The Other World

"The cosmos is also within us, we're made of star stuff..."

http://www.carlsaganday.com/

To celebrate the day you may want to listen to the interesting samplings of scientific symphonies. Who ever said that science cannot be wondorous and poetic?

Symphony of Science - We Are All Connected (Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye):

A Glorious Dawn (Carl Sagan ft. Stephen Hawking):

Great thanks to Melodysheep for making these!

Post scriptum: Don't forget Sagan's wonderful books, especially 'Billions & Billions' and 'The Demon-Haunted World'!

My antivirus software needs renewal and since I'm no technical nerd I have no idea whether it's a better idea to call the technical support and try to do it myself, or to take my PC down to the local store and let them fix it there. The latter is of course more expensive but.. well, an image of a male who has tried to repair the plumbing on his own and managed to flood the basement instead of calling a professional probably offers a pretty good metaphor here. Anyway, I just called Gigantti's technical support to ask for their opinion and what do I get? Someone named Simon speaking English. I mean, I can ask this question in English since I'm a bloody translator and have the technical vocabulary to communicate it but what about the majority who cannot?! I've heard of this before: the company has stores worldwide, the headquarters in some low-taxation country and customer services somewhere in India as it's the cheapest there, but I've never encountered it myself. I should have inquired where he was at the moment. In India? The accent sure did match that (apparently they tend to train the advisors to speak with British accent but Indian accent was tracable in his speech). But seriously, is this what they call good customer service 'cause I don't. The automatic "press X if you want Y" selection in the beginning was in Finnish so of course I made the assumption that the advisor would speak Finnish, too. They should, at least, have a language selection there, goddamit!

I'm sure you've all heard the joke before of what it says in the paycheck of a Gigantti employee? I think they have managed to outlast themselves in savings by this...

Eli edustajistovaalit olivat ja menivät ja eritellyt tulokset ovat saapuneet. Allekirjoittaneen äänimäärä oli eeeeerittäin ennustettavissa: yksi kappale ja sekin itseltäni ;). Läpi pääsivät olivat jotakuinkin niitä, joiden oletinkin pääsevän läpi. Ne ovat niitä verkostoitujia. Läpi pääseminen edellyttää verkostoitumista, ja koska minä en harrasta verkostoitumista, ergo...

Meillä oli tästä itsensä äänestämisestä juttua erään toisen ehdokkaan kanssa. Onko itsensä äänestäminen a) hyvä juttu, koska jos ei äänestä itseään ei luota edes omaan kykyynsä hoitaa niitä asioita, joihin pyrkii? vai b) aika outoa, sillä jo ehdokkaaksi asettuminen on merkki omasta luottamuksesta kykyynsä hoitaa em. asioita ja itse vaaleissa on kysymys siitä, missä määrin muut luottavat ehdokkaan kykyyn hoitaa näitä asioita? No, olen edelleen b-vaihtoehdon kannalla, mutta äänestinpä itseäni silti. Sillä pääsi varaedaattoriksi.

Ja se äänestysprosentti oli aivan naurettava. Ei tällainen ole demokratiaa vaan jotain aivan muuta! Mutta toisaalta, enpäs ole itsekään ennen äänestänyt vaikka kahdet vaalit on aikanani ollut. Veikkaan, ettei edustajistosta ja sen funktiosta tiedetä tarpeeksi että viitsisi keskittyä etsimään ehdokasta ja vielä äänestämään. Mitä tälle muka voi tehdä, kun suurimmalla osalla on tarpeeksi kiireitä perusjuttujenkin tekemisen kanssa kun paineita lisääntyy joka kulmalta?

No mutta, nyt voi taas keskittyä olennaiseen eli opiskeluun. Ehkä aktiivikärpäsen purema kestää vielä hetken ja päädyn laittamaan paperit vetämään ainejärjestön hallitukseen. :)

Fuck. These people live in some kind of parallel universe in which the concept 'human' is completely alien. More effective, more productive, moremoremoremoremore. Nuwanda's poem works fine for this:

"Laughing, crying, tumbling, mumbling,
Gotta do more, gotta be more!
Chaos screaming, chaos dreaming,
Gotta be more, gotta do more!"

It appears they've used a lot of time, energy and resources to make their processes as effective and productive as possible, but they've forgotten one big variant out of the equation: human. Humans make mistakes, humans are not perfect, humans are selfish and do not always count the most effective and productive way of doing something. Emotions affect. I can already imagine these people having sex, assessing their modus operandi to the context and the different variants, evaluating which approach is best for a certain goal from a certain point of view. Just exactly how sad is that...?

The third last slide incited connotations that I found hilarious. I could imagine the far corner of the bank's head quarters, several stories beneath the surfice, in the ground. All new employees dressed up in army-gray clothing, heads shaved, lying on a tilted chair in constraints with their eyelids kept open by some kind of device. Another employee puts eyedrops to the eyes preventing them from drying while their brains are fed images and slogans embedded in a stream of emotionally provocative pictures as subliminal messages:

"Asiakas on etusijalla!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Jokainen ongelma on mahdollisuus!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Hukka on suurin vihollinen!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Joku muu ei ole ratkaisu!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Voimme vaikuttaa asioihin!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Hukka on suurin vihollinen!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Esimies on aina roolimalli!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Tavoitteita, ei keinoja!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Hukka on suurin vihollinen!"
[The Bank's logo]
"Arbeit macht frei!"