Ok. panic buttons on cars are the most moronic thing ever conceived, especially when the idiots who implemented them didn't bother to make sure the damned things only go off when you push the stupid button. I've been woken three times tonight by my damn car honking and flashing it's headlights, and probably everyone else in my complex has. I have never used the panic button deliberately, nor have I heard of anyone else who has, ever.

So, about 6 weeks ago, I put in my usual order on Woolworths Homeshop. As I do, I notice that they've got porerhouse steak (a very nice cut of meat) on real cheap. So I order one as a bit of a treat. When my order's delivered, I find they've given me sirloin instead - which is a good cut, but cheaper than porterhouse. So I ring em up and tell them that they gave me the wrong steak. They apologise, and credit the cost to my account.

Now, I figure that since they had it on special they ran out of stock. Next fortnight, since I've still got the refunded amount from last week, I give it another shot. On receiving my order - rump steak. Repeat the call, the refund, etc. Last week, I tried again, same thing.

So for the last month and a half I've had a nice, free steak every week. Cheers, Woolworths. May your incompetence never end!

Ok, so long time no post. Things have been keeping me busy - weddings, houses, work, that sort of thing. Anyway. This post comes to you thanks to dinner with my parents (both teachers), and probably a recent viewing of Dead Poet Society.

So after dinner, Dad was talking about the new laptops the government was going to give schoolkids. They were going to be locked down so that nothing except government-sanctioned software could be installed on them, everything was monitored, and all net access was filtered. The first thing that jumped into my head was "how can that be useful for learning anything?"

Education, real education, is learning how to think. Thinking is a destructive activity. It's looking at the current state of things, finding them inadequate, and taking a new path. There's a reason why great thinkers - in every field - have been persecuted, from Pythagoras, to Pasteur, to Galileo. Thinking means discarding old ideas, and embracing new ones. It means a change in the status quo.

Established authorities are always interested in maintaining status quo. Every individual in charge of formulating policies which govern others has been raised their by virtue of the current status. Any change in status threatens that power; for those of the greatest power, there is more risk. The more powerful a person is within a government or any other body which exerts control on others, the more determined they are that things not change.

The people in charge don't want people to be educated. They want the benefits of it - an educated population is more productive, because they can find new, more efficient ways of doing things. But they don't want people to actually learn to think for themselves - then they might stop just believing what they're told.

The laptop example above seems to me to be bitterly symbolic of that. Computers are seen as tools of education. In the early days of computers, they were only really persued by hobbyists. People had to assemble them themselves, and to do much work with them, you had to write the programs yourself. Later (as when I started using computers), there was still somewhat of an exploratory nature to computing. If you wanted to do something, you had to figure it out for yourself. You had to learn how things worked, and then, how to make them work. "Mucking around with computers" was an education.

The laptops the government intends to provide are designed so that nothing can be done which has not explicitly been authorised. In such in an environment, it is not possible to be educated. Every time you attempt to think, you are slapped down, shoved back into line, and told to do it the same way as everyone else. They are not tools of education, they're tools to indoctrinate in conformity - which, it seems to me, is often the point of modern education.

Ok, so I need careful consideration before writing a post bagging out doctors when I'm going out with a girl who is daughter to two of 'em. So let me start by saying that I think what I experience is a direct result of the "production-lining" of doctors in our local medical centre. I don't doubt that there are good, conscientious doctors in there. I also don't doubt that there are good, conscientious doctors elsewhere. But as far as my experiences go...

I came down with a stomach bug about midway through last week. Tuesday night, I had a nasty fever, spent the night tossing and turning, and had Wednesday of work. Mum and Dad dragged me off to their place Wednesday night, and I wasn't much better on Thursday, so I took it off too. Dad took me down to the medical centre, and I joined the queue to see one of the doctors. The visit was short and to the point. The doctor pretty much asked me "what are the symptoms, and how much time do you want off work?". As he was typing up my doctor's certificate (on which he got the date wrong, by the way, but it'll be useful if I need a day off work on the 22nd of January, 91 A.D.), he happened to mention that I should drink lots of fluids.

Ok, now I know that stomach bugs are pretty much a dime-a-dozen, and that your run-of-the-mill one will generally take care of itself without much medical intervention. Still, there should be on my medical record the fact that last year I had a bunch of fevers that they didn't really come to any conclusion about, and here I was showing up with another one. And even without that, shouldn't there be at least some physical examination before a certificate is issued? Or, in fact, before I'm sent home? You read stories about GPs who have a reputation for producing doctors certificates on demand for people chucking sickies, or in diagnosing problems for people looking for special consideration in their school exams. And it really doesn't surprise me.

I may be showing my age (or my naievete), but before the doctors here all conglomerated onto the medical centre, you used to have your own GP - at least, one you went to see regularly. Being that you saw them regularly, they were familiar with your case history as more than just a record of examinations on a computer screen - they probably performed most of the examinations themselves. As they ran their own business, they weren't really answerable to a central beaurocracy about how many cases they managed to process in a single day (although they would, I imagine, be answerable to their pocketbooks). It seems to me that as the process has become more systemetized - patient in, process, patent out - the whiole thing has become less rigorous, and less effective. My Mum seems lately to have turned to alternative medicine for a lot of things - she swears by her chiropracter, and recommended I go see a naturapath (although to be fair, the naturapath she recommended is also a qualified GP). And you know, I can't really blame her for it. I might be dubious about their claims, but at least they appear to care, and actually pay attention to you when you show up. Which is more, it seems, than can be said for the traditional doctor - at least around here.

Rach asked me to read this book when we first started going out (which seems like ages ago, but is actually now only approaching one month). I've read through, and am just going to use this post to sort through my thoughts and reactions to it. Like most books of this sort, I see it as a useful place to start thinking about the issues it raises, rather than a bunch of things to just absorb. So this is not really a book review as such, it's my thoughts on dating after having read the book - some of this stuff is from me, some of the stuff is from the book, and I'm probably not going to bother making a distinction as to which is which. If you really care, you can read the book too.

( Read more... )

It's been a long time since I made a real post (that is, not a quick quote or a D&D houserule). For the most part, that can be attributed to my laziness. But for the last week, it could possibly be that I have been spending all my possible journal-writing time with an exceptionally wonderful person (no, it's still been my laziness, but I thought it made a neat segue).

If you know me on Facebook, you'll probably already know that person is Rachel. In fact, there are new photos on Facebook, so you can go see how lovely she is for yourself. But a number of people have asked me how we met, and went out, and all that jazz and, well, this journal is supposed to be a chronicle of important events in my life. And this is. So, without further ado...

( Read more... )

The errata'd stealth rules don't particularly appeal to me. The fact that in order to a character to gain combat advantage from stealth, they need to begin behind total cover (or in total concealment), and must move into position entirely under cover or concealment, really limits the use of it, and requires battlefields to be built with stealth in mind, rather than it emerging naturally from normal battlefields. Duie to this, I'm posting houserules that I'll use for stealth (should anyone actually decide to stealth in combat, which they haven't yet). Any rule not covered here (moving, running or talking while hidden, for example) remains the same.

1. Any time you have complete cover or complete concealment, you become hidden.


2. Whenever you move out of complete cover or complete concealment, you can take a stealth check.


3. To any enemy who can see you, and whose passive perception is lower than your stealth roll, you remain hidden until the end of your turn. You are visisble to all enemies whose perception is higher than your stealth roll.


4. If you attack, you become visible to all enemies who can see you.


5. If you are hidden, and were concealed/covered for your entire turn, you remain hidden to any enemy who you were hidden from at the start of your turn.

Due to these changes, powers that affect stealth also need updating:

Chameleon: 2 becomes "Whenever you move out of complete cover or complete concealment, or an enemy moves such that you are no longer completely covered or concealed, you can take a stealth check."
Shadow Stride: 5 becomes "If you are hidden and end your turn in cover or concealed, you remain hidden to any enemies who you were hidden from at the start of your turn."

This improves stealth somewhat beyond the currently-errataed level, but not to the level it was pre-errata.

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation"

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Conscientious, Fulfilled, and Spiritual

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Two stories on slashdot today:

Story One

Story Two



Really, they speak for themselves.

I ran into an article the other day that got me ruminating over some things I'd been thinking about for a while.

I did my final essay in my Creative Writing course on Baudrillard's notion of simulacra. And I can't help thinking that the observations he made are becoming more and more true. Baudrillard's notion was based on symbolism. In any symbolic system, there are symbols (abstract notions) and referents (real things to which the symbols point). For example, say, the picture of an open hand (the symbol) referring to the concrete notion of stopping (the referent). Baudrillard thought that sometimes, that relationship could be broken. That sometimes, people started forgetting that the symbol was just a symbol, and treating it as if it was what it represented. He called this a simulucrum - a copy without an original.

Our modern world seems beset with simulucra. The example in the link above is just one. Why are people - and reasonably intelligence people at that - mistaking an actor for a financial expert, because he once played a role? Everywhere, people are abandoning originals, and chasing after fake shadows. We have "celebrities" like Paris Hilton. Celebrities were once people who were recognised because of the things they'd done. Even if they weren't, in the great scope of things, important, they at least made popular films, or music, or had been involved in politics. But Paris? She's famous because she associated with the famous - a symbol without a referent, a simulacrum. Fashion is worn, not because it's attractive or elegant (although it may be), but because it's fashionable - a self-referential relationship that makes no external reference to give it objective value.

And I think one of the most tragic areas this can be seen in is that of beauty. Beauty is something that should be derived from reality. We should look at something - a picture, a landscape, a person and think "that's beautiful". But more and more it seems we've got this backwards. We are presented with an artificial, abstract concept of beauty - a referent - and try and twist reality to make it fit. Even those who supposedly epitomise that standard - celebrities, actresses, models - only meet it when they've been dressed and made-up by a team of professionals, then airbrushed into fiction on magazine pages.

Think of the advances we've had over the last few hundred years. I'm convinced, here in the West, there has never been a more physically attractive society. We have plumbing, and bathe regularly - which is really only a recent phenomenon. Most of us don't perform manual labour, and even those who do do it under much better conditions than have historically been the case - our hands aren't calloused, our skin isn't ruined from working constantly under the sun. We have fluoride in our water and modern dentistry to keep our teeth nice. We have aftershave, deoderants, electric razors, a thousand hair-care products. And yet no other time in recorded history, it seems, has ever had to pathologise image problems, like we've had to with things like anorexia, bulimia, or even just the depression of people convinced of their own ugliness.

We seem to think that appreciating beauty means that we can only consider beautiful those things closest to our ideal. That the more we cull away, the more we exclude from being beautiful, the more discerning we are, until we have nothing left that can meet our standard. We've turned our notion of beauty into a simulacra, totally divorced from reality, and people are mutilating themselves trying to emulate it. This is entirely backwards. The more we include in our understanding of beauty, the more discerning we are. If you can only see beauty in perfection, you're living a hollow existence. Take your eyes off the abstract concept of beauty, and start looking around for the real thing. Don't hold things up against a fake image, and discard them when they don't match. Discard the image, and examine things until you find what makes them beautiful. Our obsession with beauty has led us to a world where all we can see is ugliness. If we could only tear our eyes away from our garish, impossible ideal, we'd find we already live in a world full of beauty.

I'm planning another lengthy post nobody will read, but in the meantime, let me present you with another pearl of wisdom stolen from somebody else. This quote is brought to you by Mark Driscoll telling everyone to get married over the weekend, and my own innate cynicism. Luckily, while I find it funny, I don't really think it's true.

"The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand years is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds."

Thank you, Indianapolis Star.

So I was wandering around Wikipedia as I do, and managed to stumble on this gem in the orchestra article, whose ironies delighted me:

The post-revolutionary symphony orchestra Persimfans was formed in the USSR in 1922. The unusual aspect of the orchestra was that, believing that in the ideal Marxist state all people are equal, its members felt that there was no need to be led by the dictatorial baton of a conductor; instead they were led by a committee...The orchestra survived for ten years and had to be disbanded only when the individual talents began to rebel against the rigid control under which they were expected to play.

It seems Joss spent his downtime during the writers strike putting together a three-part, low-budget, internet-only mini(very)-series - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. According to Joss "It's the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.". In three 10 minutish parts, the complete series will run for 40 minutes, so I'm not expecting huge sweeping story arcs here. Still, it's Joss, and it's free.

Oh, and it's not availabe in Australia yet. But don't worry, this is technical, not policy - they're trying to fix that glitch as we speak (or as you read).

So, my birthday is over once again for another year. Went out and had dinner with the folks (Mum, Dad, Cam, Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie Gwen) on Wednesday night. Came back to my place afterwards for tea and cake. Of course, after a three-course meal, people only wanted very small, token slices of cake. Last night, I had a How To Host A Murder party. Went well, and I think (hope) everyone enjoyed it. We played out the murder mystery 0ver a three-course dinner. Afterwards, we had cake. Naturally, people again went only for the token slice. When will we learn?

So, I now have three quarters of a black forrest cake, and three quarters of a caramel mudcake cut into slices, wrapped up in my freezer. I think I'm set for snacks at work for the next few months.

In a continuation of my one-post tradition of deep-and-meaningfuls, I proudly present:

( If I were King... )

You know, I really hope people aren't expecting too much from DDI. If WotC can't even keep their simple forums running without multiple, daily interruptions, what hope does a more complex online service have.

Ok, so I've got some actual spare time at the moment, and I'm going to use it to put some thoughts to harddrive about a few things that have caught my interest lately.

I was a bit dubious about posting this one, because it's probably very easy to have it taken the wrong way, but anyway, here goes.

( Long rambling discussion of the Henson photos )

And on a happier note:

( A not quite as long, but still just as rambling talk about death )

Today I found my evil twin. He gave me cake.