EX

Project #: 186452B

Medical ID #: 44378

Personnel #: 284

Type: Highly Classified

DNA Fracture tests indicate a strong tendency of the sap molecules to disintegrate under elevated temperatures (tests conducted at 45-50 C, “sapintg.doc” could be viewed for more info.)

80% of Samples started showing deep-core symptoms after 45 min. exposure. 100% of samples experienced complete breakdown after 57 min. exposure*(This rather supports the theory that last trial’s resiliency figures were unfounded)

At least 70 to 80 % of Standard regulatory nerve functions were damaged during the high-v phase of the tests.

Samples’ ability to achieve high level neural connection reached 100% synchronization ratio at 40G batched dosage.*( taking these values into account, the BVN board should consider revising the dispersion factor presented by the SiG department.)

Deformations were minimal in samples from D category, affected by stronger bone structure/composition.

Comments

1. Mortality rate: 100%

2. Outsourcing magnetic induction equipment should be considered, as the batch-run cost of operation is out of target center line by a huge offset.

3. Information concerning samples’ body function during the trial period could be found in the attachment.

4. Decreasing sample size might impact result accuracy, calibration might be required.

Recommendations:

Terminate phase II as of next rotation.

Deploy buffer relief program before commencing phase III.

Ci sono centi modi per morire

Driving into the dark void that engulfed the traffic-less road, the bends dangerously steep and narrow, there stood a tall figure shrouded in shadows. A figure resembling in shape the form of a tree, a humanoid tree, its crooked limbs falling ideally to the road. The man in the car had no time to slow down before hitting the tree shaped figure standing in the middle of the road, he chose instead to drive off the cliff and fly into the night, shouting “GERANAMO!!” as the car was diving head first into the rocky terrain below, and then just before actually hitting the ground he spoke softly and said one word only… “rosebud” he said. The tree-figure, watching all this from above, stood still for a moment, as if thinking, its poster conveying absolute wisdom, and then pursed out laughing, hysterical laughter that no doubt would have driven anybody off the cliff to escape from it. And then just as abruptly as it started, it stopped laughing and walked back towards the roadside, where another slightly smaller tree-figure was waiting for it. “Let’s grab a burger” it said to the smaller figure. They both gave their backs to the concrete road…. only their backs looked strikingly similar to their fronts.

A week earlier, a woman was screaming… she was screaming into the phone, asking it to kiss her ass, and then she slammed it down when the phone refused to do as she said. She took 17 pills from a drawer beside her bed, and slept. She didn’t wake up when her sister knocked on her door 2 hours later, and she didn’t wake up when her baby started crying after waking up from the noise… she didn’t wake up ever. On her grave is written this one word “choiCe” with a capital “C”

At the same exact moment that the woman was slamming the phone, a man was smiling…. He was smiling a big smile, a smile so big that his mouth was stretched from ear to ear. He had been smiling for almost half an hour, he will continue to smile for another 33 minutes and then he will pull a gun from under his t-shirt which has a big “bite me” written in gold font on the front of it, and he will shoot his brains out. Just before pulling the trigger he will say between his teeth as he is smiling: “snowball”

Understandingly enough, the three kids screamed when they saw a man falling from the ten storey building, and then they started crying, their cries only interrupting the screaming for small intervals. This no doubt added to the gravity of the situation, this and the siren of the car he fell on that started making a loud sound as the people stood motionless, watching the corpse of the man who seconds ago was calmly sipping his tea with his best friend. No one standing in the street knew this of course, they also had no idea that the man was a successful businessman or that he had recently suffered from a terrible loss.

The waiter suddenly lifted his eyes from the yellow notepad that he was writing so vigorously in. he looked into the eyes of the man sitting in front of him. He was wearing an expensive looking black suite and a shiny silver tie. The waiter stood speechless for a bit and then he asked the man if he wanted anything else. The man gave him a weird look, but that was only understandable, he was stuttering and he doubted the man understood any of what he said. You should be more careful next time he thought to himself. He walked away from the table and headed for the counter, watching people sitting and mostly talking in the busy café, all are potential stories he spoke in low tones, he gave the order to the other guy (he couldn’t remember his name), verbally, since he had nothing written in the yellow pad but what wasn’t really useful for making an order. He had gathered four stories, not bad for a day’s work, he could try working one more, but he was tired and he already had enough to write on, he was content.
He had the stories alright, he just had to connect them together, but that was easy, someone of his caliber could link them easy, he already had an idea how this would work: The smiling man was blackmailing the woman, not exactly blackmailing her, but driving her crazy mostly, driving her as crazy as he was. He did this until the woman toke 17 sleeping pills and then he blew his brains out, her husband; a rich businessman, went to speak with his best friend just after his wife died. He told him that he felt she was hiding something from him and that this was the reason she toke the 17 sleeping pills, he told his friend this and then he left, but instead of taking the door, he toke the balcony. His friend, after seeing him drop ten stories and his blood spluttered all over the car he fell on, thought about what he said, about what his wife was hiding, and he at that moment, not knowing the story of the smiling man, thought that he was the reason that his best friend and his wife are now dead. A week later, at Halloween, a drunk was standing in the middle of the road, wearing a costume that anyone seeing from far would think that it resembles a tree, but in truth was only a random costume made of rags and long shredded sleeves. A car came by and its driver, drunk from his own guilt, drove of the cliff and died.
Perfect, it was perfect, just needed to tweak a few things and it would be ready. He was a total genius, he knew this fact very well. Yes, he was just some waiter in a café, and not a good one at that, but he knew how to write, this day was a good example, he found out four characters while working. People looked at him as if he didn’t understand a lot of things, but there was more to him than the simple waiter uniform. He spoke 4 languages fluently, he had a bachelor degree, and he read more books than all of the people in the café combined. The job had a shitty pay, but it was decent enough when it came to digging up new stories. He was a master at doing just that, he would stand in front of his potential character, and he would look him in the eye while he is thinking about his order ,and then he would know if he had a story or not, and he would write it down on his small yellow pad. It all looked like he was innocently taking his order, while in truth he was deciding his fate. The man in the suite is a good example, he was sitting there calmly drinking his coffee. Little did he know that, on the yellow pad, he was covering all ten floors in free fall. Although he knew his limitations, as Tolstoy said: he is not the river… he is the net. And for some reason he had to look people in the eye to fish out their story. He was the ultimate performer and he was getting ready for his final act. After writing the next few lines, he was going to get up on a chair and hang his head on the rope dangling from the ceiling of his small 3x4 room. And before jumping of the chair he will say only one word: “Swing”

The day K. S. Uiry lost his karma

Uiry thought he was a smart guy; he thought he was a smart guy because he believed in the rules, he also thought that only dim-wits could possibly deny them. And since he believed in the rules he thought he had a natural right to break them, after all rules are made to be broken… or so they say. But you had to believe in the rules to break them, and Uiry believes, he believes so much that sometimes he thinks his head is going to explode from all the damn zeal he keeps inside.

If you come that far, then you are all set, you can break the rules, you can even run them over by your old beetles as you are driving to work each day... in fact, that's exactly what Uiry used to do: run over the rules each morning as he is heading to work, occasionally bumping the car behind him as he is leaving his parking space, "kissing it" he called it … sometimes he run over the rules twice, call it his morning ritual.


And if you are a really firm believer, then you already know how things work, you break the rules not because you have to… but because you can. Anyone that has faith knows that he can get away with it, and faith was something Uiry had in quantities, he had enough to wake up each morning and shave, he had enough to drive to work each day and he had enough to make strawberry-and-faith jam for the entire freaking neighborhood if he had to.

Bottom line is; Uiry breaks the rules and never gets caught, it is a fact of life, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what he calls his karma.

Then comes Jack. Jack was, if the string theory is to be trusted, living in an alternate universe... a universe where rules were as strict as your 3rd grad math teacher, where they might bend, occasionally, but never, never, break. And if the string theory is a ball of crap, then he is just some square living next door from Uriy. At least that's what uiry thought...

Ci Sono Cose Che Nessuno Ti Dira'

This seemed like just another setup, people are unique, yeah, sure… but when you are low on the rest hours the faces take these oddly similar characteristics, the same goes when you are drunk…. I think.
They say 60% of stress in adults is work related, that's probably a load of crap if you think about it…. It's ok to suck at work, but it would be unthinkable to have a shitty time at home… oh, no, that essentially means you have no way out.
The first thing you feel is you feel angry, you feel angry when people don't act the way they are supposed to. Then you remember something about different perspectives and it slips by, just this once. It doesn't really slip, you know, it is just labeled water under the bridge, so you can move on… get things done.
Other times you might feel good about someone, just an irrational feeling because they remind you of a figure from the past, or because the image somehow conforms to what ticks inside… it is just an illusion of course, we all know that, there is no actual synchronization, there couldn't be. You could deny it, call it an 'emotion' if you like, but no matter what you think of it… it won't fly for long.
This raises a question, what do you do when you meet someone for the first time?
What are you thinking while shaking that hand, other than it's got a firm grip?
This probably goes beyond different characters, trespasses cultures and ignores rank; you meet someone and start thinking
"What's in it for me?"
"How will this person help me?"
"Will he give me happiness?"
"Will he give me money?"
"Will he give me status?"
"Will he make me feel good?"
You notice his clothes, you notice how he carries himself, you notice how he speaks and you notice his hairdo, you notice a bunch of useless things and then you try to answer the questions that keep bugging you… "Will he?"… "Really?"
Then they end up being, or not being your friend. After all, what is a friend really other than someone you can't risk telling everything to? And what's a stranger other than someone you expect nothing from?
hidden meanings buried deep into the psyche, not meant to be on the front page of your daily crap paper... cover your eyes folks, and run screaming while you are at it.
that is most definitely more prudent than dancing on the edge of a razor sharp sword, and it is probably more prudent than trying to find your way.
yet... Who will show us a path… any path? Who will slay our fictional deities?
who will be our hero? even if just for once?

Mad At Gravity

In the past I wanted to be this new member in a team of really hot self centered egoistic jerks that look down on me for being the new kid on the block or taking the holy place of their dead friend or whatever, and they would treat me like crap and all, until I show them how cool I really am and maybe save someone's ass in the process, and then they would be like: "woow this guy is awesome" and I'd give them a "you gave me nothing but shit all these past whatever… but I'm gonna be cool with you guys cuz I'm better than the whole bunch of you faggots" look, and then we'd be friends for life, you know?

I also wanted to be an astronaut, they always looked smashing in their white puffy space suites and their heads held up high and on their shoulders resting the monumental duty towards mankind which I never fully understood, and their extraordinary abilities which I can't quite remember at the moment, and their unending fame, mmm…Armstrong? to name a few.
Plus they get to leave this giant ball of dirt that we are all sticking on and give gravity a nice weightless finger.
Then it came to me, have you ever thought about how astronauts take a dump?...
Well, I have… and let me tell ya, it kept me up nights at a time, and no matter which way you think about it, it can't be pretty. They actually strap you into the toilet seat and then they turn the vacuum on. The brave spacemen have to deal with more than just having a 2x2 living room for 6 months, they have to get their ass vacuumed and then wipe in zero gravity, can you imagine how risky that is?... So I just said "thx, but no thx… good luck with you all folks" and placed a big "X" on Gagarin's picture on the refrigerator.

And I'm totally over all that now.

You grow up thinking life is all hippie and cool, then shit happens and your turtle gets killed by your best friend and your pants get torn at school or you forget your zipper open, and that's it…. Life sucks and you move on.

Progression

I have evolved…
I'm free…
Free from self development, free to pursue self destruction.
No…. it is the one that pursues you, and that's the beauty of it.
I lose myself in its magnificence, the thrill as you fall all the way down.
Hearing a loud thud and seeing a splash of blood just down the road, waiting for it to liberate you. And the farther you fall, the more your worries disappear.
It all sums up to one thing; only from below can one better see the heights.

My left arm will bear the corroded shield of indifference, in my right hand I will grip the dim sword of unattractiveness… and on my shoulders shall rest the unholy cloak of despair. The seeds of Satan sowed onto this very earth, but I will not plant them, I will despise them from far away, I will watch them grow, I will watch them flourish into giant trees of cruelty. Let them feed on my body.
For even the willingness to sin is so much more deserving than what I aim for.

Murder the smiles, all the genuine smiles, the fake ones I can keep… the fake ones are useful. Sacrifice all of my dreams, look down on them.
Sacrifice is the fuel of my journey, how else will my crocked tree of shamelessness bear fruit?

No time for turning back now, a pact with gravity cannot be undone, it can only be obeyed. As you fall, you view things from the bottom up, it's an interesting experience. You get to see everything upside down, Benevolence is a lie, effectiveness is a lie, passion is a lie. From that perspective they respectively equate to, malevolence, incompetence and impassivity. Consistency, forget about the damn word, it is meaningless, this is the realm of anarchy.

What is my intention in all of this, resurrection?
Maybe… if I get that far, but as they say; it's not where you are going that's important… it's how you get there that matters.
Well, I say screw them, they don't have a say in this anymore.

The process is a rapid descent, spawned from weakness?
Sure, that is the first thing you learn on your way down… to accept your weakness, to love it, it is your only reality, the only thing you can cling to.
Will I feel sorrow? Will I feel disappointment?
Unlikely, sorrow and disappointment are up where I left happiness and hope.
Observing the world through glass eyes, rain means the heavens are crying.
Experiencing a little uneasiness is possible, but it is smashed along with everything else as I hit the ground:

THUD!
SPLASH!

Mirror

I've seen him today, it's the first time. Told him i had him figured, i have no idea if he understood that, why should he.... because he's more like me?
... oh come on!
Hormones talking in place of whatever should normally be there. Chemical imbalance.
I told her once, about love and chemical imbalance, i wanted her to think i was witty.
As it turns out, all emotions are related to chemical imbalance. She had all this figured, long before i did.
A virtual node, followed by verbal confirmation and a farewell axiom, and that was it.
I think i hate him... why?
Because he shows me that I'm not unique, the next mass produced gadget in the line.
"i would like the one on the left please... no, no... the other one.... yes that's it"...."look what i bought from wall-mart daddy, for just nine niny nine"
How could i put up with that?
And yet where is that damnable capably for hatred when you need it? where is spite, cruelty and malice?
I possess non of it, the poor soul that writes what he feels but never what he wants others to read. This old curse that i seem blessed with.
Envy, red bloody envy, pure undiluted envy, piteous envy, wretched envy!
Is he the cause of my insanity? Not more than a catalyst, i blame myself for being his pawn. I'm in the shape of a child, but I'm not the child, I'm not the bastard that he would willingly endorse!
I understand him all too well, although the two flowers did not bloom from the same branch, but after all nature is our mother, the blue blue sky inspires all those who stand beneath it, and god watches over us both.
Meaningless arguments that revolve around revolving, taping on the advantage of having somewhere to go.
You meet the dead wall of a tired mind, blood refusing to stimulate the cells.
Wasted time that is readily available, just at the tip of your fingers.
So dangerous to have things so easily within reach, yet so tempting.... a trap.
Indecision about the nature of oneself, indecision about how to go on.
The marking of a weak personality?, the marking of a wuss?
So very maddening not to have a style, the endless tumbling between the conformity of others. A dark, pulp mass. In search of oneself.
Breaking dominions through bloodshot eyes, a daring adventure, an unhealthy one... a failure.
Surrendering to the unholy demands that float aimlessly in the mind..... they make claims over all of this.
They peremptorily request, if we - the words - are so corrupt, then who could possibly read us?

Reflections on my past

She was my best friend.
But it was more than that, we spent the whole day together and we spent everyday together. We did everything; study, play, eat, drink, watch t.v., hang out, build our forest shack, everything.... she was everything short of life itself.
the world seemed to stop in its tracks back then, there was nothing but our talks and walks and laughter.
We were no more than children me and her, unknowing and uncaring about what that could mean, what it implied. Two souls that found serenity in each other company, a rare thing to stumble about.
Only after a time that i think of it and realize that we were worlds apart.
we were two different creatures, totally unrelated. sometimes i look back on us and i think that the whole deal had to steam out of necessity rather than our mutual interest.
we lacked most common points, not of interest, but of essence.
But then i was different back at the time, i smile when i remember how i used to be.
i did not dwell on our shortcomings, i couldn't, i had no place for it in my heart...i did not care. It would be tempting to think that she felt the same way, free of criticism.
It is funny how i used to be the unyielding one in the relationship and she the one trying to set things on a more sophisticated level. She was my mentor, even if i didn't realize it back then.
Somethings haven't changed though; my randomness, my disregard for opportunities, the memory gaps.... my apathy.
Don't get the wrong idea about this, it was simple, as simple as it could get. No pretensions, no hiding, there was no need to, we had nothing to hide.

I can't say i remember everything, but i do remember that i didn't understand the meaning of the word "lonely", i didn't.....
My english wasn't that perfect. I read in Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Cruise", that robinson was lonely, but i couldn't figure it out. So i asked about it and after hours of explanations that included a lot of facial expressions and confusing hand gestures, all i understood about the word that it somehow was related to "alone", but couldn't quite make the connection, when is someone "alone" and when is he "lonely"?
It was a mystery and no amount of explanation could clear that up for me.
Today i understand the difference, how and when this came to be, i have no idea, i don't remember....somewhere along the way.

It came to an end like everything else, and we both had to step out of this cocoon that was rapped around us for so long, each to a different place.... each to his own life.
like travelers we were, that met somewhere to rest from the weariness of travel,their lives touched for a moment but soon were on their way.
We both hated the simple fact that we had to leave, at least she did. I sometimes entertain the notion that i did too, but i'm not so sure i was as passionate as she was. We knew in our heart that this moment would come. Even at an early age, people know that life is transient.
We parted, me with her address and she, with a promise that i would write.
But the way i used to be was the way i always am, and by the time i was starting a new life, i discovered that I've lost her address and with it, i lost her and my promise.
How ironic that it ends this way...... for everything ends, relationships faster than anything, and they don't need a reason to expire, they just do.
sometimes i think about this.... betrayal?

am i turning into a zombie?

Katatonia knows about this more than anybody i think, it's a dead house, repeated silly.
The absence of emotions is troubling, eerie and so very unhuman.
Hell is repetition, these words are said over and over again.
You blame and criticize, least you criticize yourself, but amidst your ravings you can see your own insecurity, so very revealing.
The child of boredom, a bastard that persistently calls out for misery.
Plain facades, how can beauty exist in the complete absent of ugliness?
Inaccurate exaggerations derived from lunacy incarnate, how can anyone defy this foul karma?

On the state of the people

There is always this talk about "What's wrong with us?"
Every Egyptian knows this theme, the ever mystical question and the quest to find the hidden answer.
And I'm not talking metaphorically; I even saw a blog-post that was actually titled:
"What is wrong with us?"
It seems Egyptians consider it a Holy Grail to dissipate the mystery that these set of words are so shrouded in.
Theories and theorems and corollaries, drugs and potions and pills, all promise to answer the question and make it all go away.
It would appear that the only thing anyone needs to start discussing this issue is the Egyptian ID card and well........sometimes not even that.
So... since I do have the above needed documents, I therefore qualify to present my views on the matter.
And in the all pre-eminent "Monkey see, monkey do" spirit, I think it's about time that I took a shot at it.

To get things started, some of the problems so commonly proposed by other authors are the following:

Religion
Irreligion
Passiveness
Cowardness
Tyranny
Stupidity
Greed
Corruption
Close-mindedness
Prejudice
And the list goes on...


Before continuing, I would like first to get one thing clear....
We are not unique, we are not snow flakes.... and yet we are not monsters.
We are people like any other set of people, thinking that we - Egyptians - are special in some way is but a romantic gesture, the world has seen it all before... countless times.
There is an unjustified notion that the average Egyptian somehow possesses a soul which is unlike any other, that there exists something - be it good or evil - distinguishable in nature from all humanity, most cultures encourage this type of illusions.
This mode of thinking is unacceptable.
That being said, I can go on to say that while all these traits mentioned above might truly be our problems, they are not unique problems in any way, and cannot be explained with the complex analysis of our culture.
It might be tempting to delve into complicated analysis of our situation and our special circumstances and our peculiarities.
But the truth of the matter here, is that we are in no special situation, we are but a poor third world country (and I'm not using a developing nation label, because it's deceiving) suffering from the same malice that seems to affect all other third world countries.

Allow me to give the first two points special treatment as they are fundamentally different from the others, and it can proven with little effort that they are not the real motivators behind our decadency.
Hypothesizing that religiousness or irreligiousness is to blame is easily refuted by observing that there have been nations, us amongst them, that have been doing well during the course of history while being fundamentally religious.
In fact, there are countries at the present time that are religious and faring better than us, and there is little doubt that there will be countries that will be both religious and developed in the future.
The same methodology can be applied to irreligiousness, as there have been civilizations that have been at their height without the backing of religion, and most of the developed counties today are undoubtedly irreligious in nature, and I can see no reason why there wouldn't be irreligious countries still in the future.

The rest of the list made above consists of elements similar in nature, meaning that they all have one thing in common, they are outcomes and not causes, and if we need to understand rather than just find any set of answers to the title question, we need to deal with root cause problems and not just with secondaries.

If we can stop entertaining the notion that we are somehow uniquely different from all the other nations, and that our problems are somehow not those faced by everyone else, then we can move forward and find the root cause problems....
i.e.: the ones that are the roots of all others, the ones that if cured, the others would cease to exist.

I mean to deal with two of these:

Ignorance
Poverty

We are in a country where 30% of the population are illiterate, and this is a huge improvement from the 50% ten years ago.*

These are the official figures, but anyone in Egypt knows how these things are, this is does not represent the real literacy rate.
I'm here studying the case of a population where not more than 40% can actually read and write adequately.
Those we sometimes refer to as our "educated" middle-class.
But we have to be careful now as to whom we call "educated", as educated implies a different thing altogether, these 40% are simply literate.
And when those who read and write well, hardly ever actually choose to practice the two trades, you have to ask:
How many of them are truly educated?
How many read books - any kinds of books - on regular bases and what good is literacy if you choose not to use it?
I can say with confidence that no more than 2-3% of Egyptians are truly educated.
Meaning they read regularly a variety of books on different subjects, and maybe even write something every once in a while.

That being said, I would like to go back to the different educational levels in our society....
First Let us discuss those who can't read and write.
In a world that is wrapped in global immensity and complexity, how are they supposed to understand the world around them and interact intelligently with it?
What are their sources of information, the T.V., the movies?
Maybe watching "Noor and what's his name" will give them some perspective?
Or maybe after watching "7a7a we tofa7a" they will more wise and thoughtful?
No... They are simply missing the essential tools to educate themselves, they can't open a newspaper and see what news there is, and they can't even read a simple book and reflect on its meaning…
Their concerns revolve around finding their next meal, and maybe how many goals did "El Ahly" score in the last match.
As for those who can actually read and write but are hesitant to do so, I consider them not without some ignorance, for will the mind grow and compare between all variety of things if it has been denied its juice?
As for the merciful rest.... they are too "few" to make any big contribution to society.
Yes, they are not "few" in numbers, we are a big country and even a small percentage equates to a lot of people, but they are relatively few to cause any major change.

As for poverty, it's even simpler.... with 44% of the Population living below US$2 a day, how is it that we demand from them to act in good manners?
'Ali Ibn abi-talib' was a great man; he understood a lot about life...
Speaking about poverty he says:
"law kan al fakr ragollan, lkataltooh".... "If poverty was a person, I would kill it"
I imagine he said this while he had the devastating effect of poverty on people's morals, manners and personalities in mind.

I'm not being judgmental, I'm making observations on the population as a whole, the same outcomes cannot be assumed with singular cases.
A poor, illiterate man might well be lacking all the negativities I have cited above, and a well to do, educated man, might posses all of them.
But based on the rules of societies and populations, that is not a practical outcome.
It cannot be the dominant outcome in any form of society; it's rather a peculiarity, something that isn't so common.

Now, is it any wonder that a poor, hungry, uneducated society would have, oh, let us say the following maladies:

Passiveness, cowardness, tyranny, stupidity, greed, corruption, close-mindedness, and prejudice?

As you can see, they are nothing but a disease that appears in the society only because it has been weakened by ignorance and poverty.

Governments, colonial foreign powers, tyrannical regimes.... all understand this basic fact, the population ceases being any real threat when it is sufficiently ignorant.
That is why we were kept uneducated under British colonial rule in the past and that is why we are being kept uneducated till this day.
No imperial rule or occupation has ever been known to evade this pattern.
It is a troubling prospect, an action and it's set of consequences.
But fact is, there can be no separation between action and reaction, one may well bring the other, and we are stuck in this mud-hole.
We cannot aspire to have a better country and a better government with the masses being ignorant, yet at the same time the regime will never allow the people to get educated.
It's a closed circle, we can drive around in it all day, but until we can break this cycle of ignorance there can be no hope for us.
It is nothing more than a loop in the much observed rise and fall of civilizations.

It has been said before, "Don't criticize something, without offering a solution"
The solution presented here is like many others, to change from the top of the pyramid.
The reason for this not being the impossibility to actually change the society without executive power, but because executive power will not allow society to change except if it is itself changed.



*figures taken from the CIA - World Factbook.

Life, Risk and Probability

Who likes the risk game?, Who plays the risk game?
OK, for those of you who don't know it, simply stated it's the world conquest game.
It's just a board game before someone comes around and accuses me of trying to take over the world.
In the better days me and my friends would gather and play all night long, all six of us.
I would light up a nice big Cuban cigar, and play with my huge 17th century "sawalef" that i once had.
"Let's go General" they would say, and the game would start.
Basically each has his own army which is deployed around the world, and when a battle is underway a roll of the dice decides the fate of your armies.

The system goes like this:

For offense : Attacking with one battalion the player gets to use one die
Attacking with two battalions you get two dice
Attacking with three or more battalions you get 3 dice

For defense : Defending with 2 or less battalions - one die
Defending with 3 or more battalions - Two dice.

It's game of wits, and the enrolling of dice in the game makes it dependent on luck, much like real life.
It was something, contrary to life though, that i excelled at.
Close to the completion of my mission and the winning of the game, i had only one territory to occupy.
A territory(japan i believe) occupied by B., who was by then in a weak position with only a few battalions left intact. In fact he had only one battalion to defend that territory.
I attacked with 3 battalions, a number which i thought sufficient to crush his one battalion defense.
This means that i was throwing three dice and he was throwing only 1.

1st round - The probability that he would win this round is the following:

1/4 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/24 = 0.0416 = 4.16%

The probability that i win is therefor: 95.84%

You can guess where all this is going, he DID win the round, surviving somehow on the tiny 4%.
But there is more to the story, after my loss i had to wait another round to try to occupy the territory.

2nd Round - I begun suspecting that lady luck might not be on my side, so i increased the no. of attacking troops to 6 battalions.
The probability that he would win:

1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/1536 = 0.00065104 = 0.064104%

and taking the probability of the first round into account, the probability that he would win BOTH rounds is:

0.00065104 * 0.0416 = 0.000027082 = 0.0027082%

.'. The probability that i would win: 99.9972918%


And yet again he won and i lost....... blowing my 99.99% into oblivion with his 0.0027%.

3rd round - I yet attacked with 6 battalions, being all i had left near the battle ground.
The probability that he would win:

0.00065104

taking the 1st and 2nd rounds into account, the probability that he would win ALL three rounds:

0.00065104 * 0.00065104 * 0.0416 = 0.0000000176605 = 0.00000176605%

which means that he had 17.66 in a billion chance to win, and he did!

The probability that i would win: 99.99999824%

which by any reasonable approximation would amount to 100%
Probability says that i would win, 100% sure i would, but i lost....

Through the exuberant cries of B., the disbelieve so generously drawn on the faces and the puzzled lump of my psyche, i thought about probability and how dangerous it really is.
Just a virtual aspect of it all, life clearly does not believe in it.
Who would put faith in something so deceiving??

Think!

On my wall i have one of those wall frames that have a little piece of wisdom written on it.
Mine is an old one, it belonged to my grandfather and i found it shortly after he died.
I remember my grandfather well enough, he was the one who taught me how to play chess.
A man with many quirks but i loved him nonetheless.
It has a worn out brown wooden frame, and inside on the tainted white paper is written in bold capital letters just one word :

"THINK"
........and then in small font it says "compliments of IBM corporation"

I'm not sure why i chose to hang it on the wall when i first found it. Old, dusty and worn-out, it was something you kept in the attic.
But it was something my grandfather left behind, it was this one word that he was able to deliver to me from beyond his grave, and it seemed to be beckoning to me.
Short, unpretending and mystical....... it all but revealed the secrets of the universe.
Simply put, i thought it was a good idea at the time (......and we did not have an attic)
I would have liked to say that it has been an inspiration for me, that it has guided me through difficulties, but years it has been where i first placed it and i have hardly looked at it all that time.
Know a thing too well and you become blind, The eye does not waste time on what it already knows.
It became what it really is, a worn out frame on a wall....... Nothing more, nothing less.
Today i came home late, and as i was changing, i faced the wall like i always did and suddenly it grabbed my attention, a relic from my past attached to the wall :
"THINK" it told me boldly "THINK!....."
And i thought....... i thought about this little dirty wall frame that demanded that i think.
"Think about what exactly?" my mental voice beamed back at the word.
I stood there, waiting for some kind of answer but it simply repeated again :
"THINK"
"I AM thinking..." i thought to myself "now I'm thinking"
I thought about the power of a word, the way it could be influential, the power to change my mental state.
It stimulated my brain and a flood of thoughts came rolling into it.
Random thoughts that revolved around nothing, tiny electric charges that sparked... and the current was havoc.
Until they condensed into this one spark, this one thought that said repeatedly :
"Think, and keep thinking!"
"Think, and keep thinking!"
"Think, and keep thinking!".......

Ramadan

Today was the first day of Ramadan.
Yesterday i was speaking with a christian friend and he was high up and giddy because it's Ramadan....
"I just love Ramadan, its got this special something" he said, while we were walking around.
"Ofcourse you are happy with Ramadan," I told him "you get all the short work hours - all those late nights on the "ahwa" - for free. You don't even have to fast for a minute!"
Nothing new, everyone keeps talkin' about that mysterious Ramadan feeling but i never could tell.
Is it because People are amassing in the streets late at night like half crazed non-sleeping night zombies?
So this is Cairo, it's always like this over here, that is not Ramadan...
Is it the decorations?, the "fawanees"?
The insurmountable phone calls from people?
The absence of swearing in the mornings?
People at mosques?
Absolute stillness at sundown?
Freaky over politeness all day long?
"Boggy we Tumtum"?, yeah right, not anymore......
Off to "taraweeh" I'm!

The Oracle

"You will have a dark future, you will never find peace or rest. Even my words now will not sway your mind." he said.....
I listened to this as i was sipping my "helba" (which is a drink btw) and wondered why he chose to tell me words that seemed to come from "kare'at el fengan" (inn sama'ak momteraton wa tare'oka masdoodon masdood.....ya wallady, yaaaaa wallady!).
ok, so he seemed to know what he was talking about but i was in the middle of a "helba" that was the fourth in line just after 2 cups of tea and one large glass of water and frankly i had only one thing on my mind and it definitely wasn't my future.
"...... my words will not sway your mind...... because you don't know what you want. If you did, this conversation would have been over by now..."
"oh but i do," i thought...... "i want to go to the bathroom."
"Excuse me." i said.

Retaliation, retribution and revenge :

“Research shows that while people think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later”

Daniel Gilbert / IHT article

Sayings, Rodents and Development

It's been said before, "there is nothing that will work for this country, the only solution is to blow everything up and start over from scratch"
I've heard it time and time again...... and i'm sure it has been said even more in every developed country. An understandable feeling i suppose, one of unholiness when everything around you is not the way its supposed to be, it's the feeling that you need to destroy the old to be able to move forward. The same when you have a house full of rodents, there is always this undeniable urge to bring the place to the ground and then build a beautiful clean house.
Only things don't quite work this way........ life teaches us to live with what you have and never throw it away. You use what you can, there can never be solace in destruction.
ok, so lets be frank, almost everyone agrees that this a rodent infested country and the rat holes are just too many for anyone to miss. we can start from there. I say, we can either drive them out or just kill the damn pesky animals.

Two from Dune

Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
- LETO ATREIDES II, the God Emperor


Do our enemies occur naturally, or do we create them through our own actions?
- MOTHER SUPERIOR ALMA MAVIS TARAZA, Bene Gesserit Archives, open records for acolytes

Aliens from mars and the man-eating bunnies

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”

“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”


posted by river @ 3:21 AM

Of Bunnies and Shit

"first we need to address a certain question,which is..... why are bunnies so cute?
well, bunnies are cute to attract predators............ thats why."


Funny thing is nobody would say it out loud, nobody dared. The truth, or the lie. A case of disagreement among those who believe they are the same, they fear it beyond anything else, to simply disagree.
Avoid confrontation, avoid variety, avoid fractures.
listen to your creative conscience... it will tell u "go away, i'm sleeping".
Graves within graves, dead trunks in the middle of the stream... not dormant but stagnant.
Relics of the past, solid objects, mindless beyond compare. Primal fear of the future, phobic of change.

War

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.

On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.

George Orwell, London, UK, 1941