Thanks to dad for this one!
Author: Cubilone
This is me. Or so I believe.
Νέος Εθνικός Ύμνος
Στην μελωδία του γνωστού, τελείως παρωχημένου ύμνου:
Το σπαθί έχει σκουριάσει
και η όψη είναι χλωμή
Οι εχθροί έχουν πυκνώσει
κάνουν πάρτι στην βουλή
Απ’τα κόκκαλα βγαλμένη
τα πουλήσαμε κι αυτά
Μα τι άλλο θες να κάνουν
για να νιώσεις την σκλαβιά; (x3)
Stig & Steen – Nedenomsvej
I just LOVE these super-obscure guys! What a song, what an album…
Why?
Why do lots of people only buy lottery tickets only when there’s the ‘biggest jackpot ever’ going on? Don’t they realise that their chances only become slimmer? People seem to be impressed with the large sum of money as if winning the normal, non-jackpot amount is somehow insufficient, as if somehow the extra amount of money can somehow counteract the worse chances of winning. Explain that, people out there who insist that humans are beings of logic!
Why do some people… write like this… on digital media…? They must realise that it reads as if they’re hesitating… unsure… I really hate it… But one can one do… Perhaps there should be an update on punctuation for the digital age… Include stuff like sarcasm marks to replace the dizzying amount of :P, replace Latin questionmarks with Greek ones (;) when typing in Greek and abolish or replace ellipses, whose only purpose nowadays seems to be to either make people look mysterious or aloof through the net or help the insescure ones find some security in the written word…
Why are library PCs so horrible and slow, lacking basic software such as audio drivers? Oh yeah, libraries are supposed to be silent… but I’m not asking for speakers, just for a way to use my fucking headphones! Why is it forbidden to install even updates to the existing software?
Why when the weather is freezing cold, water on the street is very particular if it feels like freezing or not?
Why do I feel obliged to write these things when I know I should be writing my Babel assignment instead?
Danish Diaries #14: Putada
Putada 1: I moved out of my room 4 days ago. The clever thieves called Kollegiekontoret, the people behind the dorms of Århus, have included in the contract that when you pay your rent until a certain day you must leave 7 working days earlier (+ the weekend). So my contract ends on the 15th but I had to leave my room on the 6th. These 9 days are included in the rent, of course! Yes, of course! I’ve paid for something that is impossible to use by contract. Well done, Kollegiekontoret, well done.
Putada 2: Moving out means cleaning your room thoroughly, which makes the whole ”7 days!” even stranger, since at least in theory the room is perfectly ready for its next inhabitant. Anyway, I did clean my room thoroughly, took everything and moved it to Ana’s place (thanks Ana!). So the guy came and inspected the room. He had to use his almost UV flashlight to show me how ”dirty” the tiles and the basin were. Yeah. So, 30 euros deducted from my deposit because of some barely visible scale in the bathroom. Emphasis on the barely: I did clean it. It just wasn’t, you know, perfect.
Putada 3: While cleaning my room I had a big bowl of water for the rags I used to clean the surfaces with. Somehow, I’m not really sure how because I was very careful with it, water from this bowl (it must have been from this bowl! :{ ) somehow trickled on the desk and under my laptop, slowly frying it while it was still on — a little bit like the medieval recipe for goose that has it surrounded with flames and slowly being cooked alive. At first, Firefox just wasn’t responding. All of a sudden, BSOD. And that was the hard drive’s last hurrah. Its contact with water must have killed it instantly, painlessly. The rest of the laptop seems to be working fine; the water reached only the hard drive, conveniently only to destroy the pictures I had taken the past 4 months, all the great stuff I had downloaded (which, unless in the next months the Internet is transformed into the digital counterpart of Oceania, should all be easy to find again) but most importantly, my assignments for my Erasmus courses. And the deadline for one of them was yesterday. Cue RE HALL! My professors’ reaction were mild at best, Charless Ess even said something like: something necessary to convince you to be appropriately religious about backing up. I guess he’s right.
Putada 4: I bought two bottles of mead for gifts. The bottles were made of clay so they were more sensitive to shocks than normal bottles. Sure enough, both were cracked before the end of the day I bought them. Cue another, slightly more astonished RE HALL! I had to get rid of them before they had all of their mead leaked out of them, so one I already drunk with my Erasmus classmates in the farewell Sharing Is Caring dinner (I made some tzatziki, baked potatoes and the wonderful cinnamon spaghetti that got Giulia’s –the group’s token Italian girl– approval. I could have died right there). About the other botte, I don’t know. Maybe I can manage to stuff into a plastic bottle and take it home. But the bottles are so pretty and fitting of an old viking drink recipe that it really is a pity that I can’t use them as parts of the gifts themselves.
Putada 5: My digital camera, my beloved e-510, has been acting strange lately. Buttons not working, lenses malfunctioning… Electronics seem to hate me in general lately. Anyway. For the purposes of this story the putada was magnified by its empty battery. So I decided to whip out my beautiful but mostly not used OM2-n that still had maybe 12 shots left before the B&W film I’d had inside since April was ready for developing. Good shots I did take, especially from the ‘last beer’ goodbye party. I finished the film, wound it up with too much effort apparently… and opened the back of the camera only to find the film wrapped up outside of the cartridge (re hall). Paraphrasing the famous song: Light is like oxygen: you get too much, you burn your pics. As you may be able to imagine, that’s exactly what happened. 100% useless film of 36 images lost forever was subsequently used as party prop.
I’ve been also mostly sleeping in the library. It’s verty convenient cause I have to write all of my assignments again and can work without worrying about moving somewhere else to sleep. The Information & Media Studies library is extremely cool. In which other library do you get hammocks and comfy sofas whose purpose is to provide rest to the people that have worked hard all day and joy to everyone? The Danish library culture will be one of the things I’ll look back to the most fondly…
Review: The Ethics of Computer Games
The Ethics of Computer Games by Miguel Sicart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Excellent blend of philosophy (chiefly ethics) and a game design analysis. The main idea presented by Miguel Sicart is that gamers take their morality in the games they play, that players are moral subjects with certain cultural and individual backgrounds when they come in contact with a game and cannot be analysed individually without a player-activator. That is to say that as an object turned into an experience by a moral subject cannot exist on its own and thus should not be analysed as an experience players would enjoy passively (as is droned by politicians and the media concerning violent games). The best comparison he gives is that games provide a moral skin for players to wear over their normal subjectivities. This skin is the basis for all interaction with the game world, whatever the player’s role might be within it.
For Sicart, ethical games are games that allow a certain freedom of choice to the player but do not impose their own morality on them as Knights of the Old Republic or Fable would do, both examples of games he deems unethical exactly because the subject that creates the ethical meanings out of the game is not the player-subject herself.
I have never read a more up-to-date and complete reading on games and ethics together and I can say that I generally agree with the author, even with his bolder suggestions. I’m still not sure, though, what exactly makes Custer’s Revenge an example of poor design if it can, in the end, make the player-subject reflect on her actions nonetheless. But I’m prepared to cut him some slack. I mean, an in-depth analysis of BioShock and DEFCON, mentions of obscure little gems like Cursor*10 and Daigasso! Band Brothers?
Miguel Sicart is a philosopher gamer. We need to read more from other people with similar critical abilities and back-catalogue of game experiences. Until then, this book will remain the definitive literature on the subject.
Africa
Τα στερεότυπα μάς ακολουθούν παντού. Όλοι έχουμε γνώμη και συχνά απόλυτη, χωρίς καν να γνωρίζουμε αυτό για το οποίο μιλάμε. Αλήθεια, σκεφτείτε το, πόσα στερεότυπα υπάρχουν για την Αφρική και πόσοι από όσους τα πιστεύουν έχουν επισκεφθεί ποτέ μια αφρικάνικη χώρα; Αν ρωτήσεις τον μέσο Έλληνα (όχι ότι οι Ευρωπαίοι δεν έχουν ανάλογες απόψεις, φυσικά) τη γνώμη του για τους Αφρικανούς θα έχει συγκεκριμένη άποψη, ακόμα και αν η μόνη του επαφή με τους ανθρώπους αυτούς είναι το CD ή η τσάντα που αγόρασε στο δρόμο. […]
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Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger Of A Single Story
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Και για επιδόρπιο:
Why don’t you visit Africa? (Matador)
“Nobody’s listening…”
Ole Julian is at it again. It’s amazing how he’s managed to preserve his integrity this long.
iPhone, Blackberry and Gmail users are all screwed privacy-wise, says Julian Assange. It looks like our privacy doesn’t really exist in today’s world of modern technology with the recent Carrier IQ logging scandal and the one with the iPhone 4 tracking every movement you make a while back. Scary, indeed. And to make matters worse, in a recent press conference Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made a statement about iPhone, Blackberry and Gmail users saying they are simply “screwed”.
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O ιδρυτής των Wikileaks, Julien Assange αποκάλυψε σε δηλώσεις του πως οι κυβερνήσεις σε όλο τον κόσμο χρησιμοποιούν ηλεκτρονικές συσκευές, όπως τα smart-phones και υπολογιστές για να παρακολουθούν τι λένε οι άνθρωποι, πού πηγαίνουν και τι γράφουν.
“Ποιος από εσάς εδώ έχει BlackBerry; Ποιος χρησιμοποιεί το Gmail; Λοιπόν, τη γ@#!$@τε!» είπε ο Assange. «Η αλήθεια είναι πως υπηρεσίες πληροφοριών πωλούν σε χώρες ανά τον κόσμο συστήματα μαζικής παρακολούθησης για όλα αυτά τα προϊόντα»
Ο Julien Assange μίλησε στο City University στο Λονδίνο, οπου εγκαινιάστηκε το νέο project των Wikileaks: τα Spyfiles. Tα spyfiles παρέχουν πληροφορίες σχετικά με τις συμφωνίες που γίνονται ανάμεσα σε ιδιωτικές εταιρείες παρακολούθησης και κυβερνήσεις από όλο τον κόσμο για τον σχεδιασμό λογισμικού παρακολούθησης . Οι συμφωνίες έχουν σκοπό την παρακολούθηση των δραστηριοτήτων οποιουδήποτε θέλει η κάθε κυβέρνηση.
Οι συγκεκριμένες εταιρείες, σύμφωνα με τον Assange έχουν την έδρα τους σε τεχνολογικά εξελιγμένες χώρες αλλά πωλούν τα συστήματα παρακολούθησης και σε χώρες που περιφρονούνται από τη Δύση για τα απολυταρχικά καθεστώτα τους. Μία από αυτές είναι η Λιβύη καθώς η γαλλική εταιρεία Αmesys πούλησε στον Καντάφι εξοπλισμό ώστε να παρακολουθεί τους διαφωνούντες του καθεστώτος στο εξωτερικό.
Η βρετανική υπηρεσία πληροφοριών ΜΙ5 χρησιμοποιεί ειδικό λογισμικό ηχητικής αναγνώρισης ώστε να καταλαβαίνει ποιος μιλάει με ποιον. Άλλες παρόμοιες υπηρεσίες ξέρουν πως είναι ο κάθε χρήστης εμφανισιακά, τι πληκτρολογεί και που ακριβώς βρίσκεται. Ένα ειδικό πρόγραμμα επιτρέπει στις υπηρεσίες να φωτογραφίζουν ανυποψίαστα θύματα με κρυφά τοποθετημένες κάμερες στα κινητά. Υπάρχει επίσης πρόγραμμα που επιτρέπει στην υπηρεσία να γνωρίζει που ακριβώς βρίσκεται ο ιδιοκτήτης του κινητού ακόμα και όταν αυτό είναι κλειστό.
«Δημοσιεύουμε πάνω από 287 αρχεία που τεκμηριώνουν την αλήθεια σχετικά με τη βιομηχανία μαζικής παρακολούθησης. Μία βιομηχανία που πωλεί λογισμικά σε δικτάτορες και δημοκρατίες για να υποκλέψει ολόκληρους πληθυσμούς», λέει ο Julien Assange.
link: theinsider.gr
Tim and Daisy nail it again:
Review: The Soul of Man under Socialism // Quotes/Aποφθέγματα ΧΙ
The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“[…]with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they [altruists] have seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive, or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it[…]”“[…]the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.”
“[…]a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of this own personality, if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”
Oscar Wilde’s take on Utopia, “the realisation of progress”. In this enjoyable and obviously very quotable essay, he gives his thoughts on how private property does not let people make the best of their potential, to be the perfect artists of themselves. Under Socialism, says Wilde, people would be able to concentrate on being perfect, selfish (in its positive definition, described above) individuals. It is an intriguing but unusual take on things, since Socialism as an ideology has been condemned for its apparent murder of the individual. No, argues the author. That would describe a totalitarian Socialist society, the kind of which wouldn’t appear before several decades after Oscar Wilde had written these words in the late 19th century.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism is an ode to virtue ethics under which each person’s goal, and what makes him or her human, circles around personal excellence and eudaimonia. As an artist himself, Wilde went on a great deal on how artists can be true individuals, but he kind of awkwardly robs this privilege from poor people, whose jobs “more apt for beasts” have little to do with what it really is, or better, what it can mean to be human. For Wilde, Socialism could destroy poverty at its roots, giving people of every class (or what we would today understand it to be) the opportunity to reach their true individualist potential, free of the restraints of posession. After all, “the only people thinking about money more than the rich are the poor” (paraphrase).
There are some very interesting concepts here and I find myself in agreement with most of what I read. However, it’s always clear that Wilde writes from his awesome vantage point of the upper class. His patronising of the less fortunate people among us, however justified and well-argued, just reeks of a kind of superiority complex. Wilde couldn’t decide if he wanted to be an elitist or not and it shows in this piece. He defies his own definition of selfishness by inevitably being selfish himself. Still, as one of the great writers and artists of times past, perhaps we should admit him this privilege to have been able to exercise his full capacity of individualism.
Danish Diaries #13
Today is the first day of advent. In four weeks time it’s Christmas. One week before that, I’ll be setting my foot on Greek soil for the first time after almost five months. Party’s almost over and it really feels like it’s long past its peak. Two years ago I wrote this particular heartfelt piece. Right now, I’m feeling like I can’t wait for Christmas to come and for me to be with my loved ones again. Everything’s looking as if our lives are going to change dramatically in the next few months and in ways we can’t even predict now, much less a year or two ago… so I feel the need to be with my people right now. That will necessarily mean leaving my newly-found loved ones behind over here, but my approach to such inevitable small tragedies of life can be best summarised with a “bring on the pain”. I am confident that things will take their course the only way they can…
Now I will detail such an interesting topic as the weather. The weather’s broken its month-long hiatus of just plain meh of cloudy, rainless days with sheets of rain and wind that’s blowing all of the orange leaves that had gathered in piles everywhere, turning them into forced immigrants riding towards the unknown. It’s been definitely a pretty sight. Very happy that the Danish weather finally decided to prove the wilder side of its infamy. I do not think I will see snow before I leave, though — believe it or not, Danish winters are considered ‘mild’.
Jul is coming and hyggelighed is shooting through the roofs. People getting Christmas sweets, doing their Christmas shopping starting from early November *silent sigh* Then, the quaint little Christmas bazaar in the center of Aarhus is closed by 6pm (and it’s been 2 hours of darkness already), making the Christmas wine very eloquently called Gløgg unavailable to the thirsty crowds. What can I say? This place is boring. The only fun people seem to be having is by mindlessly consuming tons of alcohol to at least make their mind-numbingly boring Fredagsbar entertainment a tiny bit more interesting. Danish people are like a bunch of spoiled children. They’re actually more like a society of sheltered people that avoid to look at the world without some kind of capitalist-socialist rose-tinted glasses (if you’re thinking that it’s a travesty to even think that capitalism and socialism could ever walk hand-in-hand down Utopia Lane, just visit Denmark and all should become crystal clear) Its clockwork social system seems to be breeding generations of people that cannot think for themselves if their life depended on it. Maybe its a common trait between people, that… But definitely, if populations from other corners of the world share this trait with the Danes, at least the Danes are the ones that come off as the ones with the better end of the stick. They are the happiest people in the world after all…
Could Denmark be an example of what would happen to a country and a population if all its problems were magically solved? Would it all come to a grinding halt out of a sheer lack of important stuff to worry about, people being very happy leading perfectly normal, predictable and passionless lives? It does seem to me that one of the common characteristics between people of the ‘First World‘ –pardon my anachronistic geopolitical categorisation, calling rich countries ‘Western’ seems just as uninspiring– is that we all seem to invent our problems, no matter if our existing problems, big or small, are affecting our happiness or not.
That is a confusing thought. I shall leave it aside.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Too afraid of foreigners, too afraid of standing out, they are hiding deep complexes behind their feel-good, relaxed appearances, against even their own larger and frankly much more interesting Nordic relatives.
OK, enough with cultural generalisations. My relativist side is painfully screaming in protest to all the above. I would hate to do what everybody seems to be doing with Greece right now; that is branding millions of people with a single stamp. Oh, oops, hehe.
Maybe I’m just sour cause I have no Danish friends to invite me over for a hyggelig board game evening… :’e
Most of my days consist of learning Spanish, enjoying hygge alone or with my predominantly Spanish-speaking friends in various altered states (yes, natural endorphins and caffeine counts! Does caffeine withdrawal onset also count as an altered state?), obsessing with Skyward Sword like a well-behaved Pavlov’s human (the highly behaviourist principle in work here is: “we want what we can’t have”. Beware of your hardware flaws and you can probably do much better than most of us out there), writing my final assignments for Digital Media Ethics and Great Works of Art or trying to at least find a good subject for both that will balance between “I already know a lot about this, I can write this stuff down!”, “I want to learn something new, research, research!” and “I like this topic enough I will actually choose it over all the other possibilities and give it the honour of being my subject of preference for this course”. I’m listening to Grace For Drowning a lot, watching many good films the past few days and just finished Peep Show. What a great britcom it is!
Yet, I realise that once all here is said and done, I will regret not being able to use my last days here in a more creative or… Danish way. I wish I had ideas, I really do. But the spirit of Denmark has engulfed me entirely. Now excuse me: I must continue procrastinating and not doing my in Skjoldhøj Autumn cleaning, hoping that if Ι pretend it’s not there it will magically go away οr I will vacate the room before needing to do the general cleaning, having the perfect excuse… Urgh…