A weird day

Today started with, of all things, a RL pikachu lookalike (and I am not talking about my gf) on some German T-shirts. It turns out that this pikachu is an actual weirdo deep-sea octopus from genus Grimpotheutis, and not just another Elbonian politician in superhero disguise. Life seems to be stranger then fiction...and sometimes it just looks like something out of Call of Cthulhu.
The actual weirdness of the day started earlier in the morning, when my cousin and me (driving in his red Clitmobi...er, Batmobile) almost run over a middle aged hippie bicyclist who spontaneously (and suddenly) decided to use all 4 lanes of a rather busy crossroads to drive in circles, while listening to ipod thingie. The incident reinforced my belief that ipod thingies are devilish devices designed to weed out certain strains of genes from humanity's gene pool.
Which brings me to bacterial sex, a subject of some interest, which unfortunately, I never have time for. It seems to be *the* process for an entrepreneurial gene hacker/nanotech gadgeteer, especially when it is combined with the ultimate in geek niftiness, the portable DNA copier. According to wonderfully named Mr. Ugaz ("Stepped in" in Elbonian language), this truly revolutionary device (for dictators of small countries with no oil, for example) seems to work on principles akin to lava lamp - a device that enthralled and still enthralls hundreds of thousands of students who love nature.
Seriously, though, a cheap and portable DNA copier is just one step away from making a cheap and reliable Von Neumann machine factory. Since the best machines on nano-scales seem to be biological molecules (usually encoded by RNA or DNA), we only need to find a cheap and reliable device that creates cell-like environment, and bingo! we have our own nanotech factories. In a few years, we might end up exchanging DNA and RNA strands for cool new designer bacteria and cellular factory products ;)
This would be hot, if it weren't for the fact that other people wrote about it many years ago. It was also probably done in Simpsons, since it seems that every other good idea was done in Simpsons, too.
In the meantime, I was hijacked from my work by a friend who came nearby to plunder the military library-they were about to burn some old books (because that is what military libraries do - why sell or recycle when you can have a big bonfire?) and he wanted to take interesting tidbits for himself. While talking to him and his colleagues, I heard the most wonderful story about the men who managed to break his own leg while sleeping in his bed. This same person is (in)famous in Elbonian military for his enigmatic cloud of extreme clumsiness - he managed to fall under our Navy flagship while carrying extremely expensive video equipment (they dragged him out with a pole), he routinely manages to find uncovered manholes to fall into, etc. Of course, if there is a female of the species present anywhere on the scene, the results are even worse - another poor geek who probably won't breed. Because I am a small hearted person, I laughed very hard and secretly felt relieved in knowledge that there is someone clumsier then me.
Which brings me to duck genitalia. Which are weird and disturbing in too many ways.

Addiction hits again

This is my 7th day without EVE...it is getting really really hard...tribbles...nooo...

So I went back to the roots of my space addiction - science! Ever since I was a small kid, I wanted to be a "space scientist". For a very brief period it almost happened - but then I decided to return to Elbonia, and this dream of mine stayed unfulfilled. Still, I try to keep up with news from my favorite field. I understand that technicalities of orbital mechanics are not fun reading for everyone, so I shall just post pictures. :)

Also, fresh from Jupiter! A storm is brewing! Is it yet another yachting championship for Dwellers?

Elbonian Defense

This Monday is an interrupt in my long weekend. Since tomorrow is a state holiday (Elbonians traditionally celebrate International Work(ers) Day by not working)*, vast numbers of my countrymen have decided to take a day off and just enjoy one really nice, relaxed and long weekend. Unfortunately for me, due to bureaucratic difficulties in moving various multicolored pieces of paper throughout the system on time, I actually have to work today. This is not too bad, though, since the rest of the firm's employees don't have to work, and so I have zero work to do.

I decided to catch up with the news.

First thing that I saw was that our own Minister of Love held a joint (meaning, Air Force, Navy and Army) military exercise for the benefit of an elementary school class (in Elbonia, class is about 40 kids). This is slightly strange, for two reasons: a) the exercise was held in Elbonian capital, which has no sea, and b) it was held *in* the capital itself, in military depot/garrison in one of the suburbs, instead of the more usual approach to hold it in the nearby swamp, err, field exercise complex. The apparent reason why the exercise was held at all, was because of our Minister's son, who had to bring his parent to school to tell about his work. Our beloved Minister decided not to give a speach to a class of 10 year olds, but instead opted to bring the school to his work. His son is now officially the coolest kid in his school.

According to the people in flats neighboring the base, the show was not too exciting - no military policemen fell out of the helicopters (like the last time a public exercise was staged).
How much did it cost? Well, far less then an U.S. day in Irak, and actually comparable with the cost of a day for our Elbonian troops in Jerka Jerkastan.

I say, money well spent.

All the other news were full of eulogies for our main opposition party leader, who died last night. Since in times past he was a leader of communist party, declared atheist (after meeting Pope John Paul, he decided he was "only" an agnostic), then leader of the social-democrat party, I found it rather strange that most of the articles focus on how he "accepted the faith", even though there is no evidence for it (he recently explicitly stated that he is not a believer). I mean, what the heck?! When did our Elbonian Catholic Church manage to hijack our newspapers?!
I suppose that many famous deathbed conversions originally started up as a story in religion-influenced newspapers..;)

Shaking my head, I surfed some more and I found out about recent interview of our Minister of Economics (the chubby guy-his team wore "Cho" T-shirts) who showed his complete ignorance of not only economics, but also the professional jargon. He managed to get an interview on TV after which everyone who knows anything about economics probably started to sell his government bonds and move their stock portfolios into other countries, like Hrbia and Crotoboltavia, who seem to have marginally more competent ministers (even though most of them had at some point of their past been unsuccessfull premiere league soccer club managers, crime kingpins, warlords, war crime suspects, state monopolists and local firefighting society presidents, kinda like our minister himself).

This was the moment I decided to just go away and watch some undead seafood instead.

* Traditionally, we all go out to a park and eat charity bean soup.

Bruce

I spent my last weekend wallowing in my geek roots - visiting local SF convention (SFerakon). I had great amounts of fun, even though the "grown up" parts of my brain were stopping me from engaging in some of the more outrageous activities (like SFerakon Survivor, an activity that looks like a weird younger brother of Fear Factor and Edward Elizabeth Hitler's idea of a nice dinner). Guest of Honor was Bruce Sterling, who was awesome, even up close and personal, even though he is generally an unpleasant person. So why awesome?

Well, he managed to future shock us. :)

Imagine this: a room full of Elbonian SF fans - most of them young, some of them Trekkies, about third of them are either science students or scientist, the rest is usual mix of SMOFs, SFoldster/burnouts and wandering outsiders. All of them think that they are cool, in touch with technopulse, living at the edge of today's imagination, proud in their utter geekiness. Zoom on the speaker: early 50ties red faced, grey haired potbellied glasses-wearing geek, talking with nasal Texas drawl about 20db louder then is actually needed. He looks unhappy and annoyed*, and is taking it all out at us - by subjecting us to each and every one of our favorite SF fantasies (that we never before though of as fantasies) and systematically destroying them.
When I say destroying them, I am being nice: he takes our cherished ideas by their neck, twists them around, cuts them into little pieces, jumps up and down on them, digs a hole, throws them in, pisses on that and drops a huge tombstone on top. When he kills an idea, it stays dead.

At first I was shocked. Then I looked at the audience and saw that unforgettable "deer in headlights" stare on their faces, and almost burst out from laughter. It was so funny! All these ubergeeks being geeked over by a 50+y.o. nerd from Texas (who probably voted republican ;)!!
He was especially nasty towards anything that (in my opinion) smelled of fairy tale new ageism - things like singularity, AI, religion (quote: "if you believe in that, you might as well believe in holy trinity and transubstantiation", which made some people very angry :), and impending golden age brought to us through technology. He also seems to have a red button thingie about climate change - very vehement against people who don't believe in it - almost funny to watch while he elaborates all the bad things that are going to happen, whatever we do. Somehow, though, he still managed to come off as an optimist - world *can* be saved, if rich people decide so. Which is something I find incomprehensible (probably due to not being rich) - why would someone who built his business empire by taking advantage of global commons (our biosphere), decide to repair the damage? That person, after all, isn't going to have problems finding clean water, air, etc. - being rich means that you have access to resources denied to the rest of the population. But I digress.

After Sterling's panel, we all walked out feeling a bit like being hit by a near-light speed proton stream. He held two more panels in the coming days, and I definitely felt old and out of date by the end of it - though still determined to catch up. :)

I am not yet ready to go and visit Mount Fuji, I think....

* Possibly due to not being served enough beer while being harassed by very 20th cen. sf nerds. I do remember that he didn't listen very closely to questions we asked him, but then again, he heard it all, so many many times before...:)

The Cathedral update

It is now 17 years since the beginning of the restoration of the cathedral, and it finally dawned on some that rate of limestone melt is higher then the rate of cathedral restoration. A flurry of fund raising ensued, such as selling of restored church property in the historic district of town to new shopping/office centre being built by local general (who escaped to Austria when it was discovered that he may have taken a few bags of jewels when he left his office in Elbonian MoD few years ago), or prisoners gathering used PET bottles for recycling (about 12 bottles for a US dollar). Somehow that did not raise quite as much money as was needed, so more radical solutions are contemplated. Current church officials are talking about opening a restaurant/beerhouse in one of the old defensive cathedral towers. Supposedly it will not only bring money for the restoration, but will also attract young believers back to the church.
If you think that this is slightly weird, you should know that famous elbonian Cathedral of Đakovo has a chimney sticking out of it.

Tuesday(s)

Today is an actual work day in Elbonia. By late yesterday afternoon, all the bosses have gotten a clue about things that were supposed to happen last week, so today they charge hither and thither trying to make their unwilling subjects perform various onerous duties. Since no one has an "it is Monday for Higher Power's sake!" excuse today, and it is still too early in the week for kids to get sick (thus granting sickness leave to their parents), people actually do have to work. It is depressing. Even local weather detects Tuesdays, and rains most often on them*.

To prove my thesis, today I phoned to my colleagues working in the wonderful country of Jerka Jerkastan (which is about three and a half hours ahead in time, and thus perfect for finding out about weather, but not far enough that it could be used to find out the winning lottery numbers), well known for its nice and sunny climate, amazing beaches that go on forever, and local inhabitants who are almost as religious and almost as well armed as average North Dakotans. I asked my colleagues questions about the weather, and of course, it is raining there too. They said that it was raining there for the whole last week, and that it felt like a really really long Tuesday. Not even the occasional rocket (launched by the well meaning locals who sincerely believe that this is the fastest way to find out the Truth about their religion) could dispel the gloom of the long, dark, world-wide Tuesday, they complained.

Them being true Elbonians, rain did not stop them from a having a traditional light lunch.

*When it doesn't fall on Rain God (Rob McKenna), of course.

Monday Shmonday

Life in my home country of Elbonia is strange and mystifying, especially when it relates to work habits of us, native Elbonians. If you listen to us speak, we spend enormous amounts of time working, usually for incompetent bosses imported from neighbouring country Crotoboltavia (world famous for its ancestral Elbonian wild mountain tribes and such fashion statements as white socks with suits and black shoes). If you actually visit Elbonia, you are going to find that all the coffeehouses seem to be full of the people, all the time, and that all of them claim to be on a short coffee break from their incompetent Crotoboltavian bosses. Of course, although incompetent, Crotoboltavians are crafty montagnards and quite often spend the whole day searching for their employees - usually by going from coffeehouse to coffeehouse themselves.

Some of us are lucky, and work for government companies, agencies, departments and the rest of the metastasizing kafkian apparatus of state. For us, the whole work question is quite irrelevant, especially when compared to really important issues like whether the weekly allotment of toilet paper arrived, who bought which of the daily newspapers (and of course, coordination issues for prevention of duplication of effort when buying or reading the same), whose turn is it to spend time and patience convincing the corner coffee machine to produce some liquid almost totally, but not quite, different then the coffee you asked for, etc, etc..

For example, I recently transferred into a new office, quite a bit higher up in the hierarchy of government. This office is part of a highly secretive and paranoid part of state apparatus, witch uses staggering security measures (quite alien to our easy-going Elbonian ways) such as security cards for opening doors, no coffee machines* in hallways and actual internal camera system. Because this is a secretive state apparatus, all the employees are required to wear suits (or for women, whatever haute mode is current) and black mirror glasses, which makes them highly inconspicuous in the middle of the military complex where the offices are situated. It also makes them highly inconspicuous on any public event which they, by the nature of their job, have to attend. To remind my foreign readers, in Elbonia men traditionally wear sweats, white socks and black leather jackets in public.

There also seems to exist a slight problem with the security cards for all the exterior and interior doors. These were part of a system inherited from previous inhabitants of that office building - a local HQ of an UN peacekeeping mission. This ancient technology (early 90s) in the meantime lost all of its accompanying manuals, most of the security cards themselves as well as the means to make new ones. So this secretive group of government officials is forced to wait around entrance and interior doors until the lucky card-bearer appears, all the time, of course, acting inconspicuously. Some enterprising individuals have in the mean time discovered alternative means of opening doors - it seems that card readers sometimes react positively to various pieces of colored paper, personal ID cards, and in at least one observed case, a briefcase.

You can imagine the scene: a small group of suits waits around entrance to an old building, pretending that they are just passing by or smoking a cigarette, while all the time watching actions of an unlucky individual who tries to open the door by waving various implements at it. When the door opens, everybody rushes in, while from the opposite side their mirror images try to rush out. Confusion ensues, confusion resolves, the doors close with ominous click, while one last unlucky late individual (running at breakneck speed) hits the door and slides down semiconscious, starting the whole cycle again.
Repeat the scene on every interior wing door.


* This problem was solved by putting all the coffee machines in the stairwell. Of course, that solution just compounded the problem with doors.