeps us from achieving this advancement is getting rid of our dependency of fossil fuel.Nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, solar power, wind, water. They all have the potential for that, but we just haven't found an efficient way of harvesting it.

All that being said, technology isn't the only way to measure evolution. If we look to our ancestors we can see some differences in the anatomy of humans. But this is not my point here. What I am trying to imagine is how will we evolve. What will humans look like in ten thousand years, in 100.000 years? The more we know about our universe, the more we develop, will our brains become bigger? Will our bodies change? Is the next step in evolution the little grey aliens with huge heads? 

Time will tell.