sleepless night reading

I couldn't sleep last night, so I naturally went online to kill time. I went on facebook and almost for the time time I found myself reading my friends' notes...over three pages of them. it was very interesting I have to say.
there was the usual comments on current affairs, political stuff, there were a couple of poems, there was actually no boring pieces like "I had two eggs and a sausage for breakfast, the tomato squirted into my friend's face when I stabbed it with my fork......". the most recurring theme, at least at the time of reading, is around telling the world about yourself. I found two categories, one is "answer these questions TRUTHFULLY", and the other is "25 random things about you that others might not know". I suppose what makes these nice to read is that they help make the connection between friends, you begin to realise that there is more in common between yourself and the friend. or, you learn more about your friend so that you have a much better profile of what he/she is like, which boils down to gaining a greater understanding of the friendship.
well I like reading philosophy or theoretical stuff, I very rarely read a fiction. I love knowing about development of ideas etc. but still, 3 o'clock in the morning there's just nothing better than reading what my friends are like! on top of that, surely profiling someone isn't really easy, deducing what their character is like from a few facts is just not simple yet I guess we all enjoy doing it, unlike deducing say facts from philosophical or mathematical theories which only a few of us like to do. I reccon that we are simply soooo good at profiling and understanding people that we manage to find so much satisfaction in processing it so that we don't mind doing that kind of tasks even 3 o'clock AM.

fairy tales original

I just want to share this. "in our time" on radio 4 this morning was talking about the origin of the popular fairy tales, they were collected by the Grimm brothers. I have found an archive online which has quite a few of the stories.

they are not lovely happy stories as we know them today, most are quite horrible and cruel though with a somewhat happy ending.
"enjoy"!

conclusion

more than 1300 dead, more have not actually been identified because they were simply burried in rubble. buildings destroyed, infrastructure destroyed, Gaza is simply not functioning. these 1300 and more people are not individuals, they have fathers, they have mothers, they have sons, daughters, cousins, wives, husbands and so on. the buildings are not just rooms, they are people's houses, their home. all these are gone, and what the european leaders are saying to the people left behind is basically this:

there is anguish, there are tears, but just don't take revenge, and there will be peace. however, if there are signs of revenge, we will, just like what we have been doing, keep a blind eye on the dogs. the solution for lasting peace is simple, israel will have all the arms they want, you palestinians will have none so that it's just not possible to have a war, just invasions, blockade etc that's all.

isn't this amazing? presumably all these leaders are clever people and they believe in these? or rather, they blatantly don't believe in these, they are just so good at lieing. forget about all these for now, what has israel actually achieved?

in israel's words, they have achieved all their goals, which were never defined. Hamas still has the capability to fire rockets, more are probably going to join hamas, it's going to take another 100/200/400 years before history makes this event fade away if ever, which means that the anger is going to linger for as long as this event is still in people's memory. charities are going to go in, lots of money willl be spent to rebuild the infrastructure that the bombs destroyed, the homes that were destroyed. lots of people will also have to go in, to help look after the children who have become orphens. the biggest thing israel has achieved, though, has to be the destruction of any sign of peace.

can I find a CHARATY that accepts donation for the destruction of a large part of israel? that might actually be more effective than sending money and people in to rebuild again and again. after all, curing the disease is better than the symtoms.

the lesson is this. if you want to kill, occupy or to do any such things, provoke your enemy for the slightest attack, then kill, not just one or two, but in thousands, and their families as well.

funny music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPMKH95M1M
Remember that some time ago I wrote a little post about what makes it the case that one can make humour from speech, from visual elements, but hardly anything else such as taste or sound. well thanks to Caz this piece is very close.
these two guys cleverly mix pieces of music that you wouldn't normally associate with one another, which creates a kind of irony. the ending is particularly humourous because they takes just about all the different kinds of endings from classical music and make you think that the music is going to end but it never does.

THAT prison

If everything works out, after a person commited a crime, he goes to court, he is convicted, he goes to jail regretting what he has done, and he comes out of jail. at that point it's up to the society and the system to keep him away from reoffending, from perhaps his old friends etc.

Obama is going to be the president very soon, in nine days I believe. one of his first priorities is to shut down Guantanamo bay. he mentioned that there might be very dangerous people in there that haven't been tried, and that needs to be taken care of and the process isn't that easy.

the process could actually be very easy, only if the people in there are really very dangerous and all of them have commited evil crime that made them deserve what they have endured. because, since they have all commited serious crime they will be tried publically, then there will simply be a transfer for all those prisoners from Guantanamo to somewhere else. if this is the logic, there actually isn't much point in shutting the place down.
what is going to take a long time, and what makes the process long and difficult, is that some of the people in Guantanamo are simply not dangerous at all, and they are perfectly normal citizens of another countries who have been caught by the police for exchange of money etc. firstly, if these people were not very dangerous before, after being subjected to such crime as torture in guantanamo, they become very dangerous both perhaps militarily and public-relationally. militarily because if they are ever sent back to their own countries, they are full of resentment, they spread their stories, they have to start looking for jobs, money or something to support them where the world has changed a lot compared with what they knew; they become the most eager to take revenge on what they have suffered.
pr wise, the ones who are proved to have done nothing wrong but have subjected to torture are going to tell their stories, I believe that many many stories will be revealed if these people really are going to be released, and this of course is an even bigger problem for the US than the military one.
given what we know about American policies, I am highly skeptical that they will be happy to deliver this what is to them a painful justice.
if Obama is going to prove me wrong, I will be delighted.

Fuck Israel, fuck the us government

people who know me know that I don't really swear, but when I was watching the news I just couldn't help it. I did something I probably shouldn't do: I googled "fuck israel".

14 voted yes, the US vetoed the resolution to call Israel to stop the offensive otherwise known as massacre. there are still Israel spokenspeople who try to turn the whole thing around, and claim that they are the victims. "1 million people are in shelters, 10,000 rockets are landing on israel" said one, this is not even true. he continued, "this is why we have to fight back". that was the prompt for googling "fuck israel".
the result?
nothing official needless to say, lots of blogs though. top few have comments expressing their anger and frustration as well, some call for the arab leaders to get up and fight and call the massacre the hummiliation that cannot be ignored. there are actually a couple of americans too, wishing that Obama will be in office sooner and hope that there will be a change in US foreign policy. one said "the US government is sadly controlled by ziaenist pigs, which is why the US is not doing anything to Israel".
some reccon that this conflict will damage Israel quite a bit in the long term, I have no doubt that this will apply in a reputational sense and moral sense, but I also hope that it'll be the same in a physical way too. there has to be a physical power balance in the middle east, there has to be a hard lesson for Israel physically.

I will keep this short

it really does make me sick with anger when I watch the news nowadays, how can people tell such outragous lies, to themselves and to others, kill without fear of regret, order to kill without feeling shameful, how can we let people live just so that they live a little bit longer before they die...
I have heard people who are totally ignorant of the history of middle-east (not that I'm an expert but I have tried to understand the key events) saying how much sympathy they have for israel, that israel is surounded by so many "extremist" organisation and it has to "defend" itself. I don't blame them for having such a sympathy, I only blame them for not trying to understand the situation before making such a judgement. I think I have written why there has to be quotation marks around extremist before, and possibly why there has to be quotes around defend as well so I'm not going to write about that again.
but please just think about what people say before judging whether it's propaganda
or real. "we have to fight BECAUSE rockets are being fired into our country." israel is not stupid, she knows that by destroying gaza, by killing 23 out of a 25-people family, by occupying territories that do not belong to yourself will only initiate hatred, making the 2 survivors having no goal in life but revenge (totally understanble, even in the form of suicide bombing). if israel really is trying to stop the rockets, it has to fight a bundle of ideologies, not an army. the gazans are poor, homeless, suffering because of the israeli blockade, which is just some of the fuel to the extremist ideologies. it is very telling when an so called "extremist" organisation managed to win a one person one vote democratic election. it says a lot about the mood of the people who vote, how they feel etc.
"we have to fight UNTIL the rockets stop." what do you actually expect? when I get stabbed, tortured shot at, starved, my family being murdered, I am suuposed to be godly and turn round to let you hit the other side of me as well? this is one of the worst justification for war I have heard. besides, the earlier ceasefire which lasted for almost six months was broken by israel, not Hamas, and israel was the sole benefitor from the ceasefire, while gaza was kept blockaded, gazans kept suffering.
last one: this has been stuck in my head every time I hear that woman speak (defense minister of israel). "food is filled in wearhouses in gaza right to the top, there's no humanitarian crisis". what can I say. perhaps israelis really are stupid. it just expects people to just nod.
history has been full of wars, ownership of territories shift, if everyone tries to claim the land as far as they remember the world will be in a big disaster. people who advocate that israel sould be wiped off the map are quite wrong, but israel does have to respect the people who used to live on the territories it has occupied if it wants a lasting country. it can't just bully with a dog behind it, and of course bullying has to be stopped.

feeling a bit sad

It's almost Christmas and I probably should write about something a bit happier, but I suddenly feel a bit sad about business and work. I'll use my favourite analogy again: the body
the body works amazingly well with so many different parts and organs because there is a high level of division of labour, each organ is only good at doing one thing and nothing else. in fact this is not amazing, sometimes it is even detrimental since if the kidneys fail, or the heart fails, or the brain fails, or the stomach fails, then the whole body collapses since no other organ is able to replace them. big companies are better at this in this sense, people in a department can be replaced - they might not do a good job but the company will still function. however, the amazing thing is how all the organs work together.
there is absolutely no selfish interest for each organ, the kidney wouldn't boast its performance by pretending that it cleans the blood more than it did and thereby gaining more oxygen or whatever currency the body works in; the eyes wouldn't claim to be able to see further and clearer than they can so that the brain interprets signals from the eyes more than it deserves, likewise the ears wouldn't compete with the eyes and try to get a bigger share of sensory input to the brain. what the sensory organs do is that they give the best and accurate information they have to the brain so that the most well-informed decision can be made about what to do in any situation.
big companies are different: there is a single currency which is pure money, departments often compete with each other so that each makes sure that their department has the biggest share of fund possible. this problem occurs most acutely when two or more departments are having similar functions, or have similar goals. of course, the goal, or the justification of each department's existence, is generating money for the company. therefore, each department, to some degree, compete, and sometimes they do what the eyes and ears in our body do not do, namely they have to present information that are not entirely true, or they give part of the full picture, in order that they do not lose out in the competition. this necessarily leads to misjudgement and misinformation when the company as a whole needs to make any decision.
what I feel people do not understand thorughly is that giving out wrong information does not just hurt a company, but what it tends to do is that it makes a department look very good short term, but in the end, there wijll be no substance to support the expansion, and therefore the department suffers more than it deserves at a later date. and this is sad.

an imprisonned man

Hannah stared at the brick wall, as if it was a mirror on which she could find out how she looked before leaving. she turned, there was another wall, she turned again, and yet there was another, and she turned once more, and there was yet another... gradually, she began to realise that there was no mirror in front of her, she could not see the present reflection, but a film was unfolding about her past.
There was James, sat beside him was a beautiful young woman. they looked at each other lovingly, they whispered even though no one else was in the room, he hugged her tightly as if they have not met for centuries, they took off each other's clothes as if the young woman was Hannah. the next thing that Hannah saw, she was standing on the edge of a boat, there was a hand reaching out from the murky water to desperately trying to hold on to anything. she let out a cry and hit it with so much force that the boat shook, and the bucket of miserable fish they caught earlier toppled into the sea. some of the fish sank, the rest danced away with so much joy that made Hannah smile.
the guard came and found her staring at the blank wall, he led her to the gate, and all of a sudden found the quiet and always-thinking prisoner intensely intriguing. he did not know what she had done to land in prison, nor could he have guessed at all given such a quiet, seemingly well-mannered woman.
"Do you ... regret?" he asked hesitantly as if some evil might come out of her to strike on his question. she spotted a rather pretty beatle in front of her foot, almost out of instinct, she held her leg high and hammered the beatle. that, was the biggest negative answer the guard has ever seen.

sheep and lemonade

In the middle of the desert, in the middle of the day
there was a wealthy shepherd, with his sheep and his lemonade
the lemonade was too hot, but the sheep thought not
the sheep were busy, and the shepherd was dizzy
a gust of wind came, and everything was lost.