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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31658955452839306702015-07-01T17:05:31.485+02:00Stefan Stenudd BlogLife is swift, craft elaborate, opportunity fleeting, trial erroneous, judgment questionable.Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-61406542460498253992014-05-11T13:36:00.003+02:002014-05-11T13:36:28.259+02:00When the Bearded Lady Sings

The winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest was the Austrian singer Tom Neuwirth in his alter ego of the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst. We know drag, but millions of TV viewers wondered: what's with the beard?

It's not that Tom Neuwirth wouldn't manage to be just as seductive as the next drag queen with a clean shaven face and a makeup enhancing its feminine features. That also goes for his slender body and its language. Nor is his voice a dead give-away. So, he would do splendidly as a strict female impersonator, easily fooling us all.

But he chooses to add a distinct dark beard to the Conchita Wurst attributes. It's quite provocative to the eye. A drag queen insisting on being a king as well. Not a man turned woman, but a raving hermaphrodite, combining the sexes into one character.

There is an internet buzz about this figure, often descending into raging intolerance, even hatred. And they focus on the beard, as if its addition would be a most sinister case of blasphemy. As if changing from one gender to another might be Ok, but stopping in between them is an abomination.

In our society, we foster all kinds of absurd ideas about the necessity of normality and illusions about deviating from the norm leading to mayhem. Nature just doesn't care, so why should we? A man dresses like a woman – so what? Nobody gets hurt. She grows a beard. How could that ever cause any damage to anyone or anything?

Most of us know that, fortunately. But there are still many who react with aggression, even hatred, although they have a very hard time explaining why in any way that makes sense.

They need to be provoked. Their prejudice must be revealed, or all sorts of really bad things happen. That's what Conchita Wurst is doing, very consciously.

She is a drag queen reminding us blatantly of the fact that she is also a man. She refuses to be one or the other. And still she can sing us to tears.

She makes it additionally obvious by having a beard that is very much like theatrical makeup. Her dress, her mascara and lipstick are joined by a beard that is to some extent as much fake – and not hiding it. The beard as well as the rest is a conscious choice. Part of the costume.

And that hits the core of intolerance. Prejudiced people can accept deviation from the norm if it's involuntary. You are forgiven if you are unable to fit, but if you choose to be different there is no excuse.

Our modern world has learned to accept gender bending as an expression of deep personal need, such as a man in a woman's body and vice versa. But Conchita Wurst's theatrical beard makes it obvious that this is a question of free will, a choice, even a statement. In our odd society, with its tendency to regard completely irrelevant things as vital, that statement is revolutionary.

The beard is a particularly mighty symbol of masculinity. More so than the male genitals, since they are hidden whereas the beard is flaunted for all to see. I've written about the mythological significance of the beard on this blog: What'sWith the Beard?

Carl G. Jung would not have hesitated to regard the beard as a symbol of archetypical importance. Every society on earth associates it with masculinity and the male gender, and nothing else. A bearded woman is regarded as a freak, and a drag queen growing a beard around the glossy lips is a rebel, refusing to give one thing up for another.

Conchita Wurst implies something that scares so many – that there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man. Otherwise, how could we learn empathy?

By the way, the stage name Conchita Wurst, which has very much of a drag show flare to it, was not taken randomly by Tom Neuwirth. Wurst is used in the German language as an expression meaning something like "I don't care" and Conchita is a Latino name of a woman that everybody would love to... date. But also, Conchita is sort of a nickname for the female genitals – and wurst is, as can be guessed, the male counterpart. See this explained in an interview made by none other than the prestigious Wall Street Journal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUgPpxMX9-0

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-2399295235512690162014-05-09T12:33:00.000+02:002014-05-09T12:45:31.962+02:00Life in the Shadows

I like to work with themes when I go around and take random photos with my smartphone. The paradox of a glimpse of order in chaos is inspiring. Here is a bunch of photos on the theme of shadows.

Shadows are intriguing. They form sort of mirror images, rather obscure ones, as if reluctantly revealing something essential about the objects causing them. The chaos hiding behind order, if you will. The yin accompanying every yang (the Chinese duality originally refers to the shady and the sunny side of an object).

Shadows also remind us that the universe is a dynamic relation between what is and what isn't. As Plato pointed out in the cave, sometimes we mix up the two. We come and we go, casting lots of shadows in between, tracks of the fact that we once were. But these tracks are as evanescent as we are. It all slips away into the void.

I started taking shadow photos in 2007, but the additions were scarce. A couple of weeks, though, I took a stroll in Berlin when the city bathed in splendid sunlight, creating lots of sharp shadows. So, I had a go on my theme again. After that, I thought I had enough for this little exhibition.

Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-41025856645342342422014-02-20T14:22:00.002+01:002014-02-20T14:22:52.553+01:00Chapter One, Two, Three...

Right now, I'm working on a new novel. For fun, and to trigger me, I post every chapter of it on my website, one after the other as they are completed (well, their first draft, anyway). Here is Chapter One:

A new novel in the making: Chapter One

 If you read it, please give me suggestions on any editing it might need.

I will not tell you what the novel is about. It's much better that you find out gradually, and probably more fun for you. At this point, I'ver reached Chapter Nine, and that's where things really start to unfold... ;)

English is not my native tongue, so it's not easy to write a book in this language - especially not a novel, where every nuance is so important. But the challenge is irresistible. Better to fail utterly than never to try.

I will tell you this much:

Actually, this story started as a screenplay, years ago. I completed it and it might be swimming around somewhere in Hollywood, if it hasn't sunk to the bottom of oblivion.

Anyway, I decided to make it a novel, but I want to keep as much as possible of the kind of straightforward storytelling of a screenplay. You may notice this in the style of the text and in the perspective of how the story is told.

I also found that I need to change the plot quite a lot from the screenplay version. There are some loose ends, to say the least. I'm in the process of that and expect to have several serious complications to sort out on the way. Wish me luck.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-28229864621915188882013-12-03T17:35:00.000+01:002013-12-03T17:35:01.820+01:00Mind over Matter

Sometimes science comes up with stuff that's weirder than religion. It seems we can influence our DNA in order to teach our offspring what we have learned, as if we're able to reprogram our genes by will-power. Like magic.

A US neuroscience study found that rats conditioned to fear a certain smell (to avoid pain), changed the DNA of their sperm so that their offspring got the same fear – although completely lacking the painful experiences. BBC writes about it here, and here is the scientific report in Nature.

It seems too absurd to be true, as the paradigm of genetics now stands. Generally, genetic change is supposed to happen only by chance, through the time consuming process of mutations, rarely leading to something lasting, even less so to something improving the species. So, we should wait for confirmation from other research, before accepting the above mentioned discovery. Still, it opens for interesting speculation.

The researchers have not yet been able to decide how this reprogramming of the DNA is done in the bodies of the rats, but I'm reminded of a pet theory of mine since many years: the idea that DNA can be altered by will-power.

That would indeed be a tremendous resource in the Darwinistic rat-race of the survival of the fittest, the evolution of the species by natural selection. Being able to stimulate genetic adaptation based on experience, from one generation to the next, would be a wonderful resource for survival of the species. So why would it not have evolved sometime during the billions of years that life has existed and regenerated itself?

It's a bit like the question of life elsewhere in the universe. With so many planets out there, why not?

Maybe evolution has many such surprises in store for us. We've barely more than scratched its surface. Considering the time it's been around, and the countless creatures it has created for countless generations, there's no telling what it has accomplished.

Maybe first of all we need to change the paradigm of Darwinism that states it as a partly passive thing: we may choose with whom we procreate, but we have no way of influencing the traits we duplicate in our offspring. Perhaps we do. Perhaps there's no end to what we can accomplish for the sake of the survival of our species.

And perhaps the very source of that capacity is in the greatest mystery of our being: the conscious mind. Anyway, it's great material for all kinds of fiction.
Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-54760266003701549782013-07-28T16:33:00.001+02:002013-07-28T16:33:52.783+02:00Pornography Reduces Sex Crime

British Prime Minister David Cameron wants to block Internet pornography and make it less accessible, especially to minors. But research shows that if he succeeds, sex crimes are likely to increase – especially those involving minors as victims or offenders.

Cameron is far from alone in this ambition. Plenty of debaters and organizations express moral indignation regarding Internet pornography and insist that it promotes sex crime as well as brutal sexual behavior. They have no proof at all. Instead, their far-fetched conclusions are simply based on the same old prejudice against sexuality, as if it's a sin to make love and lust is something disgusting.

The rabid war against pornography and any explicit sexuality only reflects the distorted view on sex upheld by those self-righteous warriors. They don't care about what research concludes and what the real effects on society may be – to them, sex is basically a crime, at least when enjoyed by others.

Research proves clearly that when pornography is increasingly accessible, sex crimes decrease. That's particularly true for sex crimes against minors or committed by minors – the ones that Cameron and like-minded agitators claim they want to protect. If they succeed in making pornography less accessible, minors in particular will suffer from the consequences.

That is the sad case also if pornography is made less accessible to minors. It may be hard for many adults to face, since they tend to regard sexuality as something from which they need to protect the young.

The adult world at large has a strange attitude towards our sexuality. It's often spoken about as something unnatural and perverted, especially if done outside of wedlock or at young age. But nature is indifferent to human civil institutions, as is our own biology, and our sexuality emerges at a younger age than that of consent in most countries.

Children start to explore their sexuality already before puberty, but most definitely their bodies shout at them to do so when puberty commences. Complete abstinence and denial are no options. If teenagers are hindered to explore this aspect of their lives, it leads to frustration and complication. Only a world that regards sexuality as something basically evil would demand it of them. And that's a world gone mad.

Another argument constantly repeated is that minors should not be introduced to their sexuality by pornography, because of its often malicious and vulgarized form of sex. That argument would be much more credible if the people expressing it also advocated sex education relevant to the needs of the teens. But they rarely do. Their alternative is mainly to "spare" minors from sex, possibly with the exception of warnings against sexually transmitted disease.

It would indeed be nice if pornography could incorporate all the finer aspects of our sexuality and the joy it can bring, and some of it definitely does. When pornography turns ugly, it's mostly a consequence of its expulsion from decent society, the taboo of it. That leaves it in the hands of a hardened minority and the whole business becomes overly indecent. Beauty leaves the room, as talented artists go elsewhere to express themselves.

The low standard of most pornography is a consequence of the lacking talent of its producers. Also, the fact that pornography is largely condemned by society makes its producers fall into the trap of making it condemnable, as if that is what's called for. Not to mention its proximity to the world of crime, again because of it being regarded as a social outcast. We have thrown pornography into the hands of people lacking business moral.

In spite of its quality deficiencies, pornography has a healthy influence on society, simply because we're all so fascinated by sex that we need to explore it more than just by marital coitus. It meets parts of our desires. Nothing harmful in that. The harm comes from condemning it.

Conclusive Research
Already in 1970, the Danish Professor of Criminology Berl Kutchinsky reported that increased pornography did not lead to an increase of sex crimes, but the contrary: most of those crimes decreased.

Denmark had recently legalized pornography, so he had the statistics of a whole country to analyze. Soon also Sweden and West Germany did it. His continued research showed that the effect was the same there. Here is a report of his from 1973: The Effect of Easy Availability of Pornography on the Incidence of Sex Crimes: The Danish Experience.

Later, Kutchinsky could include the USA is his studies, where the laws on pornography had also changed. Here is a study from 1991, dismissing the myth that pornography causes rape: Pornography and rape: theory and practice? Evidence from crime data in four countries where pornography is easily available.

Another nationwide example is Japan, which became increasingly lenient towards pornography over time. Statistics showed significant drops of sex crimes, in particular those with minors as either victims or perpetrators. Here is a 1999 report by the US Professor of Reproductive Biology Milton Diamond, where he also discusses previous research about the effects of pornography, and the drop in rape crimes in the USA: The Effects of Pornography: An International Perspective.

In the above report, Diamond also discusses the evidence that US statistics on sex offenders show them less exposed to sexually explicit material (SEM) than others, especially in young years, and their upbringing being more sexually restrictive:

This lack of early exposure to pornography seems to be a crucial consideration. Most frequently, as it was found in the 1960s before the influx of sexually explicit materials in the United States, those who committed sex crimes typically had less exposure to SEM in their background than others and the offenders generally were individuals usually deeply religious and socially and politically conservative (Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965). Since then, most researchers have found similarly (e.g., Ward & Kruttschnitt, 1983). The upbringing of sex offenders was usually sexually repressive, often they had an overtly religious background and held rigid conservative attitudes toward sexuality (Conyers & Harvey, 1996; Dougher, 1988); their upbringing had usually been ritualistically moralistic and conservative rather than permissive. During adolescence and adulthood, sex offenders were generally found not to have used erotic or pornographic materials any more than any other groups of individuals or even less so (Goldstein & Kant, 1973; Propper, 1972). Among sex offenders, violent rapists had seen no more pornography than had sex peepers or flashers (Abel, Becker, Murphy & Flanagan, 1980). Walker (1970) reported that sex criminals were several years older than non-criminals before they first saw pictures of intercourse. Thirty-nine percent of convicts surveyed by Walker agreed that pornography "provides a safety valve for antisocial impulses." It thus seems that early exposure to sex, rather than late exposure, is socially more beneficial.

Permissive Is the Key
There is no evidence at all to the myth that pornography leads to sex crimes, but lots of proof to the contrary: wide access to pornography leads to a decline in sex crimes. Still, I seriously doubt that the access to pornography alone can explain significant drops in sex offenses. There are more things involved.

A society being more permissive regarding pornography is surely also a society with a more permissive attitude towards sexuality. Sex crimes are closely related to sexual oppression and prejudice, as indicated by the Diamond quote above. A liberal mentality in society diminishes that oppression and the frustration it causes, maybe not in every household but in most of them. And that's what lowers the sex crime rates.

Another closely related issue is that of education. A permissive society is not restrictive when it comes to sex education, whereas typically societies with less tolerance tend to minimize or completely ban it. That may very well have a greater effect on sex crime statistics than pornography. They just happen to coincide. So, what we really need to guard is a positive and permissive attitude towards sex in general, including pornography, and the rest will follow.

The Internet Boom
Since the mid-1990's, there has been a tremendous boom of worldwide accessible information of any kind on the Internet. Pornography, too, has become more easily accessible than ever before in history – also to minors. So, how has that influenced the frequency and nature of sex crimes?

From the previous research presented above, it makes sense to assume that increased pornography accessibility will continue to decrease sex crimes. Findings seem to be consistent with this. Here's a no-nonsense Slate article discussing it briefly: How the Web Prevents Rape. And here's the research by Todd Kendall quoted on the issue: Pornography, Rape, and the Internet.

A quick search on the Internet seems to confirm it, but what strikes me the most is that such research seems to be rare or marginalized, even on the Internet. Why so? Now we have the chance to do a worldwide study on the effect of pornography access – so why is this not already an established fact? Instead, there are lots of texts speculating with little facts to confirm it about how Internet pornography might change people's attitudes towards sex. But that's just speculation.

If rapes decline they decline, and they do so – especially among the young, who are the greatest consumers of anything Internet. This source specifies a 72% decrease of rape in the USA since 1993, right before the Internet boom started: Sexual Images and Sex Crimes. The US Justice Department confirms the sharp decline: Female Victims Of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010. So why not shout it out?

It doesn't fit with the conservative prejudiced attitude towards sexuality, which regards it primarily as something filthy and deplorable. But that's just prejudice. It should not be allowed to make the rules of our society.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-7286969029766722212013-07-08T23:02:00.001+02:002013-07-08T23:02:15.721+02:00War Is Not About Aggression

I saw a TV documentary about the origin of war: is it inherent in our species or did it come with civilization? There's no consensus within the sciences, so I allow myself to speculate.

I have pondered it since childhood years. Before things got complicated with accumulated knowledge, I took for granted that war was a consequence of aggression within our species. I witnessed it daily in myself, my classmates and other people, from the youngest to the oldest. Even infants can show rage and have violent outbursts.

I didn't like it. As far as I could see, nor did anyone else, really. Well, maybe there were some few exceptions among the worst of the bullies, but also in their eyes I saw glimpses of regret, even grief, immediately following their outbursts. Actually during them. Violence was something that erupted, quicker in some than in others, an irresistible force that satisfied none.

It was as if we had demons inside, occasionally taking control of our bodies. The eruption of rage was as unpredictable as that of volcanoes. And anyone could see that what it left behind was nothing but destruction.

I figured that this uncontrollable aggression was something animalistic. After all, our species belongs to the animal kingdom and we share ancestors, going far enough back in time. Any animal has the ability to be triggered into rage and violence.

I could see it in the cutest of pets. It was just as sudden as with humans. An outburst, and then stillness without any sign of satisfaction. Surely, the root of the aggression was the fight for survival – either to defend oneself when hunted by a predator or when the roles were reversed.

Aggression is the primary weapon in killing. I dreamed of a universe where the survival of one wouldn't demand the death of another. Still do.

So, I suspected that war was that demon let lose in grand scale. The same thing, simply involving lots of people at the same time.

But after just a brief introduction to history it was evident to me that war is a completely different thing. It may use the aggression latent in man, but that's never what starts it. War is a planned action, having its cause and aiming at a certain effect. It's started by reason, not the instincts.

Usually, war is initiated by other people than those who have to fight it. The rulers. They seduce or force their subjects to march into battle for one or other reason. Rarely do the soldiers march in rage, but in battle they need it in the desperate effort to survive. Like on the school yard, when boys clash in a fight.

If mankind had no aggression, there would certainly be no war. No one would fight it – at least not before technology made it a thing for the machines. And without a history of man to man combat, how would weapons for that purpose at all be invented?

The basic reason for war is always the same: someone wants what someone else doesn't want. The collision of wills. Therefore, the very first wars back in primordial times must have been in competition over limited resources. Food, water, women, whatever essential to us before the dawn of civilization. Basically, the essentials are still the same, albeit in fancy costume and grand scale.

It may have started as theft, leading to robbery and then plundering. Groups of people discovered that they could take from others what they didn't find or produce themselves. Again, that's pretty much what war is still about.

Soon enough, the most skilled or ruthless thieves had the resources to parasite their victims by becoming their constant rulers, like a farmer and his cattle. Hierarchy emerged, with an increasing level of oppression. Then the greed of rulers turned them against each other. As the rulers grew in power, so did their wars.

Simply put: The root to violence between individuals is the aggression we all have inside and can't always control. But the root to war is greed.

To my experience, what triggers aggression is frustration. If we are pleased, our inner volcanoes sleep. If violence increases among people in society, it's because they are increasingly frustrated. Society can do that to you, especially when it's ruled without compassion. Sadly, that's often the case. But it can be changed.

What seems to trigger greed the most is not poverty but plenty. The more people have, the more they want. Strange thing. There's just so much Russian caviar one can eat.

When some have more than others, they want to protect as well as increase it. If it's power, and it usually is, they will use force. Thereby they quickly gain more power, so they can escalate the force. They seem unable to restrain themselves.

It has nothing to do with aggression. When rulers start wars, they do so coldly, not for fighting but for winning.

So, the more evenly power is distributed, the less risk there is for war. History shows this clearly. Democracy, with all its fallacies, tends to avoid war as a solution. When the conflict is between two democracies, then, chances are great that peace remains.

In the case of both aggression and war, the problem seems to be the rulers. How about that?

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-69383424661386465952013-07-05T16:44:00.000+02:002013-07-05T16:44:09.135+02:00Don't Wanna Stay Alive When You're 25

What's with the withering of rock stars, when they become adults? Is rock'n'roll an art form reserved for those in touch with their adolescence? Or could it be that its artists have a limited time of creativity, whatever their age at the outset?

I've been watching YouTube clips of some of the old pop and rock giants. What keeps picking like a woodpecker on my brain is how their artistic poignance dims at a certain time in their career, as if someone blew out their candle. They get comfortably well-to-do, they lean back with confidence, and their new material is anesthesia.

After a couple of decades struggling with this depressing fate, they surrender and resort to shows where they do karaoke versions of their old hits.

It happens to the best of them. Why so? What is it they lose when the frenzy of their adolescence wears out? Well, probably just that. Without the anguish of the adolescent, there's no rock'n'roll. It's just songs. Songs with an anxious naiveté, soon lost to those who actually survived it. They can repeat the melody and words, but not the sound and feel of it.

Art is salvation, but also a deadly trap. You can be its martyr, and numerous following generations will praise you, or you can be its survivor, by which the dust from the battle settles on you. You become a relic, forever a servant of memorabilia.

I was never surprised that so many rock legends died before reaching this stage. What continues to surprise me is how many survived it and keep on living, although not finding a way out of it – unable to completely change their path to where past feats lose their gravitational pull.

The analogy of celestial mechanics might hold the key. You can land on the moon and take off with the same vessel, but how to escape a black hole? When your mark on history exceeded a certain value, there's no way to go on and do other stuff.

Art is salvation, but also a deadly trap. We live in a time when pop and rock songs are regarded as gospels, magical potions by which life is both expressed and saved. It sure feels like that at certain concerts, momentarily. But they're songs.

Already when I was an adolescent, I was often struck by ambiguity regarding the majestic qualities attached to songs of this or that moment of time. When my inebriation faded away, I had to conclude that most of those celebrated hymns had next to pointless lyrics, no matter what was done with drums and electric guitars to enhance them.

Sure, there were fragments of poetic ingenuity at times, as well as an occasional kōan. But mostly they were surrounded by self-evident rhymes. Well, drowned in them. Not much compared to the monologues of Shakespeare, or for that matter the dialogues of Plato.

The music had its merits, thought seldom to the extent that it was equally satisfying without the original performer in his or her state of adolescent anguish. Karaoke, as mentioned earlier, revealed that with non-compromising cruelty. How many of those pop and rock anthems will really stand the test of time? Few, I bet, compared to the hundreds of years that Mozart and Beethoven have already managed splendidly.

Also the stage shows struggle to survive revisits, as time progresses. What once seemed earthshakingly spectacular soon becomes awkward, if not to say ridiculous.

In some few cases, the frenzy of the original performances keep on striking cords within us – but surely not when those artists have ripened. When the desperation is gone, so is the sensation.

Art should not be too occupied by speaking to the present. No fundamental truths are to be found in the illusion of the now. Art should speak to the timeless, to the aeons gone and those coming, alike. That's where the essence hides. We're all essentially the same, as is the world we live in. What's not eternally recurring is not that vital to us.

When our idols grow old, they think that they still have some kind of precedence over their songs, because they once gave birth to them. But if they're not the same as when that happened, they are doing the same karaoke as everyone else. A piece of art ceases to be the property of the artist as soon as an audience has started to relate to it.

So, the mistake made by our pop and rock icons is not that they keep singing their old songs, but that they do it without trying to recreate the desperation they once felt.

It can be done. There are gifted actors who can play any role intensely, regardless of their age or gender or any other circumstance. So could some of our fallen rock stars, if they tried.

If they don't want to, maybe they should do something completely different and refrain from desecrating their past glories by holding on to them half-heartedly?

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-68385123666299374152013-06-20T13:05:00.004+02:002013-06-20T13:05:59.368+02:00No Rule Can Substitute Compassion

I happened to come across a few episodes of The World's Strictest Parents, a TV show where troublemaker teens are "shown the way." The message is as conservative and moralistic as can be expected, narrowmindedly blaming the teenagers for just about everything. Still, upon closer inspection, it can't be brushed off all that easily.

The usual adult reflex, especially among people who pride themselves of high moral standards, is to claim complete innocence when their children don't behave exactly as they want them to. In most cases, that attitude is actually what started the problem.

It's not easy to be a teenager. The adult world, though, tends to demand of them to show none of it – as if leaving childhood is illegal. It's even so that they are treated with increasing intolerance and expected to show more self-restrain than ever before. That's detrimental. Often it is really cruel, in a way that no adult would ever accept to be treated.

The World's Strictest Parents doesn't differ from that pattern, not at all. The homes that the teens are sent to all have the same rules – no smoking, no alcohol, no profanity, no sex. They expect unquestioning obedience of the adults and complete adaption to their demands, no matter what. Very often the temporary foster homes are devoted to one or other religion, which doesn't exactly promote tolerance.

If the teens are unable to behave as demanded, the whole blame is on them – as if that proves their inferiority and delinquency. How many adults would pass such a test?

In addition, most of these teens have a deeply troubled past, for which they can't be blamed. Several of them experienced parental divorce when they were children, some of them had even been struck by tragic death within the family. More than once, these events are reported as coinciding with the start of the obtrusive behavior. Well, do the math...

It's nothing but inhuman to demand of the teenagers to be restrained and obedient to an extent that is not humanly possible.

So, I picked one of the shows to examine closer, in order to expose the absurdities I mention above. It happened to be the very first episode of the series, where the kids were sent to a conservative Christian family in Alabama. No Einstein needed to figure out what must follow.

The World's Strictest Parents - s01e01 - Alabama by theworldstrictestparents

Sure enough, the strictness and the rules were what could be expected, as was the initial clash with the teens when complete obedience was demanded. As if they could be expected to reprogram themselves inside out in mere seconds.

But another image emerged, soon into the show. The Alabama parents were non-compromising in their moral beliefs, but they proved to be very sensitive to the simple fact that the teens had another life to try to manage, and their own background stories making all the difference in the world.

So the adults were repeatedly forgiving, a paradigm of Christianity often neglected by those confessing loudly to it. Also, they were genuinely showing hope and commitment to actually help the teens – even when it meant bending the rules.

I was reminded about what Jesus said when the priests accused him for letting his disciples ignore the rules of the Sabbath: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

The Alabama family was aware of this distinction, simply because they really cared about the two teens in their temporary care.

At one point, the father became angry and spoke heated words. It was when the teens had smoked contrary to their promise to him. It was not the smoking that upset him, but their breaking of a promise: "If we can't trust you, if we can't have faith in you, there's just nothing here."

He was obviously saddened more than enraged, although expressing it in the latter way at first. He was disappointed, because he had genuinely hoped for a different outcome. That was evidence of how much he cared, which is just about all that matters and the only way by which serious problems in human relations can be solved.

That's also why they could put the incident behind them and move on, quickly from that point deepening their bond and mutual respect. That's a cure for just about everything.

I had to look at a bunch of other episodes of the show. Some were indeed dreadful in regard to what I've stated above about disrespect for the human heart beating inside the porcupine surface of teen attitude. When such encounters ended well, it was totally because of the compassionate yielding of the teens, in spite of adult rigidity.

But several other shows had that surprising quality of "the strictest parents in the world" reaching the teens and helping them to cure themselves. There was even one Utah Mormon family proving able to do that (season 2, episode 4) – much to my amazement. Mormons have their share of children emotionally crippled in their care.

What was always evident was the recipe for success: It came when the strict adults were moved enough to soften that strictness, really reaching out to the needs of the teens. Compassion is the key. No rule can replace it.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-79280120510114726382013-06-10T12:30:00.001+02:002013-06-10T12:33:11.824+02:00The Weakness of Rhetoric
President Obama defended the massive NSA monitoring of digital information, which was revealed a couple of days ago. It was not an easy task, not even with his rhetoric skills. There are limits to the power of rhetoric.

The major limit of rhetoric is its inability of hiding something without revealing something else. It might even be possible to express in algebra. We're familiar with the expression "If you have said A, you must also say B." It's also true that if you don't want to say A, you must instead say B, which is usually not better. Simply put: rhetoric is for saying things, not for concealing them.

It's evident already in Barack Obama's opening remark, as can be seen in the video above:

"When I came into this office, I made two commitments that are more important than any commitment I make: number one to keep the American people safe, and number two to uphold the constitution."

That's a terrible example of accidentally saying much more than intended. What he really states by the given order of his priorities, is that he will ignore the constitution when he deems that the safety of the American people demands it. Actually, it's pretty much a confession that it has been done in this case.

Later in his speech he says:
"You can't have a 100% security, and also then have a 100% privacy, and zero inconvenience. We're gonna have to make some choices as a society."

Well, you can't have a 100% security. No one is safe. The universe itself doesn't allow for it. Hey, we all die at some point. The whole idea of the Constitution is that the fundamental rights of the people should triumph, even at the cost of their own safety.

That's why we're innocent until proven guilty. That's why we have the right to our privacy. That's why the Constitution limits the power of the government. Theoretically speaking, maximum safety can only be accomplished by maximum confinement.

Any US government official who regards something – anything – as more important than the Constitution, is abusing the office. The question is how much, but the choice has been made.

Obama moves on in his speech with a nonsense definition:
"The programs that have been discussed over the last couple of days in the press are secret in the sense that they are classified."

Well, that's secret. Or are there things classified which are not secret? Again, we approach math. In this case set theory. Secret always means some get to know, and some don't. The only significance is who – and most importantly: who gets to decide what's to be kept secret from whom?

Democracy depends on keeping secrets to a minimum, for the simple reason that if the people is to govern itself, it needs to have the information relevant to do so.

Sadly, most governments have a tendency to classify things that they believe would meet with the disapproval of the people. That means the governments actively sabotage the basis of democracy, by acting against the will of the people and hiding it.

"Nobody is listening to your phone calls," Obama stated firmly in his speech. But later he confessed this to be untrue, when there's a court order to the contrary. Phones are listened to. We all know that. The question is to what extent and with how much of a real legal process in control.

Regarding monitoring of the Internet and emails, Obama stated:
"This does not apply to US citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States."

But what has been revealed about the NSA system indicates the opposite. The monitoring is done on all electronic information exchanged on the Internet and emails passing through accessed media, such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

If all this information is gathered and accessible on an individual level, and the use of it is concealed – then this does mean that all of it is monitored. Most of it may be ignored, but it is accessible and by computer handling anything can be extracted from it – by anyone with access to the system.

President Obama tries to assure his listeners, by stating about his initial attitude as a newly elected President:
"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs."

Apart from the fact that it's rhetorically weak to claim a competence instead of proving it by examples and reasoning, he really diluted the word skepticism by adding healthy in front of it. Skepticism is the ability to question – anything and always. But "healthy skepticism" means being skeptic up to a point. It means questioning some things and not other things.

Since the word healthy is non-descriptive in any context other than medicine, he gives no clue as to what he deemed unnecessary to question. For all we know, it might have been just about everything.

The most important questions about the NSA monitoring are two: firstly, is the measure in proportion to the threat it's supposed to counter, and secondly, what are the risks and consequences of misuse? If Obama regards it as healthy not to ask these questions, there is not much to his skepticism.

Unfortunately, it seems he all but ignores those aspects, calling this enormous NSA monitoring a "modest encroachments on privacy." At least he used the word encroachment, though not without hesitation. In present society, there's nothing modest about concealed government access to all the electronic communication of all its citizens, as well as hundreds of millions of people in other countries.

"Some other folks may have a different assessment of that," he added. You bet. And by admitting this, he made the most important statement in his speech. The whole thing is indeed questionable.

When he ended his speech by welcoming the congress to consider and debate the issue, he confessed to its controversy – maybe even hoped for a change that he is himself unable to openly propagate.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-83988893831592163452013-06-09T13:55:00.001+02:002013-06-09T13:55:24.493+02:00Cats

When I was a kid, we got a cat. Then another. Soon enough kittens, as well. That was also the time I started taking photos for more than souvenirs, so I took a lot of cat photos. Here are some of them, from the 1970's.

(Click on the images to see them enlarged.)

You also find those images on my personal website: stenudd.comStefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-30679789421370987042013-03-18T20:55:00.001+01:002013-03-18T20:55:28.493+01:00The Uncertainty of It All

We all know about accepting what we can't change, change what we can, and recognize the difference. Well, sometimes that's easier said than done. At times, I fall into the mental trap of trepidation at the thought of just how helpless we humans are against the forces of this universe.

For some reason – probably stress – I have glimpses of it now. As I walk the street, I'm suddenly reminded of the thin crust of earth covering the chaotic fire within, eager to burst through. Mayhem in a minute.

The chilly wind on my cheeks and forehead, remnant of a winter unwilling to pass, creates images of a coming ice age, with a layer of ice, one thousand meters thick, spreading its deadly embrace all over Scandinavia – and perhaps, if things get really bad, growing to cover the whole planet, which would shut off life for good. What is global warming compared to that?

A glimpse at the evening sky, where the moon is unusually bright and seemingly distant, accompanied right now by a couple of planets making particularly piercing white dots – that not only reminds me of a possible meteor instantly pulverizing the crash site and miles and miles around it, maybe even covering the planet in ashes.

It also brings to mind just how helpless we and our planet are against the galactic processes, including the collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda galaxy in about four billion years. If not doomed by then or long before then, our sun will have its spectacular death dance at about the same time. And in the long run, the whole universe is heading for a fading away like no other, a desolate cold darkness where nothing can happen.

That's very far into the future, but its chill reaches us from way yonder by the mere hopelessness of it. Neither individually nor as a species are we able to live forever. It's sad, because it gives little room for a lasting meaning in life. Whatever we do will vanish.

Death is not just something that appears at the end of every lifespan. It's present all through life, like a shadow companion threatening to strike at any moment. In the grand scheme of things, life is the anomaly and death is the rule.

We exist for an instant in a vast eternity when we do not. Actually, the time we occupy is comparable to the space we fill up in this expanding universe. The farther into the future, the less significant is that time and space of ours.

When I was a child I used to have the same dream recurring in the beginning of the summer: I dreamed that nature had somehow skipped summer, and it was winter again. The dream was so convincing, I believed it to be true until I looked out the kitchen window at breakfast. No snow! It was just a dream.

But it reminded me of the total uncertainty of life.

I know fully well that we should live in the present, which is something philosophers of old as well as present ones have told us repeatedly. There is nothing else, they say – which may be oversimplifying things, but they have a point. There is nothing else on which one can trust. What we have is what's now, right now.

So, we should live our lives from day to day, steadfast in the present as it carries us onwards through time and space. What else can we do? We can even learn to be content with it. But I am surely not the only one occasionally overcome by the uncertainty of it all. That dreadful uncertainty.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-85323023237237230112013-03-12T17:10:00.001+01:002013-03-12T17:10:59.952+01:00The Great Misfortune of Society: It's Ruled by Freeloaders

Society is far from perfect, in spite of its thousands of years of evolution. Most of the suffering it causes or at least readily allows, is due to injustice. Some few are privileged at the expense of the vast majority.

Some have much more power than most. They even tend to inherit it, from generation to generation. In addition to making sure to keep that power, they often misuse it, increasing the injustice.

This emerged when society swelled from small tribes where everybody knew each other, into big civilizations of thousands of individuals, most of them completely unknown to one another. Early examples are the cities of Memphis and Ur, with thousands of inhabitants already in the third millennium BC.

The increase and concentration of population was possible through agriculture, by which the work of some could feed plenty. Agriculture was introduced in the New Stone Age, around 10,000 years BC, and was significantly developed in the seventh and sixth millenniums BC.

Unfortunately, it also led to a drastic drop in human life expectancy, which was circa 33 years in the pre-agricultural Old Stone Age and dropped to 20 years in the New Stone Age. Not until the 20th century did the life expectancy rise significantly above the Old Stone Age value.

Another consequence of agriculture was the rise of hierarchies. Kings and aristocracies emerged and took control with the force of arms, making the rest of the population helpless subjects. They seized the surplus of agriculture and became the rulers of the world. That's pretty much still the situation.

A hierarchy doesn't in itself necessarily lead to greater injustice than the unequal distribution of power. But alas, we're yet to see a society where additional injustice is not the unavoidable outcome of that first one. Those who can will grab what they want, which tends to be more than they really ever need. And the ones who can't stop it are robbed of everything but what they need for basic survival. Sometimes even that is ripped away from them.

Why is that so? Many would hurry to say it's human nature. But that's jumping to conclusions. The study of non-agricultural society, those who live as hunters and gatherers, shows that they live by the code of general reciprocity – they share everything, always, thereby making sure that no one's needs are ignored. It's almost a sacred thing in those societies, where deviation from it is regarded as repulsive.

Still, sometimes it happens that an individual makes sure to receive what others give, but escapes from returning the favor. Cultural anthropology calls this a freeloader – someone who wants to share the benefits without sharing the sacrifice needed for them.

It may go unnoticed for a while, but when exposed, this person is finally thrown out of the community. Usually, those who are expelled like that return humbled and reformed, after discovering how tough life is in solitude, without the support of others. They learn the lesson.

But in agricultural society, where populations multiplied and small tribes were replaced by big communities of thousands of inhabitants, freeloaders were able to continue their ways in anonymity, and simply move from one part of the community to another when exposed. They could go on exploiting the trust of others, and did so – until they had the resources to grab what they wanted by force, instead of asking for it.

They became the rulers. The growing society had no protection against freeloaders, so it was soon taken over by them. They're still in control.

Look at so many leaders of the world today. They use their positions primarily to spoil themselves, living luxuriously, increasing their fortunes beyond any reasonable limit, holding on to their power with any means they deem necessary, whatever the cost to society as a whole.

That is strikingly true about countless politicians, making their decisions on what they gain on the most, and business executives, cooperating to squeeze the companies for absurd salaries and bonuses. This minority in power treats the rest of mankind as little more than cattle.

They even claim that this is only human, as if it's what we all would do in the same situation. Not true. Only freeloaders think like that. They just want to defend their own misuse of power, in a hubris of not only taking all but getting praise for it as well.

In the rare occasions when others than freeloaders get power and money, they act quite differently. They try to do some good with it – good for us all. But they're viciously opposed by the freeloaders, who usually succeed in keeping anyone but their own kind out of power to begin with.

I don't believe we can solve the dire injustices of society until we get rid of the freeloaders in positions of power. How to do that is no easy matter, but it has to begin by exposing them. Of all people in power and all people of wealth, we must demand benevolence and altruism. That's only what society with its laws and actions demands of everybody else.

Actually, I think the Internet may bring along a change also here, since it's a tremendous resource in exposing injustice wherever it resides. Traditional media tends to be reluctant about that, since they are both owned and led by the privileged few. But the Internet escapes such control and censorship, so there's a chance it will persist and thereby increase the pressure on our leaders to be fair. At length, that can make freeloaders shun leadership altogether.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-27157703041057926232013-03-04T01:24:00.000+01:002013-03-04T01:24:05.154+01:00The Individualism of Communism

Seeing a documentary about Mao Zedong's China I was reminded of the anomaly of communism: Why are these ideologies of the collective given names of individuals? That should be enough to dismiss them.

Marxism, Leninism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism... The communist ideologies persist in carrying names of individuals in spite of their expressed principles of the rule of the masses.

They also tend to consist of idolatry. One person is given complete charge and swiftly demands to be worshiped like a deity. Beyond any reason, as if that person was the creator of the universe and then some.

I noticed it way back in the 1960's, when I was a kid and these movements were high fashion. Their supporters spoke of revolting against the men in power and substituting their rule with one of the people. But why, then, were they obsessed with these individuals? It didn't make sense to me, and still doesn't. So, I had my doubts.

Not that idolatry is a monopoly of the communists. It pops up just about everywhere, as far as political power is concerned. I guess we simply haven't grown out of monarchy yet.

Democracy may have been invented already by the ancient Greeks, some 2,500 years ago. But it was forgotten for a number of those years. Since its recent renaissance, it's still in its infancy. We easily slip back into the habits of monarchy. Communists do, too, for sure. More than most.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-23269832143024263852013-02-22T14:05:00.000+01:002013-02-23T16:01:41.355+01:00We're All Victims of the Bully

Bullying is a very serious social problem, a matter of life and death since some victims are pushed to suicide and many others are damaged for life. Still, the solution is very far away – probably because bullying is rooted within our instincts, which our conscious minds have trouble reaching.

It's particularly alarming when children are bullied. That, the adults surrounding them should be able to deal with – but alas, they rarely manage to stop it. Instead, they often unknowingly partake in worsening the situation.

It's terribly evident in the TV documentary Bully (2011). The adults fumble when confronted with the problem, mainly occupied by claiming their own innocence. The children have no one to turn to. The most striking example of that is a scene starting at 28:30 into the film.

A school principal demands the bully and the bullied to shake hands, as if that would solve the problem. She even says that by the handshake they should let the thing drop. A good deal for the bully...

When the bullied boy is reluctant to do that, the principal immediately starts to scold him. Actually, she jumps to a bullying behavior.

"That means you're just like him", she tells the boy, comparing his behavior to that of the bully.

"I don't hurt people," he replies.

"By not shaking his hand you're just like him," the principal insists.

"Like someone who pushes you into walls, threatens to break your arm, threatens to stab you and kill you?" the boy inquires with admirable guts.

"He apologized," the principal replies, although that's not at all true. It was never even demanded of him. She continues: "And have you reported all that sort of stuff?"

"Yes!"

"Ok, then it's been taken care of," the principal immediately concludes.

"All of them said," he continues, "even the cops told him to stay away from me – and he doesn't."

"Right. Can you try to get along?" the principal insists, as if it's all up to the bullied boy. "I think you guys might be really good friends at some time."

"We were," the boy replies, "and then he started bullying me."

From the scene quoted above, in the TV documentary Bully (2011).

Unfortunately, that is likely to continue, especially since the principal's dealing with it became very much like her sanctioning of it. The bullied was the one blamed, the bully could walk off without any consequences. Actually, it was like he was praised, while the bullied was condemned.

That's as frequent as it is absurd. The reluctant efforts from responsible adults are mostly focused at the bullied, not the bullies, as if the former are after all the real problems and somehow the causes. They are the ones moved away, if it comes to that, and they are the ones suggested to change their behavior in some way. So, what does it say other than that they are regarded as the causes of the bullying?

Parents often fail to be any substantial support, since they only rule that little cell of the family and its home. Therefore, they also tend to demand of their bullied child to make some kind of change. They feel helpless, of course, and therefore really don't want to know, although stating the opposite.

People want problems to go away. In the case of repeated bullying, that means they tend to compute that the problem will be solved if the one that goes away is the bullied. That's not something they would readily confess, but it's what their action – and lack of action – confirms.

When school officials and parents meet, they tend to find common ground in just that: wanting the problem to go away, and escaping blame. This is also evident in several scenes of the TV documentary. Parents blame the school and the school claims the problem to be insoluble – thereby blaming society as a whole, or mankind or whatever.

The bullied child is little but a hostage in this battle of blame, and sees no hope of ceasing to be a victim.

Bullying is always a consequence of the social commitment to conformity. Children and adults alike are expected to conform to the norm. Be like everybody else, in every way. Those that stick out are either praised or condemned, depending on the nature of their deviation. It comes down to the rude survival of the fittest.

When people stick out from the norm they are admired if they do so in a way that signals some kind of superiority. If it's interpreted as a weakness, though, the instinctual behavior of exclusion is triggered. We are animals and frequently behave so, although we fail to admit it. When our instincts are free to roam, they make us want to follow the ones we perceive as strong and desert the ones we see as weak.

The human condition is far from perfect, but it is possible to change tremendously, we've learned through history. The job's just not yet done, completely. Far from completely.

The flaw is not with those who stand out, but with all of us who continue to protect the instinct of deserting those who do. The bully is not the only one at fault. So is everyone unable to resist that malicious instinct. That's a lot of people – to some extent all of us.

No wonder, then, that the problem is unsolved. We must start by admitting where it lies. We must admit our blame. Otherwise we are unlikely to do any better than the principal quoted above.

We have to remember Voltaire's statement about tolerance, and we need to widen it. Not only should we accept and defend different opinions than our own, but the same positive tolerance should be shown other behavior and characteristics as well. Only to the extent we commit our society to tolerance will we free it from intolerance.

So, we have a long way to go. The only intolerance we should foster is one against intolerance.

As for most bullying, especially among children, it seems to stem from conformity and intolerance regarding gender roles. Boys and girls are expected to grow up to men and women, by which we mean that they must conform to the images we make of the genders. It's when children deviate from those norms that the bullying becomes the most severe and persistent.

This is easily explained by Darwinism and the survival of the fittest, which is a mechanism based on procreation, therefore on how males and females interact. Our instincts tell us that there's a war between males to be alpha males, and one between females to be alpha females. What that comprises may differ through time and from one culture to another, but the vicious force towards conformity is the same everywhere.

It's very important to understand that what the instincts dictate about gender roles is not necessarily relevant even for the survival of the fittest. Society and man's role in it change much quicker than instincts do, so they are not to be trusted blindly. If we don't question our instincts, they may very well lead to the extinction of our species. As for our gender roles, they have unquestionably caused a lot of suffering through the ages. They still do.

We need to rise above that. We can. We have defeated several other instincts in order to create a society closer to the ideals we agree about.

So, bullying is not an isolated problem with its particular solutions. It's a symptom of what we need to reform in society as a whole. The bullied is the canary in the coal mine, the first one to suffer something that's wrong and will take its toll on us all – if we don't listen to this warning and act upon it.

The TV documentary Bully can be seen here (with Swedish subtitles), but that's just for a few more days.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-39733755460323924502013-02-16T01:41:00.000+01:002013-02-16T01:41:08.166+01:00The Quest for the Perfect Search Engine

Since the second half of 2012, the search results on Google have deteriorated. Single domains often dominate the first few results pages – especially, but not only, after the first ten results. Also, the relevance and quality of the results have decreased. It got me wondering: What would be the perfect search engine algorithm?

What's happened to Google is easy enough to compute: In their effort to fight unwanted Search Engine Optimization (SEO), they've changed their algorithm without properly considering the effect for the user.

Google may have gotten rid of sites cynically constructed for the sole purpose of stealing top positions on the search results, but by doing so they also swept away links of high value to the users. Their result lists got a conformity that is quite disappointing, since it leads to a boring surfer experience.

They seem to have failed to consider a very simple mathematical fact: when one criteria is reduced, the others swell. Making one piece of the cake smaller also leads to the others getting bigger. Fewer criteria decide the result.

As far as I can see, there are three major criteria of importance in getting search results satisfying to the user: relevance, quality, and popularity.

Google also rewards websites for their size, and very much so. This is very strange because it has almost no relevance to the user. It may simply be a priority inspired by Google's own size. As the saying goes: Birds of a feather flock together. For the user, size is meaningless compared to relevance, quality, and popularity.

Relevance describes to what extent a website is about the subject of the search. A search engine algorithm decides this by evaluating search word frequency and prominence in URL, titles, texts, and so on.

Quality is the measure of how well the search subject may be treated. Of course, this is not easy to compute. What search engines evaluate are the links to the webpage in question – how many they are and the quality of the websites they come from. The latter easily becomes sort of a vicious circle, when websites thereby increase the estimated quality of one another in sort of a loop. Another way to go about it is to measure links from such types of websites as those with the edu suffix, newspapers, online encyclopedias, forums on the search word topic, et cetera. That, too, is uncertain and not necessarily relevant to the user, but what to do?

Popularity is the nirvana of our time, a more or less outspoken belief in things being better the more people favor them. That can indeed be questioned, although it has some relevance to the user. When we make our searches, we like to see what's the talk of the town regarding that topic. We want to see the most popular webpages about the topic in the listing, although we might not always feel the need to click them. Popularity can be decided by the number of visits to the sites. What the search engines also read is again the number of links to the site, like they do in the case of quality.

That's probably why Google already at its outset decided to put such emphasis on mapping links. They are relevant to two of the three criteria. But they are no guarantee for a pleased user experience, simply because behind most searches is a need for specific information, which is best measured by the relevance criteria. Unfortunately, it's also the criteria most exposed to malicious SEO – often to the point of the relevance being a chimera.

Now, if the three criteria are valued equally by a search engine algorithm (which is hardly the case with any search engine), it looks like this:

If the algorithm is changed, so that one criteria is given less weight, it will lead to the importance of the other criteria increasing. They automatically swell proportionally, according to their previous compared weights. For example, if relevance is diminished from one third to 10% of the cake above, quality and popularity will swell to 45% each:

As the diagram shows, what suffers the most is variety. Two criteria dominate completely at the cost of the third. So, the search results will show a conformity of limited value to the user. Even if many criteria are used, the result lists will swarm with those strong in the few weightiest criteria, as if nothing else mattered.

That's what Google did, when changing their algorithm in their aggressive battle against malicious SEO uses. The purpose might have been commendable, but the result may even be the opposite of the intent, since fewer criteria make methodical SEO easier.

So, what would be the ideal weight distribution of the three criteria in the eyes of the user?

No doubt, relevance is of primary important to any search engine user. We want information on the topic indicated by the search words we use. Any search engine unable to give us that in the results would be useless.

Next comes quality. We prefer search results filtering out nonsense and misleading sites that use search words to catch visitors but don't deliver the information requested. If this is not done to some extent, we would just drown in an ocean of spam, whatever we seek. Or porn.

Lastly, popularity has some bearing, depending on what we search for. Man is a social being, needing to be aware of what goes on in the minds of fellow men. That's why we give significant value to popularity. In a search on a topic, we would also like to have indications of how other people relate to the topic and what they are likely to find out about it.

In a diagram like the ones above, a user friendly division of the three criteria would be something like: relevance 50%, quality 30%, and popularity 20%.

When I look at Google search results, I see nothing of the kind. Website sizes are given huge values, distorting the results and contributing to cause plenty of links to just a few sites. That's a killer of variety right there.

Also, Google has become extremely depreciative of the most important relevance ingredient: the actual search words. Therefore, sites that have very little to do with the topic can get surprisingly high ranks, even when they are obviously all about something else.

Actually, I even see what seems to be a depreciation of the old Google credo: the links to the sites as a measure of their quality. Many top results lack significant numbers of links, even less if they are to be examined with some quality filter.

Instead, Google focuses more and more on popularity. The same old same old megasites appear again and again, whatever the topic and however substantially or superficially they treat it.

So, size and popularity – those are the new icons cherished at Google. Not very exciting. Since the biggest sites often have the most visitors and vice versa, it leads to a terrible conformity in the Google search results.

I think it can lead to Google's downfall, if they don't change this radically. Users get bored with this easily recognizable repetition in the searches, and start longing for alternatives.

And they do already exist. The closest one in the race is Bing (also the engine for Yahoo), which is very interesting to compare to Google. Especially with search words about which there is great competition to be on top, it's my experience that Bing gives more varied and interesting results than Google does. Often strikingly so.

If my impression is correct, it can quickly lead to an escalating number of users shifting their habits. And then they are not very prone to shift back. We may be reluctant to change our habits, but even more so to change them back. The past is not to be revisited other than by memory. If that's not where Google is satisfied to reside, it should rethink its quest.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-16403371060169755762013-02-11T03:51:00.002+01:002013-06-09T18:41:15.901+02:00Georgian Gethsemane
A friend and I were searching the web for versions of Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say) from Jesus Christ Superstar that might surpass Ted Neeley's from 2006. A mission impossible, but I happened to come across an adolescent getting quite near – on a Georgian Idol show.

The young man's name is Luka Zaqariadze and he won that season, to no surprise. He has passion and the voice to express it. That's a rare combination. He also does what is so rare in show business: he totally commits to the song and lives out the lyrics as well as squeezes the notes like the flesh of a lover in heated intercourse.

His version of Gethsemane still has some oddities in how he treats the words and the melody, probably stemming from his own very different musical and cultural background. But when he sings boldly about dying and being nailed to the cross, Luka Zaqariadze expresses the purgatory of puberty, which has no borders.

I had to check out his other performances, and there are several of them from the Georgian Idol 2012 season. Already in his interpretation of Gethsemane it's obvious that he has a metal heart. That also stands out in his version of Led Zeppelin's Since I've Been Loving You, which is true to a long-gone time when rock'n'roll was allowed to take its time and the musicians played themselves and their audience into a trance. Here it is, linked from his own YouTube account:

The way the boy makes himself one with the pain and longing at the core of any real rock ballad is breathtaking.

And how about his version of Sting's Desert Rose, where Luka Zaqariadze and the orchestra comfortably mix influences from several cultures, having lots of fun with it:

But he also performed songs that don't translate as easily to the rest of the world. I don't understand any word in the below song, but I imagine it must have local traditional roots. It seems that Luka Zaqariadze is enjoying it just as much as any power ballad.

But what's this kind of song doing in an Idol show? The same can be asked about all the long and elaborate performances above, involving a symphony orchestra and extensive instrumental passages. I don't recognize it from either the Swedish version of the show or the American one. But I love it.

If other Idol shows, outside Georgia, dared the same musical explorations, they would keep me awake and lusting for more. Both in Sweden and USA (many other countries too, I bet), music and the pure joy of it have been brushed aside by business, and by the myth upheld by television executives that the audience can only consume nonsense.

Were it not for the wonderful Internet, we would never ever get to experience anything other than what our national show biz executives wanted to stuff us with. The songs above would never pass through that needle's eye.

So, what will happen to Luka Zaqariadze? He won the Georgian Idol. In the history of the show, that's almost a death sentence. The winners rarely get anywhere, probably because their voting fans soon move on to performers of the next season. How quickly they forget...

I learned as a rock critic for a Swedish newspaper that artists who remain are the ones with their own material, songs from their own hearts and minds. Covers are little more than karaoke. They hardly make history. Even voices and expressions as intense as that of Luka Zaqariadze are doomed if they don't have something unique on which to apply their gifts.

I know nothing about the music scene in Georgia, but I doubt that it's very different on the above account. Luka will need to come up with his own music or he will be forgotten as soon as the next Idol season begins in Georgia. On the other hand, if he finds an inner source from which to fetch his future music, he certainly has the talent to be an idol for real, even outside Georgia.

I end with an irrelevant note. His name made me remember this sweet sad song, whether it's applicable to Luka Zaqariadze's situation or not:

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-53746985696616810982013-01-11T14:00:00.001+01:002013-01-11T14:00:24.524+01:00Profit Is a Lousy Ideal

No doubt, capitalism has brought a lot of good to the world – at least to parts of it. But it's at a cost. The strife for profit is an effective engine for the progress of material gains, but it's a lousy ideal.

Probably, the problem of it is that it's never fulfilled. Even in the most successful business, there's always more profit to be made and that is the constant obsession of its owners. At some point, this goal will become destructive. Quite often, it's poisonous to everyone but the owners already to begin with.

The tireless battle for increased profit is some kind of megalomania. It's a marathon where no runner stops until owning everything in the universe. And that can't happen, so the race continues, although millions fall exhausted along the way. Even those – especially those – who never agreed to participate in the race, or were not even allowed to.

So, every business venture turns into a war of sorts, aiming for world-wide monopoly. And every company strives to charge as much as possible for their products, while trying to make them at as low cost as possible.

That can result in quality leaps, sort of accidentally, but not at length. Instead, the world resources are gorged just to be discarded at the next instant. Nothing is allowed to last.

Not only the natural resources are exploited in the process. So are people – all of us, also those who gladly participate in the race. It's a chaotic pillage without end, sparing none.

And no trophy is more than a mirage, a quickly fading sense of success soon replaced by the gnawing frustration of increased greed. And then we die.

Death may very well be what triggered this mania. All we know is that we have this short life to live, so we are obsessed by making the most of it – as if quantity in itself induces quality. It's like the T-shirt and bumper sticker text that was popular in the 1980's, the yuppie era: "He who dies with the most toys wins."

At that point, how to celebrate the victory?

Truly, though, this malady is not one of capitalism. In slightly different shapes, it's present in every country and every historical setting – at least in agrarian society. I'm not sure about hunters and gatherers.

Those with means have always tried to make a fortune and increase it. Those with fame have always tried to expand it – even the infamous. I think it's all about power. Money is power. So is fame. Increasing one's fortune of whatever kind is trying to increase one's power.

If so, could it be a misguided longing for the resources to overpower death? The greed driving us is one for eternal life.

That would be utterly sad, since this futile struggle has nothing but a lot of casualties. If there is such a thing as eternal life, we need to die to begin it. Considering the uncertainty about it, we shouldn't hurry.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-19862539928675869232012-12-25T22:51:00.001+01:002012-12-25T22:52:59.847+01:00It Is the Season to Be JollyOn an impulse inspired by the season, I started making theme images (in Photoshop) and posted them, one after the other, on my Facebook account. Just for fun. Here they all are, in the original order.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-40337860941764580562012-11-22T14:14:00.001+01:002012-11-22T14:14:38.311+01:00Totally Messed Up Rising

The grand finale of the Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises, is a complete mess. The 2.5 hours have a plot that's a maze where the first to get lost were the scriptwriting brothers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, the latter of which was also the director. That didn't help.

The film got lost already at its prequels, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. The whole thing with a secret cult of vindictive martial artists had little to do with the Batman archetype, but seemed to be an accidental mix in the clipping board with some Hong Kong kung-fu spectacular: Bruce Wayne becomes Bruce Lee. Didn't work.

The very essence of Batman is the "Lone Ranger" in the big city, an archaic figure refusing to adapt to the modern world and proving that there's still room for him. One man on a personal mission, flamed by his childhood trauma and the rage it created. His motifs are questionable, taking the law into his own hands and punishing the criminals swiftly, without the least consideration to fair trial and all that.

The Dark Knight of Christopher Nolan's films is a social creature, although griping. He cares for the city as if secretly dreaming of becoming its mayor. That makes him hopelessly entangled in society, by which his behavior tends to be as megalomanic as that of the cult he rejected. And just as predictable.

So, the film doesn't have much to work on, from a dramatic perspective. There's a big threat introduced – as big as possible – and a lot of struggle overcoming it. Not enough for 2.5 hours.

It's obvious in the script, which tries telling a lot of stories on the way, almost like starting over repeatedly. It would be better as a miniseries for TV, where it would be graced by our forgetfulness between each episode.

In the dramaturgy of it, the main character is the policeman Blake, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt. He is increasingly frustrated by the impotence of the police force system, finally throwing away his badge and taking the steps towards becoming the next Dark Knight – be it as Robin, the sidekick of the comic strip.

I wouldn't be surprised if there will be yet another Dark Knight movie with Levitt as a Batman incarnate. As an actor, Levitt is definitely better equipped for the role than Christian Bale has proven to be. But only if the character is allowed to bleed internally from waves of self-doubt and the anguish of ghosts from the past.

In this film, though, the metamorphosis he goes through is far too minute to carry the dramatic incentive of the story. He's an honest heroic cop from the beginning to the end, simply taking the consequences of this. For the drama to work, he would have needed to make much more of a quest.

No one else in the film goes through any process to mention. They are what they are, from beginning to end. They act as they would. So, what's to keep the audience interested, except for the mass scenes, the frequent musical crescendos and countless explosions? I kept watching in the fading hope of having a real story starting at some point. It never did.

I don't think the film can make any lasting impression.

Hollywood has great trouble when putting comic strip heroes on the screen. The well-chiseled mythical ingredients of the comics seem to escape the movie producers. They probably want the films to grow up from the boyish comic strip settings, but lose the powerful symbolic patterns in the process.

They would do better to invent new superheroes directly for the movie screen. But then they would need creative minds, something mainstream Hollywood is not particularly famous for. So they stick to squeezing old fruit from other gardens.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-75185077231541816142012-11-21T20:57:00.004+01:002012-11-21T20:57:50.510+01:00Not Taken by the Dramatic Curve

The film Taken from 2008, where Liam Neeson is a retired agent showing all his fury in saving his daughter from human trafficking, is a decent action movie, much thanks to him, but it fails mainly in its dramatic curve. So, the end can be nothing but disappointing.

Any drama needs to conform to the dramatic curve of increased and decreased tension. That also goes for thrillers, action films, horror stories, and so on. Basically they're all drama, from a narration perspective.

Now, the drama that gets us hooked from the beginning to the end has a curve of tension or excitement, which is almost the same in every successful drama. The simple form of this curve is the exponential increase of tension all the way to the climax, after which the tension drops to almost nothing as the closing scene unfolds. It looks something like this:

The dramatic curve.

It plays tricks with the senses, if well executed. A good drama gives the impression of having its climax about one third from the end. Actually, it's no more than five to ten minutes. Check it with a timer. You'll be surprised.

It's needed, because the climax leads to the solution, and after that the audience is impatient to exit.

In a refined drama, the curve gets more complex. It can start with quick initial excitement, just to grab the attention of the audience. Then it drops to low, followed by a slow increase – maybe with some short drum beats of tension on the way. But the general figure of tension development is still basically the curve above.

The film Taken failed completely to follow that curve. It started slowly, like a thriller usually does, but at the moment of the daughters kidnap it went up high and remained there all through. Were it not for the very competent acting of Liam Neeson, we would have lost interest long before the end.

He was an interesting hero – a seemingly loving father with a raving mad capacity. That's why an audience would not be disappointed until the end, which was simply finding the girl and killing the bad guys. Exactly what he set out to do.

In that way, the film also failed another basic law of drama: the development of the protagonist. For the audience to stay enchanted by the story, it has to show some major development of the one who is the real main character of the story – often not the obvious hero. Someone has to learn something, discover something, or accomplish something previously deemed impossible for him or her.

Nothing of the sort happened in Taken. The father-hero just went on with his rampage until he saved his daughter, and then everybody was happy. Nobody changed significantly.

That doesn't work. We may still see the movie through, but we forget it the moment the end credits start rolling.

Aristotle told us more than two thousand years ago: there are rules to drama. If they are not obeyed, the story collapses. It's odd that Luc Besson, the merited film maker who was one of the script writers, failed that basic requirement.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-30322865176425650152012-11-21T00:28:00.001+01:002012-11-21T00:28:46.766+01:00Age-old Dilemmas Also Plague the Future

Looper is a film playing with the idea of time travel – but doing so with a dramatic nerve that leaves the intellectual paradox far behind. I wonder if that sci-fi ingredient is needed at all in the plot, except for the special effects. The story by director Rian Johnson is so classical, it needs no future.

As the plot developed in front of my eyes, I was initially confused by the main actor, who looked a lot like Joseph Gordon Levitt, and still not. I thought they had found a look-alike, because the character needed someone of his air and caliber.

Only when Bruce Willis' character entered into the story, I realized that it was indeed Joseph Gordon Levitt, made up to have his facial traits. That's so cool of him, and so professional. Many Hollywood actors are neurotic about their looks and profiles, whatever movie they make. Levitt worked hard, in makeup and in his acting, to be a probable younger version of Bruce Willis.

He did a good job, too. Not too much, but enough. I bet he had fun all the time.

For the film plot, it did wonders, since the two ages of the character meet (sorry about that and other spoilers, if you haven't seen the movie yet). Levitt sacrificed his "persona" to make it happen. As the story progressed and the two generations of the same man deviated also in character, this sacrifice of his got its reward. The dilemma of the film became flesh.

The movie does indeed raise some intriguing and alarming questions. Is there a value in being true to oneself, even if that means corruption of the soul? This man morally deteriorates as time passes, and I would say it's just as likely as the opposite.

Another eternally complicated question asked by the film is what's worth dying for? Paradise is exposed as a myth and the present world is filled with rewards that mostly seem to go to the greedy. Then, what's worth making the greatest personal sacrifice for?

The third impossible question raised in the film is: does the end justify the means? Here the end is the actual future, what it will be if nothing is done. The film's discovery is one of utter clarity: If we allow the end to justify the means, we thereby create the future we want to avoid.

Every great thinker of the past would agree.

Like so often, I'm reminded of what the ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching has to say (chapter 29):

Conquering the world and changing it,
I do not think it can succeed.
The world is a sacred vessel that cannot be changed.
He who changes it will destroy it.
He who seizes it will lose it.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-45886038408420031772012-11-19T19:03:00.001+01:002012-11-19T19:03:06.689+01:00The Rage of Puberty

The film Chronicle, by director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis, is a high school supernatural thriller turning into tragedy. Underneath the spectacular surface, it's all about the torment and rage of male puberty.

If you haven't seen the film yet – watch out, because there are several blunt spoilers below.

Three high school boys mysteriously acquire what proves to be increasing superpowers. Raw power. They can move bigger and bigger things, they learn how to fly, and their powers keep on growing. So do the complications that follow.

Especially one of them, played with escalating intensity by Dane DeHaan, becomes unable to control the melting pot in which he falls, deeper and deeper. None can help or halt him, not even his equally equipped friends.

All the ingredients of puberty are there. The unhealed wounds of bullying, the sexual urge and disgracing failure, the revolt against a tyrannic father. So, his growing powers are doomed to run amok and lead to his own thunderous doom.

It's an allegory with a bite. The telekinesis and flying among the clouds actually increase the emotional turmoil that is the essence of the story. That's an odd aspect of storytelling – the more extreme the story, the more it seems to relate universally. It's because withing ourselves, we live magnificent lives. The grand scale is what we regard as the most appropriate.

That's never more true than in puberty. And all through the history of human culture there have been a lot of sparkling allegories about puberty, like Gilgamesh, Icarus, Hamlet, Spiderman, just to mention a few. They will keep on coming. Puberty will never be easy.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-40952779722507935802012-11-01T17:27:00.001+01:002013-03-17T12:27:30.046+01:00Patterns of Creation Myths

I made a new website, devoted to creation myths, their stories, structures, and patterns of thought. There is much to discover about the human mind in what kinds of ideas about the world beginning have been imagined way back in the dawn of civilization. We haven't changed that much since, nor has the essence of our perception of the world.

To begin with, the material on my new website, creationmyths.org, is mostly stuff I earlier had on my stenudd.com website. But there it was hidden beneath layer of layer of other stuff. So, I thought I'd better make a new domain explicitly for my writing on creation myths.

And it got me adding a new text, about Rig Veda 10:129, an Indian hymn contemplating in a drastic way what might have been before the world was created. It's an old favorite of mine among cosmological writings of the past.

I've studied creation myths for years and years, mainly but not only within the history of ideas, where I'm still supposed to complete a dissertation on the subject. I don't know about that, but surely there will be a book of some kind, eventually. In the meantime, I will keep adding to my new website. Please have a look at it:

creationmyths.org
Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-56996354304716137712012-10-22T01:03:00.003+02:002012-10-22T01:03:53.632+02:00Still a Beatle

I saw the TV concert of Paul McCartney with orchestra doing songs from his Kisses on the Bottom album, a handful of carefully chosen evergreen covers and a couple of new songs of his composed in the same style. What stood out the most was what a delicate singer he can be.

After the Beatles, Paul McCartney made a few albums that I enjoyed tremendously: his initial solo album as well as the first couple of records with the Wings. I saw two of the Wings concerts, too, back in the early 1970's. But after a few years, the following albums attracted me less and less, until they just got unbearably cozy. That has little to do with rock'n'roll.

In the decades to follow, Paul McCartney has really just stood out enough for me to notice, when doing old Beatles songs with surprising vitality and delight. That's hard not to adore.

But this TV show was a magnet, although I was really just zapping through the channels. My thumb halted on the remote, as my ears picked up something in his voice, telling me that Paul was getting into this for real. He was singing delicately, taking great care of every word – both its tone and its meaning.

Skilled singing, indeed. But more than that. In his care, the songs were lustfully opening themselves to the listener, as if seduced by Casanova, shivering at his every touch. Paul McCartney proved able to handle each song in just the way it must always have longed for.

And he made it seem so easy, like a child using a bucket to build sand castles on the beach. But it's not that easy for anyone else. Well, whatever else has happened these past decades, Paul reminded me that he was a Beatle, and still is.

Stefan Stenuddhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-3165895545283930670.post-84022455111722042722012-10-16T11:54:00.004+02:002012-10-16T11:59:31.353+02:00Kosice CloseupsI was in Kosice, Slovakia, for an aikido seminar. Before it started, I had a chance to stroll around the city with my camera. As usual, I looked more for details than scenery. I wonder how long I will keep that up.

You find more of my Kosice photos here: Kosice CloseupsStefan Stenuddhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Dependency status: unincorporated territory of the US; administered from Washington, DC, by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system
Definition: This entry describes the formal relationship between a particular nonindependent entity and an independent state.
Source: CIA World Factbook - Unless otherwise noted, information in this page is accurate as of April 17, 2001
© 2007 IndexMundi. All rights reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is administered when someone's breathing or pulse stops. If both have stopped, then sudden death has occurred. While some of the causes of sudden death include poisoning, drowning, choking, suffocation, electrocution, or smoke inhalation, the most common cause is from heart attack.
The following are the most common symptoms of a heart attack. However, each individual may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
Severe pressure, fullness, squeezing, pain and/or discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes
Pain or discomfort that spreads to the shoulders, neck, arms, or jaw
Chest pain that increases in intensity
Chest pain that is not relieved by rest or by taking cardiac prescription medication
Chest pain that occurs with any or all of the following (additional) symptoms of a heart attack:
Sweating, cool, clammy skin, and/or paleness
Shortness of breath
Nausea or vomiting
Dizziness or fainting
Unexplained weakness or fatigue
Rapid or irregular pulse
Although chest pain is the key warning sign of a heart attack, it may be confused with indigestion, pleurisy, pneumonia, or other disorders. It is important to note that not all of these symptoms are present in every heart attack.
If you or someone you know exhibits any of the above warning signs, act immediately. Call 911, or your local emergency number. If necessary, give CPR if you are trained, or ask someone who is. CPR certification means you have received the necessary training and practice and can comfortably perform this lifesaving technique.
Both the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association provide excellent training programs in CPR, which helps to save thousands of lives each year. Ask your doctor or health care provider for more information on becoming trained in CPR.
When a person collapses suddenly and isn't breathing or has no pulse, bystanders are often reluctant to assist with CPR for fear of doing it wrong or making the situation worse. Because less than one-third of sudden cardiac arrest victims receive prehospital CPR, the American Heart Association is promoting hands-only CPR. The technique consists of two steps: call 911, then push hard and fast in the center of the victim's chest. Hands-only CPR can help a heart attack victim survive three to five minutes long--possibly enough time until emergency medical services arrive.
Ochsner accepts all major insurances.
Ochsner is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, founded on providing the best patient care, research, and education.
We are one of the country's largest non-university based academic medical centers.
Ochsner is an equal opportunity employer.


text:
Book Search
1-1 of 1 results for Author: cynthia mcclintock (sorted by Publication Date, showing all)
The United States and Peru
Cooperation -- At A Cost
Series: Contemporary Inter-American Relations
The early 1990s marked a critical turning point in the relationship between the United States and Peru. Prior to the election of Albert Fujimori in 1990, the relationship between governments had been contentious. Fujimori, however, sought to work together with the United States regarding issues...
Published November 27th 2002 by Routledge


text:
Kettle Cooked Sweet Potato Chips, 1 oz.user rating
Sweet potatoes are kettle cooked and lightly salted to bring out the natural sweetness of this root vegetable.
About the Producer
Food Should Taste Good, Inc.
Needham Heights, MA
Website: http://www.foodshouldtastegood.com/
Made from wholesome ingredients, Food Should Taste Good chips are the #1 natural tortilla chip brand created without trans fats, cholesterol or artificial ingredients. They're also certified gluten-free, Kosher, low in sodium, a good source of dietary fiber and many varieties are certified vegan. Flavors include multigrain, sweet potato, lime, olive, chocolate, The Works!, and jalapeno. Launched in 2012: Kettle Cooked Sweet Potato Chips. Food Should Taste Good believes food should not only taste good but do good. The company's Food Should Do Good' initiative has donated nearly $750,000 to various organizations fighting breast cancer and hunger.


text:
Discussing the failures of artificial intelligence, Justin Mullins completely leaves out the thriving world of chatbots beyond ALICE.
I created the Personality Forge at www.personalityforge.com, which allows anyone to create their own chatbot. After a few years of evening and weekend work, many people agree that some of the bots thus created are as good as, if not better than ALICE. Each Personality Forge bot is a completely unique personality with its own emotional reactions and memories.
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.


text:
The Toolkit Thread
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team ftb
Befuddled Adventurer
Joined: Mar 2006
Location: Lost in the jungles of Thailand
Oddometer: 1,771
I'm the guy with the failed Motion Pro tool.
That tool is wonderful and compact, I never had any issues with the sockets, hex's or screwdrivers using the tool. It was simply the driver for the sockets is multiple pieces and the pieces began to spin instead of funtioning as one single piece. This sucked (and is horrific when you encounter the failing the piece in the field as I did instead of the garage) but I was able to fix it by welding, as detailed in the thread. My unit is now fixed and I worked with it in the garage for another couple weeks to test it out and then began taking it on rides again as its so wonderfully compact and it fits in a convenient pocket in the Camelbak for easy access. I posted in the thread so that people who own the piece can address any issues
taking it into the field.
One failed unit is indeed not enough to condemn the tool as Flagger pointed out, however according to tech at Motion Pro it has been reported to them more than a few times (as feared by Mercury264), and is not unheard of, so in my eyes you are a gambling man if you rely on this tool without addressing the potential issue I described earlier in the thread.
Here's the tool after I modified (welded solid) the driver, working on my drowned 525 on a river bank in Lao, pictured on the righthand rock
and another time in my left hand after removing the right side engine case.
If I owned a MP multi tool
rely on it without welding the driver pieces together. Once welded, you can then once again enjoy the convenience the tool has to offer.
Edit: Just to clarify I don't think the tool is crap, it's just not trustworthy in my eyes until the potential weakness in the system (driver) is addressed.
Team FTB
Team "Fingering The Bean"
Looking for the woman that takes the wheel when I'm seeing double.
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