So tomorrow, provided my folks don't get stranded in an ice filled Stockport, I will be headed back to leafy Surrey. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks but I think for once the pros of going home do vastly outweigh the cons.
Pros (in no particular order):
Damn near everyone I know in Birmingham has gone home;
The cat;
The family. Dad's been ill, mum's been stressed at work whilst my brother seems to be in the best mood he's been in for years thanks to LAMDA. It'll be good to catch up;
Free food (provided my mum remembers I've been a Vegetarian for 10 months;
The bath, I don't have a bath at uni and I miss it, showers just aren't relaxing;
Old friends. Seeing people like Matt, Tibbin, SMeg, Dre, Jake, Rob, Jay, Lucy, Alice, Doug, Grainger, Mike, Jenny, Belayet (hopefully this time), the old Sainsbury's lot, Elliot, Christoph, the old Swan lot, and many many more is gonna be awesome;
Christmas eve. I look forward to Christmas eve more than I look forward to Christmas itself. A break from tradition this year with the O. Chaser and then Weybridge instead of the Swan but it should still be a killer night;
The river, the muse of my teenage years, Birmingham's canals just don't cut it;
Having a garden again (though the weather means I probably won't spend much time in it;
The stars, a lack of light pollution back home means I can see the damn things again;
Much less smoking;
The return of midnight wanderings, the two near muggings in Birmingham had left me a near hermit after nightfall up here, back home will be safer;
The bike, I have a bike at uni, it's useless so, weather permitting, I'll be able to get my ride on again while I'm back;
Central London's only a 20 minute train ride away, I miss the SouthBank and the West End;
A chance to clear my head and reconcile some serious issues;
Less of an urge to order takeaway pizza;
Dad's CD collection, there's still a lot of music there I need to adopt into my own collection;
I'm sure there are more.
Cons (again, no particular order);
My dad's old bass is nowhere near as nice to play as mine which I can't take back with me;
Severely limited internet access. Since my mum insists on carrying on with the world's oldest modem (which my laptop still refuses to accept even exists) means that my internet access is limited to whenever I can convince my mum to let me hijack her laptop. This is probably a pro tbh as I spend far too much time on facebook and not enough time reading when I have full net access. Also since there's no new HIMYM episodes till January the 11th it's not like I'll be missing out on that;
Some loss of freedom, mostly to stay up until whenever doing whatever, my mum's a bloody light sleeper which stops me being able to do that at home;
My first Vegetarian Christmas. I'm actually kind of dreading this, resisting the sausage meat is going to be a huge challenge, hooray for Quorn!;
Being reminded of the people from home who have died this year;
I always get fat at home;
Walton-Upon-Thames is boring with a severely small amount of things to do;
There's probably more but tbh, I'm kinda looking forward to going home for once.
Sunday 20 December 2009
Saturday 12 December 2009
Just remember
When the Titanic sank the first class cabins sank just as quickly as those in steerage.
The Stolen
Blatantly devoted,
Outdated and outmoded,
Let us get this fire started,
And see those ashes scatter.
Sinning's just for pleasure,
Playing the saint is just too dull,
Sweating blood just for the sake of it,
And searing off your skin,
Wasted years of your self hatred,
Coming back to haunt you now,
With these endless repercussions,
That find fault with all that's gone,
All alone in your room now,
Digging through the memories,
You know the past is gone,
But you'll never just let go,
There is a hole there at the bottom,
That you will never find,
Disposing of the things you need,
Leaving you deaf, dumb and blind,
So the reason I have a smile,
When you ignore the things I say,
Is that without these complications,
My dear you'd fade away.
Outdated and outmoded,
Let us get this fire started,
And see those ashes scatter.
Sinning's just for pleasure,
Playing the saint is just too dull,
Sweating blood just for the sake of it,
And searing off your skin,
Wasted years of your self hatred,
Coming back to haunt you now,
With these endless repercussions,
That find fault with all that's gone,
All alone in your room now,
Digging through the memories,
You know the past is gone,
But you'll never just let go,
There is a hole there at the bottom,
That you will never find,
Disposing of the things you need,
Leaving you deaf, dumb and blind,
So the reason I have a smile,
When you ignore the things I say,
Is that without these complications,
My dear you'd fade away.
Friday 11 December 2009
Tuesday 8 December 2009
USA back anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda.
http://airamerica.co...-anti-gay-bill/
Rachel Maddow reported on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 being proposed in Uganda.
The government of Uganda is considering passing a law to execute gay people. Execute as in by hanging a, quote, “serial offender” or an HIV-positive person who commits same sex act. If enacted, this law would also impose a three-year prison sentence on anyone who knows of a gay person in the country but doesn‘t report that gay person to the government within 24 hours.
So this is a bill that would kill gay people and impose prison sentences on people who know a gay person and don't call the police. Does this story get worse? Oh yes it does.
Who is supporting and promoting this legislation? Well, one of the proponents is a minister named Pastor Martin Ssempa. He was a familiar face to American conservative Evangelicals, because Mr. Ssempa has been a frequent guest of Pastor Rick Warren at One Saddleback Church in California.
Yes, the same hateful man who Obama invited to give the inaugural prayer. The man who has made a disgusting amount of money selling his 'Purpose Driven Life' book so he can recruit people to his little cult so he can make even more money. While Warren did not explicitly celebrate, he refused to condemn something so awful as an extermination plan.
Warren's statement - “It is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.” I suppose he'd think the Holocaust was a 'political process' too. Does it get worse? Yes it does.
http://en.wikipedia....the_US_Congress
20 U.S. CONGRESSMEN are members of a Christian activist group called The Family. The man who authored the extermination bill is a member of the same group.
"It‘s a member of parliament named David Bahati who has been very involved with a sort of conservative Evangelical revival in Uganda, very involved with a lot of American Evangelical groups and has also taken a leadership role in The Family‘s Uganda operation through something called the African Student Leadership Program at the Uganda‘s National Prayer Breakfast, which is an offshoot of the prayer breakfast The Family hosts every year here in the United States."
Rachel Maddow reported on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 being proposed in Uganda.
The government of Uganda is considering passing a law to execute gay people. Execute as in by hanging a, quote, “serial offender” or an HIV-positive person who commits same sex act. If enacted, this law would also impose a three-year prison sentence on anyone who knows of a gay person in the country but doesn‘t report that gay person to the government within 24 hours.
So this is a bill that would kill gay people and impose prison sentences on people who know a gay person and don't call the police. Does this story get worse? Oh yes it does.
Who is supporting and promoting this legislation? Well, one of the proponents is a minister named Pastor Martin Ssempa. He was a familiar face to American conservative Evangelicals, because Mr. Ssempa has been a frequent guest of Pastor Rick Warren at One Saddleback Church in California.
Yes, the same hateful man who Obama invited to give the inaugural prayer. The man who has made a disgusting amount of money selling his 'Purpose Driven Life' book so he can recruit people to his little cult so he can make even more money. While Warren did not explicitly celebrate, he refused to condemn something so awful as an extermination plan.
Warren's statement - “It is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.” I suppose he'd think the Holocaust was a 'political process' too. Does it get worse? Yes it does.
http://en.wikipedia....the_US_Congress
20 U.S. CONGRESSMEN are members of a Christian activist group called The Family. The man who authored the extermination bill is a member of the same group.
"It‘s a member of parliament named David Bahati who has been very involved with a sort of conservative Evangelical revival in Uganda, very involved with a lot of American Evangelical groups and has also taken a leadership role in The Family‘s Uganda operation through something called the African Student Leadership Program at the Uganda‘s National Prayer Breakfast, which is an offshoot of the prayer breakfast The Family hosts every year here in the United States."
Friday 4 December 2009
Tuesday 1 December 2009
My final Automata blog
Fear of Machines
As I am writing my essay on R.U.R. I am a little nervous about stepping on the toes of my essay in this weeks blog. As a result I decided to focus more on the fear of machines as it remains today in Literature.
There is no doubting that Karel Capek's play is the birth of the modern conception of robot. Aside from actually introducing the word robot into western lexicon it also gave birth to the idea of intelligent, human like, artificial life built to serve man as slaves without personal wants or needs. It very much signalled a shift in focus, in literature at least, as to what an automaton's purpose is within our lives. It could also be seen perhaps as the literary birth of Artificial Intelligence.
In modern literature robots, and artificial intelligence as a whole, are often seen as antagonists. Although Isaac Asimov wished to change this when he wrote his Three Laws of Robotics:
"...one of the stock plots of science fiction was... robots were created and destroyed by their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings? With all this in mind I began, in 1940, to write robot stories of my own -- but robot stories of a new variety. Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics#History_of_the_Laws
The loose film adaptation of his short stories, in the 2004 film I, Robot, however showed how even these laws could be manipulated to turn robots against their masters. The supercomputer VIKI attempts to become the despotic ruler of all the Earth in order to ensure that humans do not break the first rule of Robotics. Much like in R.U.R. robots are shown to be the antagonists and the enemy of humans.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey a similar situation occurs. HAL 9000 believes that the humans pose a risk to the success of the mission and so decides they must be terminated. HAL 9000 and VIKI both act perfectly logically acting entirely on a perfectly sensible course of action based on probabilities and a ranking of importance of life and duty to a set of paradigms they must obey.
Another act of violence against humans by an artificially created intelligent supercomputer takes place in James Cameron's The Terminator. In the films the computer system Skynet becomes self aware and proceeds to plunge humanity into nuclear war and then a systematic genocide of the survivors. Although it acts in a similar way to both VIKI and HAL Skynet probably most closely resembles the robots in R.U.R. than the others. Whereas VIKI and HAL were acting out of a sense of duty and logic Skynet's reasoning could almost be seen as emotional. It is expressly stated that the humans attempted to pull the plug on Skynet when they realised it had become self-aware and it was out of an act of self-preservation that Skynet declared war on humanity. The robots in R.U.R., whilst not acting out of self preservation, were acting out of a desire to be more than just slaves, they wanted to experience more than just servitude which is an emotional response. Skynet's actions are the most directly antagonistic towards humanity; there is no attempt at rationalisation from Skynet, "it cannot be reasoned with" (that quote is actually referring to the Terminator itself though can equally be atributed to Skynet also) and it is acting purely out of self defence much like a cornerned animal. It is the most emotionally driven response of these three examples.
One recent exception to the concept of robots explicitly rebelling against their masters is in Stepehen Spielberg's A.I. whereupon a robot acts in response to the emotion of love rather than any other. A.I. in many ways seemed much more disconcerting than the despotic and violent actions of HAL, Skynet and VIKI as this particular emotion is seen as an essence of humanity. The Uncanny nature of the robot boy who can feel love is much more fear inducing as it suggest humans being replaced in a subversive manner, rather than in a violent one which can be overturned as in the other examples. Unlike in 2001 and I, Robot (the Terminator is less clear since that seems to be self preservation) the machine is not acting on cold hard logic or a sense of duty but out of genuine human emotion; and that can, for many people, be disturbing.
Will H
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