Well it’s the 29th of December, you can’t get much closer to the edge of 2006 without dipping your feet into the fresh expectant water of the big ‘07. Frankly ‘06 has been a pretty shit year for me, but also for the world. I would on this basis suggest that the world is but a stage for my inner thoughts and machinations. Now don’t back away just yet, but if you just think about it, it kind of makes sense.
If it doesn’t, I suggest you ponder some more.
It is kind of hard to know what to write about this year - it has been a year of attrition and uphill battles. We’ve killed a good percentage of of the populations of some continents in the pursuit of… justice, peace, liberty; Take your pick. I personally have achieved little and yet come a great way at the same time, psychologically. I find the term ‘uphill battle’ particularly apt. Among other things I’ve learnt you simply can’t substitute for friends, and I deeply apologize to any of my friends who I have ignored in favour of pursuit of myself.
I am not one to make new years resolutions for the simple fact that failing to meet expectations you make of yourself can be tough, specially if they are very demanding. On the other hand there are certainly parts of my life that I need to seriously work on and considering I am a poor lowly creature trapped in the stream of time, ever flowing forwards I will humbly attempt to set targets for the future, not the past. So with that 2007 will be the year of the exploration of the word YES. To often in my life have I thought of myself in terms of everything I refuse to do, everything I dislike, don’t want and would readily say NO to; However considering my life’s tide line has been at low ebb for such a long time I think it high time to say YES to life - even though the deeply cynical part of me is loath to be so clichéd and cheesy.
Cynicism will be one of the qualities that I need to even out. Anyone who knows me suitably well knows how dry and cynical I can be and we all know that while cynicism is sometimes healthy it can oft be an irritating and and unattractive quality.
Forgive the fragmentation of this post, I am writing it slowly throughout the evening while I reorganize my music collection. I was looking for a good album art tool for a friend when I came across Album Cover Art Downloader. It’s a great tool for finding those missing album covers for your mp3 collection. I personally set the preferences so that it writes a jpg file to the album directory, rather than the mp3 tag. I’m not keen on programs editing my mp3 tags and adding data. ACAD is available for Windows and Linux, which is very welcome. There are .deb files for you ubuntu users!
Well it’s 2007 now, how unexciting. In other news for the deeply macabre amongst us we can go and watch Saddam’s hanging(Torrent), as recorded by camera phone. Hardly surprising that it would appear on the Internet mere hours after the fact.
As barbaric as this sounds at first, is there reason and justification for it? For instance what would it be like for a person with the mental age of a 3 month old to have to suffer a process which made no sense to them on a regular basis?
One reason the parents give for stunting their daughters growth is practicality for them, it will be easier to care for her and include her in their daily activities. Is this true, is this justified?
I am quite sure a great many people will say that this is a terrible thing that they have done, but I find it hard to think this. It seems at first barbarous, and perhaps a step too far in the wrong direction but the only people who can say whether it makes a difference are the parents, so read their blog and decide from what you glean there.
There are of course other ethical questions here. We take our advances in science step by step, and this kind of involuntary body altering could be the first step towards a world where parents routinely decide their children’s characteristics based on the adults needs. Tamagotchi kids if you will.
Let’s face it for thousands of years we have altered the world around us to set it in line with our desires, could we resist the chance to alter ourselves to that same degree? Look at the bewildering variety of modern dogs, some of which have been so curiously bred as to even have trouble breathing, in favour of a more pleasing aesthetic. Comparing dogs and children may make a great many people wince, but it must be remembered that there are a great many people who see children simply as a way to a means; Passing on their genes, morals and ethics to reach for a little immortality.
Death Note
The ever wonderful Boing Boing posted about Death Note today, a fantastic Manga comic that I would recommend anyone pick up. I’m not sure whether it’s been licensed in the West but I downloaded my copy as a torrent (yeah I’m evil).
I would recommend taking breathers between reading chapters, as otherwise this complex and engaging story will make your head spin as it spirals into deeper and deeper intrigue.
The story of Death Note focuses on a teenager who one day discovers an empty book entitled ‘Death Note’, dropped by a bored Death God. On the inside cover there are a set of rules governing the Death Note, stating that anyone’s name who is written in the book will die. Our fantastically amoral anti-hero Light soon gets to work cleansing the world of criminals to build the society which is closer to his ideal. His biggest opponent however is the worlds greatest Detective, L. The mysterious Detective L is shrouded in mystery so much so that even though he has solved the toughest cases the world has ever seen, no one even knows what he looks like. The story quickly becomes a matching of wit, intellect and ruthless calculation between the two as they try to discover the truth about one and other.
