Returning, finally.

Sorry to keep the dry spot with no posts from me lasting so long. I am back with more to talk about and I will try to post as often as possible now.

Just seeing the creature on the right (I hope) many will immidiatly understand my absence.

For those who don't this is a screen shot from super metroid the third installment in this nintendo produced series and my personal favourite. To give a brief explanation as to this game and whatever relevance it has to SG, here we go.

Super Metroid: after the first metroid on the NES, the space pirate leader Mother Brain is destroyed. In Metroid 2 on Game Boy Samus destroys all the metroids except a hatchling which thinks Samus is its mother. Super Metroid takes place soon after that when Samus delivers the final metroid to researchers. after leaving the research station ceres she recieves a distress call saying the station has been attacked. The game begins with samus, with none of her suit's abilities from previous games (for some inexplicable reason) attempting to save the metroid and eventually returns to the planet where it all began Zebes to save the metroid.

I have recently beaten this game on the Wii's Virtual Console and haven't done much else with my time.

The relevance to SG?: Since Point-Counterpoint wasn't so big I figured I'd do what I do on facebook where I give gaming news and review games for others to play. This said I recomend everyone with a wii goes and gets this game for 800 points.

Till next time,

Aaron

Re: the last 3 posts

So, right off the top, I want to say that even if the Olympics were in Beijing (which they are going to be), and I significantly disliked Beijing, I would probably not hate them, and still watch events that I found interesting. I guess maybe if you are like the US in the Cold War when the Olympics were in Russia, you might have an okay reason to dislike the Olympics, or not send anyone to them, or something similar, but I highly doubt that China is planning on launching nuclear bombs at Amir, and we know that in general he does like the Olympics (see the second sentence of his post), therefore I do not see why Amir should hate the coming Olympics. Plus, the whole point of the Olympics is to spread unity and peace, not spark debates comparing the US to China. But, as the debate has already been sparked, I will join in. Now, I probably don't know much about the situation in China at the moment, and I probably have a huge bias towards the US, as I, and most of my family that I know, were born there, but I'll try to not be too bias. Well, the next paragraph might make this seem unlikely, but just hold on.

First of all (to demonstrate my bias, it would seem) I think the founding fathers of the US were very smart people. The US declared independence on the 4th of July, 1776, because it got mad at Britain for implementing all sorts of taxes on them without their consent. In fact, they didn't even have representatives in British parliament. Nobody likes being taxed, especially when you don't even get to choose who is making you pay more taxes, and thus, people got mad. "No taxation without representation," coined by Jonathan Mayhew, became a prevalent view among people in the US. So, they fought the British for their independence. Right at the beginning of the war, however, the founding fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence, which stated very clearly:

"all men are created equal."

Basically, the US was made because its citizens wanted to be fairly represented, and choose what happened to them. Therefore, many years later, when Communism came around, it would make sense that they disliked it, as it was more or less what they had fought against for independence. Thus, everyone started hating communists, and, among other things, ignored fascists, which may have helped cause the Second World War, but that's another story. While it may be the case that democracy was good for the US, however, this is not the case for all countries. If what Cindy said is true (which I assume it is), then China needs communism to be able to do anything. Obviously, this is not the case for the US, for instance, as they manage to do things like declare war on Iraq, but once again, that's another story. But then, Amir says: "I also don't like how the Chinese government is letting hundreds of thousands of little girls and women be raped by Arab militants." I don't know whether this is true or not, and assume that there is at least a little bit of fib in it. It makes sense, however, that people in the US would blame the Chinese government for this, though. Basically, they see a country where the population has no say in what happens, and people being raped (or at least they are being told that they are seeing this by people like Amir), and probably think that the situation in China is similar to theirs back in the 1770s, and thus blame the Chinese government. Once again, I don't know enough to say for sure (maybe I'll look into it when I don't have stuff to do), but I think that the situation regarding Falun Gong looks a lot like Britain taxing the US without asking them first, too, and if the people of China started revolting against the government, I would be surprised if the US didn't help. However, I haven't heard of any revolutions in China recently, thus I assume that the people of China don't care as much about being persecuted for practicing Falun Gong as Americans did about being taxed, or that they value productivity more than they care. At any rate, both sides have pretty valid points. I guess it all depends on your perspective…

Now, in Jon's post, he discussed how hive-mindedness probably comes naturally when there are many people. To an extent, I agree. I guess I don't really know both sides to this one, but in the stereotypic view of most Western people, Chinese are mostly as Amir described in his post; they accumulate money, status, and achievement for the sake of achieving money, status and achievement. Stereotyping is very bad. I am sure that that is not the case with all Chinese people. I would be highly surprised if everyone just did lots and lots of work to get good grades. I know many people in the US and Canada don't. Then again, it may be in Chinese culture to make your children do lots and lots of extra work so that they succeed, which might cause lots of people to "strive" to do well, or copy their neighbors in playing music, which I have heard alot. Whether or not either of those are true, they do remind me a lot of the American Dream, as well. Though, there is one big difference that I see. The American Dream is that all Americans have the opportunity to do whatever they want to through hard work, because the US is a free country. While this opportunity is available, not many Americans actually seem to work very hard, which is true of most people, because they don't see the point in working hard when they could just not work hard (nor do I, in most cases). While Jon's point on the matter does have validity, I think that, if the Chinese did not make their children strive to do well, there would be a wider range of people's views on working hard in China, as there is in the US. Then, when he says that the American Dream is what is on the mind of all Americans, I disagree, because, firstly, nowadays, the American Dream is usually only associated with immigrants coming to the US so that they can do better than they were in their home country, but also, not close to the majority of Americans actually take advantage of the opportunity they have to work hard then succeed. Walking around any part of the US that is not a rich neighborhood will show you that (ie, Broadway probably doesn't count). Plus, the only time I remember hearing about or thinking about the American dream, with the exception of now, in the last 4 or 5 years at least, was when Harry Potter married his best friend's sister. I doubt that most Americans have just that on their minds. Anyway, that is all I have to say for now, and I have to go eat, so I will leave my comments at that. Maybe I'll write more if I can think of more to say. Or if Amir or Jon or Cindy writes anything else that I feel like commenting on. En tous cas, la prochaine!

Re: Amir's Rant

I had so much to say about Amir’s post, that I stopped writing a comment, and decided to do a post instead. Politics happens to be one of several subjects that are extremely touchy, like religion, so I hope I don’t offend anyone, first of all. Anyway, I think I have a pretty weird/unique standpoint, because although I was born in China and I do talk with my parents about Chinese culture and politics, I also left China at a very early age, and my environment has made me quite Western in terms of philosophy and way of life. So, I have these two viewpoints that both influence me.

The main thing I want to say is that I think Amir’s post (and most of the Western world) antagonizes China too much, and that they are not unbiased like they may think. (Just wanted to make it clear that I’m not saying that I agree with what the Chinese government is doing, especially in terms of the human rights violations.) Ok, here goes:

On Communism and Propaganda:

After I read Amir’s post, I immediately told my dad about it, and had a discussion with him. What he said boils down to: China needs communism. In a big country like China, both in terms of land mass and population, competing political parties would get nothing done. And that is unacceptable. Thus, China needs one strong leader with one strong party, and communism just happens to be that. And propaganda – it’s necessary for the government to function, so it remains. It’s about power and stability.
To outsiders looking in, this way of living, this lack of democracy, is horrible. But to people living in China (though there is a distinction between city and country folk), it’s not all bad. They like having a leader who knows what to do, and follows through with it – someone who is in control of things. I do think they would rather have this stability than a democracy that gets nothing done.

On Darfur:

It’s horrible, the civil war in Darfur. Nothing with people dying unnecessarily is good. Again, not trying to defend China’s actions, but then again, if the U.S. can benefit from invading the Middle East with oil, why not China from Darfur? Ok, not necessarily a good thing, but at least China is buying the oil, not seizing it. Again, China’s not the only one doing the bad things. If the U.S. is so good (which is the vibe I seem to be getting from Amir’s post), how can you be such a hypocrite, ignoring the things the U.S. has done and is doing, and attack China’s actions?

On Falun Gong and Tibet:

I do believe Falun Gong the practice itself is beneficial to the body (like Tai Chi, for example), and has helped people, and I don’t agree with the torture that the Chinese government uses on people who practice Falun Gong, but I think the West simplifies the issue too much. The West focuses on the ill-treatment of these people - what human rights violations China has committed - while it has not examined the other side of the issue, namely why the Chinese government hates Falun Gong so much. Because the conflict is definitely not unprovoked; the conflict is in fact very much political.
The Chinese government, in the beginning, supported and gave grants to Li Hongzhi (creator of the practice). Then, in 1999 – after seven years of the practice being taught and spread – the Chinese government banned it. You have to ask yourself why the Chinese government would suddenly start banning it without provocation, after promoting it for seven years. The Chinese government said that it banned the practice because “Falun Gong was a highly organised political group ‘opposed to the Communist Party of China and the central government, preaches idealism, theism and feudal superstition’. It attempted to make the distinction between ‘ordinary core members’ and the leaders, which it referred to as ‘a small number of behind-the-scenes plotters and organizers who harbor political intentions’.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_gong ) Li Hongzhi, of course, replied that Falun Gong was not a political organization, and that it had no wish to overthrow the Communist government. After that, nationwide persecution began. It’s all politics. China didn’t start persecuting for no reason; it started it because it believed there was a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Not sure if this conspiracy is real or not, but just trying to say that all this persecution and torture started for a reason - the fear of rebellion – and to the Chinese government that is reason enough. So, Amir said, “In fact, you mention the Falun Gong, and you are pressured, prisonned, and in the case of international lobbying, bullied into ignorance and compliance.” I say: of course, to the Chinese government, this is what it takes to stop a rebellion against it.

Same thing with Tibet – it’s all politics. I know lot of people hate China because of China’s treatment of Tibet, but China is just trying to do what all countries want – to keep its territory. So of course China won’t let Tibet be independent; it is a self-governing province though, like Shanghai is a self-governing municipality. And of course China doesn’t want other countries to interfere with its internal affairs.

Same with Taiwan, too; it’s all politics. China wants to keep the land, and doesn’t want other countries poking their noses into what China thinks is its own business, and therefore no one else’s business. All of this stuff, it’s nasty politics.

On the U.S. vs. China thing:

Amir said, “But its an indication of the mentality of the nation. Its closed mindedness, similar to Soviet Russia, will be its downfall. For it is the economic philosophy of the U.S. that will keep it strong for years to come. It is its transparencies that allow dark regiems to rise, but it is also this transparency that allows the system to correct itself.”
By economic philosophy, what do you mean? Capitalism? The thing is, the U.S. isn’t doing that well right now. I mean, I do think things might change with a Democrat president, if that is the outcome, but the U.S. economy is doing so much worse than China, and the country remains billions of dollars in debt, if not more. So I ask, what is it that is keeping the U.S. strong, as you say? Right now, what I’m seeing is China getting more and more power, and then there’s the U.S. both trying to stop China from getting power, and trying to get on China’s good side so it can benefit from China’s wealth at the same time. (Don’t know how well that works.) China, on the other hand, seems to be doing quite well. Of course, no country can do well forever, like the U.S. has shown us, but this is the situation right now – China is getting more power, and the U.S. seems to be losing its grip on the position of number one.

---

Ultimately, life is not fair. Politics, especially, is dirty. Everyone wants power and money; some people say that there is inherent good in human nature, but there is inherent greed and selfishness too.

I guess I do agree with Amir on the one thing, about superpowers – yes, that is what they do. They abuse their power. But just trying to say, China is not the first country to do this. And it will not be the last.

Cramoisy ascites

cramoisy (adj.): a crimson red color

ascites (n.): an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity.

Okay, I started writing a comment on Amir's "Rant of Political Nature" (see the post below this), but then it got pretty long, so I decided to put it into its own post. So, voila (you should probably read his post first, if you haven't already):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

You really need to be careful not to get too biased. Otherwise your points become really unconvincing.

1. "I also don't like how the Chinese government is letting hundreds of thousands of little girls and women be raped by Arab militants"

This is probably true to some extent, but you are looking at it so one-sidedly. You know, the UN doesn't even allow the War in Darfur to be called a genocide. That's because it's a lot more multidimensional than just a genocide - i.e. "genocidal intent appears to be missing", in their own words.

By no means do I claim to be very knowledgeable about the War in Darfur (or call it genocide if you will, the semantics are irrelevant to what's actually happening), but it's fairly obvious that the war isn't just about social or ethnic issues. In fact, no war is just about social or ethnic issues. The economy always gets involved, somehow. And it's not hard to see why in Darfur - the place is a desert!

Now, if you think about this, a UN reaction could possibly stall the fighting for some time, but has the UN ever really succeeded in repairing an economy. The UN has just too many divided interests to do such a thing successfully. I'm fairly sure they've worsened some economies, but I don't think there's really a case where they've helped a developing nation become self-sufficient.

Yet, ironically enough, if China moves in for oil and other natural resources, this inevitably creates local jobs. And while we can't put good faith in any predictions we make, once a stable part of an economy is set up, the rest of the economy tends to flow together nicely. You can see this in many cities - originally they may have been for some specialized purpose, say gold mining, but then developed into economic centers. So, China might be able to help the conflict in Darfur more than the UN, ironically enough.

2. Chinese censorship

Err, yeah. This is one of the unpleasant remaining vestiges of communist China. I do say remaining though, because China has gotten a lot better recently - it's practically emerging from a revolution, after all.

Whenever a country progresses into industrialization, things get shaken up a bit. It's only natural that it happens - you can't really flip the economy around without causing something to happen. In the so called "developed" countries, we've been industrialized for a while now, so understandably, our style of government will look quite different than that of, say, China. I may remind you, Britain under industrialization was not the least 'corrupt' place you'd find. America at the time wasn't much better.

Nevertheless, China is trying very hard to emulate itself after America. Whether you think it's for the good or for the bad, it's definitely understandable, as America is the most powerful (the "best") country in the world. Is it really bad for a country to want to be good?

3. The Zerg-ish hive-mind thing

Hmm, this is a bit iffy too, in that the entire social conscience of a nation is probably not so easily describe.. It may be true to some limited extent, though.

If you take any twenty people, even from some specific group like people that work at the same company or something, you'd probably hardly call them a "hive mind". After all, they probably have different interests, skills, dislikes, etc. Now take 200 people. It's more probable now that some of their interests, skills, and dislikes overlap now. And when you look at the group as a whole, you're more likely to call it a "hive mind" - in that they are converging towards a common point.

So, "hive mind"-ed ness probably increases with population. And since China has about four times the population of the US, it'll seem a lot more hive minded.

In fact, if you continue this line of reasoning, you'll see that the entire Earth as a whole is the most hive-minded thing. And while this is counter-intuitive, it's pretty true. Go look back in history and see all the patterns that have repeated, and try to tell yourself Earth isn't a "hive mind".

Of course, you probably mean "hive mind" in a slightly different way. But then you made a rather strange confusing comment.

But first, when you say "hive mind", you probably mean something like, "everyone in China wants to study hard in highschool so they can go to a good university and then go get a good paying job in some well respected field like medicine or engineering or something like that". Perhaps this is true. But: a. I wouldn't be surprised if most of our school thinks that way, and b. China has a population of 1.3 billion people. The Chinese economy does not have room for over a billion well-paying, respected jobs. Which means, for the average person, either you study really hard in school and follow that path, or you go work in a factory somewhere for the rest of your life. Maybe there are other paths, but they're much more riskier than the first path - and one might as well err on the side of caution.

Amir, if you think the Chinese government can somehow restructure their economy to avoid that way of thinking without decimating their population, please tell me. But if there was an easy way, it would have been done already.

Alright, but now for your weird comments - you give the absolute best examples of America being a hive mind. If the entire population adopts one mindset to work towards something, that's a hive mind! You give the Space Race as an example - you realize, they just had to beat Russia. Because communists were evil. And everyone thought that. Hmmm. Pretty hive-mindish.

You only seem to think China is different because the example dream you gave is work really hard to gain money and fame. Hmm. Where have I heard that before. It's definitely not the American Dream.

Overall, there might be some truth hiding in the points, but you really need better examples. Like, ones that don't contradict you.

Oh, and by the way, learn your history - Soviet Russia's downfall wasn't really their closed mindedness, it was their horrible economy. China doesn't really have that problem - and at this point, if it does fall, it's pretty certain that the US is going down with them.

-squid out

PS: Apparently Nintendo and BioWare are teaming up to make a Sonic RPG... should be interesting.

Rant of a political nature

Who likes the Olympics? I like the Olympics! I'm sure you do too!

But who likes the Beijing Olympics? I hate the comming Olympics! I'm sure you do too!

I also don't like how the Chinese government is letting hundreds of thousands of little girls and women be raped by Arab militants and in the meanwhile, stalling all U.N. actions to move in and stop the militia. Now, you may ask WHY? Well the answer is: Isn't this what a superpower does?

Yes, we have reached a new era in global politics. In fact, you may call it the Asian Cold War: China has become a world superpower, and leaves all except U.S. behind in its wake. And as with all superpowers, it follows the conventions that it must follow.

They prosper at the expense of others (and I don't mean being competitive). They stall all international efforts. And of course, they only care about prestige and money. If it weren't for the Chinese, action would have been taken in Darfur by now. But then, who would the corrupt Arabs send their coal exports to? Canada?

The worst part about it all is that there isn't even any transparency in the Zerg hive-mind that is the People's Republic. There isn't even a simple mention of this in the media (rather, the propaganda machine). In fact, you mention the Falun Gong, and you are pressured, prisonned, and in the case of international lobbying, bullied into ignorance and compliance. The Canadian Press mentions Tibet, and China is ready to send their wave of drones to wipe Canada out (ad hominem, of course, but the point is made).

At least with the United States of America, it is a "consumer" driven economy, in that the economics and social policies are driven by the whims of the consumer. If the fad of the day is the Space race, the U.S. will deliver. If it is fighting terrorism, then it is fighting terrorism. And if its becoming green, the U.S. will become green. In CHINA though, there is no dream. There is only to acumulate money, status, and achievement FOR THE SAKE of achieving money, status and achievement. Ask a little girl that is native to the country (and I have done this) why they wan't to be a musician and they say "because i have to be a musician. I don't like it. My mom and dad say I have to be a musician because I have to". I asked a boy my age the same question, and he had recently emigrated form China. His response: "I'm just doing it so that I can stay in the same level as my neighbours, and just so we all play music. As well, I am only doing it to fool universities; I will actually study to be a doctor because my neighbours were also going to do the same thing"

These comments rip me apart. But its an indication of the mentality of the nation. Its closed mindedness, similar to Soviet Russia, will be its downfall. For it is the economic philosophy of the U.S. that will keep it strong for years to come. It is its transparencies that allow dark regiems to rise, but it is also this transparency that allows the system to correct itself.

This is the beauty of America. This is the weakness of China.

At least in out other superpower, we have a better world.

I look forward to your comments

Lode Runner

One day, while sitting at your computer, and reading Saddening Goat, you decided to go acquire lots of money very quickly. For most people, this may seem rather difficult, but not for you. You just do the same thing you do every night – go into a labyrinth, and collect treasure than happens to be scattered around, while avoiding the evil enemy monster/robot/thief things. If this is an accurate description of you, then you have probably discovered one of the best video games ever – Lode Runner.

Originally made for the NES in 1983, then remade many, many times, Lode Runner is a game where, as a random person wearing a blue hat and overalls, you walk around a puzzle board/maze, like that pictured above, collecting the random piles of money that conveniently happen to be lying around all over the place. Unfortunately, you have three enemies, which depending on the version of the game you are playing, could be monsters, robots, or other people that look like you but with a different color scheme. When they run into you, you put all your money back where you found it, and return to where you started, while the enemies do the same, then restart. This continues for a while until you get all of the gold in one go and leave up the ladder in the top right corner, which leads you to the next maze! And the cycle continues.

Fortunately, to fend off the evil people, you have a super power: at the click of a button, you can make a hole appear to the left or right of you! This is helpful in two ways. The first is that the evil people, for whatever reason, cannot look anywhere other than horizontally. Thus, if they're following you, and you make a hole appear in their path, they fall into it. This goes especially well with the second characteristic of the holes you can make – after a couple seconds, they magically close, and everything in them (generally evil people) dies. Unfortunately, when an enemy dies in Lode Runner, they just reappear at the top of the board a couple seconds later, but it wouldn't be interesting otherwise. Sometimes, though, the evil things manage to climb out of the holes before they close on them, so you don't always succeed in killing them if you manage to make them fall in a hole. You, however, can also fall in your own holes, and you cannot climb out, no matter what, because obviously, people with different color schemes than you have better upper-body strength.

If you happen to be on an upper level, however, the holes can help in another way: you can just jump through them, and land one level lower. This is especially helpful because when the enemies try to jump through holes that have no bottom, instead of falling to a lower level, they somehow float in the holes anyway, and just stay there until they lift themselves out or are crushed and "die." Also, if you make a series of holes in a row, and an enemy falls into one of them, when they climb out (which they do by holding onto… another hole… and lifting) they just fall right into the next hole!

Despite all these random impossible things that happen in Lode Runner, it is still one of the best games I have ever played. I highly suggest you go and download it from the Xbox Live Arcade, or the Wii Shop Channel, depending on what system you have, or going to someone's house who has a Wii or Xbox 360, and downloading it on theirs, and playing it there. It's worth it.

Looking back, I'm not sure if this whole post will make much sense to those who have never played Lode Runner. Therefore, you should all go here, and maybe watch other YouTube videos of Lode Runner as well, then come back, and it should make more sense. Hopefully. A la prochaine!

Sematic xiphoid

sematic (adj.): Serving as a warning or signal of danger. Used especially of the coloring of some poisonous animals.

xiphoid (n.): The posterior and smallest of the three divisions of the sternum, below the gladiolus and the manubrium.

Interestingly, xiphoid is also an adjective that means "shaped like a sword". I bring this up for no other reason than that swords are rather cool. In fact, so cool that I spent my entire american history research period on Friday looking at swords. This site has a bunch of purchasable cool swords, and maybe I'll randomly decide to purchase one one day. Of course, they sell other things besides for swords on that site - for example, if you feel at risk of being attacked, you could always purchase some chain mail (a word of advice, however: my very history knowledgeable friend says arrows can go through chainmail pretty easily). Or if you want, you can also buy full suits of armor, which will be good for decorating the Swedish castle I intend to own in the future.

But anyway, without further ado, here are the Top 10 Swords (in no particular order):

10.

It's Excalibur! Actually, it's not Excalibur... it's a letter opener... that happens to look like the sword in the stone. These must be pretty impressive/cheesy to have on your office desk; whenever a letter comes in you can draw the sword from the stone and mercilessly slice open your letter with triumph! (The stone is probably made out of metal, actually, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was stone... after all, they do have full replica suits of armor...)

9.

This isn't actually a sword either... it's just a dagger. But what this makes this dagger so cool (and also, remarkably distinct from the slightly commonplace assassin-type daggers) are the grooves along its 16 inch blade. And no, the grooves aren't just for grating cheese. The grooves are also awesome at catching and often breaking an incoming sword blade. It was also used often in two-handed fencing/dueling in medieval Italy, but that's another story (involving throwing your cloaks over other people's heads, shaking hands, and why you hold daggers in your left hand).

8.

A sword used during the Civil War by Union officers (you see, the research was sort of relevant...) A 29 inch blade, 35 inches altogether including the hilt. Of course, by this time, swords were becoming a bit useless, but generals still liked them, and they meshed well with the old-style concept of military honor. In fact, here is an entire page about proper etiquette of sword usage (taken from the military manual of the time).

7.

It's William Wallace's sword! He's like, the guy from the intro campaign in Age of Empires 2. What more has to be said?

(It's a replica of his claymore, btw. 56.25 inches.)

6.

Hurray for gigantic German swords. This one happens to be 6.25 feet tall, so it's probably larger than you are. This type of sword is called a "Landsknecht" sword - I mistook it for a "zweihander", the huge German sword that's probably more familiar to people (there should be two dots on top of the i, but I'm not going to look up German accented characters right now). In any case, I found it pretty amusing that over half of the sword consisted of the hilt. Of course, huge 5 foot long blades would be near impossible to forge, but whatever.

I always wondered what two people dueling with zweihander's would look like, but much to my dismay, Wikipedia has informed me that really the ways you'd use a huge sword like this would be to a. run into a bunch of pikemen and swing it wildly, in the hope that you'll break their formation and not be skewered, or b. run around swinging it wildly in the hopes of tripping enemy cavalry. Personally, I think the most effective way to use it would just be to spin it in a circle. Repeatedly.

5.

It's the Knight's Templar Sword! Impressively cool to people that have played Assassin's Creed (unfortunately, they don't sell ring finger blade replacements).

The total length is 46.5 inches. Cool hilt design (the writing on the bottom of the hilt seems to say "Cristi De Templo", which is probably Latin for Knights Templar (but perhaps not?)

4.

It's Merlin's Sword! 45 inches long... the hilt is cool, but I wonder what bird is on the pommel (probably if I knew some more Arthurian stuff I'd get it).

3.

This time it's the Demon Slayer's sword! Another sword from Toledo, Spain (in fact, most of the Toledo Swords, which include the above three, are pretty awesome), you can use it to slay demons! This is because there's a demon's face on the pommel, of course.

2.

The website calls it the Magnificent Sword of Power, and although I don't really see why, it must be pretty magnificent then. And powerful. Also 45 inches long.

1.

The Odachi Samurai sword! No collection of random swords is complete without throwing in any Japanese swords (which, may I remind you, are far better than their European counterparts). I'm not sure if this replica can, but the samurai swords of Ancient Japan could slice through a tree in one swing. In fact, their blacksmithing was so awesome that anyone who revealed the secrets of samurai sword forging would be killed (this is just like the silk thing by the way).

This is a 67 inch sword, which makes it pretty big, even for a samurai sword. Actually, that reminds me, we do have a samurai sword somewhere in my house - it's not as impressive as this though.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That concludes the top 10 swords thing. By the way, if you ever want to learn about (or just hear the names) of exotic ancient weaponry, go play Diablo or Diablo II - since you get new weapons every 2 or 3 levels, you end up hearing a lot of exotic weapon names. Of course, World of Warcraft has a bunch of interestingly named weapons too - which reminds me, they're making a documentary about WoW addiction =P. Enjoy.

That's all for now. I think I'll start focusing my posts more on individual topics - and also start titling them relevantly (but don't worry, I'll keep the random phrase, just probably move it to the postscript). But it really depends whether I feel like it or not. Until then, ciao.

-squidout

Yawn

We somehow managed to go two whole days without any posts. I, therefore, have made another logic puzzle. I think Jon will be able to solve this one with an algorithm, as I probably could, but whatever. Good luck!

Six intrepid explorers traveled to various parts of the world hoping to find new places and places that time had forgotten, unfortunately they all came to a rather fateful end, but not necessarily where and how you would expect.

Each spent 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, or 12 months traveling, and no two spent the same amount of time.

What was each explorer's name, how many months had each explorer been traveling what place did they travel too and what was the cause of death (one of them died of starvation, obviously)?

Fearless Dan went to Swampy Creek for 2 months longer than the explorer who died of a viral illness. Whoever died from a high fall (after climbing a tree to rescue a sloth, was this in the Rain Forest) traveled for less time than the person who died from Food Poisoning.

Valiant Jack traveled for 2 months less than the explorer eaten by a crocodile. Adventuresome Sam traveled for 1 month less than the explorer who went to the Frozen Wasteland. The explorer who went 'Sailing the Oceans' was away for the longest before succumbing to his fate. The explorer who died after 3 months didn't travel to the Long Lost City.

Barry Brave did not die of Food Poisoning. Courageous Fred traveled for 3 months more than Daring Derek. The explorer who visited the Dirty Desert traveled for 6 months more than the person who died of Hypothermia after they tripped over a seal and plunged head first through thin ice.

Bradytelic nylghau

bradytelic (adj.): of or pertaining to evolution at a rate slower than the standard for a given group of plants or animals.

nylghau (n.): large Indian antelope; male is blue-grey with white markings; female is brownish with no horns

Hmm, I didn't know there were antelope (this is the correct plural, I presume) in India. Antelope are supposed to run around in the savannas of Africa, and then subsequently be eaten by large predatory mammals. But it makes sense that you'd get some in southern regions of eurasia too.

Also, hurray for Mexican traffic laws! If only people were sane to a sufficient degree...
In other news, I got a Khet game. The lasers are pretty cool - I should probably find somebody to play it with though. It's basically the same as laser chess.

Anyway, onto the main point of this post: our (Canada+US) highschools suck.

Although true, that's not a very insightful main point, so I'll follow it up with main point #2: that's a good thing.

Now, some people will probably say that our highschools aren't that bad. But they are. I think I was pretty much always aware of this, but recently it was brought to my immediate attention by my friend from Japan, who showed me the University of Tokyo Math Entrance Examination (Science Stream). Now, the high school I go to is supposed to be pretty good, but I'm aware that there are only about two people (maybe 3) in the entire school who can actually solve any of the questions there. That bodes pretty sadly.

Now, the ducated person might notice that the University of Tokyo is like Japan's elite school - so the science stream exam is undoubtedly going to be hard, especially considering the population applying. But so few people able to solve one question is pretty pathetic. Forget comparing this to like, the SAT, or even AP Calculus. This year's COMC is practically a joke in comparison to that.

Of course, it might be fairer to look at what tests regular people in Japan have to write. And they are here. The first part is basically their 'SAT'. It's quite doable, but the American SAT is really a joke in comparison. Then, if you scroll down, you'll find the entrance examinations for the good universities. The best students in our school would probably have tons of trouble just doing the humanities section.

Now, for some people the above facts might suggest that our education (and particularly, our public education) needs to improve a lot. But really, while it would be good if it improved a bit, it's not that necessary. The reason for this?

Well, if a school improves, that's practically equivalent to: the students will have a harder time at it. And from what I hear about Japan (especially with the cram schools, etc.) all the students basically do is work.

Now, with sucky schools, there's the obvious disadvantage that there are a lot of people that don't learn anything, and are thus relayed to rather menial jobs. Moreover, the general population becomes pretty uneducated, and in a democratic society, that's less than ideal.

But there's also lots of free time - and this gives people, especially those who can breeze through the low level public education, a lot of free time to do whatever they like. And it's that type of environment that fosters creativity, which ultimately leads to the US's wealth.

Of course, it's probably more circular than that - the US's wealth attracts the best people from everywhere else, so after a while, the US high schools don't matter anymore - just the universities, which are good. But everything above is just speculation, after all. Education is a pretty random thing.

-squid out

There once was a buggy AI
Who decided her subject should die.
When the plot was uncovered,
The subjected discovered
That sadly the cake was a lie.

(courtesy of munroe's limerick site)



Also, the xkcd today is really cool (but think hard enough about it first):

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the year of the rat, the beginning of another twelve-year cycle.

space

May lots of money, food, and good fortunes come your way :)