A Sophist And His Monologue

Okay, so Royal Caribbean International of Miami bought itself a really big boat, measuring in size around one eighteenth of late Marlon Brando's ego. It's a very, very impressive piece of machinery, called the Oasis of the Seas for some reason, and of course it got finished just in time for recession.

The really cool bit is this: They're sort of excited about whether they can get it through the Great Belt Strait and into the Atlantic without chipping something off. There's a very large bridge on the Great Belt, quite obviously, and they need to slide their luxury Super Star Destroyer under it. Royal Caribbean Intl. spent something like $2,5 million on retractable smokestacks so they wouldn't have to worry about it too much, but it's still a little touch-and-go, since the margin is, quite frankly, the smallest possible.

Beebs reports the British Forum of Private Business is concerned that cutting back on Christmas parties might "harm the economy". Given that the point is the Forum wants businesses to avoid doing so, what you have here is possibly the most hilariously bad sales pitch ever since people started selling cars on the sheer power of patriotism. And besides, it's too early for Christmas. I mean, people haven't even gotten over this debate yet:

Remember when I complained that the English language is entirely dedicated to concealing where things are? It turns out it's also dedicated to concealing how things work.

For instance, people who don't have rights or advantages reserved for other people are "underprivileged". They just don't have the special and exclusive prerogatives of privileged people. But since "privilege" implies exactly such exclusivity, we have a problem. If everyone were equally privileged, nobody would technically be privileged at all. It will take a discerning observer some time to figure out that people who use the word are not, in fact, advocating the creation of a set of even less privileged people to pad out some privileges for the current set of underprivileged people.

For whatever bizarre reason things burn in various spatial directions, rather than just burning, like any self-respecting thing on fire should. When an arsonist sets out to burn down something, he needs to take note of the fact that it may, in fact, ruin his plans and burn up instead. In a similiar fashion, filling up a bottle is the same thing as filling it out, which makes absolutely no intuitive sense at all, because you do it by putting things in.

Conclusions are drawn, but they're conspiciously not drawn out of anything, so this must be the sort of drawing you do with pencils. This seems perfectly logical until you realise that a drawn-out meeting is not actually drawn out of anything either, it's just too bloody long. This may stress you out. It may also distress you, but not in a relation to any container. It may aggravate you, and it may aggravate the situation. Aggravated people are, according to the linguistic whim of the day, annoyed people. But if something aggravates a situation, it makes the situation worse, not more pissed off.

Turns, like power, are apparently taken, but when you take turns, you may end up going by turns, which itself may or may not involve passing turns, which to a strictly logical thinker, not to mention a good driver, would all seem a little self-defeating.

To my great disappointment, womanisers don't have the miraculous power to physically turn things into women.

Rules to follow if you are ever stuck in a Japanese animation and have to fight somebody:

1. Do change into a large, generic growling monster. It has never, ever helped anybody win a fight.

2. Do not cackle, boast or sort of generally wheeze in an annoying but thriumphant manner during a fight. This will immediately break your cool, which means you will lose the fight.

3. If you do change into a large, generic growling monster, it's normally considered de rigueur to be polite about it, even in the middle of combat. If the heroes decide to have a lengthy tactical conversation or a forlorn flashback about their long-dead mentor, you are apparently obliged by custom to give them time to do so. Don't do it. Instead, kill them while they're reminiscing, then wear their skulls as a hat.

4. Cosmic energies almost universally manifest as bizarre bright lights, and what they mostly do is blow things up. Do not attempt any master plan which will involve you absorbing said cosmic energies, on account of the fact that they mostly blow things up. I mean, why would you even think that's a good idea?

5. If the enemy fields a teenager of any sort against you, you run. No questions. Just run. If you have decided to change into a generic, growling monster, and find yourself against the Organisation which protects The City from your overall monster type, you should run twice as fast and possibly consider skipping town.

6. While there is a long and compelling tradition of announcing yourself before a battle, you should not, in fact, do so. If you're going to kill the heroes, it doesn't matter if they know they were defeated by somebody with such and such hilariously unrealistic name, because they'll be dead. Instead, ambush them with a sniper rifle, then wear their skulls a a hat.

7. Avoid battle with any man who looks like a woman. If you are a man who looks like a woman, again, note rule number one.

8. Swords are invincible.

Have you heard the Good News?

Via charlycrash: British scientists discover faster, more efficient way to share porn, 4chan memes.

Middle American spider species embraces alternative lifestyle; foreswears meat, cigarettes and alcohol.

Well, not quite, but still very cool.

If it doesn't make sense, it's not your fault.

( Sorcerous Scabbards of the Infinite Night, Part XI )

Breaking culture news!

President Barack Obama has received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for the grand achievement of being someone other than Mr George W. Bush. A panel of high-ranking judges, gathering in Oslo, has congratulated President Obama for his impressive non-Bushness. "Given his scant time in office, Mr Obama's diplomatic victories are largely yet to come, and we appreciate that. But our basic criterion is and always was the recipient's extremely stellar credentials in the field of not being Mr Bush. In that he has performed admirably," a representative of the Committee told Reuters. "He has demonstrably not been Mr Bush for any of the eight months he has been in office. We laud that. That is human heroism."

It is indeed speculated that Mr Obama has never, in his 48 years, been George W. Bush in any way, making him an exceptionally ideal candidate for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. For instance, it is known that Barack Obama was born on Hawa'ii, whereas Mr Bush was born in Connecticut. "Every detail of their lives is subtly different, clearly marking Mr Obama as a different person from George W. Bush, so the Committee's decision, while exceptional, is clearly well-founded. They did give one to Mikhail Gorbachev, and it was widely speculated that was for not being Leonid Brezhnev," a committee official said, "but disappointingly enough, it turns out that was something to do with missiles or some such thing."

Mr Barack Obama has not yet commented on the Prize or the exact state of his non-Bushness. Critics, however, have already attacked the Committee's selection criterion, suggesting the decision may prove out controversial. "How the hell do we know this guy isn't George W. Bush?" asked Carneades of Cyrene (c. 214 – 129 BC), a philosopher of the Sceptic school. Consensus view, however, currently holds that Mr Obama and Mr Bush are indeed manifestly separate people, upholding Mr Obama's claim to the award.

Via charlycrash: Pocket-sized nuclear fun. Can anyone seriously look at it and not think it's the most adorable thing since the cinematograph?

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of heavily armed 18,000 tonne French military tanker. Wait, that isn't how the words go.

The national archive hoards stuff like a coked-up dragon sitting on a Fabergé egg. Either it's the lack of shelf space, or it's good old-fashioned paranoia, but gods, people. Get a grip. Not every little thing needs to be locked up in storage and guarded by a pack of nuclear-powered man-eating cyborg pumas.

But I've also just realised how great QI is. Yay!

I've ran across some flag-related coolness recently, so I thought I'd share.

This is a logo the Norwegian Society of St. Louis used for an event called Nordic Fest back in what I think would have to be 2008. It's got one nice detail on it.




The flag wedged between the Icelandic and Swedish flags is the flag of Shetland. These isles were once part of Norway, and even though they have been Scottish for ages, and while Shetland Norn has been dead and gone as a spoken language since the 18th century, there are still certain traces of that whole history around. So it's a little shout-out to Scotland, which is kinda cool.

Then there's this Finnish stamp that I ran into online, and just so you know, this is possibly most heart-warming thing I've come across digging into British-Finnish commercial ties ever:




The text translates to "Let us buy from those who buy from us!" in Finnish and Swedish. The stamp's got to be from the 20th century, but the thing is, I've no clue when exactly it was issued, and I've got absolutely no idea what the hell its deeper function is. So there it sits, basking in its mystery.

And since I'm sort of vaguely on the topic, I've got so share an oldie-but-goldie specimen, just in case you haven't ever seen it. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I've always found the 1707 flag of the British East India Company really quite inspirational for some reason:




So yeah. Flag fun for all.

Usama ibn Munqidh reminisces:

One of the most spectacular spear-thrusts that I witnessed was inflicted by a horseman from the Franks (may God confound them) upon a horseman from our troops, called Sabah ibn Qunayb, from the Kilab tribe. It cut through three rib bones on his left side, and then through three on his right. Finally, the sharp edge of the spear-head struck his elbow-joint, splitting it in two, just like a butcher does with a joint of meat. He died instantly.

Well yeah, that 1d6+1 can be such a bother if you haven't leveled up.

It's the five words meme again, this time via bwinter. You all know how this works. Post a comment with "Words!" in it, and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. The words I got were really quite good, so this got long -- the "tl;dr" kind of long -- and to avoid exasperating y'all, I've chopped it up into five separate bits. Mix and match, combine and conquer.

( Marx )

( Humanism )

( Nietzsche )

( Heresy )

( Kittens! )

That's all for now, folks.

Poll #1463283 Your favourite homicidal AI?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

P-p-p-pick one.

I remember having an excuse for this, but I forgot what it was.

I don't know who this person is, but I want a medal given to them post-haste.

Things I learned from the 2001 Travolta movie Swordfish.

1. Renegade government agents dress like pimps and frequent clubs where everyone adores them to the point of following all their cruel commands. Corollary to this behaviour, they throw around oodles of cash to friends and strangers alike. All this is integral to the succesful operation of their intricate, shadowy conspiracy. It works: Nobody knows who they are.

2. Renegade government agents who dress like pimps and throw around oodles of cash may nonetheless run the risk of blowing their cover, thereby clueing the police in on the intricate, shadowy conspiracy. If this happens, the most discreet course of action is to send an army of suit-wearing mooks with automatic weapons to take them down in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. Yeah.

3. The United States Department of Defence is desperately in love with funky 72-point fonts.

4. Superhacker Hugh Jackman is capable of penetrating into any computer, including afore-mentioned DoD computers, by vigorously mashing his keyboard in a random and haphazard manner.

5. The most magnificent super-duper computer in the world needs eight separate screens to make best use of its stunning ability to "connect to eight separate databases at once." It also comes with software to create malware with, the use of which largely resembles a fast-paced game of what'd pop out if Counter-Strike and Tetris had an illegitimate offspring and it ran under the Matrix.

6. Renegade government agents who rob banks using said malware (and a hefty dose of physical violence) rely on intricate diversions to break through the inevitable police siege of their position. In this they are hindered by the fact that the police officers who run hostage situations have never seen Die Hard, a much better action film, and therefore violently dismiss anyone who actually gets the bad guy on the phone.

7. Said intricate diversions rely exclusively on the police being drooling, crackbrained imbeciles who, apparently, cannot for the life of them guard a single stairwell despite having overwhelming numbers and explicit orders to do so.

Bee puke! I demand fresh bee-puke for my toast!

That is all.