So frustrated, so depressed, so angry

It's just that I participated in voting today. I spoke with my coworkers about the candidates/issues. Our ideological differences are much clearer, and it's disheartening. Who knew there were so many straight-ticket party-liners? Hell, I don't think one of them was even going to look at the issues before casting his vote.Who knew they cared so little about our civil liberties? One of them called Benjamin Franklin a fascist, seriously.

There was a quote from some anarchist, paraphrased, "If voting actually worked, they'd make it illegal." But for all its flaws, I think America can still trudge along the path to enlightenment and reason. If not then maybe there'll be no choice but to vote in another
way.

Pervez Musharraf

Man, I am just so impressed with this guy. Just listening to him speak, it sounds like there's so much thought that goes into what he says. And the thing is, what he's talking about is the things that he has done or is doing, and his actions and policies also sound like he's put a lot of thought into them. Of course this is a painful contradistinction to our own president.

The other side of the story

I wrote about a book about Jerry Siegel's life some time back. In response to the book, Siegel's second wife, Joanne Siegel (and model for Lois Lane), wrote a response. It certainly does paint Jerry in a much different light. If it's true, it seems like Jones should have a case of libel on his hands...

A Peer-review Patent System

The meat of the idea seems to be discussed here.

The biggest thing I was worried about was a lack of legal understanding on the part of participants in the system, but they seem to have that pretty well addressed. Basically, their heart is in the right place, but they think that people will do this out of the kindness of their hearts and devotion to the betterment of society. Or, essentially, for recognition.

While there are people like that out there, I have a feeling that when it comes time to put up or shut up, there just won't be enough people to sustain the system. The truth is, patents are quite boring, but they're also quite lucrative, which is why there are so many people actually involved.

Another worry I had is the amount of time that such a system would require, both on the part of the peers and the examiners. Things like, "Those who submitted will be sent an email requesting their participation over a 4-week follow-on period in an expert panel.", "Once convened, this online panel will have one month in which to discuss the patent application.", and "In every case, the participant should receive feedback from the examiner about the final results of the process." seem to lengthen the examination process, not expedite it. It seems that this peer process is highly concerned with quality, but is willing to sacrifice timeliness. One suggestion was to start the process prior to when the examiner takes up the case. That really seems like the only practical solution, though I doubt there'd be any time for consultation after or during examination.

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see what will happen. Generally, I think the submission of relevant prior art by an expert public is a great idea, but in practice really won't happen all that often. First, there needs to be a large, dedicated community. Second, that community has to be as broad as it is deep, with regards to the subject matter. Thirdly, that community has to be willing to deal with learning not only patent law, but also the peer review system.

I think what will actually happen is that certain computer technology savvy individuals will at least be initially interested in computer technology fields of patent endeavor. A few other subject areas will also see some interest, but probably won't reach the level of peer review desired for discussion. Some companies/inventors will receive a disproportionate amount of attention. A lot of irrelevant, unranked art will be submitted. Eventually people will mostly give up on trying to affect the patent system as a whole, but importantly, sometimes some application will spark some public interest and a system may be in place for interested members of the public to affect its prosecution.

Some more horrible images

Horribly funny that is. Everything I know about 'em are in the filenames...

American Idol sucks

And not just because it's a reality show. It disgusts me because I actually like music. I haven't watched enough of the show to see if it actually makes any claims outside of the singing abilities of its contestants, but quite clearly, American Idol thinks that singing ability is of utmost importance.

While it certainly doesn't hurt to have good range and precision, that's like saying whoever has the best paints is the best painter. Shouldn't things like creativity and originality have something to do with who Americans should idolize? Shouldn't having something to say matter?

I think the person that writes the song brings significantly more to the table than the person who sings it. Just looking pretty and having a good set of pipes doesn't make a person a musician.

I have a friend who likes the opera. I didn't understand the attraction. One day he and I were at an opera singer's concert (it wasn't an opera, just a few songs with accompaniment), and so I ask him, what it is that sets this opera singer apart from other opera singers, and why he enjoys listening to it. He explains it to me by looking for the degree of skill of the singer: the range and power and accuracy. Of course, the kind of music you like is just about as subjective as you can get, but is it really that important that you have the best possible instrument to play someone else's music?

I guess it's somewhat strange, the juxtaposition of classically trained musicians with American Idol contestants. The thing is, I've always found the person who plays the instrument to be interchangeable. Yoyo Ma may be the best cellist in the world, but if he didn't play the song, someone else would. But if Mozart wasn't around, there wouldn't've been someone else to write his symphonies.

And so we're left with American Idol, a show so popular that Fox has deemed it worthy of inclusion in the evening news. A show that gets more voters than the president of the USA. A show that has nothing but people I would consider otherwise talentless.

1984, V for Vendetta

A lot of people compare world events to 1984, and sometimes it's frightening how similar they appear to be. After finally reading it, though, I'm inclined to say the level of oppression present in the book just isn't possible. In piecemeal, it serves warnings, but the aspects outlined are required to be present all at the same time, some of which just seem so unlikely as to be impossible (such as the reduction to 3 nation-states, the rounding up of all first generational dissenters, the acceptance of lack of privacy, doublethink, the technological infrastucture necessary for the telemonitors, the tracking and changing of all literature, etc...).

1984 posits that power is its own goal, but I have a hard time believing that there is even one person that wants power for only power's sake; that there is a person who would be wholly satisfied lording over his fellow man while living in filth and squallor (does anybody remember the line "my kingdom for a horse"?). In that sense, 1984 does address something that I've pondered, and that's the need for stratified goods and services between the classes. Hopefully I'll write on it at a later date, but the basic idea is that there's no point to being rich if it doesn't get you something better than someone who's poorer. Taken down the logical path that 1984 itself proposes, even the highest class citizens would eventually have a very meager quality of life. True, a better one than their inferiors, but a poor one by the standards of what could be.

However, more than anything, and probably because of V for Vendetta, I'm inclined to think like Winston did: that people won't live like that. That someone would eventually notice, and then more and more. The peasants would become incapable of accepting an even lower standard of life, and then the higher classses. Or perhaps the higher would no longer think that merely being able to fill one's stomach was such a grand high thing. Perhaps the Brotherhood existed, maybe it didn't. But I would think something like the Brotherhood would exist. And maybe 1984 would have its own V. Maybe not an untouchable superman, but perhaps a Claudius, willfully cloaked by seeming innocuousness.

The closest example presented that I think refutes my view is the Catholic Church back in its heyday. With the level of education and communication we have nowadays, it doesn't seem capable of recapturing its position.

The Founding Fathers got a lot of things right: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, right to be secure in one's possessions (right to privacy), right to bear arms.

As V said, "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." As Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." And, too, what Goering said.

In that sense, I think the greatest Americans are the greatest champions of liberty, ever-vigilant against the encroachment of government and the erosion of freedom. That also implies the necessity of tolerance. The poorest Americans, then, are those that cannot think beyond the herd and are led as a herd, reactionary and ignorant.

I certainly hope that people watch V for Vendetta. For me, it was the first work that got me to think in that way. Maybe they'll watch it and be more aware of the warnings of oppression and the dangers groupthink.

A Death in the Family

I'd never been to a funeral before. My other grandfather might've even died in the States, but I was too young. Being that my father was his father's only son, and me my father's only son, it was important that I go this time, but I would've gone regardless.

They say that funerals are for the living, and this case was no different. It was good to see my father's family together (minus one sister as she couldn't make it). And it was good to see our families paying our last respects. I'd written my grandfather off a long time ago as his mind had already gone: Alzheimer's. Technically, I think he died of heart failure, but really, all his major organs were fighting for the title.

The Saturday following the Friday I arrived in Taiwan, the family went to pray for him in a ceremony that I think was to feed him in his next life. There was a lot of bowing, a lot of food offerings, and a lot of chanting by the temple priestesses (I don't know their actual title). I don't know the exact religion, but I think it's a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism.

The actual funeral was on Tuesday. We arrived in the morning and we met some family that arrived later. There was no rehearsal, but it was a fairly complex proceeding, with a man directing each of us as to what to do.

I'd never seen a dead body before, either. Of course I've seen them on TV. And real ones on the internet. Still, seeing my grandfather that day was startling. His body was emaciated from malnutrition and twisted from rigor mortis. It wasn't a pretty corpse like in Western funerals. I didn't recognize him. I'm not sure my Aunt did either as she confirmed the body with the tag. He was covered up to his neck, and the head that stuck out had its eyes closed, but its mouth opened like the mouth in "The Scream" by Munch, and the skin was waxen. After identifying the corpse, they brought it back and dressed it in some traditional clothes and laid it in an open casket. The casket was placed behind the ceremonial altar, behind a wall of cloth.

My father asked me to prepare something to say. I didn't know my grandfather too well. Particularly since the Alzheimer's took hold and he lived in Taiwan, there really wasn't much of a chance. I scraped together what I had and realized it didn't amount to much, so I wrote a poem instead. Afterwards, we each placed the papers we wrote our last words on into the casket.

After all the words and all the chanting, the body was taken to be cremated, casket, papers, and all. The furnace door went up as the family stood outside the threshold of the crematorium, the coffin slid in, and the door went back down. Apparently the process of cremation, as performed there, takes an hour and a half, so in that time, we sat around and chit-chatted.

When the cremation was done, they called us to a table and brought us the remains, among which were quite a few large pieces of bone, including skull fragments. A large pair of chopsticks was used by each of us to place a piece of bone in the urn. The bone was very light; much lighter than I thought it'd be; and very fragile as I'd soon see. After we each took our turns, the person who brought us the remains scraped up a mound of bone and dumped it on top, smashing it down with very audible crunching. The skull fragments were saved for last and placed specifically on top. Then the lid was glued down and we made our way to the temple along with the urn for my grandmother's ashes.

I think the temple was built specifically for the military deceased. A custodian showed us to the specific cabinet that we were to place the urns. A ladder was used to open a double-sized cabinet, and the custodian asked if we wanted him to put the urns in, but we said we would. With my grandfather's urn, I climbed up the ladder, slowly, but the ladder was very sturdy. My father followed with his mother's urn. The cabinet was closed and we were told that if we had anything left to say, we should do it now. Of course, the temple would always be available, but just very far away.

Some inappropriate photoshops

Filenames have credits, and they were most likely swiped from fark.com and somethingawful.com.

Something Random

My sister was complaining about her mp3 player the other day. She didn't like the randomness of her random function, as it seems to play a few songs too many times and a few songs not at all. I have the same mp3 player, and I think I notice it, too. I think the problem is a couple of things: the size of its playlist buffer and the Gaussian normalization of the distribution. It seems like if you have a list of 100 things and one is picked randomly, each thing has a 1 in 100 chance of being picked. So why does such a simple concept result in an mp3 player that can't pick songs correctly?

Of course it'd be a simple thing for a player to keep track of the last few songs played and not to play them, but it may also depend on the operating system's method of keeping track of files as to how big the list can be. Assuming it can't keep track indefinitely, at some point the buffer is going to overflow and there's a chance a song you've already heard's going to be played. It may be song you've heard before a lot, too. In fact, perhaps the size of the buffer is fixed, so you don't want it to be too big anyway because maybe some person doesn't put that many songs on their mp3 player and it'd just screw up the random function anyway? Or maybe with that in mind, the size of the buffer is set as a certain fraction of the number of songs in the overall list?

Now, if you put it on the "play randomly, but only once" mode, this may be entirely different. If I were to implement it, it'd probably work by flagging each file as it's played and picking one that's not flagged, randomly, for each new song. In short, it wouldn't really depend on a playlist buffer at all, and so, isn't limited by that as far as randomness is concerned. There's a term for this in probability class, and even an equation. But I forget.

It's been a long time since I've taken any statistics classes, but one thing I vaguely remember is convolution. Actually, 'vaguely' isn't the right word. 'Poorly' is a better one. One interesting/pertinent thing about convolution, though, is that given any type of distribution (such as our evenly distributed 1 in 100 one above), if you convolve (the verb form of convolution) it with itself enough, it becomes a Guassian distribution: normalized. What this means is that there are going to be some on one end that are played few or no times, a lot toward the middle that are played an average number of times, and some toward the other end that are played a whole lot. A playlist buffer might counteract it initially, but eventually, it becomes useless as far as desired randomness is concerned. I believe this concept is "randomness with reseeding", which forms the basis for the normalization of any distribution convolved with itself enough.

Sometime before my "hard core" statistics class, I took a physics class on optics. The professor showed us this one demonstration where photons were separated using grates, each grate having an equal chance of being the one the photon went through. The professor said that in the original experiment, one photon, passing through the grate, would strike some photon-sensitive backing opposite the grate, making a mark to show where it landed. So with that in mind, what did we, as the classs, think the resulting backing would look like over time as more and more photons hit it?

As it turns out, there was a big clump in the center, and corresponding but smaller clumps to either side of the big one, and so on, further out, in a line. The professor said it was interesting, but didn't really elaborate on why it looked that way. It wasn't until I took my statistics class that I put two and two together. Well, that is to say, I'm pretty sure that's why it looked like that. Just like I'm pretty sure that that's why mp3 player "random repeat" functions can sometimes suck.

Roman Holiday, The Little Mermaid

It's kind of amazing that someone like Audrey Hepburn existed. I've only seen two of her films to-date: Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Nevertheless, from what little I know about her, she is endlessly captivating. Regardless...

Roman Holiday reminds me quite a bit of The Little Mermaid. Not the Disney one, but the original Hans Christian Andersen one. Actually, maybe not even exactly that one, but one definitely a lot more faithful to it. When I'd originally watched it somewhere around the age of eight, I think the idea of the mermaid disappearing into sea foam broke my heart. I'd go so far as to say that it's colored my worldview from that point on.

I'm sure The Little Mermaid was about a lot of things, but what sticks out in my mind is cultural immobility. She gives up her voice (her ability to communicate words and precise ideas) to gain legs (the appearance of a human). It seems pretty blunt in implying the prince and mermaid's love, though earnest, is only superficial. In the end (of the movie that I recall), even though her sisters provide her a means to return as a mermaid by killing the prince, she chooses to dissolve into sea foam instead.

In Roman Holiday, Joe and Ann fall quickly and earnestly in love, despite being from different worlds. In the end, though in love, they realize that what they had was beautiful, but ephemeral; true but out of reach.

If the movie were made today, Ann and Joe would probably end up getting married, living happily ever after. It's not that it couldn't happen. I recall a Japanese princess (Princess Akiko I believe) married a commoner not too long ago. And it's good in that it shows that love can overcome any obstacle; that hard work and perseverance can let you accomplish anything... You can create a multi-billion dollar business, too, I just don't think it's a realistic expectation.

Time

I suppose the traditional view of time is that it is a dimension, akin to the three that make up what we view as space (hyperdimensional physics aside). I think it's actually electrochemical/mechanical processes that dictate our perceptions of time. Well, I'm not the first person to think of this, but I did come to that conclusion on my own. I think it was someone along the lines of Aristotle that said time is a product of motion.

I think that about sums it up, but there are some interesting corollaries I draw from this. For one, I think that children learn faster because they are operating on a higher intake of data for any given moment. This may explain why a child may feel that time passes so slowly and why an adult may feel it is so fleeting.

Another corollary is that time travel is impossible. Well, it's impossible in the sense that someone could simply travel along some "time continuum" to turn back (or forward) the clock. Hypothetically, if someone knew the precise position of every infinitesimal speck of matter in the entire universe and its exact velocity (Heisenberg be damned) at the time that someone wanted to turn back the clock, AND also had the means to place those specks in those positions with those velocities (entropy be damned), then effectively, that someone will have performed time travel. Further hypothetically, it may simply be enough to know and be able to manipulate matter in that way on a more local scale, like only the entire planet. Although I suppose if you had that much power, maybe you could just screw around with people's heads...

Heroic Legend of Arslan

I'd been meaning to watch this title for some time, as a favorite song of mine (Ryoute Ippai) comes from it. Overall I liked it, but it ran from some complex political themes to some hard to believe contrivances. There were also a few stereotypical anime characterizations and relationships.

Regardless, what really stands out about this title, I read from a review by "Zereshk" on Netflix, "For those of you who dont know, Arslan's story is based directly (yet dicreetly) on Persian mythology... Too bad Hollywood has been ignoring this rich area of legend and literature due to politics, unlike the open minded Japanese, despite the fact that the Persian empire arguably was the largest superpower of antiquity, feared by the Greeks and Romans... The series tries to condense the entire mass of 3000 years of written Persian history (mostly from 500 BC to 600 AD), legends, and mythology into one (albeit loosely) comprehensive story. ... And besides, monarchy has been in continued existence in Persia (Iran) since the dawn of time. The struggle for the throne has never ended. "

I agree in that I find it astounding that so little of the region's mythology and stories have been popularized by Hollywood. I also find it strikingly appropriate that one of the story's central themes, demonization of the "Rusitanians" because of the war they wage in the name of their god, finds parallel in the context of modern day events in the same region.

The animation itself was rather poor, although the character designs were well done (albeit varying from episode to episode). I recall one beautiful scene in which a character named Farangese played her flute while the wind fluttered her hair. Unfortunately, there were numerous scenes that were comprised of a series of stills. Nevertheless, for all its faults in execution, I think they're reasonably outweighed by the weight of its subject matter.

A couple of things really stuck with me (from memory, so they're paraphrased). "Kings and empires may crumble away, but art is forever." And the second was a character's response (I forget which) regarding why a great strategist and a great general would follow Arslan, a 14 year old boy who, other than having noble blood, really has nothing to offer. The answer was an analogy in which a big boat with a good crew needs a large body of water to reach full speed. Of Arslan, the character said, "He is a lake now that one day may become an ocean."

Dragon Ball Z and Naruto really, really suck

Eh, who am I to get all uppity about anime? For years I watched anything and everything, and that included a few episodes of Dragon Ball Z. Looking back, there was a lot of crap. And by a lot, I mean metric buttloads. And by metric buttloads, I mean somewhere in the neighborhood of hundreds. I'd pick up a title and watch the first few minutes, or maybe even the entire episode, and decide to toss it or give it a shot. Naruto was one of the ones that lasted about 2 minutes. In that time, it was quite clear that it was typical of a well-defined genre, replete with stereotypes and cliches. Dragon Ball Z is the same genre. Actually, Dragonball Z might've defined the genre. Another example would be Yuyu Hakusho.

In Japan, these shows and comics target a demographic of a boy somewhere around the age of 14. In my view, it's probably younger. While it may be argued that Japan's school system is heads and shoulders above the American public school system, there's no denying that these shows are for children.

As an aside, I think animation, anime, comics (sequential art), and manga have great examples that show what the mediums are capable of. There are plenty of adults, myself included, who watch/read regularly and, the field is populated with adults of great and varied talent that regularly tell great and varied stories. They are works of consequence and significance. From other things I've written, at least that much should be evident.

Back to Dragon Ball Z and Naruto, anyone can see the animation quality is very poor. Even if it weren't, the writing is poor. It's ultra-simplistic and has no bearing on reality, literally or metaphorically. With Dragon Ball Z, I know all the characters are flat and uninteresting. From what I read about Naruto, the characters are just a bunch of stereotypes.

A friend of mine argued that it promotes training and struggle. True. But does that require thousands of pages and hundreds of episodes? Not hardly. A single one-on-one battle might take 3-5 episodes, and that's just for a minor villain. Dragon Ball Z has no plot. Well, no complicated plot. It all revolves around some villain of the episode/week/arc. Some new flashy attack is learned, and then Earth is saved.

I haven't watched enough Naruto to know what their "training" entails, but I'm sure "flashy attack" training is replaced by "ninja attack" training. I recall reading about a ninja training school in Japan. A real ninja came out to demonstrate some of his skills for a school promotion. That seems like it'd be an important time not to mess up. He ended up embarassing himself and giving up. In short, I'm guessing whatever "ninja attacks" they're learning, there is no real world equivalent, and it may as well be a "flashy attack".

Another show I gave up on was Slam Dunk. It's a show about high school basketball. A single game might take about 4 episodes. One thing that separates Slam Dunk from Dragon Ball Z, though, is that I actually think I learned a good bit about basketball from watching it.

I find it absolutely appalling that a grown person could watch this dreck. It's even more amazing that they try to defend it as having any worth. Knowing it's fluff and admitting as much at least has some acceptance of reality. These shows just tend to spawn apologists. My friend is 23. Another friend is 27 (I think) who also loves the show.

A friend I had when interning loved Dragon Ball Z. He'd tape it every day and wouldn't miss an episode. I pointed out how crappy the animation was, how poorly the fights were choreographed, and how thoughtless the storylines were. The next day he came in and said he couldn't watch anymore. That seems like a rational response.

I guess what this is really about is that it's okay to like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto (and its ilk) when you're a child because you're expected to like childish things. I guess I won't go so far as to say that when you grow up you should cast it aside, but what really bugs me is people who defend it when it's quite obviously crap and they should know better. They are, with a straight face, saying that shows like Dragon Ball Z are great works of art that carry tremendous meaning. It blows my mind.

Elation

I can't remember if I said previously, but all the fundamentalists getting up in arms about evolution and "intelligent design" made me more than a little wary of all Christians... I had a rather lengthy discussion about it with a friend of mine (who happened to be very religious and pro-evolution). Clearly it wasn't all Christians... Up until shortly after that discussion, I'm not sure I really had a good grasp of Christian fundamentalism. Nevertheless, it warms my heart to see the non-fundamentalists distancing themselves from such unswerving zealotry.

Sky High

Well, I watched Sky High. It was fun, but I don't think it really added anything to the genre. Any of them, actually: teen comedy-drama, family movie, superhero. So in the end, I guess I'm still looking forward to the Invincible movie, if it ever comes out.

I just finished the fifth volume of the trade paperbacks (of Invincible). It feels like it's settled somewhat, into something a little more typical. Or maybe it's just that I've gotten over the initial euphoria of the concept and writing.

Alito

I was driving home and was able to catch some of the confirmation hearings for Alito. It was fortunate, too, because it had to do with religious freedom. One of the questions Alito was asked was, "Is freedom of religion also freedom to not believe?" and he responded with something like "Absolutely", which is very reassuring to me. He also said that he believes it's wrong to impose his own moral and religious views on others, although of course, he can't not, absolutely.

There was a case he gave a dissenting opinion for where a public school's students voted for a prayer prior to some event like graduation or a football game (i think it was graduation). His dissent was that the government may not give religious speech, but it also cannot impede religious speech. He treated the voting majority of the school (which of course voted for prayer) as individuals whose speech would be impeded if prohibited by the government. His reasoning was sound, although I disagree with it.

He also said, of the establishment clause, something along the lines of "It would be nice if decisions based on the clause did not turn on so fine a point."

All in all, I think he sounds like a good candidate and well-learned person, even if I don't agree with him.

The Mastermind of Mars

I started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars series a while back, and now I've gotten to the sixth book in the series, "The Mastermind of Mars". Up until now, I can't say I've been terribly impressed with the substance of the books. Wonderfully creative, sure, but I regarded them as pure escapism.

This one in particular started out rather poorly, not only not starring John Carter (it'd be a Tarzan book without Tarzan, although not the first time Burroughs has done it thus far), but not even a person related to him or introduced in a previous story. But from there it goes on to what I'm writing about, which is science, religion, and extremism.

Our protagonist who comes to be named Vad Varo arrives on Mars and comes into the care of one Ras Thavas, master of the science of life and physiology. But Ras Thavas practices and studies his science in a very self-serving manner, purely for the intellect and the advancement of his science. Coldly, Ras Thavas says, "Sentiment is indeed a bar to all progress." Truly, in the pursuit of knowledge, he would sacrifice all save himself.

On the other hand, we have the Phundalians who blindly worship Tur, the scripture of the Turgan, and the high priestess Xaxa. From the book:

"He said that the Phundahlians maintained that Tur still created every living thing with his own hands. They denied vigorously that man possessed the power to reproduce his kind and taught their young that all such belief was vile; and always they hid every evidence of natural procreation, insisting to the death that even those things which they witnessed with their own eyes and experienced with their own bodies in the bringing forth of their young never transpired.

Turgan taught them that Barsoom is flat and they shut their minds to every proof to the contrary. They would not leave Phundahl far for fear of failing off the edge of the world; they would not permit the development of aeronautics because should one of their ships circumnavigate Barsoom it would be a wicked sacrilege in the eyes of Tur who made Barsoom flat.

They would not permit the use of telescopes, for Tur taught them that there was no other world than Barsoom and to look at another would be heresy; nor would they permit the teaching in their schools of any history of Barsoom that antedated the creation of Barsoom by Tur, though Barsoom has a well authenticated written history that reaches back more than one hundred thousand years; nor would they permit any geography of Barsoom except that which appears in Turgan, nor any scientific researches along biological lines. Turgan is their only text book--if it is not in Turgan it is a wicked lie.

Much of all this and a great deal more I gathered from one source or another during my brief stay in Phundahl, whose people are, I believe, the least advanced in civilization of any of the red nations upon Barsoom. Giving, as they do, all their best thought to religious matters, they have become ignorant, bigoted and narrow, going as far to one extreme as the Toonolians do to the other."

As you can see, it's quite blunt in its analogy to Christian Fundamentalism. It's probably no coincidence that "Phundalians", phonetically, bears resemblance to "fundamentalism".

As the book draws to a close, Ras Thavas is ordered under Vad Varo's suggestion to be restored to his laboratory "Only on condition that he devote his great skill to the amelioration of human suffering". Xaxa is deposed and dead, replaced by one of Vad Varo's friends, and the puppet statue of Tur is operated by Vad Varo's friends as well.

So what is Burroughs saying? Vad Varo and company appear to be people of sound judgement, so leaving the country and followers under their rule doesn't sound like a bad idea. A well-run monarchy is supposedly the best form of government. Clearly he says that science should be conducted with human interests at heart.

On religion, though, he appears to be saying that there is no harm as long as the right persons are in charge. Throughout the series, religion (of course not Christianity directly) is treated largely as superstition and flimflammery; a tool of those in power to keep people in control. It's not just in this book, but "The Chessmen of Mars", and the other books as well, to a lesser degree.

Diagonal parking

What's so hard to get? Every now and then I'll see some idiot bearing down on me, going the wrong way down a one way parking lot alley; one way because the parking lot wisely chose to use diagonal parking spaces. So why is it so hard to understand? Diagonal parking spaces are easier to pull into and out of. Front first. And then there are the people who park rear first into a diagonal parking space. Surely they've missed out on this great parking idea as well.

Maybe I should keep some flyers in my car to enlighten people of their folly.

It reminds of this woman who came up to me in a store where I was a computer salesman. "I can never use mice, they're so hard to use," she said. As it turns out, she was holding it upside down with the cord facing out the back.

Happy New Year!

Well, another year, another step closer to the grave. This particular picture I like a lot because it happens to make fun of the biggest douche in the universe. It was the work of a DrToast of the Fark forums.