On a Swedish IT news site there are a few interesting headlines; one of which is that Sweden is “best” in Europe at using the Internet. (Link; beware – it’s in Swedish.) First of all, let me object to the word best. Let’s see. What constructive criticism could I conjure against that use…? Maybe…the fact that it’s complete and utter bollocks! Best is a marvellous word for quantifiable comparisons within a clearly measurable area, but in what way is Internet use a measurable area? And what exactly would “best” imply? That we’re best in Europe at finding warez? That we waste time on the Internet instead of working? That we know how to write good Google keywords? The phrase is completely ridiculous and says nothing at all.

And on the note of Google, there is another headline at the same site: Why Google is Making Us Dumber. Basically, that article insists that Googling stuff makes us dumber; for instance we no longer do conversion arithmetic by hand (or by head, rather) – instead we use Google features for those kinds of things. Well, let’s see if I remember my logic classes; I’ll try to make a modus ponens situation out of this. But I’ll leave out the predicate logic.

If P then Q, where P = “increased Google use” and Q = “getting dumber.” And I’ll introduce R = “increased Internet use” as well, and state the intuitive hypothesis that if R then P. Then we have the following:

(R -> P) AND R
-> P

(P -> Q) AND P
-> Q

Thus, Swedes are getting dumber. If you trust strange logic and strange articles you read on the ‘net, that is.

I won’t really waste any time on disputing the “Google makes you stupid” claim – it’s clearly ridiculous and a prime example of backward-thinking. The same was said when calculators were invented. “Oh no, the kids won’t learn how to do simple arithmetic anymore now that they have a machine for it.” Granted, I expect that kids today can’t do simple arithmetic, so I guess this example sucks. Still, I’m convinced that the productivity gains from automating simple tasks vastly oughtweighs the small setbacks in basic knowledge.

But wait, there’s more! I have yet another point to this little blog post. Some people might have read my little rant about coffee, in which I claimed that coffee was the cause of major wars. I received some interesting (IRL) feedback to that; most who commented on the post were confused and didn’t really see the point of it. That’s okay, ’cause I was planning on bringing up the point later – like now. In the coffee post I claimed, for example, that coffee was the cause of the War of the Golden Stool. That was complete and utter rubbish. Just as all the other coffee-related anecdotes in the post. Have you guessed the common thread through this blog entry by now? No? Okay, I’ll continue.

The post sounded confident and it was backed by enough facts to make it believable; no one really cared to question my claims since the topic was dull, but I have seen many search entries for the War of the Golden Stool that led to my site. I keep imagining that some kids have used my lies as interesting anecdotes in their schoolwork, and that a few teachers are scratching their heads in confusion right now. I hope that both those teachers and those kids have learned a valuable lesson about using things on the Internet as resources for their essays. There’s basically no guarantee that anything you read on the net is true, regardless of the imagined authenticity.

This goes for the article about Google making people dumber as well: it’s a personal opinion backed by no facts. It doesn’t matter that a major Swedish IT news portal picked it up – it’s just as much rubbish regardless of who thinks that it might be valid.

In my youth I was a nerd. Oh yes – I know that it’s hard to imagine. Surely I couldn’t have been one of the geeky losers; I who became awesome and cool in every way? Well, no, I wasn’t. I was pretty damn cool – I simply had nerdy interests like programming my Amiga, reading copious amounts of geeky literature, and role-playing. The last bit is something I’ve all but forgotten these days, but reading about the Disappointment in the Demonweb Pits made me recall an amusing series of events.

It all began when a friend of my brother’s introduced me to Drakar & Demoner, a Swedish “equivalent” to Dungeons & Dragons which takes place in a world called Ereb Altor. All in all it’s probably a pretty shitty system, but it served nicely as an introduction into the weird world of role-playing games. Table-top ones, that is; I had played several CRPGs before this. Go Ultima IV! Anyway, I quickly decided that this was great fun so I got my own set of rulebooks for D&D. The Swedish D&D that is. I also found some friends who were interested in trying it out.

The first roleplaying session I had with my friends was…interesting to say the least. More than a dozen people who had never roleplayed before sat around, trying to grasp the concepts of this strange way of playing a game. Some had an intuitive understanding of the possibilities: a pair started making out in a bar in-game, and went to do the nasty in a tent. Another person wanted to find people to mug. Yet another tried to explore the town. Then, of course, there were others who just didn’t get the appeal at all and wanted to kill everyone so we’d be over and done with the session. All in all it was pretty amusing for most involved, and eventually I ended up with two or three regular players. Alas, they had no idea of how to be Dungeon Master (or as we call it in Swedish: “game leader”) so I ended up with the task of making up stories for them.

Then, just as now, I was a lazy bugger so I mostly bought pre-written stories and modified them slightly for my group. Essentially, I removed the parts involving lateral thinking, logic, or any attempts at non-linearity – those things were too complex. (Do I sound bitter? I don’t mean to sound bitter. Really.) One of these pre-written adventures I bought wasn’t just an adventure: it was a whole city called Krilloan and a large campaign which took place inside the city. When I was just about to set loose my little group of brawlers inside Krilloan, we received an unexpected addition: another friend of mine had heard of our fantastic exploits and wanted to join in.

Sounds great, huh? The problem was that this friend was a bit…well. More geeky. “More geeky than what,” you ask, whereupon I reply: “More geeky than just about everything.” This is the kind of person who, when asked what kind of music he listens to, answers that he listens to in-game music from computer games. Yes. Well. Anyway… To put it bluntly: the other people in my role-playing group found him irritating and obnoxious, and really didn’t care much for his being part of their exclusive group. Still, I couldn’t very well tell him that so he ended up making a character and joining the campaign anyway. Ain’t I a real softie.

Things went okay for a session or two, but eventually the others got really annoyed at the geekier of us geeks, and decided to have their revenge. They communicated through notes with me that they wanted to covertly purchase black masks and black cloaks, and coordinate an ambush on the geek character. They attacked him in a dark alley, mugged him, and slit his throat. Game over. But he got to create a new character and join in again instantly (through some story-telling magic) so no real harm was done. And it was frankly pretty awesome to see his confusion during the following sessions, where he discussed with the others who could have been behind the attack. “It must have been this baron we’re after! He must have hired some assassins!” The others nodded and agreed – that must have been it.

Things were fine for another two sessions or so, until the group found a magical chalice. This was an artifact belonging to an evil church, but that didn’t stop my usual brawler players from being stupid.

“I try sensing some magic off this thing.”
“Oooh, you definitely feel the radiant magic emerging from the chalice! It’s just full of power…”
“Hmm.. So, guys.. What do we do with it? Hey, I know! Let’s pour some wine into it!”
“Oh, nothing happened. Well, it’s a chalice, so…I’ll try drinking the wine from it.”

This is where the geekier guy chimes up.

“No! Dude! This is an artifact from an evil church – you can’t drink from it! Who knows what will happen?!”

The brawlers got quite annoyed at this sensible interruption and growled: “Well, you drink it then.” Of course the geekier person of the crowd refused; but it was too late. The other players held him down and forced his mouth open while they poured the wine down his throat…and then he fell down limp, stone dead.

“Well. Damn. I guess he was right!”

My friends were real bastards.

Have you heard of the War of the Golden Stool? Or the Russo-Japanese War of 1904? Maybe Tecumseh’s War? They all have one thing in common:

Coffee played an important role in starting all of them.

The 20th century had barely begun when serious conflicts once again arose between the British Imperial government of the Gold Coast and the Ashanti Kingdom. The latter was a semi-autonomous African state that co-existed with the British; but it was never an easy co-existance. The British constantly tried to assert their authority over the Ashanti after the demise of the slave trade, and twice the Ashanti had risen against the white invaders. In 1900 Sir Frederick Hodgson tried once more to impress the Ashanti: he demanded their submission, and that he would be seated on the Ashanti’s Golden Stool – the stool that, as he understood it, acted as a throne to the Ashanti people. The Ashanti couldn’t resist the white men, and he eventually got his wish; however, as he sat down he decided to drive his point home even further: he smiled, relaxed, and had a cup of hot coffee while he sat on his golden stool. Little did he know that the Golden Stool wasn’t just a throne – whoever sat on it also symbolised the direct embodiment of the Ashanti gods. And the white man sitting there drinking the black liquid was too much for the proud Ashanti: to them it symbolised not only the rise of white gods, but also white gods who would devour the black peoples. Thus began the Third Ashanti Uprising, or the War of the Golden Stool in 1900.

The Russo-Japanese War was a completely different business: in the early 1900s both Russia and Japan had massively imperialistic ambitions, and due to their close proximity they – of course – became bitter rivals. Both countries competed for influence, trade and territory in East Asia, and Japan desperately wanted to convert itself to a modern power. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) Japan defeated China; this led to the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 in which China yielded many territories to Japan. One of these territories were the Liaodong Peninsula. Three Western countries, Russia, the German Empire and France, tried to apply pressure on Japan to relinquish its claim on the Liaodong Peninsula, because on this peninsula could be found Port Arthur. Russia especially desired this port, since it was the only warm-water port available in that area, and the only viable place in which they could import luxury items from the Pacific. Luxury items? Like what? Yes, you guessed it: coffee. Thus, another war was started in coffee’s name.

In 1811, North America was full of strife. The great War of 1812 stood just around the corner, but before it another war broke out: Tecumseh’s War, or Tecumseh’s Rebellion. Tecumseh was a Shawnee cheif who led an American Indian confederacy against the United States in the Old Northwest. The two principal adversaries in the war, Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison, had both been participants in the Battle of Fallen Timbers at the close of the Northwest Indian War in 1794. That war ended with the Treaty of Greenville, in which much of present-day Ohio was ceded to the United States; however, Tecumseh never signed the treaty – he continued to fight the United States and William Henry Harrison through the years, and ignited the American Indians to a great rebellion in 1811. Why did he do that? The story has it that the two leaders sat down in 1794 to discuss the terms of surrender, in order to come up with a solution that would be acceptable to both parties. Things were proceeding fine until a fateful moment. William Henry Harrison had brewed a pot of strong coffee and, in a friendly gesture, offered a cup to Tecumseh. The latter gladly accepted, tasted the brew, and then exclaimed: “By the ancestors, this is the most vile and putrid liquid I have ever tasted! I thought you wished to come to a compromise – yet you offend me with this awful beverage,” whereupon he stormed out of the pavillion. And he never forgave Harrison until the day he died.

In short, what I’m trying to say is that coffee has caused so much pain and suffering in this world; if we had any sense we would make the disgusting habit of coffee-drinking illegal, punishable by public flogging. It doesn’t matter that you try to disguise the black brew with nuts and milk and cream and whatnot – it’s still an awful thing to put in your mouth. Much better to rely on the magnificent flavour of tea. If you’re ever in Linköping I recommend that you try the cactus tea from the central tea boutique. It has just the right amount of sweetness without tasting like perfume (like most fruit teas do).

Oh, and did I mention that cool people play Sheeplings?

I just have to get it out of my system: I love 300! You know, the gory movie about the Spartans who stood up to the Persian empire, based on a comic by Frank Miller. I’ve seen the movie twice so far – once as a DVD rip (Shhh! Shhh! Don’t tell anyone!) and yesterday I saw it again at the movies. While I love it, the other geeks I saw it with were divided: some thought it was a beautiful action flick, and some were quite disappointed. Personally I’m not sure why I love it; given my loathing for Kill Bill and similar action-only movies I really shouldn’t approve of this two-dimensional fantastical portrait of a slaughter. Induction really isn’t applicable in real life, it seems.

But what differs between Kill Bill and 300? Why do I approve of the latter but not the former. Well, one obvious thing is aesthetics. Kill Bill is essentially a mix of a gangster flick and a samurai flick (or something like that), while there’s no missing the fact that 300 is an animated comic. Every detail in the movie breathes comics – from the way they almost exclusively utilized blue/green screens rather than real environments, to the over-the-top one-liner-based dialogue. Not to mention the constant posing. I think this is a prime example of how cliches can be used to create something grand – and probably grander than what would have been created with more restraint. Movie critics apparently aren’t too fond of the movie, and that’s understandable: I would hazard a guess that the movie’s simplistic script and cliches are poison to a reviewer schooled in film theory. Maybe it takes a layman to appreciate this kind of entertainment; after all, it has performed marvellously at the box offices.

Another thing that struck me is that Kill Bill is the story of one person, compared to – say – 300 persons. 300 persons fighting for a greater cause than their personal revenge. The epic quality of 300 is most definitely something that appeals to me much more than the down-to-earth feeling of Kill Bill: there’s no sense of greater cause in the latter. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the Spartans are doomed from the very beginning; I have a very nasty addiction to tragedy, and people giving up their lives almost always send shivers up my spine. I’m quite aware that my Goth tendencies are at fault, but I prefer it that way, thank you!

A third thing that separates Kill Bill and 300 is the gender of the protagonists. Male chauvinist pig that I am, I probably have a bias against female warriors. Or – more realistically – I probably can’t identify with Kill Bill’s main character in the same way that I can identify with Leonidas of Sparta. And to tie things up with the previous paragraph: I also find it easier to identify with the driving force of the Spartans than with whatever-she’s-called in Kill Bill. Epic sacrifice is much more appealing than personal revenge.

Okay, I’ve established some of my reasons for liking 300. But there’s more. For instance, the movie is extremely – and I mean extremely – close to the original comic, visually. This worked wonders in Sin City, just as it does in this movie. I also love tiny details like how Thermopylae is translated into Hot Gates. It makes sense – since they are speaking English it makes sense to translate the names of the places as well. It’s especially effective in this case, since Hot Gates has an undertone of Hell that – probably – wouldn’t have been very obvious if the Greek name was kept. Speaking of original Greek names, I had to refresh my memory on the battle of Thermopylae after seeing this movie, and I might as well sum up some important things I noted. All so that you don’t have to bother with it.

• The Spartans didn’t face Xerxes with only Arcadians at their side. Rather, there were also 400 Corinthians, 1,000 Phocians, and many many more. In total, the estimate lies at 7,000 people holding Thermopylae against the Persians.
• The Persians supposedly numbered millions, but modern estimates suggest “just” 200,000 land-based troops.
• In the movie there’s a lot of talk of Sparta’s freedom against Persia’s slavery. I think they forgot to mention the fact that the Helots were slaves to Sparta, and 1,000 Helots were with the Spartans at Thermopylae.
• The oracle’s prophecy isn’t elaborated upon in the film, but according to Herodotus the original prophecy was that Sparta will be destroyed unless one of their two (yes, two) kings give up his life. It’s speculated that this is a reason why Leonidas decided to stand at Thermopylae.
• And much much more. This is all rather fascinating, actually, but I can’t be arsed to write more.

Finally, I just have to mention two things:

1. If you haven’t seen 300 yet, do it!
2. And… Since 300 and Sin City were successfull, please please please please God let them make a properly dark and gruesome version of Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns as well!

I decided to write an informational piece about Mensa. You know, the fabled seat of high intelligence, whose members strive toward excellence and the betterment of mankind. Or something like that.

[Edit: if you examine the comments you'll notice quite a few - I assume - Mensans who prove my point much better than anything I could ever write. "Waaa, he's talking crap about Mensa! He must be a reject!" For these people I might as well spell it out in bold letters: I AM a member of Mensa.]

What is Mensa?

Mensa, according to the homepage, “provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members. Its activities include the exchange of ideas by lectures, discussions, journals, special-interest groups, and local, regional, national, and international gatherings; the investigations of members’ opinions and attitudes; and assistance to researchers, inside and outside Mensa, in projects dealing with intelligence or Mensa.”

Personally, I would say that Mensa provides a forum for self-loathing individuals to attempt to receive some self-esteem, and exchange inane ideas with other semi-intellectual members who also lack the ability to produce something fruitful instead of debate useless details.

Who can join Mensa?

In order to join Mensa you need to have attained an official IQ score at or above the 98th percentile; you need to be among the “smartest” 2% in the world. In case you’re wondering: no, online IQ tests aren’t acceptable – you need to take tests that are graded by professionals in order to qualify. Online tests often test things that aren’t strictly IQ-related, and they also often show a better result than a proper test. Remember that the next time you get an IQ of 152 on an online test.

One common rebuttal against IQ tests is that they measure nothing at all, except the ability to take IQ tests. It’s a relatively valid claim: IQ tests measure a form of logical thinking, but skips many other types of intelligence. However, what they measure is one type of thinking that is quantifiable. It’s not easy to measure, for example, how socially intelligent a person is, so IQ tests simply ignore those bits and measure what they can measure instead. Does that make the tests irrelevant? Most of the time, yes, but they still measure something comparable.

What kind of people join Mensa?

To quote the Mensa homepage: “Mensans range in age from 4 to 94, but most are between 20 and 60. In education they range from preschoolers to high school dropouts to people with multiple doctorates. There are Mensans on welfare and Mensans who are millionaires. As far as occupations, the range is staggering. Mensa has professors and truck drivers, scientists and firefighters, computer programmers and farmers, artists, military people, musicians, laborers, police officers, glassblowers–the diverse list goes on and on. There are famous Mensans and prize-winning Mensans, but there are many whose names you wouldn’t know.”

I can elaborate a bit on that. Mensans can theoretically be of any profession and any personality, but most of the time you tend to see:

1. People out to prove something to themselves or the world (The Insecure)
2. Complete and utter introverts with bad social skills (The Nerds)
3. Accomplished people who seek new groups to impress (The Braggers)
4. Relatively normal persons just looking for something new (The Bored)

Note that this list isn’t complete, and the choice isn’t binary. (Ehm. Qaternary I mean.) Sometimes you encounter a person who completely fulfills a stereotype, but most people have a fuzzy level for all four archetypes. (I wonder if I can use the word archetype in this context; either way it looks cool.)

What can you expect from Mensa?

Again, to quote the homepage: “The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other’s company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities.”

In reality, what you get is pretty much what you’d expect from a group of semi-self-claimed highly intelligent people:

• Mailing lists with a mix of insanely stupid comments, insightful knowledge and Asperger-like anal retentiveness
• Small social gatherings where people discuss nerdy topics and drink beer, and either watch each other with a “how the hell could this guy pass the test” look, or genuinely try to find common topics in order to become friends with the others
• Large social gatherings where… Hm. I really don’t know. I guess everyone listens to lectures and try their best to impress others with their useless trivia insightful knowledge

All cynicism aside, I do think that Mensa is a great place for some people. You know that the others who have joined have passed a decently difficult test of logic, so they can’t be really stupid per se (just irritating). And given the spread of people who become members you’re bound to run into many new and exciting faces whom you never would have met otherwise (although there’s a great risk that you’ll mostly see college students). And the gatherings actually provide an excellent way to meet new people (unless you’re…you know…able to go to normal parties and be charming and interesting to normal people).

“Why are you so full of contempt for Mensans,” you may wonder. “Who are you to judge people like that?” I judge all the Insecure and Nerdy people, because – Dog help me – I’m the biggest Insecure Nerd of them all. Feel free to e-mail me at karja@mensa.se if you want to complain about my hypocrisy.

Some final anecdotes

I have a friend who’s one of the smartest people I know. He once insinuated that he wouldn’t want to take the Mensa test, because the blow to his confidence would be too great if he failed. Another extremely intelligent friend of mine routinely ridicules Mensa for only containing wannabes out to prove something. An ex of mine scored quite well on an IQ test, but she simply sees no reason to join Mensa. All three people are – I regret to admit it – probably more intelligent than me. The point of all of this? Don’t assume that people in a high IQ society automatically are more intelligent than non-members.

Once I was having a stroll with a girl, and for some reason we ended up discussing intelligence. No, that usually doesn’t happen, but she was interested in the topic. We talked about our opinions of ourselves and I made a suitably modest comment, along the lines that I have verified that I’m a pretty intelligent person. Her reply was, “you don’t seem like it.” That’s a very interesting comment. Personally, I’m of the opinion that the ability to fit in and adapt oneself is a better measure of intelligence than showing off knowledge and/or quick thinking. (But, of course, opinions are like arseholes.)

Sometimes it’s easy to get fooled by numbers. 2% doesn’t sound like much, but that’s just one person in fifty. I work with IT, and I would hazard a guess that not many people in my department would fail to qualify for those two per cents. Whenever one gets the urge to feel proud of one’s supposed intelligence, one only has to think of all others who ought to qualify in one’s surroundings. (I love the word “one.”)

Today I browsed through various news articles and noticed that Apple are considering to incorporate more flash memory into its products. Subnotebooks will have it, and analysts speculate that the iPod brand will go cold turkey on HDDs and go for flash instead in a while. Also, Samsung have released flash hybrid HDDs. Flash seems to be mighty popular right now!

This got me thinking. It’s a well-known fact that flash memory has a limited amount of rewrites. A common number to throw around is a hundred thousand rewrites. Reading up on the issue a little shows that things aren’t really that simple… A hundred thousand rewrites seems to be a fictional number that someone conjured as a vague average: instead, what matters is the number of erase-write cycles. These number a whopping million rather than a hundred thousand; however, the mapping between erase-write cycles and rewrites isn’t that simple.

There are two types of flash memory: NOR and NAND. NOR flash memory is slow and expensive, but it has a full address interface which allows random access to any location. It’s basically comparable to normal RAM in that aspect. Apparently, it’s often used for BIOS and firmware for embedded consumer products. This type of flash was used in Compact Flash earlier, but later scrapped for the cheaper NAND. NAND also has faster erase and write times and longer endurance, and is used in most products these days. (In fact, I can’t see any reason that NOR is better for BIOSes or firmware. There’s nothing in the nature of those products that requre random access; it must be a typo in Wikipedia.) This type of flash is the one that has a million promised erase-write cycles.

But, and this is a big but: NAND only addresses memory sequentially. There’s no random access, so if you want to – say – read address 0x00ffc you have to read the entire block that contains that address…and the same goes when you want to write something down. In other words, large files will span several blocks and require several erase-write cycles. The last bit is what makes me sit up and take notice.

It’s also interesting to read what Samsung wrote a while ago:

The hybrid hard drive prototype uses 1 Gigabit OneNAND Flash as both the write buffer and boot buffer. In the hybrid write mode, the mechanical drive is spun down for the majority of the time, while data is written to the Flash write buffer. When the write buffer is filled, the rotating drive spins and the data from the write buffer is written to the hard drive.

Is it just me or does this seem rather ineffective, considering that HDDs have a relatively long lifetime – probably longer than the flash’s amount of rewrites. What happens if the flash gives in prior to the HDD? Is the write buffer required or can the hybrid HDD be used as a normal HDD after the flash has croaked? I hope the latter, but I fear that the functions are relatively hard-wired; HDD lifetime expectancy will probably drop, in other words. I know that people talk about switching all your hard drives every third year or so, but seriously, how many do that? I have hard drives that are probably older than some of you who read this. (At least the spambots; I’m sure that I have older HDDs than them.) I do not want a trend where life expectancy is dropping in favour of non-movable parts.

But then again, flash firmware have this neat thing called wear levelling:

This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors. This technique is called wear levelling.

I can only assume that similar techniques are implemented for the hybrid HDDs, and that the very nature of using the flash as a write cache rather than random access media will cause the wear to be level. Still, balancing out the wear doesn’t cover the fact that erase-write cycles are pretty limited. I wonder how many blocks are accessed per day in normal computer use; speculating about life expectancy would be much easier if I had some real numbers to mess with rather than throwing up vague ideas that “HDDs last longer than flash.”

It’s strange, really: I’ve been working with flash-based embedded systems for a while, but I never had a grasp of the hardware involved. It’s probably a good thing to read up on things now and then.

Let me get one thing out of my system before I begin this little tirade: I loathe political correctness. Or, to be more in tone with that statement, political correctness can suck my hairy ass. I do realize that people find different things offensive, but I feel insulted in a vague way when people decide what I can and cannot express. I think Anthrax puts it best:

Now you might take offense
To a word like “fuck” or “shit”
But you fuckin’ don’t have the right
To discriminate me for saying it!

This is actually kind of curious, considering that I’m close to finishing an uber-cute game called Sheeplings that doesn’t feature a mean bone in its entire metaphorical body. It used to, though: previously I had the text “Dammit, you lost!” when you lost a level. Due to pressure (well, honest suggestions rather) I changed it to something less offensive; apparently mothers and kids might find “dammit” an unnecessarily strong word. Cue rolling of my eyes.

That little anecdote was put there to show that I’m not only an offensive person – I’m also a hypocrite.

Anyway, onto today’s experiment in political correctness: Bookworm Adventures by PopCap Games. It’s a lovely game in which you make up words from a set of available letters in order to defeat enemies, gain experience, and advance the story. I liked the original Bookworm, and I love this game: it has a progressing storyline and it’s not timed! The two facts combine into something I thoroughly enjoy on a lazy Saturday like this.

But oh, what’s this? I tried to compose an unorthodox word:

Neither CUNT nor CUNTS is a valid word. Meh! I got my first whiff of fear – was I playing a dumbed-down game with a censored word list?!

But hey! PENIS works just fine (and gave me a pretty good attack to boot). Time to investigate this further…

The silly WEE works just fine as well, as I suspected, but this doesn’t:

SHIT is banned! What the hell? That has to be one of the most common words in the English language, not counting prepositions and such. What about a more toned-down version…

Nope, SHITE isn’t allowed either. Meh! I’m really starting to dislike this. Time for a few other words:

DONG: not allowed. SHAG: allowed. The very common and practical word FISTER isn’t allowed. Anyway, I could go on and on with more tests, but I’ve reached my conclusion:

Why yes, Moxie! I would like to know why PopCap is censoring the word list. And I also would like to know how they’re deciding what words are okay and what aren’t. Why is PENIS, WEE and SHAG okay but SHIT isn’t? And is CUNT really such a horrible word that you have to remove it from your list?

I don’t see the point of the censoring. Kids can still spell the naughty words; what would happen if they got points for them as well? Would they be encouraged to use such words – is that what PopCap are afraid of? It’s not like they’re displaying bad words themselves – they’re just giving people the choice. I guess I’m most definitely a pro-choice person, eh.

My aversion toward political correctness isn’t a new thing. Back in 1998 I fell in love with a schoolmate’s game Chickens 2, in which you slaughter innocent little chickens trying to – ah-hah – cross the road. Well, a patch of grass actually. This game featured lots of gore and blood. I wanted to push this idea further, though: I thought about what people would find taboo, and eventually came up with a brilliant idea… A game where you killed cute and innocent babies. The babies would get mutilated in various ways, and cry and sob heart-wrenchingly.

I wonder how many people I would have offended with that game. Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t have enough productivity to fulfil all my strange ideas.

A rolling stone gathers no rest, so I’m off for yet another adventure in a couple of days; this time I’m going to the French Alps to injure myself terribly whilst attempting to snowboard. That’s one part of the coolness mentioned in the title, but I’ll spare you the obvious additional pun. Instead I’ll follow that line of thought: two days ago the temperature here in Sweden dropped considerably…and suddenly. As I decided to walk home from work at 7-8 PM I was prepared for the temperature we’ve so far had this “winter” – around freezing at worst, and more often than not a few degrees plus. Celsius that is. We may be close to the polar circle, but we have this nice thing called the Gulf Stream just metaphorically outside our metaphoric window to heat things up. Still, the so-called winter has been extremely hot and this sudden drop to -10 degrees took me by complete surprise. I had forgotten how it feels to take a long brisk walk but still not get warm; my fingers were like flesh-covered pieces of bone only mildly heated by the circulatory system and overall body heat. …Oh crap, my similies suck.

That’s another part of the coolness, but I think it’s time I got to the point and mentioned the real thing I had in mind. A few years ago I realized that my literary explorations in youth curiously had omitted Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. I bought it, read it, and liked it. And subsequently forgot about it. Until a week ago or two when I ordered books from the Sci-Fi Bookstore up in Stockholm. “Hey. What’s this? Rama II? The Garden of Rama? Crap, I’ve forgotten to read the sequels!” As I was reading Rama II I came upon something very cool: one of the characters in the book quoted a famous saying.

This is where one of my readers objects: “What’s so cool about that? Dude, didn’t you note that Richard’s small robots quote Shakespeare all the time. Quoting things is not unusual in that book.”

Ah yes, but at first I didn’t recognize from where I knew this quote. I had to pause and think about it a few seconds. The original quote is: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.” And guess who wrote it. Of course it was Mr. Clarke himself.

I really started at that. My esteem for Clarke just rose a bit further: in his book he assumes that characters two hundred years in the future will be aware of his quote. That’s cool by itself. And with all probability true. But the fact that he had made a masterful stroke at combining the invented world with the real world was also cool; by making his character discuss the saying he brings an immense sense of life to the novel. It’s not a parallel future – it’s our future. We use that saying now, and it’s such a profound statement that we can imagine that future people will hold it as truth as well. It all fits in. And it also corrects a major pet peeve of mine: when movies, books or other media explains too much. Take the example of a vampire movie in which no of the characters are previously aware of what a vampire is. What the hell? Who doesn’t know what a vampire is? Sure, the writers might feel the need to introduce the concept somehow…but doing it like this they break the illusion that things are happening in the world we live in. Clarke correctly assumes that the current world knows of his saying, and extrapolates that future generations will know it as well since it’s a good quote. That’s thinking immersively.

Granted, I don’t know who exactly wrote that bit. It could very well be his co-author, as an inside joke. The idea still holds, though.

Now, onto effects of the media. As I read Rama II I could recall some rumours that Clarke was a paedophile. “Oh well,” I thought, “he writes well anyway.” Then I decided to look him up on Wikipedia – and was surprised to see that he was completely cleared of the rumours. But did I recall that? Of course not. Media had probably fed me all the sensational news about the famous writer’s paedophilic tendencies, but forgotten to make a big thing out of the fact that it turned out to be (if one can trust that) untrue. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, I find it highly fascinating that I’ve thought the rumour to be true for all these years. All because media reported it long ago.

Sometimes my own susceptibility surprises me. And I view myself as relatively critical; imagine what Mr. Joe Regular thinks. (Of course, he probably doesn’t know who Clarke is. But you know what I mean.)

As a final interesting tidbit, the temperature drop here in Sweden completely took me by surprise. I wonder if media informed about it beforehand – I haven’t watched the news for a week or more, so if they did I completely missed it. I wonder if my disinterest with media reports is a result of my steadily growing cynism regarding what they report. I wonder if I should stop wondering so much.

These recent weeks I’ve become interested in economy for some reason. After I saw A Beautiful Mind I became intrigued with John Nash and his supposed (according to the filmatization) critique against Adam Smith; but this vague and dormant fascination with economics has suddenly flared up. As a technical person I’ve always held economists in a slight contempt (just as they with all certainity feel the same about me) because I figured that the area of economics isn’t scientific enough. Wow, how’s that for vague? Since I haven’t studied economics I’ve had a hard time putting my finger on exactly what’s lacking, but I’ve assumed that they just borrow a little from statistics, a little from social sciences, a little from psychology and put it all together into something I view as sort of pseudo-scientific.

I won’t say that my recent delve into this area has left me convinced that this isn’t the case, but at least now I feel that economics is full of brilliant ideas and brilliant people. Not in the least, aforementioned Adam Smith himself. Imagine this absent-minded Scottish scholar walking around muttering to himself; liked by all, studious and thorough, producing theories that – basically – hit the spot over 300 years ago and still hold up rather well today. I have a very warped sense of what’s cool, but Mr. Smith is definitely what I would call cool. Total icebox.

However, one thing struck me about his comments about value and price. First of all, I’d better paraphrase (with the risk of misinterpreting or omitting something important) the argument:

An observation: things don’t cost what they are worth. It’s a common complaint; athletes earn too much, teachers earn too little, and so on. Likewise, the same could be said for objects. In Adam Smith’s time diamonds had no practical use in the industry, so their only redeeming quality was that they were pretty – they were essentially worthless. On the other hand, water is immensely valuable; without it you’ll die. Now, that’s pretty freakin’ valuable.

So, what we have is something that’s enormously valuable – water - that doesn’t cost anything at all, while diamonds which have no practical worth at all cost a mint. The usefulness, or value of an object is not reflected by its price; the price is a separate thing that is governed by supply and demand rather than value. Water is commonly available, but diamonds are rare.

(I know that worth and value aren’t really synonymous, but please consider them so for the span of this blog post. My vocabulary wanders.)

Professor Timothy Taylor quotes the old saying that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing, but changes it to be about economists instead. The argument is that economics deals with objective things like supply and demand and prices, but cannot judge values since they are incredibly hard to quantify due to their subjectivity.

When I heard this I instinctively felt like objecting. Okay. I admit that value is nigh on impossible to determine. You can’t set a numerical value on water’s worth. It would be an exercise in futility. Here’s a subjective list for me, for example:

• Water: 1 GWth
• Diamond: 134 Wth
• Nintendo Wii: 1024 Wth
• 100 Mbit Internet connection: 2 TWth

The units are of course Worth (Wth), MegaWorth and GigaWorth. If you receive the urge to comment that a diamond could get you many Wiis and thus should be worth more, remember that that’s the price you’re talking about now – not the worth of the object itself. And yes, the list is a joke in case you’re wondering.

But despite the intangibility of value, you can’t omit it completely from the calculations and pretend that you’ve made a functional model of supply and demand without it; it’s like approximating a function of [insert a natural phenomenon] and pretend that you have the whole story. Sure, you can reach results; and sure, this might be the practical way of approaching it all. But to my layman mind it seems like value is a bigger piece of the puzzle than the lecture pretends that it is. If you have something that’s slightly less plentiful than another item, but you think that its value is greater than the other, you’re bound to purchase it despite supply and demand models.

What we have here is a status quo of sorts. Value is needed for complete calculations, but it cannot be quantified. Are the economists correct in skipping this parameter then? Approximations might work anyway. I say nay! (Only because I like the word nay.)

I may roll over like a dog most of the time, but not this time. Why not try to quantify value? Here’s a spontaneous thought: Maslow has presented a hierarchy of needs in which needs have various levels of importance. First come the physiological needs such as breathing and eating, and then comes safety needs and so on. I may be grasping at straws here, but it seems to me that water could easily be fitted into the physiological need, while diamonds fit into the aesthetic needs far later. Hey, what do we have then? We have quantified the values of water and diamonds, respectively. Sure, there are no MegaWorth values attached to the items, but we have a relative value against each other. That ought to suffice to include value into some calculations.

One obvious objection to this is subjectivity. For a kid a Nintendo Wii will be very useful and valuable for recreation, while an elderly gentleman might view it as a piece of junk that gets placed on the shelf next to the DVD and the transmogrifier, never to be used. But couldn’t we apply some statistics here? No, I’m not being hypocritical – I’m just suggesting that we make the approximations as late as possible, and don’t hide important variables.

But hey, considering the brilliant people everywhere this must have been considered and discarded already. Or possibly, it comes into play in more advanced economics - I’m just on Economy 001, also known as bullshit and spare time speculation.

Every once in a while I receive the urge to draw something silly; I could show you some questionable comics I drew years and years ago, but let’s just say that I’d better leave those sleeping dogs lie. My humour is not only questionable – it’s outright offensive to most people. As an example, while doing my military service I drew a comic that featured an infamous German dictator and his rather infamous doctor accomplice. I found it hilarious to display them as a comic due along the lines of Laurel and Hardy. I guess the military leadership I saw in real life inspired me.

My debatable humour is not my only obstacle: I also suck at drawing. More specifically, at drawing original things. I can do decent sketches based on others’ works, but I can’t make an original composition very well. This is not a good thing for someone aspiring to produce comics.

While all of this might or might not be interesting, where is it all leading? I drew an inane comic just now, and just for laughs I thought I’d put it up here. After all, what’s a blog for if not to be filled with content of dubious quality? Before I do that I’ll show you some other comics o’ mine. Have you heard of Flakey? He was an impressive early robot constructed by SRI, and in an AI class back in 2000 we got to see a video clip showing off his capabilities. Most impressive was the scene where he accepted a vocal command and then performed the task admirably. The task was “Bring Lesley a bagle.” This is crucial for understanding many of the comics below.

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey1.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey2.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey3.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey4.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey5.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey6.jpg

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/Flakey7.jpg

I love Flakey5, personally. But I guess I’m just a tad biased in this matter.

Now, onto the topic of my recent comic. Compared to the ones above, it sucks. Sorry, there’s just no getting around it: Flakey was poorly drawn but the jokes were topical, the cast was specified before I started drawing, and the humour was accessible (if you can ever say that computer science humour is accessible). There was a plan behind it all. With this latter comic I just started drawing a bit, without any idea what to produce. I had read a bit about Chiaroscuro paintings and thought that the technique was interesting, so I went with a completely black background. Some experimenting to and fro resulted in this:

http://www.cynicalstuff.com/images/comics/saturday_afternoon.jpg

Note how dull the comic is; note how the text and images don’t really match; note my poor use of the space; note how the hockey hair magically disappeared in the second and third “frames”; note how my experiment with leaving the eyes see-through only results in the appearance of spectacles; note how I’m mixing obsessive symmetrical thinking with chaotic assymetry; note how I fail at drawing convincing emotion.

So what is it that I’m saying? That I’ll give up drawing strange comics? Of course not. But the next time I pick up the drawing pad I’ll have a plan beforehand: the art style needs to be thought over, the cast needs to be defined, and the jokes need to emerge before I start scribbling random things.

Regardless of artistic deficiencies, I think that I am able to create a decent comic - it just requires a bit more work if the raw talent is missing. John Stuart Mill wrote marvellous philosophical and economical pieces, but he always claimed that he was nothing special. Anyone could do what he did if they had the same background and upbringing, he claimed. I don’t agree fully, but hard work can definitely make up for many shortcomings; genius isn’t always a trait one is born with – I believe that it can be aquired.

Well. Except for me, when it comes to comics. I’ll settle for someday possibly becoming competent.