Cav's Place

Such series tend to start out rather slow, and that’s what this does too, but that doesn’t make you lose interest or focus. It paints the characters and develops the story rather well, and I keep finding myself wishing to just do without all the other annoying humans and focus on the dragons, and perhaps some of the better captains.

Rating: 4/5

With the first science data downlink from the Kepler Mission supposed to be happening just these days, I thought I’d take a minute to put all the apparently uninteresting things we know about exoplanets into perspective.

According to The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, we are currently aware of 353 exoplanets and most of them are lonely giants outside their stars’ habitable zones. Close to 90% of the discovered planet systems contain a single planet and about two thirds of the rest contain only two. We currently know of only two systems (Gliese 581 and Mu Arae) containing four planets and only one (55 Cancri) containing five.
If we compare that to the eight planets and several other recognized dwarf planets from our own solar system, our current knowledge paints a rather boring picture of the galaxy through numbers alone. And if you also add the other things we know about exoplanets, such as size, likely composition and distance from their host star, things look even worse.

But the problem isn’t what’s out there, but what we can see. I wondered if anybody tried to figure out how much would an observer located on a habitable planet from one of these boring systems we have discovered and using our current technology be able to make out from our own solar system and I found exactly what I thought I would: “The only object in the Solar System available for detection by a team of planet hunters at the distance of the 55 Cancri system (using early 21st century technology) would be Jupiter, placidly circling our Sun at 5.2 AU.”
Granted that 55 Cancri is by far one of the least boring systems we have discovered so far, but bear with me. What matters is the distance, and that’s of only about 13 parsecs. If we could only detect Jupiter from 55 Cancri but detected five of its planets from here, what else could be there? How many Earths could be around all those lonely gas giants we have discovered? In fact, how many of anything could be anywhere, seeing as, even with our primitive technology, we could detect a planet roughly 6600 parsecs away, close to the center of the galaxy?

No matter what you think about what we already see, consider what we can’t (yet) see…

The elections for the European Parliament made me think once again of a better political system within the existing general structures, perhaps a necessary step towards a system which could actually be good. I’ve had this idea for quite a long time now but, as is the case with a lot of other things, never wrote about it.
Unlike most of my others, this idea won’t exactly be revolutionary and certainly won’t be drastic. The current political system simply isn’t working, so it must be replaced with one that does; finding something which actually works well could be left for later, as the next step. Politics are also less important than environmentalism and the other specific issues I care about, because if we were to take that “whatever works” approach then things would happen with or without help from the authorities, meaning that we could leave finding a solution to the world’s political problems until after we’ll solve those which really can’t wait. These two arguments make it desirable to attempt to immediately change the political system in a way which would make it somewhat better while at the same time not requiring a complete overhaul or the use of force.

I’ll start from the top and say that I’d like to see a system with clearly defined layers, where each layer has greater power of decision than those below it but can also control those above it. The power of decision applies to the things that involve the country in question, while the control involves keeping a close eye on those with more power, not allowing them to use their authority for personal gain.
I believe that a country’s president must certainly be its ruler, not just a figurehead as is the case of parliamentary republics. The president should have the final word in any decision that falls under the responsibility of that country’s central governing body, but also the right to delegate certain responsibilities to members of the government, when he or she feels unable to make that decision properly, whether from lack of the necessary skills, information or time. If the president chooses to make use of this right but the government is unable to agree on a decision, the issue will be once again brought before the president, who will be asked to settle the argument by either siding with one of the points of view expressed by members of the government or delegating the responsibility for that particular decision to the parliament or even the people.
After the president comes the government, with all its departments. Their primary duty should be to aid the president by creating reports and legislative projects, offering suggestions, summarizing the debates which have taken place in the parliament and making the decisions the president asks them to make in his or her place. On top of that, they should always listen carefully to the parliament’s suggestions in order to keep in close contact with the needs and desires of the people. They should also have the right, but not the obligation, to control the president as described above.
Next comes the parliament, which could have one or two chambers. One chamber is all that’s needed for smaller and more centralized countries, while two chambers are very useful for larger and more decentralized countries. In case two chambers will be used, one should be made up of representatives of the various regions, counties, major cities or other authorities which are placed directly below the central governing body. The other chamber, or the only chamber in case only one will be needed, should be made up of representatives of all the existing points of view and interest groups in that country, represented more or less equally, and not of a proportional number of members of each party which obtained at least a certain percentage of the votes at the last elections. That way a tyranny of the majority will be avoided, allowing all points of view to be presented and requiring serious discussion and negotiation. The parliament’s primary role should be to maintain the connection between the people and the government, creating reports and legislative projects for the government according to the needs and desires of the people and also explaining the government’s actions and the legislative process to the people in terms which can be understood by anyone who’s at least somewhat interested in these issues. The parliament should also have the very important right and obligation of controlling the government and the president. In fact, this form of control would represent the parliament’s single major decision making power, seeing as they would have the right to decide the dissolution of the government if they deem that its members use their authority for personal gain. They would also have the right to suspend the president for the same reason, but the people would have the final say in that matter, through a referendum, because the people elect the president and only they have the right to withdraw that mandate.

One advantage of this system is that it could work on all levels, all the way down to individual towns and villages. In that case, the mayor would correspond to the president, the various administrative departments (and especially the heads of these departments) would correspond to the government and the local council would correspond to the parliament.
Another advantage is that it creates a clear separation of powers without generating conflicts between the various layers. A lower layer has the right to take away a higher layer’s decision making power, but that will only happen under very specific circumstances, namely when those from said higher layer use their authority for personal gain. Otherwise all important decisions are made by the president or by those the president chooses to delegate that particular responsibility to. There is never more than one layer involved in making a decision and no layer is allowed to take away the rights of another simply because they disagree when it comes to a certain decision.
A third advantage comes from the composition of the parliament, which encourages dialogue and eliminates the tyranny of the majority. A bicameral parliament under this system would also encourage true decentralization, giving the various regions, counties and important cities a direct link to the government, ensuring that their particular needs and desires are known and tended to at the highest level.
A fourth advantage is that it does ensure that level of control which current systems of government lack. They allow for people to be removed from office because of disagreements over certain decisions, which is bad, but they don’t provide the necessary framework for controlling those who use their authority for personal gain, which is even worse. This way, there would be specific regulations which would determine when can a person lose their decision making powers and also specific people appointed to check whether or not those conditions have been met.
And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, this system would ensure that the different layers would keep communicating and also that there would always be a strong exchange of information between the people and the government, seeing as the parliament’s primary duty would be to ensure just this exchange of information. Right now it’s all too often that you see a complete lack of meaningful communication between the people and the central governing body, and that needs to change right away!

I joined Facebook after noticing that Andra had an account there, hoping that I could actually see her profile once I joined. That didn’t happen so it just became an account I never used until Alina suggested that it might be a way of keeping in touch, seeing as she tends to “vanish” for weeks or months at a time otherwise. So I started using it a little just to keep in touch with her, exchange messages and read what she writes on her page when I could. (I’m saying “when I could” because she usually writes in Finnish and it seems like pretty much all of her friends are Finnish, so most of the time I’m left staring at some strange words.) Then Sandra also stumbled upon me, so I added her too and had another reason to use it, though thankfully she’s easier to keep in touch with otherwise as well. That means I seem to find myself required to use that site, despite really hating it.
But hating something and being creeped out by it are two very different things, and Facebook creeped me out yesterday. I’m used to the suggestions column to feature random people from Alina’s and Sandra’s friends lists, none of which I know, but last night it was cycling between seven people, six of which I do know! One of them I talk to frequently, another I have exchanged a few occasional e-mails with over the past few months, but I lost contact with all the others quite some time ago, from several months for Ele to about seven years for Laurel, if I remember correctly.
At first I assumed that it read my Hotmail address book, since it can read the cookie and therefore doesn’t need your permission to do that, no matter what they say, but then I realized that I only have two of the six people listed there. Then I thought about my Yahoo! address book, since I was logged on to Yahoo! Messenger at the time and perhaps it could work with that too, but that only explains a third person, still leaving three others. I know I randomly searched for two of them and that might explain those… But that still leaves one, Ele, whose full name I didn’t even know until now. Jen said that, based on what she noticed recently, it seems like e-mail providers store who you have been in contact with and these sites can read that information, even if you don’t have those people in any contacts list and didn’t store any messages to or from them. But that doesn’t explain Ele either, seeing as she seems to be registered using a different e-mail address than the one I knew, because I searched by e-mail after recognizing her and I got no results.
I should add that now I see that it no longer says that Facebook will never store your contacts or password without your permission, but just that it won’t store your password, which I take as admitting that they are snooping through whatever accounts of yours they can access and retrieving your contacts. But since that doesn’t fully explain what happened, can anyone please tell me what the fuck’s going on?

Despite the fact that it appears to be an impossible task, there are several proven methods of creating large scale social change. None are easy and most can be considered evil, but they work and that’s what matters.
I’m most likely missing some of them, but I’ll try to go through the ones I know of, briefly explaining each. I’ll start from the most desirable ones and then move on through the list, because they are all just means and their value is defined by the ends for which they are used.

Education. It can have some success on adults, but the chances of that happening diminish as the subject’s age increases. The most effective use of education is on children, which can be taught that certain behaviors are right and desirable and then also used to spread these concepts among their older relatives.
It’s the mildest and most desirable method, because it involves the least amount of pressure and violence. However, it requires the longest amount of time, a huge amount of resources and, perhaps most importantly, can only be employed by those who are already in well-established positions of authority.

Persuasion. If education fails or is impossible to attempt, it can be assumed that people are unlikely to believe that the expected behavior is truly the best one, but persuasion can be used in order to at least make them think that it is necessary. Unlike education, this method is probably most effective when used on middle-aged individuals, because the young tend to rebel more often and the old are notoriously hard to persuade to change their ways. It also works best on those of moderate intelligence, because persuasion relies on facts and arguments, which the less intelligent ones will likely be unable to understand and the highly intelligent ones will probably be able to seriously challenge.
Either way, it still requires a long amount of time and quite a significant amount of resources, but it can be attempted even if you are not in a position of authority. In fact, a highly successful campaign of persuasion tends to raise one to a position of authority, therefore making it easier to subsequently use other methods.

Propaganda. It is also a means of persuasion, but the facts and arguments used don’t need to actually be true anymore, but only to appear as such. Propaganda also implies some amount of pressure, making some people even less likely to analyze the information they are given and find the flaws within it. Its effects on the elderly and the highly intelligent are still rather weak, but it’s far more effective than plain persuasion when it comes to the young and the unintelligent. It tends to appeal to the young because propaganda makes the things it requests appear to be a form of rebellion and a call to action, while the unintelligent are swayed partly because of the added pressure and partly because the arguments used, especially the false ones, are specifically tailored in such a way as to be easily understood by these individuals.
It can be attempted by anyone and, being more effective, it also requires less time, but usually it can only be made to work truly well by those who are already in a position of authority and have a huge amount of resources at their disposal. Still, people can be raised to positions of authority thanks to successful propaganda campaigns, so the few who manage something like this without already being in such a position tend to be greatly rewarded.

Pressure. This involves making it harder and harder to behave in any other way than the one desired by those who use this method. Some form of propaganda is usually also involved. It doesn’t exactly involve punishments, but it involves a lot of bureaucracy and some harassment. Only very determined individuals resist this method, which is the first one that tends to also work on the elderly.
This method can yield results in a fair amount of time and can even be made to work using limited resources. However, there is no way to use this method on a large scale unless you are already in a well-established position of authority. This method is widely used by democratic governments and other authority figures which try to avoid being labeled as tyrants. Actually, it’s widely used by everyone, some using it without even realizing it. We all know of “peer pressure”, right?

Partial coercion. This means taking pressure to the next level on a small scale. You actually force some people to do what you want them to do and then expect the others to follow suit. The initial targets are those least likely to rebel, or at least those least likely to rebel successfully, because a failed coercion attempt will greatly diminish your authority in the eyes of the next potential targets, making everything more difficult. Once a sufficient number of people end up behaving as desired, propaganda tends to be used in order to persuade the others either that this behavior is truly beneficial or simply that they will fail if they try to resist. This kind of propaganda can be more effective than the regular kind, because it tends to involve images with and statements from those who either match the expected behavior patterns and appear to be living wonderful lives, which can make plenty of people end up believing in that false utopia and desiring to be a part of it, or have refused to bow down and ended up completely broken as a result, which demoralizes some of those who would have otherwise been willing to fight.
It’s a method which can be used on a lot of levels, so there is no significant authority requirement and the necessary resources vary greatly, but the large scale effectiveness relies almost entirely on the success of the propaganda campaign, which will be very limited if it doesn’t have a solid enough backing. On the other hand, a highly successful partial coercion campaign can create a snowball effect, significantly raising the authority of those who employed it.

Complete coercion. Quite simply, this means forcing everyone to behave as desired by whatever means necessary. Unlike the partial coercion, it no longer relies on persuasion or propaganda, no longer trying to convince people that a certain behavior is right or desirable. This is a method used when it’s obvious that popular support is unattainable, or at least unattainable within the required time frame.
Being in a well-established position of authority is mandatory and the required amount of resources is tremendous, but this method can offer results more or less immediately. It carries a high cost, however, those who use it becoming targets and usually being recorded into the pages of history as tyrants.

Killing. I don’t think there’s much to say about this. When even coercion fails and you really need to get rid of the opposition, this is the final method available. It can be counterproductive if you actually need the people to do something and don’t just want to get them out of your way, so a small number of killings tends to be used as an example, hoping to demoralize the others and to make them accept to be coerced in order to avoid even more killing.
Anyone can kill, it can be done immediately and even with bare hands, so there are basically no requirements, but the method in itself is certainly counterproductive if you mean to make people do something, seeing as they can’t do anything if they’re dead. The propaganda associated with it can be highly effective, though that adds the requirements of propaganda into the mix, but it can also generate the opposite effect, turning those you kill into martyrs and strengthening the resistance. Killing is the last resort, to be done only when everything else fails.

These are all methods which have been used ever since humans first evolved, and they’re used by other species as well. They’re tried and true, proven to work. Once you get past the first two it could be said that they’re increasingly evil, but that’s not really the case. They could be undesirable, but the end result should be judged far more than the means used to achieve it. So education or persuasion can be evil if they’re used to convince people to do things that are ultimately harmful, while coercion and even killing can be fully justified if the end result will ultimately be beneficial.
The problem is that people who desire to do good things are almost never willing to go past persuasion, leaving only those who only care about their own interests or simply wish to harm to use the other, more effective, methods. And the results of that attitude can easily be seen throughout history and in the world today. Those who have good intentions are kicked aside and the others rule, most changes being for the worse.
What we need is a “whatever works” approach, with the understanding that truly noble ends really do justify the means. If we want to get something done, we need to beat the others at their own game, and to do that we need to use their methods, no matter how harsh they might seem. We can’t afford to do anything else anymore. There’s no more time to be nice about it and those who truly desire to do good are hardly ever allowed to have a position of great authority in a society ruled by greed and selfishness, such as the one we live in. Our options are limited as it is, let’s not limit them even further ourselves!