The Unbearable Awesomeness Of Being

Monday, September 27, 2004

More Political Post

The 50-dollars-per-barrel thing just lit a lamp in my brain, so I'm spreading it around like a big rainbow of happiness.

Imagine you were an oil company. Imagine how many different kinds of money you could get if the oil price rose. You could sell Alaska oil for more, you could sell it for slightly less than Middle East one and still get lots of profit, you could buy Middle East oil and sell it with a big fat percentage.

And all that'd be required for it to rise is that a little tussle break out in the Middle East. It's not like it'd be hard, you'd just need, say, a nutjob whose father had a big tussle with a certain dictator that's still around. He even treats his people sort of unwell, so it'd be seen as humanitarian.

I'm not saying the American people were just pawns in the middle of this string pulling. I'm just saying that, well, you can move two squares in your first move.

Political Post

So, apparently, even though Bush's government has the second lowest employment rate in all history of US presidency, he sent thousands of US soldiers in a totally purposeless war (Don't come saying 'Saddam had to be deposed'. The US are not the world's mom and it's not their position to come running in solving every problem by judicial application of bombs. The WMD and terrorism links are totally unproven as well.) Americans still consider him to be a good ruler and he's still ahead in the polls.

My suggestion to the Democratic party: send him a cute intern. I don't know what type of women Texans like, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Zara guarantees the results.

A New Speak

An old idea I had came back to my mind. Instead of working on botchy translation schemes for webpages, we could build them in a made-up language that'd be easier to translate -to- normal human languages. Something like this:

is(I,a(banana))

or, extended:

is(subject=I,object=a(banana))

which would translate to, obviously,

I am a banana.

Or in German,

Ich bin ein Banane.

Or Portuguese!

Eu sou uma banana.

Less Germanic languages would probably require some research, but I think it could be done.

Right now the language that's more likely to work like this is Lojban, and Lojban has too much effort on making it speakable. We don't want speakable, we want typeable.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

On Transportation

Having lost the car temporarily, I consider transportation alternatives. This being a wonderful world of freedom of choice, you can choose any vehicle you want, provided it's either a car or a motorcycle. Personally, I think a lot of people would be better off with a motorcycle - look around the street when driving and check just how many cars have more than one person in them. (May vary according to time and location.) But motorcycles are, of course, associated with breaking bones and various other gruesome incidents, not at all related to the fact car drivers and motorcycle drivers do not respect each other at all.

So, the alternatives are a four-seat gas-guzzling monster (All cars are gas guzzling monsters. Take a moment and consider how much you spent on gas last month.) or a two-wheel frame designed to rub your body against hard surfaces. (And don't even think of getting a Vespa or similar less road-racing bike. We don't want you to look STUPID now, do we? What will the other drivers THINK?)

Maybe I'll buy a helicopter.


Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Cross Referencing under "Notions That Ocurred To Others", "Web Comics"

I've been reading Something Positive and thinking. (at the same time.) The plot seems to embody a common concept that's even more common within the internet:

"It's not my fault I'm unhappy. It's everyone else's. Because everyone is a moron. Damn those morons."

And everyone agrees because, hey, everyone thinks everyone is a moron but them. It's an easy concept to love. We all want to be in the place of the smart quick-reply fellow who's the only one aware that everyone around him is stupid.

This is obviously fallacious. The truth is, you're all morons. I'm the only smart person around. Sorry, thanks for playing, better luck next time.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Blog Start

This blog will be used to relate various activities or whatever I feel like it. If you want the old Zara Abroad blog, it has been shunted to http://zarabroad.blogspot.com.