At times the writing itself makes me feel less bad about my own, but it reads quickly enough and it’s quite decent if you don’t expect too much from it. Admittedly, the action is largely an excuse to get the reader to the final chapter, but at least it makes a point of the need to use what nearly everyone else would consider excessive force if you want to get any good things done, which is a view that needs to be promoted far more.
In truth, I wouldn’t say it was a necessary part of the series, but it works well enough as one, offering a personal closure for the characters. The final chapter mentioned above deals with most of that, and I’ll say that what’s written there is pretty much the whole point of the book. It certainly is what made me stop considering giving it a lower rating, as that thought had crossed my mind a few times while reading.
Rating: 3/5
Saw a recent comparison posted by a militant Atheist between Santa Claus and God, trying to show that the two are nearly identical and doubling that with a comment stating that he makes no distinction between imaginary friends when I mentioned deities other than the Christian God listed in the chart. However, something else I mentioned and which he didn’t appear to have a witty comeback for was that, regardless of whether their beliefs make any sort of sense or not, the adults who try to pass on a certain religion to children usually believe what they’re saying, but those who propagate the Santa myth do so while being fully aware that they are lying.
The question is, why is this behavior not only acceptable in our society, but actually encouraged? Why is something that’s such a major cultural aspect of childhood in a large part of the world based on an obvious lie? I mean, I do keep saying that if most people would stop believing in any sort of magic, in anything greater than themselves, in anything beyond this mortal life and this physical plane of existence, the world would be very sad and hopeless, far more so than it is now, but shouldn’t this magic at least be possible? Shouldn’t we only stick to what’s not undeniably proven false, not to mention to what’s not clearly known as being false by just about everyone who ever claims it’s true?
For a while, this was supposed to be a much bigger post, dealing with what the above paragraph implies on a wider scale, so another rant about fair and unfair belief systems, including that stating that there’s nothing to believe in, disempowering religions, conspiracy theories, our search for meaning and the probable harsh reality of it all, as well as determining right and wrong with and without the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. However, it quickly became obvious that I won’t be able to write that, so I’ll stick to the Santa conspiracy for now.
Of course, this is hardly the only big lie fed to children, but it does seem to be by far the most widespread and both a symptom and a key ingredient of why adults behave as they do and this society they create is as rotten as it is. On top of appearing to be this worldwide conspiracy aimed at making an entire category of people believe a clear lie and then most probably suffer significant disappointment when they’ll finally learn the truth, it is also, alongside a whole slew of other lies used by parents and other authority figures, a means of persuading children to behave in certain ways through yet another reward and punishment system. I mean, why attempt to encourage creativity and independence while instilling a sense of personal responsibility and ethics based on a developed ability to discern right from wrong when you can just lie left and right in an attempt to get children to just obey whatever you say should be right and wrong, right?
My phone is now ten years old, which I thought was something worth mentioning, considering how quickly things break down these days. Actually, I should say I’m sure it has been in use for ten years, but there is a chance that it was actually bought slightly earlier. Don’t know for sure because I know Andra’s mom bought it for her but can’t remember, and in fact not entirely sure I’ve been told, if she went to pick one herself or it was received as a gift, the latter obviously indicating an earlier purchase. Either way, a couple of years later, when she got a new one, she passed this on to me and I’ve been holding on to it ever since.
Sure, the battery was having issues even back then, when I got it, and it hasn’t been good for much if you actually want to use it for phone calls for the past several years, but I don’t care for calls anyway, so this isn’t an issue. I imagine it could have been replaced at some point, at least before too many years had passed, since it’s certainly removable, but never cared and it still generally holds just fine for about a week if it’s basically just used as a clock. If needed for actual communication, as I said, phone calls basically only work if it’s plugged in, because otherwise it “forgets” it’s charged after as little as a few seconds, though it appears to recover if the call ends before it turns off on its own. However, there are no problems with SMSs, so I don’t mind.
There had been some issues with charging, which would probably be proven to still exist if it’d be allowed to drain completely, but I’ve been reacting very quickly to the battery empty warning for a long time now, hardly ever letting it turn off on its own, and it works fine then. Even the intermittent issues that had been rather frequent some years ago seem to have largely vanished lately, though what was holding the battery more firmly in place broke off long ago, so it may shift out of place and cause the phone to turn off if shaken a little, which may happen if I run or jump with it in my pocket, or in some rare cases even while simply walking.
The color has largely peeled off it and there’s even some rust inside, on a couple of small areas, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting anything so far, so I have no plans to change it. As long as it’ll still be at least somewhat functional, I’m keeping this, of course mainly because it’s from her, but also because I’d have no idea what to replace it with. Doesn’t seem likely that something at least as reliable could still be found today, much less one that’d also be very affordable, no bigger than this one and, of course, not black. That last condition alone tends to rule out the tremendous majority of the electronics released over the past several years.
Even though, as a recent BBC Future article quite nicely put it, there are “a lot of people who don’t just think the world revolves around them, they think it stops around them too”, seeing as one in seven worldwide and one in four in the United States believe that the world will end during their lifetime, announced apocalypses have this amusing tendency of coming and going all the time. Somewhat curiously, though hardly unexpectedly, while the particularly foolish believers are sometimes left stunned and directionless, the individuals and groups that make such predictions usually move on easily enough, often with a fair bit more in their pockets and accounts than they had before.
I do have to wonder how come there are still so many gullible believers in such stories. A newspaper from here was quoting a historian who, referring to a previous non-event of this same type, stated that he found historical records of no less than 476 other announced ends of the world, which number definitely sounds not only plausible but also most probably far lower than the real figure, seeing as records of many other similar announcements were most probably not preserved. In addition, if it may be argued that people rarely learn from history and inconvenient memories are easily ignored, there have been several such failed predictions even very recently, and yet many are still undeterred.
I’m not even referring to the members of this or that more or less obscure cult, as those may be expected to stand by their beliefs for reasons that are probably beyond the scope of this post, but to the many who keep thinking that this time it may be different, that the next one may actually be true, or that even if it won’t be quite the end then something major, and usually catastrophic, is far more likely to happen on a date that’s announced as the end of the world. I’m talking of the people who eat up the nonsense about certain spots being safe regardless of what may happen with the world as a whole, or about human DNA changing, as that would in fact represent an end of humanity as it is now, or about the entire planet being left without electricity by either a planetary alignment known to be a lie and which couldn’t have any effect even if it wasn’t, or cataclysmic solar flares supposedly known far ahead of time to happen on very specific dates. I’m talking about those who find themselves stockpiling some supplies each time, just in case, or checking for zombies before leaving home on a day announced as the end, or simply being unusually anxious at such a time, despite noticing no obvious signs of impending doom.
Why is there any weight whatsoever, even at a subconscious level, being placed on such prophecies? Why does NASA frequently have to put up pages to debunk myths which shouldn’t get any reaction out of anyone other than, at most, some mild amusement? Shouldn’t the fact that we’re well into the information age prevent these things from happening? Shouldn’t most people make use of the wealth of information that’s so readily available these days in order to check facts before even entertaining such absurd notions? In fact, shouldn’t anyone with an IQ above, say, 80 know how absurd they are even without checking anything? I mean, wasn’t the rule that anything should be believable given sufficient evidence, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Therefore, shouldn’t those who make such extraordinary claims be required to produce equally extraordinary evidence before anyone as much as glances in their general direction?
Of course, based on the above, I shouldn’t be writing this now either, and I definitely wouldn’t be if I had something else that I’d really want to write about at the moment. After all, I have largely ignored the issue so far, only poking a little fun or, in a couple of situations, openly laughing at those who fell for it, so there was little reason to make a point of the world yet again failing to end according to somebody’s schedule after the day in question passed. However, I did need a topic and you can’t say that this doesn’t provide a very good opportunity to say a few things that unfortunately seem to still need to be said… Not that there’s much of a chance of the gullible ones learning something now when they obviously haven’t before, but this was indeed one of the most notable such announced apocalypses, with rumors about it abounding for a long time, so there may be at least a few who’ll learn to stop falling for such hoaxes in the future as a result.
Now I’m not one to trust nothing but proven science, nor do I advocate such a mindset. I believe that a world that would stop believing in anything magical, mystical, spiritual or otherwise beyond this material plane of existence would be a very sad and hopeless place, far more so than it is now. However, science relies on evidence while belief does not, so belief has its place in the areas that science didn’t yet thoroughly analyze and undeniably prove one way or the other. There are still many such areas, and many of them will continue to exist for a long time, some beliefs being unlikely to ever be undeniably proven wrong. However, when a belief clashes with perfectly clear scientific evidence, anyone learning of both sides should immediately know that the belief can’t be right and even those who had until then been convinced that it was should accept this and renounce their obviously mistaken belief.
It’s a matter of scientific literacy and of applying such a mindset in all areas of life. If, and only if, something is undeniably proven to be either true or false, this conclusion should be accepted by all. Otherwise, of course, anything not proven false may be true and anything not proven true may be false, so each person may pick a side and see where it leads them, but even such hypotheses should be based on something, follow a certain procedure and, in the end, make sense. Such apocalyptic prophecies do not. They’re built on questionable foundations and have a structure that couldn’t bear even a fraction of their weight, crumbling at the slightest hint of scrutiny, so what does the fact that they still find such fertile ground say about humanity?
That the winter solstice saddens me because I don’t want days to get longer isn’t anything I haven’t said before, for example in the similar post I wrote in 2009, which references what I had written a year before as well. It’s also a part of a longer post I wrote back in 2007, which would also explain more about where this is coming from and why does this time of year make me feel like this, so I see no point in repeating any of that. At least we seem to have some snow again, which is a good thing, but that’s about it.
Otherwise, writing’s going poorly, but that’s no news. What may be news, however, is that I actually seem to be on my way to reaching the goal I had set for myself regarding submissions on MobyGames this year, even though I was only at some 75% of it some two weeks ago. Now I’m just where I wanted to be at this moment, opening up the option of slowing down to a more reasonable pace if I find myself needing to, but also that of securing a decent buffer if I’m able to maintain the current pace. Obviously, I’ll try to go for the latter, because a buffer will be needed if I’m to have so many of them actually approved directly, in part because doing so many means I’m sure I made at least a few mistakes and in part because sites change things around or vanish completely at times, so I always have a few that are rejected through no fault of my own, because it can’t readily be verified that they were true at the time of submission anymore. The oldest ranks I have waiting in queue have been there since the end of August, after all, so a lot may happen by the time somebody’ll get around to what I’ve been adding this month.
What’s been making everything even harder than usual is that some neighbors just moved in recently and started modifying their apartment, so there’s a huge amount of noise just about every day, starting in the morning. That means that for the past couple of weeks, or perhaps even more than that, I keep waking up with my heart racing, after usually something between three and five hours of sleep. Granted, at least they start later than others, only a few times around 9 AM, usually at 10 AM or later, when during the warmer months it’s not exactly unusual to have somebody start drilling and hammering at or even before 8 AM, but the fact that they’re right below me and use such powerful tools makes it an awful problem, since everything carries so well and sometimes I’m pulled right out of a dream and think everything’s collapsing around me for a moment.
That’d be about it I guess. I’ll try to take some comfort in the darkness and the snowfall while I still can, while seeing how much, if anything, I can get done. After that, 2013 will come and we’ll see what it brings. Most probably, it’ll be more of the same, only worse, seeing as that has generally been the rule over the past seven years, but there is always some faint hope, even if a fake one.
