Sixteen Volts

As far as I am concerned, if it's not in English or Finnish, it doesn't exist. I know there is a massive world out there, but I just never see it. There is one exception to this, though: whenever I check the SiteMeter to see where my readers have come from, there are occasionally a few refers from foreign-language blogs that, when I look at them, contain absolutely no links here. I guess that whoever came here from those blogs must have clicked the "Next Blog" button that you can see on the top right corner. (Wouldn't it be great if all blogs in the world were linked into one giant daisy chain?) The question stated in the post "What Would We Lose From a Regionalized Internet?" at Slashdot reminds me of this issue. I guess my answer would have to be "nah, not much".

If people have a point they want to make to me, they can do so in my language. If they don't but the point is so good that I should read it, then heck, that's what translators are for. In addition to building bridges between different cultures, translators provide an extremely valuable filtering service in that few people ever bother to translate things that are not important. The book publishing industry once held this role, but now that anybody can publish how much they want and cream rises to the top in the implicit collaborative filtering and long tail and yadda yadda, they don't really hold this much power any more. The end result is confusion and widespread incorrect thoughts. But at least we have the translators trying to keep things in check and in order.

When I was younger, I very much enjoyed the science fiction novels of Stanislaw Lem, translated from Polish to Finnish of course. I especially loved The Cyberiad, which now that I think of it, must have been quite an inspiration for the creators of Futurama. Heck, Lem even wrote a short story where Ijon Tichy infiltrated a human-hating robot planet disguised as a robot. I am sure I didn't "get" all of Lem's between-the-lines samizdat stuff when I read his work, but at least even my younger version understood who the planet of billions of people who were proud of all the massive things that they could do by their sheer numbers were supposed to caricature. I didn't even know that the man was still alive, but apparently he was, since he just died yesterday.

I am not into videogames myself, but I had to chuckle about the news article "'Desperate Housewives' inspires video game". I guess it is going to be a ripoff of The Sims, so the player can set up and furnish a home in Wisteria Lane, and then occasionally the plot moves forward when the other characters do something. Or maybe it will be an traditional adventure game. We'll see. Perhaps the guys from the "Dewds" short films could play the game and comment on it.

Via The Fly Bottle, we find the post "ConTREversy!", which further comments on "False Advertising".

Diserio has listed the 15 best skylines in the world, with pictures. Toronto is number 7, although I am hopeful that in a decade or two, the massive Chinese cities have grown to resemble cityscapes from Blade Runner. Then we'll move there, and I'll just call myself "Finn" and jack into cyberspace, dodging the police and the stonefaced killers in black trenchcoats employed by zaibatsus to hunt me. Hey, one can always dream!

Eric S. Raymond is the number one cyberpunk and hacker straight out of a William Gibson novel. "Open Letter to Steve Lohr & John Markoff" comments the news article "Windows Is So Slow, but Why?" and predicts that Microsoft has reached the end. I think that it was Windows 95 that Microsoft promised that they would ditch backwards compatibility, but this never happened with any of their OS ever since. Ah well, perhaps this will happen with Vista. The post "Islam Is At War With Us" analyzes the situation in Sweden.

"Enough Rope: the Creativity Paradox" in "Two Blowhards" reminds us that some constraints are always necessary. If anything is possible, nothing is.

Steve Dutch's old post "Dutch’s Laws of Just About Everything" is excellent throughout, as always, but my favourite was the part "If you believe there is a problem, it is your responsibility to fix it", which says:

Most "activism" is glorified freeloading. The activist says, in effect, "Hey everybody, drop what you're doing and solve my problem for me. Divert funds from your programs to pay for mine."

• If you think child care is a problem, you study economics and business and figure out a way to provide it economically.
• If you think drug company profits are exorbitant, you study biochemistry and business and start a company to develop low-cost drugs.
• If you want free health care, you raise the necessary capital and start an HMO that charges low premiums and pays bills with no questions asked.
• If you think oil company profits are excessive, you study geology and engineering, start your own drilling company, and find and sell oil for less.
• If you think alternative energy sources are the answer, you study physics and engineering and develop them.
• You may be the victim of a bad home and past injustice, but if you wait for someone else to set it right, your life will suck. Nobody else's.

I occasionally read Ilta-Sanomat for news from the old country. A few days ago, there was a short news article that said that Hollywood is about to make critical films about Iraq war, now that criticism of America and its military is no longer considered treasonous in Hollywood. Dunno, but I just thought that my American readers might be interested to hear that. Breathe the freedom, brothers!

As we all know, the American mass media likes to sensationalize stories about black criminals whose victims are white and make big headlines out of them, while it always downplays and tries to cover up stories about white criminals whose victims are black, especially if there is some kind a racist angle involved so that it could be considered a "hate crime". In this light, the post "Another Tragic Sexual Assault Story: Mixing Racism, Sexism, and Classism" informs us about a horrible crime that should be given more publicity, since the mainstream media ignores it. Blogosphere, assemble!

I remember that it took me a long time to realize that the word "titillate" doesn't mean what it sounds like. Speaking of mass media and titillating stories, SugarBank's post "Is the Mainstream Going Porn?" asks whether "pornification" is really happening. I am shocked, shocked to tell you that yes, it is. The same blog also has a post "A Pornographers Guide to Protecting Kids from Porn Online" about how to prevent children and teenagers from accessing porn. This post also presents simple economic arguments why having a separate ".xxx" domain for porn wouldn't work, but a far better solution would be to have a separate ".kids" domain for non-porn appropriate for children.

In any case, the news article "Man did not rescue child for fear of 'pervert' slur" shows the logical end result of the constant demonization of men. Remember when people got all huffy and puffy about those schoolgirls in Saudi-Arabia who weren't allowed to exit a burning building because they weren't properly covered? Somehow, I doubt that this incident will gain equal publicity.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 at 10:15 AM