not much to share, just feel sort of obligated to do this

been sick most of this week, so haven't really thought about blogging anything, so there is very little interesting stuff here.

if you've never seen stephen kings IT, i suggest you do. heres my favourite scene. i go into hysterics every time i see it. plus it scares small children for some reason, so thats always a plus (unless you're a small kid)
of course, the fact it scares small children makes me think sometimes, they know more than we do about things we'd term... unnatural. but thats a thought for another post. actually i'm not sure i can actually do that thought justice, when i first thought that thought all the way through, i was scared of the dark again for about 4 days.... until i forgot most of it.
but i'm rambling. enjoy this scene.

just randomness

i've been finding it difficult to write anything, all of a sudden. i can think of a bunch of things to write about, but i can't put them into words very well. and of course, according to the dynamics of murphys law (an inherent characteristic of the human experience, noted time and again without fail) as soon as i try to alert others of this problem, the problem instantly dissappears.
maybe someone, somewhere, thinks its a conspiracy, concocted by aliens, the illuminati, or our lizard overlords (maybe, they are all one and the same!) to make us eat more oranges or something.

now that i've begun, i think i can write something. as much as anything i write can actually be called 'something.'

heres a video of an ad from 1984, of, well, you can read. i hope. if you can't read, then me writing down where this ad came from isn't going to help you much.



 we've all seen or heard of this ad, before. while i think this ad is a bit overreaching, i suppose the message (apart from buy macintosh) could be about, not conforming and not getting into all that 'brave new world' 'equilibrium' 'matrix' stuff.

and here is another ad, from this year. this one is pretty much the exact opposite of the one above. you'll know exactly what i mean, you have likely seen this ad before (unless you don't watch tv much, i guess)


(geez, it took me about 1.5 hours to find this video. i have a headache.)

so, um, yeah, i think this comparison of these two ads, from different decades, its pretty obvious what i'm getting at here...

a strange couple of days.... sort of, ish

on sunday, i did a post about a thing in china. i don't really know what to call it now, but anyway, heres the link to that:
http://blackycat.blogspot.com/2011/06/mirage-in-huangshan-city-on-xinan-river.html
anyway, in the last 3-4 days, that page has gotten 75 pageviews and counting. my second highest seen post, about demotivators, which has been acquiring pageviews since 7 april, has gotten 38 so far.
so, yeah, thought i'd share that. its interesting.
i've been studying for a maths exam the last two days, which i did today. i've been studying a lot longer than 2 days obviously, its just i did a lot more study in those two days than the last couple of weeks.
i don't think studying almost (almost) non stop for a few days is detrimental to mental health, i think the equation of a straight line is written as y=mx+c. i mean, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?

and i found the single most awesome thing on the internet. this is the sole reason the internet was created,in 32 BC, by god. the only reason the internet still exists, is because god loves his creations, and also to keep this alive. mostly to keep this alive. i would tell you what it is, but, did god tell you what the world was like before you came out of the womb? of course not (well, he might have, i don't remember) he wanted you to experience it for yourself, without any preconceptions about what to expect. enjoy.
http://biancavirina.tumblr.com/post/2665295375/click-the-squares-the-whole-world-needs-to
(if you are already aware of this, still enjoy.)

mirage in huangshan city, on the xin'an river

 in china on thursday june 16, many websites, most containing other articles about how aliens enjoy invading peoples privacy (i'm phrasing this politely) and that lightning causes sky monsters to manifest physically in our dimension, began writing about a mirage seen in huangshan city, on the xin'an river, in the tunxi section.

this mirage, which was partially hidden by fog, included buildings, trees, mountains, and some weird palace thing, all of which seemed to be floating on the river. there have apparently been other sights very similar to this lately, however none as clear as this one. one is alleged to have cleary shown witnesses of the mirage bustling crowds and moving cars.
it apparently started at 5pm local time.
heres some video on it, put on youtube by some random guy:



shockingly, i'm having difficulties believing this is true. there seems very little information about these sightings, despite apparently there being a large number of them, i don't speak chinese, so i don't know if the translation is correct, nobody seems to care about this mirage in the video, and i don't know what the usual skyline of the city is. and from the looks of those trees, its flooding or something, unless they're part of the mirage, which doubt. there are also no reputable sources about it, apart from some that have been posted with the video by the random guy, and i'm not familiar with the websites of them, so i don't know if he just made some websites that look like them.

but, just because something seems ridiculous and hoaxy, doesn't automatically mean it is.  i'm going to get to the bottom of this. i figure writing a blog article about it will  push me a little more to do it.

i went to some forum threads, to see the fruits of other peoples investigations. one of the links from the video is http://newscontent.cctv.com/news.jsp?fileId=112031 , which is from 'china central television,' where the vdeo apparently originated. from above topsecret.com, apparently they've tried, in the past, to show footage from the movie top gun, passing it off as footage of their own fighters.
click here for a video showing the two clips.

heres a pic of the childrens palace, which is the island where that weird palace thing they say is a mirage is:

according to guy on above topsecret.com, the coorinates are 29.707978,118.313624. you can see the bridge from there as well, where they filmed, and the building 'mirages.' type that in google maps to see it.

this is still confusing though, they said it happened before, many times. it could be a mistranslation, or another  hoax made by them for some reason, but why say its happened before, lots of times, in lots of other areas? maybe to explain why nobody on the bridge seems to care about the phantom buildings.

so, yeah, its a hoax, or a mistranslation, or something. i don't know who or why, but i'd rather not give them the satisfaction by continuing the search.
if you wish to see the abovetopsecret.com thread about it, click here
original video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tK5zF4nw0&feature=player_embedded

UPDATE THINGY 27 JUNE: another blog, much better written than mine, and with much better pictures, has a post on this:
http://aukiman.blogspot.com/2011/06/huangshan-city-mirage-all-down-to-bad.html
if anyone reading this has something they wanna add, feel free to comment.

and, um, random picture that seems vaguely relevant:

Buttzville, New Jersey

yes, that is a town or unincorporated community, in new jersey USA. where did i get this information, you ask? your answer? stop asking stupid questions! its from wikipedia, like almost everything else.

pharology. what do you think this is the study of? pharaohs? fingers (you know, because... oh never mind)? some generic third thing that it could be, but isn't? no, lighthouses. yes, there are people, who study, and interested in them enough to research, lighthouses. the name is derived from the lighthouse of alexandria, pharos. i wonder if they feel the same about the destruction of pharos as i do about the destruction of the library of alexandria?
it is a legend that the light from pharos could burn enemy ships. which is of course ridiculous... right?

in 1241, there was a momentous battle between two men, pierre bremon ricas novas and a man called sordello (that other guy has like, 4 names and this guy has one?).
they chose their weapon, vicious sirventes, and went all out, for a whole afternoon. there is no account of what happened afterwards, or who the victory went to .
a sirvente is a poem, specifically, talking about current affairs as seen by a soldier.

in north korea, a song is played quite often on the radio, and on loudspeakers that are on the streets. it is the  themesong, the signature tune of kim jong il. if you have heard it before, i got to ask: what have you been doing? what are you involved in?
here are the lyrics:

You pushed away the severe storm You made us believe, Comrade Kim Jong-il We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Our future and hope depend on you People's fate depends on you, Comrade Kim Jong-il! We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Even if the world changes hundreds of times People believe in you, Comrade Kim Jong-il We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Oh... Our Comrade Kim Jong-il Our country cannot exist without you!

heres a random video. and this was actually randomly chosen. i do not quite remember how i got to this video on youtube. perhaps it was fate. anyway, this show was awesome. i remember the beginning going a bit differently though.

libricide: the destruction of books and presumably the stuff in them

libricide is the destruction, usually by fire, of large numbers of books. if you destroy a single book you're not commiting libricide (not that its a crime, usually), you're just, um, well, probably making a bit of a mess.
libricide usually takes the form of book burning, which can be an act of getting rid of the information in the books, but is usually, especially in modern times, symbolic of the 'lack of agreement' by the burning party (i don't wanna go to that party!) with the views the book portrays.

yes, the burning of books has been a part of human civilisation for a very long time, from in the beginnings of imperial china, where Qin Shihuang Di burnt many historical records, and buried many scholars alive, to bolster his percieved historical importance, to the book burnings today by some obscure religious groups, apparently with nothing better to do than burn things they don't agree with.

the act of libricide that sticks most in my mind is the burning of the library of alexandria, one of the largest and most important libraries of the ancient world. there are too many sources that state how and why and who burnt it, some stating it was julius caesar by accident in 47 - 48bc, after setting some fireships into the harbour to destroy his archrival pompeys ships, and the fire made it to land.

others state that the library of alexandria (in these sources called 'the serapeum') was destroyed by a apparently vicious christian mob in 391ad, who were burning anything that disagreed with the bible, and killing priests and priestesses and pagan scholars, who were helped by theophilus, the christian patriarch of alexandria.

i was told this story when i was little, about a large christian mob who, out of hate and ignorance and fear, destroyed what i imagined as the intellectual centre of the ancient world. what i got from that is that religion can be a powerul thing, and that education is very important to be sure that power is used for more constructive purposes than burning things.

other sources say the muslims did it, in 640AD, because there could only be two categories of information there: that which did not agree with the koran, which made it heresy, and that which did, which made it not important enough to keep, since it was in the koran. however, it mentions a 'john of byzantium,' a historical figure that was dead a long time before this alleged happening so it is probably fiction. however muslims did burn an indian library in 1193 at nalanda. it was so large it burnt for three months before it was destroyed. nobody was able to stop it, because the muslims wouldn't allow them.


hmm, this post is getting a bit long. if i wrote everything i though about libricide here, i'd be here for a very long time.
 well, other instances of book burning include:
 the rabbi nachman of breslov burnt a book shortly after writing it. his followers mourn the loss of that book to this day, and search for clues as to what was in there.
the guy who made up superman burnt the very first superman comic, out of despair it would never be sold and published.
a badly damaged guru garanth sahib, an important book in the sikh religion, is cremated in a ritual similar to cremating a dead person.

for a list of historical book burnings, go here
for a look of modern book burnings go here. i can't help but think this website taking the piss from actual book burning groups, though. heres another one. they're both american baptist churches, i tried to find more varied sources, but thats it. heres a kinda funny one, a forum thing.

its been a slow week, on the blogging front

none of the blogs i subscribe to have had many new posts. i enjoy reading them, its nice reading the blog of a blogger with such obviously better blogging skills than me (try saying that 3 times fast). so i'm just a little dissapointed every time i've gone on the blogger dashboard, to find no new posts.
yeah, that pretty much means i'm bored, even though i do have other things to do, and i'm just writing this post for no real reason. just like nearly every other post.

did you know, that there is a finnish heavy metal band band called kilpi (which, in finnish, means shield), and they sing in finnish? could've knocked me down with a feather when i read that on wikipedia.

i'm going to try to make a blog post about libricide, the destruction of books, especially in ancient history. i found a random page in wikipedia (this is just me thinking, but maybe i spend too much time doing that) and i got the qin dynasty, which is well known and criticised for its burning of books and historical records (and killing of scholars) to make itself seem more important, and ensure it would be remembered. the fact i'm writing about them right now kinda makes me feel a bit sick.
this got me thinking about the many times throughout history a large amount of knowledge, not just historic records, has been destroyed, for various reasons. and, when you think about it, the many times it has been documented in sources is probably the tip of the iceberg, since if you're destroying knowledge, you don't want someone spreading that information do you?
 so, yeah, i'll post that in a few days. its going to be awesome.

i want to post a video or something, but i can't think of any, and i'm not bored anymore so i don't want to search youtube for something.
oh, wait. this always makes me laugh, because people seem to think its a monster or something, when that is clearly just a bald man in the woods. i'd love to hear his side of the story.

i need a new description bit, under the blog name...

because, at the moment, it says nothing in way too many words. in that respect, it fits in perfectly with the rest of this blog, but i think the idea of that descriptor bit is to entice people to read the blog, not to , well,  do whatever the hell it is now.
i was thinking something like this:
' if you are looking for a blog that will never not keep you entertained, a blog that will keep the pests of boredom away from the roots of your sanity, look no further. i have the perfect link for you, right here. (blog link in question TBD. it may even just be a dead link, or link straight back to this blog. that'd be pretty funny! i could link it to a certain blogpost, so i know how many people click it!)
and then something else, maybe about dogs riding unicycles or the random page wikithingies. i'll be thinking about this, and i might do a new one tomorrow. i'm also posting a new pic at the side. it will not be of me. i would've done the pic of me in a dress, but conveniently for me, all the pics we have on this computer were deleted, along with nearly everyone else, last week. no 2 weeks ago. something like that.

here is video of a lamb doing unnatural things. enjoy. remember:
YOU'VE SEEN IT, YOU CAN'T UNSEE IT!



this is some messed up lovecraftian stuff right here. it would make abdul alhazred go insane. if you don't know who he is, look him up.

generic post title no.337

i said i was going to continue explaining the thought i had in sustainability class last week. i'm not going to now, it sort of moves too fast, and has sort of become too, complex. i'm not even going to bother. i will say where it is currently, however.

many problems in western society, from the huge increase of children being diagnosed with learning disabilities, all the way to the inabiltity of too many people to distinguish science from science fiction (and all the problems that causes). these problems and many more can be solved, obviously over a period of time, if we get rid of one thing.
a thing that everyone hates, that everyone has done at some point in their lives, that many are probably doing right now.


i am talking, of course, about homework.
it makes kids, who were curious, about learning everything and anything before school, think of learning as a chore, something that has to be done before you can do the stuff you want to do.

i think i'd best leave it there. i can't seem to think properly right now. and i always end up making the whole post stupid and irrelevant.

 for more information, go here, here and here. oh, and here. and here.
one more. eh, maybe another?

and if you insist on believing homework is actually very useful in education, here is a picture i would like you to see...

 

seriously though, if you disagree, please speak your mind.
no swearing.
no yelling.

no creationists. well, i think we'll do a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on them.