psyche

I saw 300 yesterday; it was quite good although prone to excessive violence and random partial nudity but hey, that’s what Frank Miller comics are for, right? Elliot displayed some horror at notions of pine trees and the random tactical breakdown at the end of the film. However it was okay.

More importantly, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars arrived today, albeit gift-wrapped and with a small label saying “Happy Birthday Farhan! From Mum”. Well. My birthday is the fifteenth of June. This is going to be retarded. I am at once frightened of change and willing to embrace it! This is the game I have waited for for so many years. Probably more than eight I think - I’ve been vaguely aware of the ill-fated pseudosequel “Tiberian Twilight” since my grandfather decided to buy me a pirate copy of Tiberian Sun from a market in Pakistan. *reminisces*

Our connection to the internet briefly failed and my family is missing. Well. Good.

Pax

I’m sure everyone knows the deal by now, so please consider this a footnote to what you already believe. Physical attractiveness is an indicator of health and in females, fertility and in males, the ability to protect his mate and offspring. This is inextricably embedded into our genetic coding; indeed it is one of the main reasons that we evolved constructively - the attractive, the superior genetic specimens, survived. How blunt! What hope for the ugly? None, apparently. From birth we place extreme emphasis on the physical appearance of our peers and make judgements about people mainly based on what they look like. If you had the choice between hiring a very attractive secretary and a less attractive one, you would probably choose the attractive one unless they were severely less competent than their competitor.

I wonder; should we attempt to bypass this biological discrimination? Is it right to - does the system balance itself out? Can it be bypassed?

I don’t know. I guess unattractive people can only rely on other people doing this, though, or perhaps they must lead a solitary life and simply contribute to humanity in ways other than enhancing the genepool and hope that when news of their deeds is handed down to posterity, the future will not judge them so harshly as we did!

It’s lucky I’m not a people person or I’d be fairly depressed by my disgusting nature.

In other news, by some miraculous chance I managed to get an A* in the German mock. It was probably in some way connected to the fact that there was no mock oral. When we have the oral, I will … probably not do very well. But I’ll try.

Pax

I don’t know why, but you’re likely to read this and immediately find an excuse to use your new hard-hitting argument against me. I implore you to wait and actually absorb what I say before doing this.

I believe the following:

Religion, which often leads to suffering, is a global cultural phenomenon. All attacks on religion cause personal distress and conflict. A large attack on religion might shift the way large populations think and therefore eliminate religion from the cultural cycle and really help to reduce suffering. However, it takes a certain “activation energy” to make a significant change. If you attack individual people on the basis of their beliefs, you get the negative effects of criticism (pissing people off, being viewed as irrational) without the positive effects (improving people’s philosophy, reducing suffering). That is why it’s counterproductive.

I am not saying religion’s good! I’m not saying anything specific about anything! The twitchy people of today appear to be itching to read a whole world of meanings into what I say, probably based on misconceptions, preconceptions or simple personal motives.

Blind faith is always risky and almost always leads to something bad. You sometimes have to step back, examine the ethical implications of what you’re doing and really think. This includes in social behaviour (*glares*). Many religious people are good but religion overall is bad. I KNOW that the petty conflicts over slightly different interpretations of the same thing are stupid. I KNOW that blind faith is not good.

I will not be here and be raped by people’s cool rhetoric, impressing others with their zealous secularism or their fervent godliness or whatever. I respect good people, and there are good people in both camps. Usually when people criticise my arguments, I rebuild them as stronger and more wide-ranging philosophies. How the fuck can I do this when people pretend I’m saying something I’m not and then debunk that? I don’t know what it is about me that attracts these kinds of attacks. I really don’t. Is it that I once had a religion? Is it that I believe that it’s not always right to go in with all guns blazing, condemning and despising people who have no idea that their innocent faith that something good will happen has in fact lead to most of civilised humanity’s suffering, instead of helping them understand? Is it that I’m a hypocritical, attention-seeking neek with no apparent purpose? What is it? I’m sorry, I’m not ranting. I haven’t said anything I regret, nor anything I don’t mean. I believe that there is a neutral path and I intend to follow it.

Sometimes, stop showing off. I understand you can make sentences. I’m so sorry that you picked me.

Pax

We (Oliver, Elliot, Alex, Hugh and I) attended the Public Schools’ Fencing Championships 2007 and did the junior sabre yesterday with some success (Adam Sriskandan, Nico Eisler and Josh Frankle did the senior sabre). It was fairly interesting despite the quirks of the public transport system and the dementedly fervent supporters at the competition. Mathieu displayed great competition experience, advising fencers not to argue and then attacking the referees until they made the correct decision. He also described a few people as “very, very stupid”, “not very thin” and “quite elephant”.

All in all, a good tournament! Unfortunately James Weedon and Chris Jones were unable to come.

The results for this year are here (the events our group participated in were the junior and senior sabre)

Pax

Our class did the German mock reading yesterday and writing (the 150-word one) today. Both were somewhat disastrous, but useful as exercises - I will definitely know what I don’t know. The Public Schools thing is on Thursday. We have to meet Mathieu at Hammersmith Station at 07:10. At least we miss school*.

I am now actually on the verge of insanity. I need a new computer, I need a new Command & Conquer game and I need to find some work experience in IT. The fleeting happiness of making up humorous and usually apocryphal anecdotes to entertain people or beating the crap out of Core 1 specimen and past papers is now gone.

Speed me to my death!

* Said in vox imitating that of the Flak Trooper in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 when he says “At least I have job.” That great man! As I send him to his death, he consoles himself.

“At least I have job.”

Truly one of the greatest men on Earth.

Pax

For whatever reason, I choose to fail

UPDATE: About self-depreciation/deprecating and fake modesty - perhaps I’m just bitter that people took them away from me. Nevertheless, it’s better this way.

Pax

As the creation of this group hints at, the iPod/RAZR generation of form-over-function has infested Apple and is buying Apple computers for no reason other than their social meaning. This disgusts me. These people probably configure their systems so badly that any advantage that could be gained by use of Mac OS is lost and they might as well be running Windows!

If you’re an Apple noob, I suggest you subscribe to MacUser (I’m talking UK here, I don’t know about the US one), learn about UNIX, NeXT and Linux from Wikipedia and ditch the iPod in favour of something more great.

Pax

If western governments want to prove that the theory of anthropogenic global warming isn’t simply a pretext to sell more Toyota Prius hybrids or to stifle the industrialisation of LEDCs, maybe they should demonstrate this, perhaps by fixing some countries as opposed to draining out their resources and building military bases in them.

Pax

I only found out today that Jean Baudrillard is dead! It’s so strange for someone you have some interest in to die during your own lifetime. He answered as much as he could, I guess.

I don’t know what to say.

Pax

We had the Club junior foil today, in which I went out immediately, losing 7-10 to Haruka. Oh well. As was firmly predictable with the absence of Guy Emerson (was doing Maths Challenge) and Theo Chester (?), who’d no doubt have filled the podium with him, Oliver (Jones) won, despite conceding several points to other Ollie who has taken Mathieu’s slidelunging advice to heart and developed a new form of distance foil which took his first two oppenents apart - interesting to watch!

So it was alright, I guess. I was very bad.

Pax