November 2003 Archives

Thankfully there are no "hard times" for me, but it has come time for me to do a review of this work by Charles Dickens that recently I finished. Hard Times doesn't live up to the grand and ambitious complexity of other two of Dickens's novels which I have read. Nevertheless, it is very different in many ways. The characterizations are still impressive (names and all: M. Choakumchild, the teacher, and Thomas Gradgrind, the father and patron of the "Philosophy of Fact", etc.), but they are slightly less extreme and more cultured. Hard Times does not have a complex storyline with multiple disconnected threads that combine in a dramatic climax. No, it has little of these classic "Dickensian" elements. In his shortest work, there is a reletive straightforwardness to all its aspects.

Hard Times does however feel to be more of a blatant social commentary than other novels of his that I have read. The consistancy with which Thomas Gradgrind (even the name...) hammers out his "Philosophy of Fact" and emphasizes that every shred of entertainment and enjoyment in life is pure nonsense is telling. Also, the reletive ease with which Gradgrind's philosophy crumbles before him by the work of his daughter, shows the frailties of rigid logic when it opposes humanity and happiness.

In more unusual form, Dickens spends the final chapter (creatively entitled "Final") essentially expounding his beliefs that "politico-economic" systems erroneously look at the individual as a cog of the machine rather than as what they are: individuals. It comments deals with everything from divorce laws to the education system in a rather pessimistic view of society.

Rating:☺☻☻☻☻ (4 out of 5)

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

PURE FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM: The government shoots you, takes the cows and feeds one to the army and the other to the police.

PURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You slaughter the cows & compete with McDonalds.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

CONSERVATISM: Milk the cows, enbalm the cows, freeze the milk, nuke the cows to keep from spreading the disease. Phase out over five years the amount of milk you're required to give to the government.

LIBERALISM: Give the milk back to the cows. Let them escape. Put the cows on the Voter Registration list.

LIBERTARIANISM: Milk the cows and keep it for yourself; hope the populace can find milk elsewhere.

MILITIAISM: Start shooting if they come for your cows.

MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallocentric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk!

If there only was a tarea #42 I would be seriously worried.

"Hablen solamente en Español porque la migra viene."

--Sra. Allan

One of my readers brought up an interesting point for debate on the "whom" topid. Personally, I think the debate on "whom" has kind of exhausted its interestingness, but here's the topic anyway: "Resolved: 'Whom' is not a necessary word". I agree with this, but does anyone know of any case where using "who" instead "whom" results in any ambiguity? Most of the cases I can think of are not ambiguous at all because of word order.

Microsoft has recently announced that they will be releasing their own Windows music download service early in 2004. Aside from the fact that it is a blatant copy of the iTunes music store, Microsoft previously announced that they would not be creating their own music download service. Undoubtedly, this piece of software will be bundled with every version of Windows, will contain files compressed in their proprietary wma audio format, and will be lame in every possible way, aside from the fact that everyone will use it because Microsoft's ruthless practice of systematic elimination of opposing corporations has made their lousy proprietary standards the only standards, even if there are other formats, etc. which are supposed to be the standard (a run-on sentence was intended here). So join me in boycotting Microsoft's act of shanghaiing other people's ideas for the purpose of destroying them.

"So, now that this sign is up, we're going to talk only en Español. And why are we going to talk only en Español? Because la migra are coming."

--Sra. Allan, yes, she really did say this.

I believe this blog-debating is very practice for our next debate tournament. Accordingly, I cannot refrain from disagreeing with a portion of your most recent comment on "whom". True, it may not be really dead yet, and very true, it probably shouldn't be considered officially dead until English teachers stop correcting "to who". But Colin... dear, dear... what is this statement that "Heck, you'd never hear the word "impugn" on prime-time TV, but it was still the Dictonary.com Word of the Day in July 2003."? Of course you wouldn't hear "impugn" on prime-time television! I would be seriously worried I did hear it. I had no clue what the heck in meant until I looked it up in my Oxford (note italics here; Maxwell will concur) dictionary, where I found "impugn - v. to challenge or call into question". But that's not really important. The point is, one simply say "challenge" or "call into question" in about 99.999999999999% of cases where they could say "impugn". There would be nothing grammatically offensive about this substitution for the sake of brevity. The substitution of "who" for "whom" is technically considered grammatically improper unlike the substitution of more humane terminology for "impugn". So this is not just a matter of choosing big or little words. Oh no! "Whom" only has four letters you know, and you wouldn't considered an idiot for using it in a conversation 30 years ago. So there's my impugnation of your argument. I knew this would make a great discussion... now that "whom" is "a grammatical stunt". Colin you're brilliant.

I was listening to a piece on NPR this afternoon about Arnold Schwarzeneggar's inauguration and there were audio clips of his speech. I'd never realized it before (obviously), but he is a really good speaker (or "speechie" as they are affectionately called). I was rather impressed. It almost had a Hitler-esque feel to it--not that there's anything remotely enviable about Hitler, but his speeches did have the effect of mesmorizing millions, and they are reputed to have been extremely well delivered. I especially like his statement that he wants to "turn this state into a job making machine."

I finished George Orwell's 1984 about a week and a half ago, so I figured it would be appropriate to write a short review of my opinions on the book. In short, it's one of the better books I've read in a while. Despire the fact that 1984 was 19 years ago, the story hasn't lost a bit of relevance. A dystopia in which totalitarianism uses the total destruction of privacy and the goal of the destruction of human thought as means for control, the novel shows the extremes of government control.

The novel bleeds with connections to the USSR and Nazi Germany, but has relevance most notably in the US Patriot Act. Obviously the Patriot Act isn't 1984, but it makes one question how far is too far in terms of the preservation of privacy.

In reading 1984 I was compelled to compare it to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, because the two books are so similar. Both being dystopias, most of the primary themes are the same, but one crucial difference and remarkable difference in the author's perspectives is on the theme of sexuality. Both author's agree in their idea of sexuality's purpose in a dystopian society: it will of course be another means of control by the ruling party. In Huxley's novel sexuality is encouraged heavily by the state to the degree that the 5-year old "alphas" spend part of their education engaging in what we might call "outrageously questionable behavior" for their age. The idea is that people will become so obsessed with sex that they won't think about the ills of society. In Orwell's novel, sexuality is oppressed brutally, except for in the scenario where it is necessary for the propagation of Party members. Party members fittingly call it their "duty to the Party".

Aside from that and the nature of power in both societies, both novels are strikingly similar, even in the sequence of their plot. Both main characters find out the inner workings of society after having a sequence of epiphanies. In the final pages they die.

Anyway, this has turned into a kind of lame and poorly contrived comparitive analysis, rather than a review of 1984. But it's a good book worth a read or re-read for those who read it in high school and haven't thought about it since, except for in the cliche use of the phrase "Big Brother is watching". It's especially fun after looking at the Soviet socio-economic system over the summer. It's strange to think it, but we really are all just cogs in a machine.

In a previous entry I said "'whom' should not be considered officially dead", but I actually meant "'whom' should be considered officially dead". A bad mistake.

In our school's history, the only team events in which teams from our school have won nationally are chess and physics. The largest trophy our school is possession of (to my knowledge) is from 1st place in the national chess tournament in 1989.

This evening on NBC during the "primetime" period I heard something very interesting. There was an advertisement for the next episode in one of the "Law and Order" series, in which the announcer said "who will turn against who..." Technically, this is incorrect: the second "who" should be a "whom". The word "whom" is, however, quickly falling out of common use, and I personally believe that this blatant use of "who" in place of "whom" on one of America's most watched television networks, at one of its most watched hours means that "whom" should be considered officially dead. Its very interesting to see how language changes, especially the systematic loss of inflection in all western European languages. For some strange reason, Eastern European languages do not show this trend at all, and they remain some of the most conservative Indo-European languages.

Here's an interesting article from Linux Journal about the servers hoasting various presidential campaign websites. And it's not meant to be political either, it's merely to provide certain conclusions about computer reliability.

"Is there any significance to what Web server/platform combinations 2004 presidential candidates are using?

As we swing into the thick of the 2004 electoral playoffs, it's interesting to see what kinds of platforms are running under the candidates' official campaign Web sites. Netcraft has a handy feature called "What's that site running?" that lets us see combinations of Web servers and OS platforms. So here's a quick rundown, in alphabetical order:

George W. Bush: Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000

Wesley Clark: Apache on Linux

Howard Dean: Apache on FreeBSD

John Edwards: Microsoft IIS "behind a computer running NetWare"

Richard Gephardt: Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000

John Kerry: Apache on Linux

Dennis Kucinich Apache on Linux

Carol Mosely-Braun: Apache on FreeBSD

Al Sharpton: Apache on Solaris 8

Joe Lieberman: Apache on FreeBSD

For what it's worth, the Republican National Committee is running Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000, while the Democratic National Committee is running Apache on Linux.

As of this writing, November 5, 2003, the RNC has an uptime of 4.26 days (maximum of 39.04) and a 90-day moving average of 16.91. The DNC has an uptime of 445.02 days (also the maximum) and a 90-day moving average of 395.38 days. "

Taken from