The Stock Price of HAL [25 Nov 2007|01:12am] Grades The past few weeks have been a mix of incredible slacking and dashing madly through chapters of my textbooks in order to race through assignments. It's payed off, I'm holding at ~90% on my assignments for both classes. Still, I'm (once again) completely fucking bombing my easy course (honours quantum) and killing my hard course (E&M). I'm thinking that perhaps I should adopt the opposite strategy of my GPA concerned friends: avoid like the plague those classes dubbed "easy" and only take the "hard" ones. Otherwise I might not make it into grad school! Iran: Where Is It? Over a conversation with a friend a few nights ago, the realization that war with Iran was almost inevitable struck me pretty hard. Even the senate and Hillary Clinton are on board with this one, and she's the front-runner here. My friend informed me of a Republican debate where the candidates were responding to questions about the use of nuclear force against Iran, to halt its nuclear weapons program and they said that, "if they had to, they'd use it." All except one, Ron Paul, who asked if they had gone mad, apparently. While I don't claim to be the most politically well-informed, I like to think that I can follow simple logical arguments (I know my detractors would object here, but grant me this tentatively for the sake of argument). The strongest apologists (that I've found so far) for the position of attacking Iran have informed me that immediate war is necessary against a mostly defenseless nation, that hasn't attacked anyone in the last century, for four reasons: 1) They might be able to develop nuclear weapons by 2017 ... at the earliest. (Oh dear lord, this one alone calls for immediate assault! That's less than ten years away!! Diplomacy has failed! Bomb them now before they kill us all!!) 2) They are going to start a ground war with Israel. No, really. A ground war with Israel. Look at a map and try to picture how that would happen. 3) Some guy named 'Ahmadinejihad', whose name they can't spell (although they mostly agree that 'Jihad' is in there). I think that they mean this guy: That's right, this fellow, Ahmadinejad, who can't find a suit his size (he always looks to me like he's just raided a thrift store), the translation and meaning of whose speeches we can't even agree on (granted, he appears to be a deluded dick re: civil liberties, homosexuality and the holocaust). But all of this is beside the point, because he's basically a powerless puppet-head anyhow. Death to the thrift store shoppers! 4) Civil rights abuses due to Sharia law. Well, yes, we can all hopefully agree that stoning people to death for adultery/being raped is a terrible thing indeed. But does this validate launching an air strike that is going to kill tens of thousands of innocent people? Not to worry though, it'll be a surgical air strike and over quite quickly, we are reassured. As my friend said: "sounds like we've heard that one before ... but when?" So again, I don't claim to be the expert here. If someone can think of a reasonable motivation for going to war with Iran, I'm all ears. What do you think? post comment

[25 Nov 2007|01:13pm] Some friends of mine (Graham and the LRR crew) are raising money for Child's Play (a charity that donates toys and games for children's hospitals) by playing Penn & Teller's Desert Bus mini game (from Smoke & Mirrors). If you are a gaming nerd, you probably already know about it. If not, the game is to drive a bus from Arizona to Las Vegas in real time, without going over 45 miles per hour. Once you get to Las Vegas, you get a point, turn around and drive back to Arizona. It takes 8 hours to play one way, is the most boring video game of all time, and the LRR boys are grinding it out. So far they've raised ~$8000 for the charity. Go here and check it out. post comment

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