Ok, so they might be Welsh. But who cares, these guys rock. They have a good sound, they let you preview their tracks, they um... have a forum on their website?
Seriously though, do yourself a favour and listen to these dudes. Especially if you like bands from the UK or Australia, like Gyroscope. They have a similar sounding accent, but their songs are cooler IMHO.
Go now! Listen!
... You're not listening... LISTEN DAMMIT!
Thank you! :)
Saturday 31 October 2009
Wednesday 28 October 2009
Our childhood dreams pave our futures
Some of you probably have heard about the big whooping dome they want to build over Houston. Just search on Google for "Houston dome project" and you'll find many links on this ambitious idea.
A rundown for the unacquainted is that they basically want to build a big geodesic dome over the U.S. city of Houston, which has gotten some positive coverage from the Discovery Channel's website. Now, why on EARTH would you want to build a big friggin dome over such a large city? Well, basically it's to do the same thing a Greenhouse does for plants but for people: condition the habitat for its occupants (in this case vegetables, including the special variant known as couch potatoes). It uses a material that allows UV rays to come through and thus allow plant growth, and the dome would be able to open up certain panels for ventilation et cetera. Overall it's a nice plan if you find a way to convince everyone to drive electric cars and figure out a way for the local new chopper to get it.
So sounds like a nice, futuristic idea, bringing the days depicted in science fiction one step closer. But this isn't the first example of human ingenuity reflecting themes and ideas brought about in science fiction. This makes me ask - are our fantastical ideas of the future as children or in the books we read or movies we see influencing our innovations of tomorrow? It certainly seems so. Of course, some things don't work out - building the tripods from War of the Worlds would be foolish as we A. don't have any murderous martians to put into them, and B. 3 legged transport is inefficient. Anyone who has watched Gundam would know 2 legged transport is the way of the future ;)
So if we really are making our future reflect what we think it should be like, how can we use this to make things better? Could this be used to implement perfect utopia? Could we have human-like AI controlled robots running around as bonafide members of society? And how come certain things (like city-wide domes and robot puppies) are worked on while other grand ideas like socks that never wear out that can be worn as shoes (not quite like this) or holographic HUD sunnies never quite grab attention?
Either way, the future looks very interesting, and given the trend so far, I think we can expect our lower-level dreams of the future to come to fruition soon. At least in Houston :)
Update: This is more what I meant by socks that double as shoes, but with a much less obvious sole (preferably none, but that's thinking a bit TOO big) and with a much longer neck/cuff/whatever the hell you call the long part of a knee high sock. Oh and a single colour, like long white school or sports socks. Now that'd be cool. You can probably guess that I hate wearing shoes.
Update: This is more what I meant by socks that double as shoes, but with a much less obvious sole (preferably none, but that's thinking a bit TOO big) and with a much longer neck/cuff/whatever the hell you call the long part of a knee high sock. Oh and a single colour, like long white school or sports socks. Now that'd be cool. You can probably guess that I hate wearing shoes.
Sunday 25 October 2009
A can of LOL.
The other day I drunk a whole can of LOL.
No, I wasn't in hysteria. LOL is a new kind of carbonated fruit juice (a whole 99% fruit juice! ZOMG@!!!!!@#!@!!!!!ONEW!!!! - altho 1%'s all you need to still something toxic in).
It's made by Golden Grove in Australia (maybe elsewhere too, I don't know nor care) and it, well, doesn't really taste all that awesome. It's not bad, it's just not good. Although it feels like you're drinking a UDL or Red Bear mixed vodka drink. I swear that remaining 1% not-fruit-juice is vodka.
I find this funny though, as this comes after the iSnack 2.0 debacle where people got emotional over naming a new vegemite product something so crud. But then that makes me ask - Why are you so emotional over something that looks like they put tar or crude oil in a jar and marketed it as spread for your toast?! Seriously, it's as if the Queen has gone an' knighted George W. Bush Jr and revived the East India Company and put him in charge! Although that would be hilarious.
No, I wasn't in hysteria. LOL is a new kind of carbonated fruit juice (a whole 99% fruit juice! ZOMG@!!!!!@#!@!!!!!ONEW!!!! - altho 1%'s all you need to still something toxic in).
It's made by Golden Grove in Australia (maybe elsewhere too, I don't know nor care) and it, well, doesn't really taste all that awesome. It's not bad, it's just not good. Although it feels like you're drinking a UDL or Red Bear mixed vodka drink. I swear that remaining 1% not-fruit-juice is vodka.
I find this funny though, as this comes after the iSnack 2.0 debacle where people got emotional over naming a new vegemite product something so crud. But then that makes me ask - Why are you so emotional over something that looks like they put tar or crude oil in a jar and marketed it as spread for your toast?! Seriously, it's as if the Queen has gone an' knighted George W. Bush Jr and revived the East India Company and put him in charge! Although that would be hilarious.
Gender bias and so called unacceptable grammar in English
Now, alot of peop's tend to think that English is evil for a variety of reasons - maybe because it's stealing the limelight from French, maybe because it's grammar isn't actually to hard, maybe it's because none of these English-dislikers have ever tried to learn Irish (complain to me about spelling then!), or maybe they don't like the future of the English language because simple 3 letter words aren't good enough for their complex tastes.
But one interesting aspect of the English language that cops a lot of flack (especially from feminists) is Gender bias. Now, lets just note for a minute that English is not actually that bad with Gender bias. It has no grammatical gender, it's fairly flexible in regards to pronouns (e.g. we don't have a system where a group of women with one man is still referred to as an all male group). So really, the main argument comes down to petty things like referring to people whose gender is unknown, and the fact that 'woman' has 'man' in it.
In regards to referring to gender-neutral things or people, there's a simple solution to this - just use 'they' all the time. I mean, why do we even NEED to distinguish the gender of the person, let alone the plurality?
Example - some dude called Roger comes home from work and his sister says this to him:
"Oh, Sam dropped by while you were at work. They looked upset".
Firstly, lets think about this - Roger would obviously KNOW who Sam is. And if he knows more than one male or female Sam then it's still as ambiguous as using 'Oh, Sam dropped in and he/she looked upset'. So there's no communication failure there.
Ok, so what about writing a book or being told about someone by a mate? If they are introduced as 'they', then how do we know the number or gender of this person? Well, quite frankly, in a normal setting, all characters should be properly introduced in a story with their gender explicitly mentioned to the reader. It's just good literacy practice. And in nonstandard settings, using 'they' actually gives the author more flexibility and ability to express themselves or create interesting plot twists - e.g. 'OMG THEY WERE A GIRL?! I THOUGH THEY WERE A BOY! AND I BOUGHT THEM HAIRPINS!'. Ok, how that counts as a plot twist is not really certain, but you should be able to understand where I'm coming from.
Nooooow, what about the 'man' in 'woman'?
This one is actually interesting, as many people try to explain this. Some Christians might argue 'Oh, well, this is because Eve came from Adam, and that's why 'woman' has 'man' in it'. But this isn't a very realistic theory, as the English language comes from a originally Pagan people. And it's unlikely the original word for 'woman' would have been modified upon the adoption of Christianity, considering how 'woman' is one of the most commonly used words in English.
So where did this 'woman' word come from? From 'womb+man'? Nup. It comes from 'Wifeman' (Old English 'wifman' if I'm correct). This literally means 'female man'. But 'wifman' wasn't just paired with 'man', nope, in fact, male men were referred to as 'werman' ('Wereman' nowdays - think 'Werewolf'). In fact, 'wer' and 'wif' could have been used alone. Which means that 'man' simply mean 'human' or 'person'. So, in fact, Modern English is actually Gender biased towards women because they still have their own word. Actually, wait, that gets cancelled out because of Werewolves and all other things 'Were-'. Darn :P
But one interesting aspect of the English language that cops a lot of flack (especially from feminists) is Gender bias. Now, lets just note for a minute that English is not actually that bad with Gender bias. It has no grammatical gender, it's fairly flexible in regards to pronouns (e.g. we don't have a system where a group of women with one man is still referred to as an all male group). So really, the main argument comes down to petty things like referring to people whose gender is unknown, and the fact that 'woman' has 'man' in it.
In regards to referring to gender-neutral things or people, there's a simple solution to this - just use 'they' all the time. I mean, why do we even NEED to distinguish the gender of the person, let alone the plurality?
Example - some dude called Roger comes home from work and his sister says this to him:
"Oh, Sam dropped by while you were at work. They looked upset".
Firstly, lets think about this - Roger would obviously KNOW who Sam is. And if he knows more than one male or female Sam then it's still as ambiguous as using 'Oh, Sam dropped in and he/she looked upset'. So there's no communication failure there.
Ok, so what about writing a book or being told about someone by a mate? If they are introduced as 'they', then how do we know the number or gender of this person? Well, quite frankly, in a normal setting, all characters should be properly introduced in a story with their gender explicitly mentioned to the reader. It's just good literacy practice. And in nonstandard settings, using 'they' actually gives the author more flexibility and ability to express themselves or create interesting plot twists - e.g. 'OMG THEY WERE A GIRL?! I THOUGH THEY WERE A BOY! AND I BOUGHT THEM HAIRPINS!'. Ok, how that counts as a plot twist is not really certain, but you should be able to understand where I'm coming from.
Nooooow, what about the 'man' in 'woman'?
This one is actually interesting, as many people try to explain this. Some Christians might argue 'Oh, well, this is because Eve came from Adam, and that's why 'woman' has 'man' in it'. But this isn't a very realistic theory, as the English language comes from a originally Pagan people. And it's unlikely the original word for 'woman' would have been modified upon the adoption of Christianity, considering how 'woman' is one of the most commonly used words in English.
So where did this 'woman' word come from? From 'womb+man'? Nup. It comes from 'Wifeman' (Old English 'wifman' if I'm correct). This literally means 'female man'. But 'wifman' wasn't just paired with 'man', nope, in fact, male men were referred to as 'werman' ('Wereman' nowdays - think 'Werewolf'). In fact, 'wer' and 'wif' could have been used alone. Which means that 'man' simply mean 'human' or 'person'. So, in fact, Modern English is actually Gender biased towards women because they still have their own word. Actually, wait, that gets cancelled out because of Werewolves and all other things 'Were-'. Darn :P
Thursday 1 October 2009
OMG! An evony ad WITHOUT women! A miracle!
This is scary stuff people. Today I found an Evony ad that did not have any women in it! Not only that, but it's a new one that I've never seen before too! Could this be the end of using mammary glands to sell a web-game which doesn't even have women in the plot?
A screenshot of the ad found on mangafox.com:
Interestingly though this ad came several pages after one of the more notorious Evony ads showing a bikini clad woman lying down (as they apparently did in medieval times). Oh well, at least it's a start towards somewhat-more-decent advertising principles.
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