Self-implosion

You know, I'm a man of politics. It's one of the few interesting parts of our daily life that is easy to talk about and can be translated over the world, although there is regional differences in what's good or bad politics for ones country, municipality and so on. But I think most people will agree when someone really fails. In Sweden the latest weeks have been on the Christian Democrats with a civil war over who's gonna be the party leader: the old one from a more liberal branch or a more conservative. Doesn't help that they got run over time after time by the other coalition partners. Well if that isn't the guide to kill a party who dangles on the edge I don't know what is. Lets see how you manage with a party with 30 % support.

That's right. The Social Democrats seems to be even worse. First we have an internal conflict over the new budget when the leaders weren't enough "left" for its members in the parliament. It finally passes and all is well (except the usual political debate over what is good governing and I don't need to tell my view on that). Then we have the calm before the storm and then everything hits the fan today. First the Social Democrats and the Left decides to cancel their participation on the party leaders debate on Sunday with the argument that they don't want to be put together with the Swedish Democrats. This happens right after the news announces that Juholt (the leader of the Social Democrats) have gotten tax-payers to pay ca 160 000 SEK (€ 18 000 or $ 23 000) for the apartment in Stockholm he shared with his girlfriend on the wrong circumstances. If that wasn't enough the big Social Democratic boss of Malmö (the third largest city) announces that he would like to see some kind of second-hand citizenship in order to make it easier to send criminals back from where they came. Oh yeah, and the second largest city, Gothenburg, have had a long-running problem with corruption which is topped today by one municipality chief giving her daughter without education a job before 94 others who also wanted the job. Both being Social Democratic strongholds since everyone was allowed to vote in 1919.

If we analyze this who will win? Well neither S or V since... well, they did everything wrong. SD will win support from those parties. The Alliance win on walk-over and probably will get a hold of more voters from S who can't stand this sheer incompetence. The only reason they would fail against SD would be if they botch this completely... there is some uncertainty there isn't? MP would probably also get a boost from those voters and might even have some of V. All in all everyone but S and V win on this. Maybe that's their plan? To lower themselves so much that the Alliance get all the voters and can rule without fear of being voted down again? Nah... but it seem plausible!

Nobel, Jobs and Golden Sun

So a Swede got the Nobel prize in literature? More than 30 years ago since last time... damn, then my shot at it is gone. Leaves the peace price, but who wants that when it's given in Oslo, I want to be in Stockholm. And I have a hard time believing that the norwegians would grant a swede the peace prize, you know... because the Union. And then Steve Jobs is dead. A pity, I really liked the products his company makes and if I had the money (or a job overall) I would gladly update my computer to a Mac. Too young at only 56 to leave as well, he will be missed. And that was the contemporary news, now lets talk about Golden Sun instead *NOOOOO* What?

It's just one thing that bugs me when I look at the maps of the different games. In the original games, the Angara continent looked like this:

The Angara continent is the northern part over the almost African-looking part. Maybe not the best, but you have a fair decent look on the world. Now, look at this map from the latest game:

A bit different, but due to the event in the end of the second game it has at least some explanation for why it looks different, but it still doesn't make that much sense. There is three places that appears again from the old games, Mt. Aleph, Kolima and Champa. Kolima isn't that easy since in-game it's explained it moved itself so that leaves two points to look at. Mt. Aleph looks about right in the mountains and forest compared on both maps, but Champa seemed to have moved to the west which is kinda hard to explain. Maybe if earth had risen from the west out of the ocean it might have been logical, but that the continent grew inside itself and still had ruins being functional stretching over most of the world isn't that plausible. But then again it might have been magic.

With that out of the way, another thing that bugs me, and I guess some others as well, is the lack of familiar places. As I mentioned, three places is visited and another one is seen, but never visited (Mercury Lighthouse) and one is often mentioned but not even seen (Bilibin). But where is Vault, Xian and Altin? Where is Lama and Fuchin Temple? And even harder to explain, where is the Lamakan Desert and Mogall Forest? Well, the last two might not be that hard to explain with the change of environment, but still, the forest is pretty much in the same spot as Sana, the equivalent of the Chinese empire. What did they do, cut down the magical forest? It's didn't work out all to well for the people in Kolima. It would have been nice to see or hear what happened to those places since we actually travel around in the vicinity. Also why don't we get any cameos from the person living in that area (Feizhi, Hsu and Master Feh). Have they moved? Are they dead? Feizhi crossed the mountains to cameo in the second game, why noting similar here? Hmm, when I think about I actually thought it would be more people with a portrait, but the only other one you encounter that isn't in the third game is Hama and she is probably in Contigo so I probably can't really complain. But it would be nice if these people showed up in the fourth installment (that we all hope will become reality really soon right?).

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.

Wings of Sadness

Today we wake up to a day filled with sorrow after one of the worst acts of terror that has shaken the foundation of Norway as well as the rest of the Scandinavian countries as well as others. An act of violence striking at the heart of my neighbors beyond the forest and mountains to the west. Sadly the hate doesn't end here but poison us all. This poison already took over 90 peoples lives, and even more horrible, the human nature will probably continue to harvest the souls of the innocent. Poison consisting of hate, prejudice and fear. Hope is all that remains, hope that we shall not fall and become savages ourselves. My thoughts and sympathies goes to the victims and those close to them as well as the norwegians I have had the pleasure to know. May this dark nightmare end and the rays of hope shatter the despair that threatens us.

Summer Time

I really don't write that much it seems during the summer. One of the things being that I got a bit addicted when it came to play the Ocarina of Time 3DS, which I cleared twice, 100 % on both. Then I went back home for the midsummer celebration which was a fun time. Then back and try to search for a job. Funny thing happened when one of the municipalities I'm trying to get a job from decided to take a vacation and postponed the hiring process... this makes me want that kind of job even more. Just close down and say "sorry, I'm on vacation, please return in 5 weeks", how awesome wouldn't that be? I heard that there is good to have smaller goals that lead to a bigger one, so one would be this one.

Beside all that I finally got wireless internet via some router or what ever it's called... which has been under my desk for 1-2 years. Yeah, technology isn't my strongest card. Now I can finally have my computer on the web together with my gaming consoles, no need for priority, just use them all... mostly for "tactical and strategic advice" *cough* cheating *cough*. A pity that I must move in the near future (which although it's near is very hard to predict). I also began playing games I have had in my shelfs for a year or so like Resident Evil 5 and Metroid: Other M, but it seems I suck at both of them so I settled for Resident Evil 4, a classic which I'm trying to clear on Normal for the first time (I prefer easy, but they change parts which take away the feeling that you cleared the whole game). On the other hand I noticed that my N64 games I had for the virtual console had lost the save files so I have to finish them once again, which I did for Majora's Mask with Ocarina of Time fresh in mind. Now I got Paper Mario 64 and Star Fox 64 left... although the last one will make it to the 3DS so it might be worth waiting for, the controls are a bit tighter with the 3DS compared to the classic controller, not to speak to my GameCube controller which doesn't work properly (but it is awesome when it comes to target shooting for some reason).