You're more likely to be killed by a bee or a wasp than by a terrorist (says recent research). And people think I'm crazy for being afraid of buzzers!

Couple of nights now I've seen this small spider hanging out near (or in) my bed when I wake up. There's an old belief in Finland that it's bad luck to kill spiders, that if you kill a spider it means someone in the house will die. Apparently this is because when a person sleeps, their soul goes wandering around in the form of a spider. Now my sleep pattern is wonky because I work nights (I think of it basically that I'm living in the Chinese timezone :P) so maybe my soul is still making its way back when I wake up.

Those Russians who actually saw the tests found themselves staggered, overwhelmed, awestruck, just as the Americans at Eniwetok had been. Ideologies differ, but the impact of raw physics is universal. The effect of the earlier atomic bombs had not necessarily been so great on those who saw the explosions, but it was on those who actually witnessed the explosions of the vastly more powerful H-bomb. These explosions were so profound as to have a psychological effect; the Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov said 'something within you changes.' Another key Soviet scientist, after seeing the actual effect of a thermonuclear explosion he had worked to produce, vowed to work on it no more.

From "Two Americans" by William Lee Miller

Planet Money gave me a sad - but a funny at the same time:





Angela Merkel: "Never as long as I live." :(

So some time ago I noticed with alarm that I only listen to American podcasts (This American Life, New Yorker, Planet money and essentially all things NPR) and read American news (NY Times, New Yorker...) though sometimes I do read the paper in Finnish (but not recently). So I started to listen to BBC Radio 4 again in the mornings (hooray iPlayer!), their Today show that's on from 6-9 in England (it's working great, actually, it forces me to not waste my morning by clicking things on the internet, I have to do hand-eye things like knitting and drawing so that I can leave my comprehension nodes open for listening). But I still kind of realised that UK and USA still not a broad range of things make. But I also realised that I'm not particularly interested in listening to anything in Finnish or Swedish (okay, sometimes at work before the KySa papers arrive I leaf through the major Swedish language paper too, but it just mostly makes me jealous that I'm not finlandsvensk >.< Stupid cool people with better everything, bah!), it's all about the English language to me.

And then This American Life did it once again :) They did a show on Americans in China, and they talked to a man called Kaiser Kuo (famous man, I'm sure you've heard of him :P) who - among other things - does an English language podcast called Sinica, of conversations with a couple of other people about Chinese current affairs. The recentest one is about the one child policy, the one from week before that I'm listening to now is about the lack of civic morals in China.

Anyway, that was a really long intro to the main point that I wanted to say (I paused the podcast to get this out after shouting at the computer screen for a bit). In the discussion they were comparing China today to USA in the early 18th century, where all sorts of scoundrels were running around and it was a dog-eat-dog world indeed. And someone suggested that maybe China will grow up eventually. Then someone else pointed out that China is way older than the US, it's been there in that position of biggest economy in the world and had all that in the past, so you can't really say that China will grow up to be USA. At this point I paused. Because. The paradox is that China hasn't actually been a country for that long a time. The country that was China died in the culture revolution or the rise of communism. They threw out everything. Including people's kitchen sinks. And their moral code. They started again from scratch. So this country that we now call China can't claim to be standing on the shoulders of its past giants, because they have rejected them all. China is a tree that was cut down, and now the shoots are growing from the stump. USA is a relatively young country, but when you compare China to another civilisation that is properly old - mainland Europe for example - they are drastically different. Things have changed very slowly in Europe. The Roman empire wasn't overthrown in a revolution, Christianity wasn't declared an official religion at its inception, and the past was constantly revisited all the way through history with renaissance going back to the antiquity etc...

So while admittedly it is easy to think of China as a new country on the surface because you kind of just clump it together with the third world countries (all those baby nations in Africa who are doing much better at age 70 than our countries did at that age...) and it's highly offensive to such an ancient civilisation - it's still not totally unaccurate to do that nonetheless, because this second China is still in its baby shoes.

But. On yet another hand, it might be too optimistic to say China will grow out of it because USA did, because China is a whole different kind of culture, something that they highlighted a lot on the podcast. They are being raised on a whole different kind of diet than USA was. Even the scoundrels were aware of the Judeo-Christian tradition of "be nice to people or you go to hell" -morals. The Chinese don't have that. They don't have an anything. And no matter what that cynical foul-mouthed Jeremy person kept implying about religion, it's pointless to deny that religion played a significant role in the history of western civilisation, and being so cynical as to claim its role was nothing but negative is just sillyness.


I probably know nothing about this topic and am talking out of my box. I will go back to the podcast now.

English language, Y U NO follow pattern!?

horrible - terrible
horrifying - terrifying
horrific - terrific! ???

-_- *goes to mime palace*

Ah-hahaa! :D
http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/25475192400/mime-palace

For the first time in yonks I am actually into this midsummer business. :D Just had the summer's first new potatoes with butter and sill (the not-rotten fish from that comic you saw in [Triola]'s diary, as advocated by the Dane), some home made bread, and sour cream on the fresh green salad :9 This is the only time you see me gush all foodie like.

I was thinking earlier today about midsummer and how it's celebrated, and I had to admit that I know of no way that I would want to do it. For most people it's about getting shit-face drunk and that's not really my thing. Then there's the silly aspects like midsummer magic stuff (involving nakedness in fields or lakes) and I'm just not pagan enough to find that exhilarating. Then there's proper stuff like the maypole and the bonfire and a flag but that's not very... common round here. I'd do it if I was in Sweden, or anywhere else than here, really.

So I've decided to celebrate it my own way: I'll give Ray a call, and then stay up late watching football on TV :D

Overall today has been an appreciation day: I've appreciated carrot sticks with sour cream, and I've appreciated not having a compulsive liar in my life (I listened to an old This American Life episode about liars and man @_@ messy bad things :/ )

Choose the right.
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/

Yes, it's tl, but do read.

So you can't watch tv on BBC iPlayer if you're foreign, but you can listen to the radio programmes. Leaving the "wtf is up with that" comments aside (because "some cats just prefer radio" says Ira Glass <3 and I am such a cat)... I listened to the Today show today (haha pun) on BBC4. I need to learn to listen to it live, since it takes forever to get onto the player afterwards. But it did raise a question again, the same one I've had about newspapers: which stations lean which way? Is there a radio station version of the Private Eye? Which was does LBC lean? Or Free Radio (network)? Or Gold (radio)? There should be some kind of a political media guide, colour-coded mayhaps that shows what are in connection to what else, are they lefty or righty etc... At least in Finland all the media conglomerates have a tv station, a radio station and a newspaper each and their stuff correlates.

I guess I'll just stick with BBC and... hope to see/read/hear through the bias. 

Last night I slept in the hammock on the balcony. Sleeping in the hammock is like falling asleep on someone's chest while slumping together on a love seat: surprisingly comfortable. Another surprising delight was that the dog slept there too. Usually I don't let him sleep in the same room as me, because he snores like a monster. The handy thing last night was that he likes to sleep in the corner under the hammock, so when he snored and it bugged me, I could just poke him until he stopped :D And when the alarm rang at 6:30, I just turned it off and didn't get up until 9 (which was when a wasp got in there and both me and the dog had to run away). Morning win <3

This week's New Yorker Political Scene podcast was pretty interesting, and I'd like esp. Silvie to listen to it. It's a conversation about the European debt crisis and austerity. And they just made a really fascinating point how we're not fixing the problem by making rational policy because we're really stuck on the idea of fairness. And I've really noticed that in Finland, especially with the Basic Finns' populism politics: "lazy and corrupt Greeks made a mess of their economy, why should we hard-working, honest Finns fix it for them?" Because if you'd stop to think for a second you'd realised that we'll all be a lot less fucked if we do that -_- Or if rationality doesn't float your boat and you want to play an emotional card, how about solidarity? Support? We're all in it together? It's why we made a European union in the first place. Instead it's narrow minded nationalism. *wants a tighter union in Europe*

But it made me think of you Silb because it's basically the same as the man who fell asleep in his car and accidentally killed people getting sent to jail. It's this idea of punishment instead of correction.

Also a good interesting point about how the tories are axe-hacking the UK economy a la Jack Nicholson at the end of the Shining. Now there's a mental image I needed, David Cameron wielding an axe and snarling "heeeere's Davy!" @_@

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2012/06/18/120618on_audio_politicalscene

Back from le England trip. The entire week from start to finish, and now afterwards, felt like a dream. I'm still not quite convinced it all actually happened, somehow it seems that it would be more probable that it was all imaginary.
I should do these imaginary trips more often.

Except the leaving part hurt like heck. It hurt worse to leave England this time than it hurt to leave Sweden after the mission.
I'll go back for a brief visit in September, before the USA trip. And then I'll probably have to move there, so that I can stop leaving.

My foot is in my dog's water bowl.

I kinda want to participate in this: http://www.kk.org/internet-mapping/ Draw a map of how you view the internet.

I'm so travel fevered that I want to get sick-leave from work... But I guess that would be a little silly since on Wednesday morning, we roll out :D

Had another strange dream. There was this new uber train track (possibly going through Siberia? Or some other landscape like that, y'know, desolate and poor country type) on which Google operated this fast uber-train, which was all the rage and everyone loved it. But I discovered that there was this hidden part to it where the track was really unsafe, it was just right there on the land, no safety measures of any kind to prevent people from getting on the line, and as a result tons of people had died when the uber-train had ran them over. And the trains never stopped to investigate and the people (or their remains) were never taken from the tracks. The train was somehow so incredibly uber that when a person was ran over it, they were just utterly shredded, there was no body left over, only tiny pieces. But since this wasn't public knowledge, it happened in the regions where the track went through that people went missing and no one knew how or what happened. When in fact they had been hit by the train, and the train people and Google never told anyone.

So I discovered this with the help of a train conductor. He showed me the place where a little girl had been ran over the train. And I was collecting the pieces of her and her things (she had a lot of little metal jewellery that was all mangled, little heart-shaped earrings or something) to bring it back to her family for burial. And I was worried that the train company would find out that the conductor was helping me, I kept telling him to go on ahead or something. And he said he'd show me all the places where people had died, and I realised that this was a hopelessly ginormous task, of gathering all the pieces and bringing them back to the families.

Apparently my subconscious isn't aware that people are mostly wet, since all the pieces were dry, as if the girl had been made of porcelain. So it was more of a sad-factor than a gross-factor that was the dominant thing in this strange scene. Also what must have been influencing this dream was the recent episode of This American Life about the massacre of Dos Erres in Guatemala, which has only recently been found out and the people brought to justice. And also few weeks ago/last month I heard of a boy that got run over by a train here, and his family had to identify him from his watch and jewellery or such, because there was nothing else left. And that his watch and necklace had been totally unscathed and perfect, while he himself had been mangled unrecognisable by the train. Also I may have been confusing Google and Virgin Trains :P Also also also there's this infomercial video I once saw about Google on YouTube that illustrated and clarified exactly what kind of massive world-domination plans Google's got going on, and the end image made out of all the typography in the video was Darth Vader and the last sentence was "Google: Trying hard not to be evil."

My dreams are in dialogue with the reality I live in.

Haa, I have shot my own sleeping rhythm to hell in just one day X_x I worked this morning as usual, then slept after work thinking "ah-HA, this way I can stay up past 6pm!" I did. But the I had a nap - from 7pm to 10pm. It is now 11pm and I'm not tired. I'm fuuu...

But I must admit I have been enjoying sleep quite a bit lately. I had an incredibly sweet and lovely dream few sleeps ago. It was a very choppy dream, but the sweet part was that I was on the edge of some kind of a body of water, kind of a beach maybe, and I was just relaxing there. And there was also a guy I really love (not in a romantic way, one of my missionary brothers - the Choice Fox). And I said something deceitful that made him jump into the water to go for a swim, but there was something wrong with the water, it was either too cold or too shallow for swimming, so essentially he just ended up getting wet and cold from his splash and it was my fault. He was very sour and he got out of the water and plopped next to me, on his stomach facing away from me. And I felt bad and said I was sorry, and dug out the towel I was lying on and dried him with it. And we were both completely naked in the dream, but that was more like a state of innocence than anything else, there was no awkwardness, it was natural and comfortable.
(I guess it's not translating into words very well, it was a very sensory dream... But I want to remember it, hence writing it down).

I'll go eat something sleep-inducing now. :/

This blog is sometimes hilarious and sometimes just strange, but this is the most hilarious bit.


http://brinkwater.blogspot.fi/2011/10/matthew-545.html

http://dearphotograph.com/
also
http://www.digitaltheatre.com/production Ahmg <3 Especially Kafka's Monkey, I need to dload that one.

I was walking my bike up hill on my way to work this morning and all of a sudden this really bright star - like the brightness of 30 stars together - did a really long red-flaming shooting star thing across the sky. I had to stop and stare with my mouth open, because the other times I've seen shooting stars it's been juts a white line, really quick. This one I could actually follow with my eyes, and it had colour and it was humongous. I then spent a long time of the rest of my trip to work thinking if a piece of space junk could do a shooting star that big and still burn all up in the atmosphere.

Apparently there was a space rocket launch in USA yesterday morning, maybe it was something to do with that, some of its junk coming down?

But it was really pretty, and made me think of an idea for a story. :3

This Is Not About The Euro Crisis

If I were an investor, I'd invest - out of sheer solidarity and caring - in something Greek right now, recognising the need for support and realising an opportunity for mutual enrichment. I would be patient. I would be willing to accept that there might not be that great a profit to be made in monetary terms, but that there is a great chance of success in other terms: in human happiness, love, stability, the future, the greater good. And I wouldn't dream of suggesting that the money would wear the pants in this set-up, I wouldn't dream of telling you what to do. But I would expect to be an equal partner, privy to the details of the state of my investment. I'd also like - if not down-right expect - to see my investment treated with care and responsibility and a certain amount of serious commitment. Not that I oppose to a certain amount of creative risk-taking or surprises, either.

But even this kind of investors will get nervous when Greece itself makes the environment shaky for investment. Insecurity is the great cancer in the finance sector, nothing but a scary rumour can cause a bank run or plummet the stock market. Communication is vital, information is vital, confidence is vital.

This is not about the Euro Crisis.
This is about my love life.

So I would like a whole bunch of you to totter over to http://www.hitrecord.org and join it. Especially if you're any sort of creatively type and aren't all that into copyright, like collaborating and think that the new world order (for example altermodern?) is just round the corner. :)

Also, I would like to express my dismay over this solar eclipse you had last night. Yes, last night, and by you I mean some undefined bunch of Americanos. I can't believe that I wasn't told that there would be an eclipse, and I can't believe that it was not here. D: Boo at your failclipse.

I just came back from visiting STS Sedov. It r pretty.