The Other World

Näytetään bloggaukset joulukuulta 2006.

NICAP and other thoughts of life, the universe and everything (almost).

Did you notice the beautiful northern lights on the sky last night? First I mistook them for clouds but I soon realised they don't move that much. So there I was, standing on my balcony with not nearly enough clothes and stared at the green flames on the firmament with tears in my eyes (the piercing north wind had something to do with this reaction). The northern lights always make me feel like the gateway to a fantasy world is open and that I could have a chance to get there. Well, one can always hope.

There was also a maxim for the Geminid meteor shower. I had just finished my X-Files marathon an hour before (how can they go dividing one episode to two seasons?!) so my first thought had something to do with UFOs since I didn’t know there is a meteor shower. The actual maxim was between midnight and one a.m. and I was outside at three a.m. so in the end I only saw two Geminids but it was pretty impressive anyway.

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Watching the X-Files has made me think of the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial biological entities which is different from UFOs. An example. Let us assume there is a planet somewhere beyond the boundaries of space we know. Let us assume further that their technological development is the same as ours and that they wonder the same questions we wonder. To them we would be extraterrestrial biological entities but we don’t have what they would see as unidentified flying objects because our technology is not developed enough for that kind of space travelling.

I can perfectly and without a question see the possibility of EBEs existing. It would be rather arrogant of us to think we are here alone, considering the fact that space is vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big place. I just cannot see why someone would want to travel millions of light years just to play doctor on us.

There are of course several explanations provided to answer this question. They might want to know our biological structure to figure out our weak spots since it’s always useful to know that about your enemy. Alas, according to this theory they would be hostile. Why would they be hostile towards us without a reason? Maybe they would have the same attitude as the planet Kricket whose people want to destroy anything outside their own planet, just because they’re not from their planet.

Another theory: There are no gods. Human race and everything else on the planet Earth was created by aliens. They abduct different species, among them humans, to restore their DNA and other building blocks in case we manage to destroy all the already endangered species, other animals and ourselves. According to this theory, they would want us to survive, I just cannot say why. Maybe they are capable of seeing the biodiversity of life and respect it and preserve its numerous varieties, the habitants of Earth included. That sounds much nicer than the previous one. Unfortunately, this would also mean that those fundamentalists would be right, with their ranting and raving about “intellectual design”. Well, at least it wouldn’t be their god.

Who knows, maybe we’ll know someday.

NICAP is, by the way, an acronym standing for National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Just in case someone wants to know.

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Now I need to start searching information about the Hawaiian grammar. In my linguistics test there is a section where we need to make sense of the structure and translations of the given language (which is Hawaiian as I checked). The problem is caused by the words meaning siblings. There are separate words for elder siblings, younger siblings and just siblings. More than that, the word seems to be chosen based on the speaker’s sex. If this were a correct assumption, it would allow the several different translations for the English sentences given in 3.3. However, this assumption would ruin my entire 3.2 answer (unless the teacher has included a trick question to the exam; she has given answer possibilities A and B, but what if the actual answer is, as my assumption suggests, C: neither?). Tricky, tricky, tricky. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the correct answer is C. It seems far too simple to just say that the speaker is male just because in the example sentence provided the speaker is male. There is no example of the same word said by a female speaker. I need to think about this a little further before handing in the exam.


Resurrected from The Dead.

Hello again.

I'm now taking a pause from writing the prose analysis. I'm hoping I might get some sudden moment of enlightment while writing something else but it doesn't look good. I'm bored out of my mind and my periods hurt and the air in the IT class... well, there really isn't much of it. Yes, I know, I'm rambling, I'm complaining, I'm sorry.

How can he possibly expect anyone to be able to put everything that needs to be said in five pages and actually manage to say something original and substantiate it as well? I mean, even the basic things that we already went through in the lecture take four bloody pages!


The truth is out there.

I just got the second season of The X-Files on DVD via mail today. YAY! I already watched the first two episodes ('Litlle green men' and 'Host'). Now I'm feeling slightly ashamed of myself for I should have been typing in my prose analysis. Now I'm just going to have to sit by the computer late at night but then I can watch the next episode in the evening. Unless there's of course some movie worth watching on TV (a movie overcoming the possibility to spend 45 minutes with Mulder and Scully; I seriously doubt that).

And remember people: the truth is out there, but so are lies.


Aliquando insanire iucundum est.

I've been wondering something. Maybe one of you could help me with this. What kind of people don't deserve to find love? Insane, overweight, too studiuos, people who keep things to themselves, people with strong opinions, people who never go anywhere? Tell me!

And where is that winter?


Hello, hello, hello...

It's again been a while since I wrote here. What could I do to get this blog updated more often? Maybe the problem is that there hasn't been much happening in my life lately. I turned twenty-one, remaining the way I was before.

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I had a viva voce exam today. I was so nervous about it last night that I couldn't get much sleep (about three hours in the end). Well, at least it's not anywhere near my reaction to my very first matriculation exam, Swedish, few years ago. Then I could barely close my eyes and when I did I kept dreaming about how I was late from the exam or otherwise screwed it up... at five a.m. I was throwing up. That was the last time I've eaten before an important and/or new exam. The actual examination was so much easier than I expected. It was also revealed that the teacher and three of her friends wrote a Harlequin novel in order to gather the money required to travel to the Bahamas. Did you know those novels have a very strict event line created by the publishers?

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Approximately an hour ago I was walking home from a book store and there was this guy who was walking to the direction I came from. Anyway, he did something very non-Finnish and stepped up to me. First I assumed he was lost or just drunk but it appeared that he was neither. He just talked to me, asking my name and whether I'm from this town and the weather... He looked so harmless (but then again, all the psychopaths look harmless and seem normal... not that I think he was a psychopath, that would be me). Diego's (that's his, presumably real, name) voice was like a little boy's voice. His hand was so very warm, too (he shook my hand before departing). I was feeling down earlier and I've been smiling ever since Diego.

Funny how something so little like this can affect so much. It's the same thing with everything: saving someone's disc from the university's computer class (also known as the Bermuda Triangle of Discs), or opening the door for someone, or helping someone if they're lost, or helping with the computers if somebody has a problem with them... These things don't probably mean much to others and they forget about them quite soon and yet they make me feel better, that I've been useful, that I'm not completely terrible and bad person.

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Speaking of personalities, I found a Cattell sixteen factors personality test (http://similarminds.com/cattell-16-factor.html). It is a test created by a chemist Raymond Bernard Cattell. The questionnaire is based on the idea that different personality characteristics (or source traits, as he himself called them) can be divided in sixteen factors (or taxonomy) as the Periodic table. Here’s my results.

Warmth 34% - More cold and selfish than supportive and comforting (I may want to disagree…).

Intellect 62% - More cerebral and analytical than instinctive and unstable (that is true).

Emotional stability 34% - More irritable and moody than level headed and calm (depends on the situation).

Aggressiveness 78% - More controlling and tough than modest and docile (why is that a bad thing?).

Liveliness 62% - More wild and fun loving than somber and restrained (=D).

Dutifulness 54% - More conforming and traditional than untraditional and rebellious (hmm?).

Social assertiveness 18% - More shy and withdrawn than uninhibited and bold (the seed of truth dwells here).

Sensitivity 70% - More touchy and soft than coarse and tough (what about aggressiveness?)

Paranoia 78% - More wary and suspicious than trusting and easy going (“possibly”).

Abstractness 78% - More strange and imaginative than practical and regular (“it’s plausible”).

Introversion 54% - More private and quiet than open and friendly (“it’s feasible”).

Anxiety 70% - More fearful and self-doubting than confident and self assured (“swamp gas?”; to those of you who have no idea what this series of answers/comments means, it's from X-Files when Scully offers scientific explanations to a UFO close encounter).

Openmindedness 66% - More curious and exploratory than closeminded and set-in-ways (could be).

Independence 82% - More loner and craving solitude than outgoing and social (why should they exclude each other?).

Perfectionism 74% - More orderly and thorough than disorganized and messy (my roommate knows this very well, probably better than she would like to).

Tension 70% - More stressed and (unstressed?) unsatisfied than relaxed and cool (mostly…).