The Clairvoyant

Hope I don't get burnt out with all these updates, it would be so sad when I finally get up the steam again (of course this is sarcastic). The difference from the summer is that stuff actually happens. The biggest news to hit the Swedish political scene is that one of the Sweden Democrats has turned into a wild card and left the party, still retaining his seat. This means that it is a possibility that the Alliance is one seat closer to the magic number of 175 (the current is 173 so they are missing 2). Of course, they can't touch him since his past in SD means he's almost an outcast. To avoid the future debate that they are just power hungry and leave themselves open for attacks from the red-green parties he probably would be left alone up to his own schemes. This logic probably apply to the red-green as well, especially since the only possible party would be the Social Democrats, the green and left party are diametrically different in the only question that SD has shown any interest in, immigration. Doesn't help that he have some problems with alcohol and medication. Well, it make it easier for the Alliance overall since the opposition is getting more fragmented and could raise doubt about SD over the health of the party. The interesting thing is that I thought of this possibilities as late as yesterday (if you choose to believe me), and that the danger for SD would be that one of the wild cards would adopt an even more extreme party like the National Democrats, incidentally they themselves where once a part of SD that broke lose. If that would happen their effort to appear as a "clean" party would be severely damaged if that would be seen as an interchangeable political view in the party.

And that was the political update for this update, now to different things. Now it seems that someone is looking into my mind, damn americans, what can't you do? Well, it's just some news that scientist have constructed a computer that if you put enough data in it could foretell events in the future. The thing is that I thought on a similar idea a long time ago. Simply program a search engine to search the web after certain buzzwords (preferably news and social media in all known languishes) that would give an indication for certain geographic hotspots around the world where something might happen. Then you have to analyze the data (it's here I find that political scientist would be very good to have) and it's here we have the problems with this idea. It's not foolproof. First, this idea is only workable if everything is reported in the news or by people, a blackout on information or no internet, then it collapses (incidentally the computer in the article has a similar problem, since it appears someone has to put in the information and in that case it would be to late to stop or warn about what's happening which defeats its purpose). Secondly, my idea is prone to the human error since it need humans to analyzes  the information that is gathered. This of course needs someone more knowledgeable with these sorts of things, but the possibilities are many if you would get it to work. You could warn of future trouble or even catastrophes (earthquakes and tsunamis often have smaller shakes and so on before, but they are often missed in the media so if some buzzwords could catch them and a geologist would interpret the data you could give a statistical prediction of what would happen). Other things would be that gambling on the stock-market could be a bit easier (if we lock-on to certain parameters and companies an economist could theoretically provide an idea if the company's stock would rise or fall). Personally I would call it the Oracle Project and put it in a skyscraper I would call the Tower of Delphi. The gambling on the stock-market would be the financial branch that pays for the whole project and with the surplus it would probably be best to branch out in different areas so in case the human error makes an appearance. Pity I don't know anything about programming, and then it probably wouldn't work because all those assigned on the analysis team would just be on Twitter and Facebook.

Final thing for today, I finally finished Secret of Mana, a game I wanted as a kid, but we neither had a SNES when it came out and it was rather rare when we got one... in the late 90's. A bit pity since I probably would have appreciated it a lot more then than now. Maybe because I might have finished it in one sitting, I took a break for half a year or more so the story went a bit over my head. But the graphics was still nice, the controls a bit awkward until you gotten used to it, but the damn ring-system was kinda annoying at times. The music was alright, but I couldn't help but draw parallels with Chrono Trigger that came a couple of years later. Certain bits are somewhat similar sounding, especially the palace music after you gotten the Mana seeds are reminding me of the "sealed doors" and somewhere in Secret of Mana something from either Ocean or Zeal Palace. The ending a bit sad (but that's usually expected for Square and now Square Enix), but the impact was somewhat lessened due to the pause I took, although that didn't help when I met an important end character after I resumed the game and didn't feel emotionally attached to it (might have to be due to the ending being spoiled years ago in a video game magazine).

Masters of Insanity

Wow, two posts in one week, that was a long time ago since that happened. Anyway, I haven't written much about Sweden or what's happening here, since it doesn't appear to happen anything. Till now that is, and that is not in a good way. During this summer there was five professors or what ever they called themselves that published an article that talked about the necessity to take away the car since it didn't serve any purpose and was just a luxury product. Now, I don't have a car nor do I have a drivers license, but that doesn't mean I understand the importance of having one. The professors (from Karlstad and Umeå, both middle size swedish towns) argue that because the car is an luxury product (they call it that since people have the audacity to want cars that don't just have the bear minimum of performance) those should be forced to settle in a more "strategic position" and everyone else should pay to subsidize the public transportation. More that we already does. I have before written how I as a kid traveled 12 years with the school bus, but what I probably didn't mention was that during the last 3 years my parents had to drive me to the bus since it would take 1 hour to walk or you could go up an hour earlier to catch a connecting bus, then wait till the school bus. F*** public transportation. If that wasn't enough, these people actually argued that the politicians should, without the public support (which they knew they didn't have), force this change upon the people. Nice view on democracy. Anyway, after being more or less hacked to pieces by the public (except some supporters) they changed tactic and now talked about it being more by choice. Of course me and everyone else now know to never trust these five or their organization when it comes to solutions at all since behind them hides the dark face of oppression and despotism to serve their warped ideas of a utopia.

That was that some people thought and we wouldn't here some stupid things from Karlstad and Umeå University, but what happens? Umeå is at it again but not concerning traffic-dictatorship. Now it's some warped orwellian speak about men being healthier when being home more often from work. WTF??? How? How does one comprehend this? It's utter nonsense? Why? Well, we could give benefit of doubt by arguing that the journalist in question didn't quite get it right, if we had had some comments below the article I'm sure someone would have pointed it out, but we don't. Also, the whole thing was about men gaining from a more equal work environment. If that means getting weaker health I might just pass on it. The professor herself argues that it's because men now take sick-leave due to colds compared to before when they still went to work. And then we have those who see no fault in this logic and begin talking about men are no longer that macho at their work environment. If going to work when having a cold is macho my macho-meter probably turned itself to badass, cause I never had missed a day of school or work due to some little cold (except that one time when it coincide with the ordinary german teacher being out of town and that class would turn into a zoo).

Wind of Changes

... God, it has been a while. Well, probably for the best since nothing actually has happened. I don't think you (who am I kidding, it's just me reading this) would have the stomach for each blog-post detailing a downward spiral of depression and lost hopes and dreams. Yeah, unemployment isn't that fun. Time seems to stand still since you can't do anything, you are trapped where you are and hope to escape this black hole of despair by gripping the escape rope in the form of a constant pay. Work may not make you free, but it least give you the means to escape into dreams to endure. The current state I'm in... is just dull. Not only that, it also affect me psychological. I'm mostly a positive person, a happy person, a carefree person, or at least gives the impression of those things. But at the moment, this uncertainty begins to gnaw on the positive spirit I'm trying to uphold. It feels like small needles poisoned with doubt is piercing my soul. Not only doubt, but also hopelessness. Although, being the optimist it will probably turn out for the best. If nothing else, i will clearly have an advantage over the broiler politicians that talk about unemployment *mumble* like they ever been unemployed those nepotistic bast...  *ahem*

Over to some more interesting stuff. Election time in Denmark. Yay! The red team won. Boo! Although, to be fair, I have no idea what their stances are, it just become a reflex, the red team at home doesn't seem to be getting any better. And it's just not as easy to say that the red team won, the social democratic and left party alliance actually lost, but with the extreme marxist left party as well as the social liberal party (funny enough called Radikale Venstre, or the radical left) they are able to wrest power from Venstre (the liberal party, Venstre meaning left) and Konseravative Folkeparti (the liberal conservative party). Gonna be 5 or less interesting years in danish politics (the prime minister can actually decide when he wants an election within a 5 year period, the same system is used in Great Britain). And for you who know your political map, why do the liberals call them self left when they are clearly on or to the right of the middle? Well, that has to do with the fact that the liberals usually are some of the oldest parties and were opponents to the conservatives (called very often the right party, especially in the nordic countries, only the norwegian conservative party call themselves right anymore, Høyre). With time the liberal parties was pushed from the left to the right side on the political scale when usually the social democrats entered the parliaments and the opponents changed from liberal vs conservative to social democrats (and/or communists) vs liberal and conservatives. Liberals usually hold the middle ground but payed the price of being almost destroyed when they weren't left enough for the social liberals that went with the social democrats or right enough for the liberal conservative that went with the conservatives instead. I think Denmark's Venstre seems to be the most successful liberal party in Europe in the 2000's since it has constantly been over 25 % of the votes in recent elections. The Swedish liberal party haven't had that since the 1950's, here they usually are striving to go above 10 % which the last time happened in 2002, but that was because the Moderates totally botched that election.