bitterlawngnome has some beautiful pictures of the mosaic art in the TTC's Dupont Station. Dupont is a station that I not-infrequently use as a base for walks home; I should really pay more attention to its decoration.

For the particularly interested, Transit Toronto has a long article on art in the TTC, while the Ryerson Wire has another article on subway art in general with a strong focus on the TTC's.

Over at A Fistful of Euros, Douglas Muir asks what, exactly, it means that the designers of Grand Theft Auto IV chose as their protagonist Niko Bellic, a Serb (a Bosnian Serb, to be precise).

[I]s this a simple-minded decision, reflecting a vulgar stereotype of Serbs as violent thugs with a taste for organized crime, ignorant peasants who are thrown into culture shock in the modern world? Or is it an inspired choice, allowing the writers to make the protagonist character more complex and morally ambiguous, and position him as a "fish out of water" observer of the madness that’s modern American street life?

Note that Niko Bellic is not inherently evil. Nor unsympathetic. In fact, you can play him as a hero, albeit a rather noir one. (Yes, you can also go around killing people at random, but that’s your problem, not Niko’s.) And he’s presented as likable, and even--in the first few episodes--somewhat innocent.

On the other hand, providing the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto is not exactly a point of national pride. Niko is now the planet’s most famous Serb, and he’s a small-time crook with issues.

Some of the speculation in the comments area suggests that the Balkans might play a useful role for game designers and others of that like, as the collapse and subsequent criminalization of much of the region produced a criminal class that is--most conveniently--white.

Went to MacDonalds and ordered a $1.49 cheeseburger. The clerk rang it up for a final total well over $2.50. When I observed that that seemed unlikely, he supported the case that it was $2.50+ by observing that that value was what the machine told him to charge. I was grumpy and would have ended the conversation by cancelling my order.

In the end, he figured out that he had punched the wrong button but it took the manager to straighten things out.

On the "the issue isn't "kids" but clerks - possibly tired clerks - who may be too dependent on their registers" front, I know that I also managed to completely derail a woman at a grocery store by handing her some extra coins after she rang in the value of bill I had given her. The idea was to make the change come out to a nicer value (non-penny containing) but the actual result was that she was terribly confused, couldn't work out the right change even with a calculator, and then took my word for what it was supposed to be.

I watched the movie/DVD Transformers. I'm not going to bother with a real review, I'll just note that

1) while the effects were cool, the movie was really stupid and crappy

2) anyone above the age of eleven who honestly think this is a good movie must have widely different tastes than I do

3) robots are silly even when they are silly

4) I have absolutely no nostalgic connection to Transformers in the first place, which may have affected my perception of the film

Resist the urge to see this one, people, unless you really like silly robots and stupid everything else.

Wandering in the rain, finally finding the Basilica Maria Maggiore, where I left a donation in memory of my grandparents. Then, hitting the Imperial Forum and the associate museum, which was perhaps one of the worst designed museums I've seen. Then, the Appian Way and the Catacomb of San Callisto. Then wandering until we found the bit of the Appian Way that had ancient stones. Then Capitoline Hill. Then dinner.

Tomorrow? Not much. We leave for the cruise at a little after noon. Gotta run.

In today's newspaper I note that Russian archaelogists seem to have discovered the presumed-to-be-lost-below-the-Caspian-Sea Khazar capital. The Khazars were an empire back in the days of the Vikings, beyond Ukraine, and they had converted to Judaism. Apparently the first religious evidence of that lost-to-the-mists-of-history rather sizable empire outside old chronicles were coins found on Gotland praising Moses and hailing from the realm of the Khazars. I imagine the Northern and Eastern edges of Europe in the 8th-9th-century was more interesting than the extremely south-central focus of most history books I have seen. Might make for a good story too for any author being tired of the same old AngloSaxon or Charlemagne things.

And being fat is bad not just for you, but for the environment, or at least it seems as The Lancet tells us so. Not only do fat people eat more, which means more strain on the farmland, but they also need more transport because the don't move as much by their own power. Gee, isn't this rather obvious?

What, you want astroscience? Check this journal next week and we'll see if I can dig something up.

BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - China said it would start three days of national mourning on Monday after raising the death toll from last week's earthquake to nearly 32,500.

This was so close to the formulas for my earlier post on such stuff I ran the numbers. This is around 8 seconds of mourning per death. Essentially, this is a way of reminding myself that these are all individual people, and that the connectedness of the modern world helps little, and maybe hurts, our ability to appreciate news of 32.5K deaths as that many people, who are as much real people as your best friend or the barista you buy your latte from, rather than just a number, or a bunch of "others/outsiders," or something.

Also, this ties in with something I picked up (and pass on as thought-provoking, but not necessarily something I agree with) from starting to skim one of the Goldwater books (heavily paraphrased): when one values individual uniqueness over group identity, the role of government shifts from "providing for groups" or "representing groups" to "protecting the freedoms and rights of individuals."

The group solidarity idea is seductive, and something modern I associate with this thought is that the PATRIOT act and other Bush Administration incursions into basic civil liberties are "protecting the American tribe against the Terrorists," and individual Americans may have to take a Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori attitude. Note also that approximately 10 times as many Chinese individuals died last week than Americans died on 9/11, although admittedly the lack of culpability makes it comparing tragedy apples to atrocity oranges. But dead is dead, and these individuals have just as much lost whatever made them unique living beings.

Some days back two of my co-workers had a fairly loud discussion about Youths. Basically they both agreed that the kids in this place (my city or my country, I don't really know) was the most disrespectful of their elders anywhere in the world. One of the involved is from New York, I think, which I didn't know was a place known for politeness, but hey, I have never been there.

Anyway, I didn't pitch in to defend the kids even though I wanted to, because there was an issue regarding a bottle of 12M hydrochloric acid which quite frankly was a bit higher a priority. It isn't that I think they are that disrespectful of their elders, I almost never have a problem, or that I think that blaming the kids take away the heat from the real problem (the parents who overprotect the children so they go unstable), it is that I think the very idea that one should be respectful of one's elders in the first places is idiotic. At least here and today. Thoreau was right, you know. Old deeds for old people.

First of all, the excessive respect for age is not one of the characteristics of my culture. We should be grateful we believed in the right of the individual over the right of the family, that the Vikings believed in death in battle being more noble than hanging around to die of old age, that we don't elect 70-year old Prime Ministers (we have had a 70+ Prime Minister last and only time in the 1880's) and that we don't have any crazy conservative honor culture to make this some sort of mental wasteland hanging on to eras best left in the past. I completely agree with the old lady in the newspaper last week who explained that it was a sad day that we are seeing weddings being taking place in a very un-Swedish mood, that is that the father presents the bride to the groom after leading her down the aisle. The Swedish tradition is that the bride and groom walk down the aisle together, to show that the wedding takes place of free will. The bride isn't to be "given" away as some sort of family property! So basically, the kids are behaving as they should. No great Swede became great by respecting his or her elders, nor did this country become peaceful and prosperous by gerontocracy. Similarly, I very strongly doubt that there is any sort of positive correlation if you look at the world between say (individual freedom, prosperity, living standard and life span) and (respect for elders).

Second, the elderly behave like they were anything but old. Really, the 50+'ers do their best to pretend they are 29 (which means their best isn't very good) and try to get the rest of society to orbit around them. How the hell are the kids supposed to respect age if the old people don't want to be old? And want to expropriate youth culture for their own failed rejuvenation! Pathetic, I can assure old people that if they don't respect themselves no one else will.

Third, and this is most important, there is absolutely no reason for the kids to respect their elders even if the above two were true. After all, we live in a welfare state full of information. Respecting the old because they are holders of valuable information began to fail with the printing press and today information has a value not just in age but also in freshness. Respect the old because they've managed to survive five decades in the welfare state is moronic. I can understand that soldiers respect veterans who have been exposed to serious risks and learned from them, and I assume back in the hunting days people respected anyone surviving the dangers of the short lives, but today surviving to the age of 70 isn't something to inherently respect. Barring some bad luck with diseases people can expect to hang on.

So instead of saying that kids or anyone else should "respect their elders", show us what we should respect the elders for. There are seven-year-olds who deserve more respect than a subway train packed with whiny people of the 1950's. Respect individuals, not age groups. When people understand this, we're one step closer to the world where we can be free.

Today was a trip on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, it was impressively scenic, but I'm particularly interested in scenic vistas. Also, while Durango is a mildly interesting place, Silverton is a tiny ex mining town that has become an impoverished tourist horror. All in all, a long and very dull day - the train jostled enough that reading was impossible. However, tomorrow (far too early) we head for home. teaotter also made a very short post mostly consisting of a few of her better and odder photos.

At the theatre last week, another patron left the washroom without washing his hands.

What made it worse it that he felt the need to dry them.

Sponsor me for AIDS Walk. It's tomorrow morning - so it's your last chance!! Or, er, the last chance for people with AIDS. Or something. :)

One older man, a younger man, and three children, none of whom could be older than ten. They look around for a few minutes. The little girl is incredibly cute, and asks questions about everything. Then just as they're about to leave, one of the boys notices the iTunes playlist that is currently playing on one of the computers. He asks his father what was playing, and I do the biggest mental facepalm ever when I realize which album I had put on just minutes before they walked into the store.

Paranoid, by Black Sabbath.

I just stood behind the counter, tight-lipped and turning red, as the older men tried to explain that it was a band of some kind, then hurried the children out of the store.

True story.

Yeah, I'm going to Hell.

The following list contains the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" at LibraryThing. As in, they sit on the shelf because you were supposed to read them for school or uni, because you felt you should read them because they are classics or because everyone else loves them. Or because it’s simply chique to have certain books on your shelves.

* Bold the ones you’ve read.* Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
* Add asterisks (*) to the ones you own.


Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a Novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses*
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre
Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies*
War and Peace*
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West*
The Canterbury Tales*
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys*
The Once and Future King*
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno*
The Satanic Verses*
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present*
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five*
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed*
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion*
Northanger Abbey*
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid*
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Ulp. Only 31. don't know why I haven't read the rest of Austen, especially considering the number of times I've read P&P.

Loud congratulations to desert_vixen on graduation with honors from American Military University!!!!!

Vatican tour, including the Sistine Chapel, a stupid number of Classical busts and treasures of antiquity. Apparently John Paul II's tomb requires three guards, and yes, for the record, the Swiss Guard look as silly as you might believe them to. We also hit Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Pantheon, and the Piazza Navona (which was under some renovations). The Mausoleum of Augustus was closed off for renovation, and we didn't really see Castel San'Angelo from the inside, but we got to wander around outside and avoid vendors who wanted to sell us D&G and Gucci knock-offs. Due to a bit of miscommunication, I also tried lamb brains, which was unexpected but interesting.

Tomorrow? I'm not quite sure. swan_tower is the keeper of the schedule, though I think we're cleaning up some of the stuff in the ancient city that we didn't see yesterday. The following day, we depart on the cruise. Yay!

London: 0/8 days

Rome: 2/2 days

Something is seriously wrong with this picture. (Though, to be fair, the Rome rain days have been temporary sprinkles, not solid rain. But still: ROME. With rain. When London had nary a drop.)

Also, re: Vatican -- buh.

Clearly I couldn't have written this, because I've been responsibly grading papers like a responsible person, a responsible person who is trying to get ready to leave the country next week...oh my god. Just. What the. Hey, look over there! Unicorns!

12K, futurefic, pseudo-gen, even more eccentric than the usual sort of thing my brain ralphs up during finals self-destruct time, inspired in part by rubyd (who is otherwise not responsible for its content).

Five kirin and a gadget.

( The Magic Box )

If I'm going to call the Republicans "Team Evil", I should have a nickname for the Democratic Party as well.

Should I use "Team Useless" or "Team Enabler"?