Vox · Corvegis

I was convinced that I had gotten a toy USS Enterprise for Christmas, but it turned out to be the ISS Enterprise (that is to say, the evil mirror universe equivalent of the Enterprise).

It may be a little early for this, but what the hell says I. I was considering doing an end of year meme, but then I decided that that was for losers, so instead I opted for the following End of Decade meme!
Large Scale
What fashion statement will define the 2000s to future generations? Low rise pants, unfortunately.
What was the best movie of the 2000s? The Lord of the Rings trilogy. All of them.
What word will define the 2000s? "Epic."
What was the most significant political event of the 2000s? The triumph and near instanteous implosion of neo-conservatism on the global stage. That, or 9/11.
What was the most significant scientific event of the 2000s? It was not a time of great revolutions in science; probably turning on the LHC, but only time will tell.
What was the most significant cultural event of the 2000s? More of a trend than an event per se, but I would be inclined to say the ongoing eclipse of television by the Internet as the dominant medium of our time (a trend which began in the late nineties)
What was the Highlight of the decade, on a grand scale? The election of Barack Obama.
What was the lowlight of the decade, on a grand scale? The (re)election of Stephen Harper. Or the Iraq war.
What was the greatest book of the 2000s? Harry Potters 4-7.
What was the greatest TV series of the 2000s? Doctor Who relaunch or Battlestar Galactica. Enterprise was rubbish.
Greatest Tragedy of the 2000s? The Iraq War was more a farce than a tragedy, but only because I had the fortune of seeing it from a distance.
Most influential person of the decade? George W. Bush. *sigh* Yeah, it was that kind of a decade, unfortunately.
What music will define the decade? Emo, probably.
Personal
Of the ten years of the last decade, which one was your favourite? 2005, because I graduated and got some nice courses.
Which was your least-favourite? Well, I had a nervous breakdown in 2000, so let's go with that. Plus, I was diappointed that civilization didn't come crashing down with the Y2K bug.
Was it a life changing decade for you? People only live about 70 or 80 years, on average. If your life doesn't change during a decade, you're probably dead.
Highlight of the 2000s? Probably still graduation.
Lowlight of the 2000s? My cat died.
Are you happier or sadder? Well, I was 12 years old at the turn of the century, so I should be sadder. But Grades 6 and 7 sucked such balls that honestly, I'm way happier now.
What do you plan to tell your grandchildren about? NOTHING!!!!!!
The Future
What is your greatest fear for the coming decade, on a global scale? Civil war in Pakistan, global warming being maybe thirty years off. My American friends will probably laugh at me, but honestly I worry about how polarized that that country has become as well.
What is your greatest fear on a national scale? Harper majority. Bleh.
What is your greatest fear on a personal scale? That I will not accomplish anything by 2020, and be a directionless, 32 year old loser.
What is your greatest hope for the coming decade, on a global scale? That internal combustion engines will have been more or less displaced by 2020. Or that China will have landed on the moon.
What is your greatest hope on a national scale? That Canada will finally get a Prime Minister worthy of its stated ideals.
What is your greatest hope on a personal scale? That I will have a fat book contract by 2020.
Make five predictions for the new decade:
- China will land on the moon.
- The LHC will turn up many new discoveries, but not the higgs boson, because it will turn out that it doesn't exist.
-  Barack Obama will be reelected in 2012.
- Stephen Harper will lose office by 2012.
- Iran will either not be a theocracy, or will be a theocracy in name only by 2020.

My exams are now officially finished! (Well, they were by 7 PM last night, but I needed to meet with my suprervisor about my thesis this afternoon; I need to flesh-out some of the background parts). Astronomy was a fun one to write (for me anyhow). It's rare that I can just stroll into an examination room when everyone else is freaking out, as if I could just drape my coat over a chair, toss my hat onto a rack and say: "As you were, gentlemen; I'll take it from here." Yes indeedy-do. Astronomy: probably the easiest course I have ever taken.

I wrote my Aboriginal Peoples of the Americas exam this morning; it was precisely as difficult as I anticipated. Afterwards, I celebrated by buying the comic book Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Cardassians (which, I'm sorry to say was a major disappointment, both in terms of the writing and the quality of artwork), and then I "completed" my General Relativity corrections. I now have an astronomy exam in about four and a half hours.
I'd better start studying for that one, eh?

I have two exams tomorrow, but I plan to write awesomexams instead. Basically, what this entails is that, if I come across a question to which I do not know the answer, I am simply going to draw something awesome (for example, Batman fighting Cthulhu) in this space provided. This I will do under the assumption that my professors will feel weirdly compelled to give me full marks, because really, how could they not?

Yesterday I wrote my Methods in Advanced Calculus final. I'm convinced that I got somewhere in the eighty percent range on it, which means that my final mark in the course will be in the B+ to A- range which, while not great, is still pretty impressive for an upper-level math course which two thirds of its original students dropped. I have only History and Astronomy left, both of them next Tuesday, and while I don't want to say that I'm entirely unworried about them...really, I kind of am.

In unrelated news, it looks like the Tories might spark yet another constitutional crisis by refusing to recognize the supremacy of parliament. Now, you all know that I hate Stephen Harper; I have been writing this livejournal for four years, and I have made absolutely no secret of it. But, for the most part, I have tried to put-up and shut-up. But lately I find that I can barely control my hatred of this government, not least of all because of the fact that the house of commons is the only democratically-elected institution in the Federal government! That makes it more legitimate than anything else, including the ruling party and the office of the Prime Minister. In England, a Civil War was fought over this precept. if we are now going to jettison this principle out the window, then we might as well let Michaelle Jean write our laws, as she is both smarter and more regal than the Prime Minister.

For a while now I have been somewhat passively dismissive of the study of philosophy, which seems, on the face of it, an odd position for me to take, as I am a man who appreciates logic and the larger questions in life. We may chalk it off to bad experiences running the philosophy cafe at my high school. For me, I have always considered it to be an interesting distraction, but little else.
Now I've thought about it more deeply, and am now strongly in favour of instituting philosophy as a mandatory course in Canadian (and indeed world) high schools.
I say this in response to what I have noted as being a worrying trend in society at large: the growing trend away from recognizing the primacy of rational argument. These days it's all about opinion; it's sacrosanct. If it's an opinion, well then...you have to respect it, even if it is demonstrably false.
I say bollocks to that. If, for example, you are a certain white supremacist, and if I, for example, rip the pants off of all of your arguments (metaphorically speaking) and beat them about the 'nads with fists of logic, at this point you should at least be having a crisis of faith concerning their validity. You should not, however, be able to dismiss this as a subjective matter and state that you can no more change your opinions on the subject than you can decide that you don't like pepperoni on your pizza anymore. Likewise, if your views on anthropogenic climate change are shown to be completely false by reems and reems of scientific evidence, than it is time to abandon them: this is not a case of he-said-she-said.
Now I realize that to some extent certain schools of philosophy are responsible for this over reliance on subjectivity. But I am convinced that philosophy can be an effective tool for at least being able to tell the difference between that which is objective and that which is subjective. This, I think, is even more important than improving scientific and historical education, as it is important for people to be able to judge for themselves the validity of an argument.

Those of you who love Wednesdays will be gratified to learn that by some quirk of temporal mechanics, it's still Wednesday here (although technically, yesterday was Monday). It's also November 11th here, although the calendar protests that it's December 3.
But I digress.
On the way to university today, my bus passed by a place called "Archangel Fireworks." It's sign said: "Even creationists can appreciate a big bang."
Awesome.

In unrelated news, Stephen Harper gets publicly bitchslapped by Wen Jiabao.

I'm proud to say I have now completed all background research on the subject of quasinormal modes. I'm now rather convinced that the whole thing is not bullshit, but at least somewhat wrong headed. Nevertheless, I will valiantly soldier along if only to help prove so.

Today's class in Aboriginal Peoples of North America (true to form for a first year course) was given over to extensive discussion of the (pre-provided) essay questions that will be asked on our exam. One such question, naturally enough, was about the effect of European epidemic diseases on the population; Dr. Bohr suggested that we should cite examples of specific epidemics.
This lead a somewhat vocal member of the class, known to me only as "green shirt" (because he always wears the same lime green hoodie, day after day) to ask whether we were meant to cite examples from the classnotes or "examples we were personally familiar with." So, a bit dodgy, but no real stupidity there.
Not compared to what was next, mind you. Green Shirt proceeded to cite an example he was "familiar" with, wherein the Hudson's Bay Company deliberately poisoned the Cree with smallpox-laced blankets.
Asked Dr. Bohr, somewhat incredulously: "The HBC?"
Green Shirt responded: "yeah, to get rid of the Indians."
"When was this?"
"You know...eighteen hundreds. Fur trade times."
"Why would the HBC want to kill off its customers?"
"So that it could do the trapping itself," responded Green Shirt.
This, I should stress, was after we had just spent the last three weeks discussing the fact that the HBC didn't want to do the trapping itself, because it was way more expensive than just paying the Natives to do it.
At this point, Green Shirt suggested that, actually, it was the British Government who had ordered them to poison the Natives.
"Uh...huh."
This went on for about fifteen minutes, back and forth, with Dr. Bohr trying frantically and diplomatically to tether the poor fellow back in reality before saying, essentially, that he said he could cite it if he had evidence for it, and blew him off.

Now in fairness, I should say that there was an instance of the British government deliberately infecting (French-allied) Hurons with smallpox laced clothing in the aftermath of the Seven Years War (which, by the way, was in the Seventeen hundreds, and had nothing to do with either the HBC or the fur trade); this, I can only suppose, was what Green Shirt was talking about. But considering that he would basically have had to make-up the details of his example, he was certainly quite forceful in adhering to them.

It doesn't feel like it's December. There's snow on the ground, but it's a pitiful dusting, looking more like the icing sugar they sprinkle on jambusters (that's "jelly donuts" to all of you Barbarians who live outside of Winnipeg) than anything respectable. I just saw a couple girls walk by in light jackets. I fear Winnipeg is at risk of losing its fearsome reputation.

Didn't get a lot done today; Maureen shanghaied me into creating a Dungeons and Dragons character. As a result, I killed a flying... lobster...thing, defeated a couple of kobolds and lost a drinking contest against a Dwarf when I should have been marking.
Also, I bought Star Trek on DVD...the two disc special edition with deleted scenes which supposedly include (and I quote), "Klingons, young Kirk and Spock, and more green girls." Can't wait!

Today is the 4th anniversary of the start of this LiveJournal! Yes, that's right: I've been wasting my precious life on the Internet for four consecutive years now! Umm...yay?

Vox Corvegis by the Numbers:
Total Number of Posts: 828 (including this one)
Average Number of Posts Per Month: 17.25 (I usually strive for 20)
Average Number of Posts Per Year: 207
Total Number of Comments I've Made: 1,911
Total Number of Comments I've Recieved: 2,495 (I'm winning!)
Average Number of Comments Per Entry (Estimated): 2.6176
Total Number of "Memories": 22
Total Number of Userpics used: 15.
Total Number of Mutual Friends: 16
Total Number of Accounts Which are Officially No Longer in Use Still Represented on My Friends List: 2
Total Number of Federal Elections Waged During the Existence of My Livejournal: 2
Total Number of Said Elections Where My Preferred Candidate Has Won: 0

This Remembrance Day, I'm going to remind you of something. Something that our whole civilization has become so saturated with, something which is so depressing, that you quite probably don't think about it enough anymore.
Stop.
Now, I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine that you're up one day, going about your life. Suddenly you see a bright flash, brighter than anything you have ever seen. This is the detonation of a nuclear weapon. I want you to think about what it would feel like to be ripped-apart, atom by atom, or half-cooked by the blast. I want you to imagine radiation poisoning, cancer, nausea, swelling up like a sausage and dying ignominiously. I would like for you to imagine whatever city in which you presently reside laid flat, everyone you love dead or dying. I want for you to imagine the sun blotted-out, the Earth stripped bare, blackened to cinders, foliage dead, animals starved, cities in ruins, vast tracts of land rendered permanently uninhabitable.
Good.
Now, I want you to remember that, for more than fifty years now, the only thing between us and this nightmare scenario is one bad day. Sleep tight.

I say this, because as we reflect upon the wars of the past, it is very important to remember that the nature of warfare has now fundamentally changed. In the past, prior to the twentieth century, wars were frequently viewed as daring adventures, and then as tragedies. In the film Passchendaele, Paul Gross likens the Human impulse to wage war to a forrest's need to burn itself out every so often. In Africa, clans of chimpanzees have been seen committing genocide against one another. I don't think that anyone can at this point reasonablly argue that warfare is not inherent to Human nature, something which we are genetically compelled to do.
But it's different now. As great as was the slaughter in the world wars, it was, in some sense, limited to the immediate time period. There was never any chance, even in the darkest days of the nineteen forties, that the generation doing the fighting would be the last generation of the Human race. But though it has become a cliché to say it, nuclear weapons have given mankind the capacity to destroy the entire world (or at least all life on it, save perhaps for cockroaches and microorganisms). In the nineteen fifties, people lived in fear of this fact; it permeated every aspect of culture, and was so ubiquitous, as I have said, that I think that culture became "saturated" with it, and it ceased to be something about which most people actively thought.
The fear faded somewhat after the Cold War ended in the early nineties, but in some ways, I think that that makes the situation even more dangerous. Let me put this bluntly: you should be afraid.
People do not look at history enough; they have lost sight of this matter. There are people now, powerful people (and here I refer to the likes of Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Osama Bin Laden, extremists in Pakistan and hawks in the Republican Party) , who act as if a nuclear war is one which can be won; as if nuclear weapons are just like regular weapons, only bigger and oh it would be a tragedy to have to use them, but war is hell don'tcha know?
No.
Sorry, no.
An all-out war in this age would not be a mere tragedy. It would be an apocalypse. You could no more "win" a nuclear war than you can "win" a category five hurricane; it is a contradiction in terms. If you are lucky, you will be among the first to die!
The truth is, frankly, that there is only one war left to fight; the war against our own baser nature, the war against those primitive impulses which compel us to wage war. I am not the first person who has said this; indeed, as I have said, it has become a cliché, it has become parodied, it has become ridiculed but it is nonetheless true.
The stakes are simply too high to lose this battle.

As projected, today was utter bollocks; can't wait for the rest of the week.
It began too early, after a night too short. It continued through history, to a battle waged with an irritatingly incompetent library photocopier system and a lamentable lack of caffeinated beverages. Through to wars waged on incomprehensible assignments, and lectures lasting long past dark, my lucidly long since abjectly spent.
Coming home I checked my e-mail, found the latest rejection letter for my latest story; neither surprising, nor disappointing really. I'd written it and sent it off, only to realize two minutes later that it was complete crap. If anything, the editor was too kind to me; described it as a "good story. but a poor fit;" it was neither.
Time to take some notes from old Peter Fidler's illegible account of his journeys in as-yet-unnamed Alberta, and await the sweet embrace of sleep.