Castro Note

This is a story I picked up from the Fark pages. I don't think I need to say very much about it, it's pretty self-explanatory. The city of Miami is sponsoring a party for when Castro dies. If the Russians had a party when Reagan died I think we would have probably nuked them. It's amazing how things that are tasteless when anyone else does it are fun when we do it.

I also like that the only comment from "critics" is that:
Critics have accused the city of dictating where people should party, with many preferring to celebrate on the streets of Little Havana. The city says the Orange Bowl celebration would not preclude that.

I guess no one minds celebrating the death of one's opponents. Too bad I didn't know this earlier, I could've had an excellent "Milton Friedman ist gestirbt!" party a few months back.

Firefox 2

So I switched over to FF2 last night, even though I had heard quite a lot of bug-related issues. Now that I've been using it, I find a thought frequently pops into my head: "I should get Firefox 2."

For you see, the only noticeable difference between 1.5 and 2.0 (version 2.0.0.1 actually, which is more important than one might think) is that the buttons are shinier. I'm sure there's a level of changes underneath (though I read a while back - at release - that little did in fact change) however. Regardless, it isn't really an issue with me. I was 98% happy with Netscape 8.0, my only complaint being the load box when you opened the browser. This is an issue for me because I opened NS, did 2 things, closed it, immediately re-opened it when I remembered I forgot something, and repeated about six times. One of the main reasons I switched to FF was because it seemed like the same thing but without the load box. And also it was better compatible with certain webpages that refused to work under Netscape, making Internet Explorer entirely unnecessary for me.

The end result of this is that if you don't have, go get FF2 (at least by April, when Mozilla cuts support). I know I was telling you as short a time as a week ago how evil 2 was, but it's fine. Really.

Vaka Video

So I rewatched the video for Sigur Ros' "Untitled 1" (a.k.a. "Vaka"). And everything makes so much more sense now. And with that, it's all the more sadder. Not only is everything so fiercely dystopian, its extremely, extremely fiercely dystopian. You have the kids checked for lesions in the school, and then they put on their gas masks and heavy clothes and such before they go outside. They do all this because they live in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. Everything outside has been charred and it looks like they live in a volcano. The sky is a crimson, blood red. And for fun they build an ashman (instead of snowman...) and trash a derelict car that is in the playground. One could even assume that it was brought in to serve as the equivalent of a real playset.

So anyway, a fight breaks out between two kids, and, to make it simple, after a dramatic choking during the climatic 44th octave singing, the camera zooms in on the "oh no I'm dying!" look in the eyes of the child, whose gas mask has come off and she is lying on the ground dying. The children crowd around and watch her die. Before I had thought "Gee, thats sad, they killed that kid." But now I realize that they killed her because they have absolutely no value for life in a post-apocalyptic world, and, for a good reason one could argue. This is a life where death comes early - the children, possibly not even out of their first decade of life, are being checked for cancerous lesions. In such a society one does not live - rather, one exists for a (short) period of time and then dies. One could almost say "expires" instead of die; one's value may as well be the same as that of a carton of milk. It is no surprise that the children did not seem at all shocked by the death of their peer. Soon, they would be the same as him.

So that's my take the second time around. Very, very dystopian.

Official Apology

In a previous post, I declared that Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island wasn't very good. "The lo-fi approach didn't work very well," I stated. I now wish to retract that statement. "Song Against Sex" lilts along wonderfully, and "Naomi" is an amazing song. And of course "Three Peaches" and "April 8th" are two of the darkest-sounding songs ever. The rest of the album is pretty solid too. I still have barely listened to The Great Destroyer. I did once and I didn't like it much; haven't found the time to re-evaluate it yet.

The Rebel

Or L'Homme Révolté.

I've been reading Camus' novel-length essay on rebels, rebellions, and revolutions, and have found it to be very fascinating. Reading Camus is really a treat because his arguments are some of the most concise and logical arguments I have ever read. Not only are they accurate and to the point, but they are often so effective that they render any counter-arguments moot. His "Reflections on the Guillotine" worked this way as well; in fact, even more so.

So back to The Rebel. The section I am currently on (and that I have found to be by far the most interesting) is "State Terrorism and Rational Terror," an examination of Marxist doctrine, both theoretically and in actuality. I just want to mention a few things I found to be especially noteworthy in the section. Of course, I would recommend that you read it yourself as well.

One of the crises of Marxist thought in the 1950's (when Camus was writing) was the question "Why hasn't the revolution come?" Marx had argued that conditions would become worse and worse as capital was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and eventually conditions would be so untolerable as to make revolution inevitable. In fact, the opposite was happening. While workers were by no means rich, and equality between the proletariat and bourgeoisie was not even visible on the horizon, conditions had improved through reform since the time that Marx had written his works. Following Marxist doctrine, these reforms had set back the revolution, and therefore should have been opposed. "The logic of such an attitude," Camus writes, "leads to the approval of everything that tends to increase working-class poverty. The worker must be given nothing so that one day he can have everything." The problem was especially acute with government welfare. As Camus puts it, "it is not a good thing that future revolutionaries should be put in the situation of expecting to be fed by the State."

And of course there is more. Marx railed against religion, "the opiate of the masses." He rightly concluded that any system that convinced people to work so that they could have an eternal, utopian afterlife was exploitative, disingenuous, and, more to the point, vile. And yet we have the Revolution, where the workers first fight a bloody war to overthrow the capitalists and institute the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (one of my favorite paradoxical phrases), which they then must unquestioningly obey and slave for, so that one day there will be a stateless Utopia where everyone is free and there is no coercion or oppression at all. The fiercely anti-religious Marx has declared a system in which the workers are exploited for a better future. Even worse than the Christian heaven, Marxist workers won't get to partake in this glorious utopia, having died long before it materialized.

There is also the most common attack against authoritarian communism from the left (and one which I have long found decisive), which is the entire concept of the state melting away after saving the worker from the evil capitalists. Never once in history has a government voluntarily dissolved itself, especially when it is a dictatorship (whether "of the proletariat" or not). As Camus writes:

...Lenin spoke with a precision which left little doubt about the indefinite continuation of the proletarian super-State. "With this machine, or rather this weapon [the State], we shall crush every form of exploitation, and when there are no longer any possibilities of exploitation left on earth, no more people owning land or factories, no more people gorging themselves under the eyes of others who are starving, when such things become impossible, then and only then shall we cast this machine aside. Then there will be neither State nor exploitation." Therefore as long as there exists on earth, and no longer in a specific society, one single oppressed person and one proprietor, so long the State will continue to exist. It also will be obliged to increase in strength during this period so as to vanquish one by one the injustices, the goverments responsible for injustice, the obstinately bourgeois nations, and the people who are blind to their own intersts. And when, on an earth that has finally been subdued and purged of enemies, the final iniquity shall have been drowned in the blood of the just and the unjust, then the State, which has reached the limit of all power, a monstrous idol covering the entire earth, will be discreetly absorbed into the silent city of Justice.

(Notice the skepticism at the end).

I think that about says it all.

News Post

I'm sitting here watching the NBC news, and there have been a number of interesting stories that deserve comment. In order of introduction:

Bush is sending more troops to Iraq, even though most of the generals I've heard interviewed (including Colin Powell, former Bush puppet) think it's a bad idea and Congress is not behind the idea. Plus, as far as I'm aware, the elections in November were a clear statement by voters that they wanted out of Iraq, despite all the dire warnings about "defeat" that the parties have been manufacturing. Bush'll be chattering tomorrow.

The second story gave an example of what will be coming out of this increase. US planes and helicopters were bombing a heavily populated neighborhood in Baghdad, killing 50 "insurgents" as the correspondent unflinchingly stated. Last time I checked, dropping 500-pound bombs in densely populated slums kills a lot more than just the intended target.

Next, the United States has decided it has the right to start dropping bombs and releasing special forces in Somalia while hunting "terrorists." The evidence the White House gave (and once again, presented unquestioningly by the media) was a grainy photo of a bunch of nutjobs prancing about in the desert. Supposedly they were training in Somalia. Therefore, we can bomb the country. The Somalis, who have plenty of experience with US troops (estimates of civilian casualties during the occupation are around 10000), are very wary about whether the US being even in the area. And of course, we just kicked out the only stable government the Somalis have had in nearly 20 years.

The final story I'm going to deal with is a story about military hardware. The Israelis developed a system (named TROPHY) that detects and intercepts incoming RPGs. They didn't go into much detail on the news, but according to the WP page it basically discharges a shotgun blast at the incoming projectile to disable it. The system would work great in Iraq, but it is being opposed by the US military on very questionable grounds, including such frivilous questions such as "does it offer 360º protection?" and "does it autoload?" A demonstration was provided as an answer to the second question, and the first question can easily be addressed by mounting multiple systems on a vehicle. A more cynical (and probably accurate) reason for the oppostion was given by MSNBC, stating that the Pentagon is against adopting the system because they would have to then cancel a contract with Raytheon to develop a similiar system, which won't be ready until 2011 at the earliest. Once again, business concerns over all else.

So, there's the news for tonight.

Let Go

I got the Nada Surf album of the previously mentioned title today, and it's really amazing, to put it simply. I haven't even listened to Low's The Great Destroyer because after listening to NMH's On Avery Island (and not much liking it, may I add; the lo-fi approach didn't work very well) I put this in (probably looking for something approaching polished-sounding and not based on incoherence). And I've been listening to it since, with the exception of watching the Maple Leafs trounce the Bruins 10-2. That was a treat.

But yes, it's an amazing album. I'm not doing a review here, so don't worry. But all the songs are above average and there are a few (esp. "Killian's Red" and "Neither Heaven nor Space") that are outstanding. It's worth investigating, at the very least. I stopped by Pitchfork a few minutes ago to see if the review for this album fitted their formula, and it did. Specifically, they hated it. A 3.8. I'm glad to see that. I would've been worried if they liked it.

And this is their formula, by the way (in python):

[neq, "radiohead", $album,
store_random_in_range, reg(0), 1, 5,
assign, $score, reg(0)]