Thanks to a friend’s posting on Facebook, I just read the first ever sensible explanation of the reasons for Trump’s victory.
Short version: Forget red and blue states. It’s country vs. city. And the country is losing.
This should be mandatory reading to everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, trying to understand the reasons behind Trump’s “stunning upset”.
Here is the link again: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
I am listening to President-Elect Trump’s victory speech.
Up until now, I always hoped that he didn’t mean any of the things he said.
This time around, I hope that he means it. He is… almost gracious.
I hope, really hope that it is this speech and not his divisive campaign that sets the tone for his presidency.
By the way, The Simpsons saw it all 16 years ago.
I didn’t vote this Tuesday… I am not an American citizen.
Instead, I voted last year.
I voted for a government that promised to help refugees.
I voted for a government that was promoting diversity and minority rights.
I voted for a government that promised to listen to its scientists, rather than muzzling them.
Will they deliver on all their promises before their term is up? Of course not. But the fundamental message remains: it is a government that embraced good over evil; humanity over fear; decency over hate.
Tonight, I am more grateful than ever to be a citizen of Canada.
Trump just won Ohio.
In the past hour, I managed to convince myself that Trump will win this election.
It’s another one of those moments when I am glad that I have no children and their future to worry about.
Like a little less than a century ago, once again the politics of divisiveness, hate and fear are gaining ground throughout the so-called “civilized” world. What it will lead to, I don’t know, but my pessimism is growing each day. The world has been peaceful and prosperous for too long.
But let me not mince worlds.
Those who forget the lessons of history are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But you know what? Why should I care? I am in my fifties. I have no children to worry about. If you want to screw up the world by listening to the siren song of xenophobia and populism, the politics of fear and hatred, be my guest. Enjoy this brave new world of your own creation. Repeat the mistakes of history, this time with even more destruction, even deadlier weapons than ever before.
In any case, Putin must be having a really good day today.
It was 16 years ago today (well, technically yesterday, since it is now past midnight) that our very first cat, our much loved Marzipan, a perfectly ordinary tabby housecat, died.
And it was also 16 years ago today that a plurality of American voters cast their ballots for Al Gore, who nonetheless didn’t become president, because of the way the electoral college works and the way votes were counted in the Sunshine State of Florida.
Today, I am happy to report, none of our kittycats are in any imminent danger of dying, as they are all (as far as we know) in good health. The outcome of tomorrow’s election in the United States is unlikely to be influenced by the health of our feline companions, but still, I take it as a good omen: I desperately hope that the sane person makes it to the White House tomorrow night.
Hungarian piano virtuoso Zoltan Kocsis died today. He was only 64.
This is him playing the first movement of Bartok’s second piano concerto:
May he rest in peace.
I am just back from a brief road trip to the Big Apple, aka. New York City.
I had three reasons to go there. First, I was invited to a Quora Top Writers meeting. Second, I have recently built a new backup server, to replace the one that has served me faithfully for many years, hosted by my good friend David who lives there. And third, I haven’t been to NYC in ages… and I am quite fond of that city.
I drove. The drive was pleasant and uneventful. The weather could not have been nicer. November indeed… it almost felt like summer! I was wearing a shirt the entire time.
Once the new server was installed (which went without a hitch), David and I visited a fantastic little place in Brooklyn: the Subway Museum. An out-of-service subway station has been converted into this museum, which allows them to host renovated subway cars that remain powered, complete with original lighting fixtures. You can walk through them, even sit down in them, and contemplate what it must have been like to ride the subway in Manhattan while the Great War was raging in distant Europe.
We also visited the new World Trade Center.
Although we didn’t have time to go up to the Observatory level, we did visit the 9/11 memorial. That sad day, which David and I both vividly remember (for instance, we were on the phone when I warned him as the second tower began to topple, which was visible on CNN, so he rushed to his office window in time to see with his own eyes as that tower, too, vanished in a billowing cloud of smoke), left an indelible mark on this great city.
I didn’t take any pictures at the Quora meeting. There were several attendees with professional photo gear… I am sure that the pictures they took will surface somewhere eventually. But I did meet some amazing people and had some very interesting conversations. A great evening, even though my voice is still hoarse from all the shouting (the restaurant had very bad acoustics.)
One of my guilty pleasures is watching dash cam videos on YouTube. On my way home, I was given the opportunity to produce a dash cam video of my own, as I witnessed a near miss right in front of me:
I was using my mobile phone as a dash cam throughout the trip. Not because I was hoping to catch an accident, but I thought it might be a good idea just in case, and perhaps it might even help me record some memorable sights.
Since tonight is Halloween night, let me scare the few who bother to read my blog with the most frightening Halloween image yet:
Yes, America may yet deliver us a Trumpkin as the leader of the free world eight days from today. After all, as another Internet meme observed, poor Americans face “such a tough choice: a lying, misogynist, racist, dangerous, unpredictable narcissist, or a woman who used the wrong email.”
Yesterday afternoon, I received a phone call from our prospective Liberal candidate in the upcoming provincial by-election.
Although I voted Liberal in the past, I was never particularly fond of our previous MPP, Madeleine Meilleur. (It didn’t help that back when she was still city councillor, when I once wrote to her about an issue, she never even bothered to send back an acknowledgement. And this was back in the snail mail days.) So despite my vote, I am not what they call an enthusiastic supporter.
Anyhow, Nathalie Des Rosiers called yesterday, and I had a delightful conversation with her that lasted maybe 10 minutes. For starters, I learned that she spent years working with one of our neighbors, whom I respect highly. She also used a phrase that I welcomed very much: “Evidence-based governance.” Most importantly, she patiently listened to me on the phone, even when I was less than eloquent with my concerns about Ontario politics (apologetically, I had to explain to her that my mind has been preoccupied lately with the US election campaign and the prospect of a Donald presidency.)
All in all, Ms. Des Rosiers left me with a very good impression. I am glad that someone with her attitude and qualifications is running for office, and I hope she succeeds.
And the most maligned game of the year award for 2016 goes to… undoubtedly, No Man’s Sky. This game was much hyped by its creator in the months leading up to its release, hugely disappointing its fans when the released version lacked many of the features that they anticipated.
I was not part of this lot, though. I have not even heard of No Man’s Sky until I was asked to review it by a customer.
I spent a bit of time playing with it. I actually found the game quite enjoyable, albeit a bit monotonous after a while. Game play, in the end, boils down to landing on a planet, collecting resources, upgrading your ship, suit, or weapon, and moving on. There is a very thin storyline about some perpetual conflict between the three alien races that you meet, the mysterious “sentinels”, and the even more mysterious Atlas that ultimately reveals that the galaxy which you explore is just a simulation (d’oh!) but I found it uncompelling. Still, I found the game strangely attractive. Perhaps because it is the ultimate sandbox environment: You are not confined to a building, a cave, a city, a country, or even to a whole planet: you have an entire universe to explore!
Still, I’d love to have seen more races, signs of civilization, alien cities covering entire continents… or for that matter, just continents and more variety in the landscape within a planet, differences between mountains and plains, polar and equatorial regions and the like.
In short, I have to agree with those reviewers that No Man’s Sky feels a little unfinished; it would make an excellent indie game, but it is a bit of a letdown when it is released at a premium price under a major label (SONY).
Like all other games, No Man’s Sky has its glitches. I certainly ran into a few of them. The most annoying is when the game slows down unexpectedly, for which the only remedy is to restart the game and reload the last save. Fortunately, the remaining glitches were much easier to overcome. Like, when I managed to land my spaceship on top of a freaking plant.
I also managed to land once on top of a tower, with my spaceship precariously balanced on one end, making it quite a challenge to get back on board.
Or how about my starship, which I swear I previously left on the ground, ending up high, way high up in the sky? Thankfully, by this time I knew how to call my spaceship back.
I once managed to fall out of the world. It is a bit disconcerting, but easy to solve by reloading my last save.
And once I happened upon a building that was mostly floating in the air. As it turns out, building floors are transparent from below. I was hoping to be able to enter areas that were previously inaccessible to me (I have not yet obtained the appropriate Atlas pass), but alas, the transparency did not go that far.
Speaking of spaceships, here is the cutest-looking ship that I managed to acquire during my travels:
Unfortunately I had to trade it away when a spaceship with a bigger cargo capacity became available. Maybe one day I’ll find another one like this, with more cargo space.
In the end, it seems to me that No Man’s Sky will not appeal to everyone, but to those who like it, it can be quite enjoyable with decent replay value. I still fire it up from time to time.
It is almost the end of October, and I only added one blog entry so far this month. One reason is that we had a minor health scare: when my wife traveled to Hungary last month, she landed in a hospital on arrival, as she had an unexplained seizure during her flight.
She is doing well, thankfully. She returned home safely, with no lasting effects. There will still be a few more tests to be sure, but the scare is largely over.
This unfortunate incident, however, allowed us to experience first-hand the state of the health care system in Hungary, about which we read so much in recent years. Yes, as it is well known, the system is badly underfunded: salaries are miserably low, and sometimes, even basic supplies are lacking.
But we cannot utter a bad word about the health care professionals that my wife encountered. They were impeccably professional and helpful, going out of their way to assist us, even beyond the call of duty. When my wife’s cell phone was acting up, one nurse volunteered to help fix it with my assistance. When I explained to a doctor that I cannot visit her in person because I happen to be a continent away, he handed the phone to my wife, allowing us to have a conversation (finally!) using a hospital line for a few minutes. They helped with insurance matters, too, and they issued a very thorough discharge report, complete with a CD-ROM containing the results of a CT scan.
All in all, we have nothing but praise for these overworked and underpaid health care workers, some minor mishaps notwithstanding. They were kind, they were helpful, and every one of them that I spoke with was ready to assist, forthcoming, and flawlessly polite. Thank you for your kind care. Köszönjük szépen.
Watching the American election campaign is like watching not one but a whole series of train wrecks unfold. There’s nothing you can do about it, and there is a good chance you’ll be hit by flying shrapnel… but at least until then, why not enjoy the bizarre spectacle.
Like Mr. Trump describing his admission of regularly committing sexual assault as “locker room talk”.
It made me soul-search a little. Am I being a hypocrite, denouncing Trump? After all, I was a young male once… and I spent some time growing up in a small town in Hungary, surrounded by boys my age for whom crudeness was the norm.
Sure, we engaged in “locker room talk”. We talked about girls. We even talked about their lady parts and what we’d like to do with those. We discussed our sexual fantasies, and we bragged about things that we never actually did.
But I do not recall anyone ever bragging about committing sexual assault. However crude was the language, however much it treated women as mere sexual objects, violence against women was not part of our “locker room talk”.
And that was, well, some 40 years ago. I was in my early teens. Not in may late 50s, and certainly not as a business and community leader, reality TV star, aspiring one day to become president of the United States, and by extension, leader of the free world.
No, Mr. Trump, this is not “locker room talk”. Nor do we have any real reason to believe that what you bragged about was not true. At best, you were bragging about committing sexual assault that you only dreamed of doing; more likely, you made an admission of committing a violent crime.
I have heard women defend Mr. Trump by suggesting that this is normal for men. No, it is not. Crude discussions about females and parts of their anatomy may be, but no, talking about committing sexual assault is not normal for men. I also heard women defend Mr. Trump by suggesting that all this is normal in the world of Fifty Shades of Gray. Well, that’s another reason for me not to read that book.
How Republicans managed to sink this low… Oh, I can take a guess at the possible reasons. The result of extreme partisanship. A political figure that justifies his follower’s racism and xenophobia. Undereducated, underachieving people (mostly middle-aged white men like myself) being told that it’s not their fault after all. (Ironically, the conservative mantra is that we are all responsible for our own lives. Except, I guess, when you are an unsuccessful middle-aged lower-middle-class white man.) Disenchantment with a political elite that is seen as distant and aloof (as if any other kind of elite were possible at the highest level of government in a country of 350 million.)
But whatever the reasons, it is a disgrace. Some Republican politicians are waking up (no doubt worried about their own re-election changes.) But when will Republicans collectively wake up, declare that enough is enough, and return to the land of sanity? If for no other reason, it’s because (judging by his deeds, if not by his words) Mr. Trump is much further away from the pro-life, socially conservative views of most conservatives than even his opponent, Mrs. Clinton.
As for those of us outside the United States, I just hope we get a “leader of the free world” who is not stark raving mad and unhinged.
Tonight, the two most important women in my life are both in the stratosphere.
My wife is en route to Hungary, to visit her Mom. At this moment, she is about halfway across the North Atlantic Ocean.
Meanwhile, my Mom is about to land in Beijing, on a memorable adventure I hope: a one-week trip to China with a friend.
And I am stuck here with three cats, fending for ourselves in the Ottawa wilderness. I would say that life is not fair, but I actually enjoy staying at home for a change. I like my home, and travel is such a chore.
Hey, I am getting famous again!
For the second time, Quora decided to feature one of my answers on their Forbes blog site. This one was in response to the question, “Is Theoretical physics a waste of resources”? I used the example of Maxwell’s prediction of electromagnetic waves to turn the question into a rhetorical one.
Forbes used a stock Getty image of some physicists in front of a blackboard to illustrate the blog post. Here, allow me to use the image of a bona fide blackboard, one from the Perimeter Institute, containing a few of the field equations of MOG/STVG, during one of our discussions with John Moffat.
Anyhow, I feel honored. Thank you Quora.
Of course, I never know how people read my answers. Just tonight, I received a mouthful in the form of hate mail from a sarcasm-challenged defender of the US space program who thought that in my answer about astronauts supposedly having two shadows on the Moon, I was actually promoting some conspiracy theory. Duh.
Fifteen years ago this morning, I was late going to bed. Very late. I was a night owl those days, and I was still up and working a few minutes before nine o’clock, when CBC Newsworld told me that an airplane hit the World Trade Center. I switched to CNN and their live coverage, in time to see the second tower hit. For a brief moment, I actually wondered if this was simply an accident, with someone flying a little too close to the action. It was hard to judge sizes on those television pictures, so I really did not realize at first that I was seeing a 767. The plane seemed so small. And the idea that someone was doing this on purpose was still too difficult to grasp.
I didn’t go to bed that day. Instead, I spent a fair bit of that time on the phone that morning with my friend David, whose office in Manhattan was just a few blocks away from the twin towers. We were on the line when the second tower fell. I saw it first: as the antenna began to sway, I knew what was coming. David watched it from his window. Later in the day, David and his wife were among the tens of thousands who were evacuated on foot from lower Manhattan; it was not until several days later that they were allowed back to visit their office.
Fifteen years. Young adults walk among us who are too young to remember that day. Thankfully, the world has not gone completely bonkers. Sure, air travel is even more unpleasant these days (not that it was such a pleasurable experience on September 10, 2011), and the consequences of America’s disastrous war in Iraq continue to impact the world. But there is no world war, and while the threat of terrorism remains with us, you are far more likely to die from falling down the stairs in your own home.
It was 25 years ago today that a Finnish chap by the name of Linus Torvalds made an announcement about a new operating system that he developed in the preceding few months. Nothing big and professional, he assured us, just a hobby project basically… but here it was, and he already got a command shell and the GNU C compiler working.
I have been using Linux for 23 of those 25 years. I became familiar with Linux when I took over sysop duties of the UNIX forum of the long defunct NVN (National Videotex Network).
I no longer have the original SLS (SoftLanding Linux) floppy images, though I am pretty sure even without checking they can be found in several archives online.
But I do have the announcement that I posted on the NVN UNIX forum page almost exactly 23 years ago, on September 1, 1993:
Welcome to the LINUX distribution on NVN! The UNIX Forum data library now contains the complete set of files making up the Softlanding Software (SLS) distribution of LINUX, the popular *FREE* UNIX operating system clone. The files are the most recent (version 0.99 patchlevel 12) as of today, August 28, 1993. The files were used by the UNIX SysOp to install a complete LINUX on an 80386SX20 PC, with 4 Mb of RAM, a 68 Mb and a 42 Mb MFM hard disk drive, an ATI VGAWonder super-VGA card with 512 kb video RAM, a Microsoft mouse, a 5.25" high density floppy drive, and a 3.5" high density drive, and an ATI2400etc/i internal modem. Brief assessment: it works like a charm. So well, in fact, that I decided to keep it and permanently convert my old 386SX to a LINUX host. I am already using it as a dial-in system for my friends and business associates. The files in this distribution are: readme.sls this file sls_info.zip miscellaneous text information files rawrite.zip needed to create the A1 bootable LINUX disk sls_a1_3.zip bootable floppy image for 3.5" 1.44 Mb drives sls_a1_5.zip bootable floppy image for 5.25" 1.2 Mb drives sls_a2.zip Minimum base system sls_a3.zip sls_a4.zip sls_b1.zip Base system extras sls_b2.zip sls_b3.zip sls_b4.zip sls_b5.zip sls_b6.zip sls_b7.zip sls_c1.zip Compilers sls_c2.zip sls_c3.zip sls_d1.zip Documentation sls_d2.zip sls_s1.zip Essential component source sls_t1.zip TeX sls_t2.zip sls_t3.zip sls_x1.zip X-Windows sls_x2.zip sls_x3.zip sls_x4.zip sls_x5.zip sls_x6.zip sls_x7.zip sls_x8.zip sls_x9.zip sls_x10.zip All the files named sls_Sn.zip must be uncompressed under DOS and copied onto separate floppies. The bootable LINUX floppy (disk A1) can be created from sls_a1_3.zip or sls_a1_5.zip using the RAWRITE program, supplied in RAWRITE.EXE. It is suggested that you download sls_info.zip first, for additional information. The files in this archive are text files readable under DOS (lines end with CR/LF instead of LF only as they do under UNIX). Please note that while the NVN UNIX does not (indeed, cannot) provide support for LINUX, I will be glad to answer any of your questions. Also, if you are interested in a specific program, application, or information file that is not included in the present distribution, please let me know and I will see if I can obtain and upload it. If you would like to run OSF/Motif on your LINUX system, you may not have to wait too long; I am planning to try and obtain Motif in the near future. Good luck with your installation and I hope that the next time you call, it will be with your LINUX system! UNIX SysOp
Before making this announcement, I already set Linux up on an old 386SX desktop computer that I was no longer using. Within a few months, this computer began to play a permanent role as my Internet server. Although it went through several hardware and software iterations, its basic identity remains the same: it’s the very same server on which these words appear.
Some people call squirrels furry rats. Yet they are cute.
Cute enough, it seems, for people to feed them donuts. Or was this donut stolen?
A moment in a squirrel’s life, caught by my wife earlier today with her cell phone camera.
The New York Times Magazine published an extraordinary report about the recent history of the Middle East.
Civilians fleeing Basra, 2003 – The New York Times
Titled Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart, it presents a comprehensive review of the recent history of Arab lands, ranging from the heyday of secular despots in the 1970s, through America’s ill-fated war in Iraq in 2003, to the present-day civil war in Syria, the fight against ISIS, the ongoing disintegration of Libya. It offers insight through the personal stories of some select characters, including a Kurdish doctor, a day laborer turned ISIS executioner, or a civil rights matriarch.
It is a very long report, filling an entire issue of the magazine. I just read it. It was well worth the time.
The one thing this report failed to offer is a ray of hope. Something that would stop the endless cycle of violence.
Having visited a virtual version of the ghost city of Pripyat recently, last night I thought I’d check out Google Maps. After all, they do have Street View from Pompeii, from inaccessible mountain villages in Nepal, even from places in Antarctica… why not Pripyat?
And sure enough, they do have coverage of Pripyat, much to my no small astonishment. Recent pictures, too, taken in June 2015. You can visit the Pripyat city centre, enjoying the view of the still standing Ferris wheel:
visit a (presumably) radioactive scrap yard:
or for that matter, visit the nuclear power plant itself, complete with new sarcophagus, still under construction:
The city is completely abandoned. However, there are signs of life at the power plant: a few cars, even people occasionally appear in the Street View pictures.
I have never been to the ghost city of Pripyat, evacuated in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
However, in recent days, I spent some of my free time fighting mutants, mercenaries, bandits and fanatics in and around a virtual version of Pripyat, in the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Pripyat.
This game is the third installment in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, made by Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World.
And it is a damn good game (available without crippling DRM, courtesy of GOG.com; which is the only reason I purchased the game, as I do not buy DRM-protected crippleware.) The other two games are pretty darn good, too.
The games combine an iconic science fiction novella by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky with the realities of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (officially the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation.)
The novella, Roadside Picnic, is inspired by a vision of some careless visitors near a forest, who, after a brief stop, leave behind everything from trash to discarded spark plugs, perhaps a pocket knife or a forgotten transistor radio, or maybe even a pool of used motor oil. What do these strange, sometimes dangerous artifacts and anomalies mean to the forest’s animals? Now imagine a visit to the Earth by some equally careless members of an extraterrestrial supercivilization, with us playing the role of the forest’s fauna. What would we make of the often deadly, totally incomprehensible anomalies and artifacts? As such, the Visitation Zones become places of interest to all, including “stalkers”, freelancers who defy government restrictions and risk life and limb as they enter the Zone illegally to retrieve precious artifacts and substances from the Zone.
The novella was written 15 years before the Chernobyl disaster and its setting is a fictitious town in Canada. Nonetheless, the parallels between the novella’s fiction and Chernobyl’s reality are eerily striking: abandoned buildings, abandoned military equipment, locations with a dangerous buildup of radiation, not to mention what remained a still operating nuclear power plant for many years at the very center of the Exclusion Zone.
This, then, is the setting of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games: The Zone, its abandoned industrial facilities, farms, vehicles and equipment, the town of Pripyat, even the nuclear plant itself, complete with its sarcophagus. In the fictitious storyline of the games, the 1986 disaster was followed by another man-made disaster some 20 years later, as the Zone, now largely uninhabited, was used as a place to conduct secret, often unsanctioned research.
Near the end of the third game, the player is presented with a choice of being part of an evacuation (which ends the game) or staying in Pripyat. I opted to stay. (OK, I had a saved game, so of course I could explore both scenarios.) After the helicopters left, I still had to dispatch a few enemies… but after that, there I was, standing in the middle of a square in Pripyat in the dead of night, with no friends, not even enemies, just silence occasionally broken by the howl of mutants in the distance. My safe house was gone, all I had was the equipment I carried… and I was alone.
I was honestly surprised by the intensity of this feeling of loneliness coming from a computer game.
Anyhow, I survived, morning came, and I was able to explore parts of Pripyat that I did not visit during the more intense game playing earlier. And thus, I happened upon a famous Pripyat landmark, the town’s never used Ferris wheel:
The Ferris wheel, along with the rest of Pripyat’s brand new amusement park, was set to open on May 1, 1986; unfortunately, the power plant disaster on April 26 scuttled those plans.
Sadly, I was unable to explore the Ferris wheel up close; it is located outside the region of Pripyat that is accessible to the player. But the area that can be explored is huge and terrifyingly gloomy, looking a little bit like pictures from North Korea:
As to the abandoned Soviet-era facilities, here is a splendid example:
Hey, when I took that screen shot, the Sun was almost shining!
The Sun was not shining, though, when I visited the Chernobyl nuclear plant in one of the earlier installments of the game:
But what a place it was. Mostly quiet deadly, even with the best equipment my game persona could muster.
Oh well, it was fun to play these games. Time to get back to work, though.