Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 117

Oh the editing. Also a survey you can fill out!

 I've been trying my hand at longer and longer blog posts, but this one will be shorter. Much shorter. Basically, I'm going to ask you to fill out a short 5 question survey. It's to aid me in my editing (and thus pruning) of my upcoming novel, Labyrinth of Souls. Available for pre-order now. This is a story about robots with super-intelligent AI. Here is the link to the survey. Many thanks!


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When Gods Fail II is free!

Ah, it seems as if summer is finally winding down with the scorching rays of the Inland NW's sun now almost calm. With that, I'll start a end of Summer sale.  I've talked to a few of you readers who thought enjoyed the first book in my When Gods Fail series was good but too short. Not enough of a teaser to read on. I want you to rest assured that I have rectified that and have now made the book free. There are three total books in the series and that leaves enough of a teaser to at least bring in some more of you to the last book. The links where you can buy it are below.For all the other readers who did end up buying the second one, please let me know and I can work something out so that you're not left out of the loop (another book, perhaps). All the best:
 Amazon.
Smashwords

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Sasquan, worldcon and the science fiction convention

My oh my has it ever been a long time since I’ve posted. I apologize for this delay, let’s for a second forget this transgression of a blog commandment (thou shalt often blog at regular intervals) and allow me to explain:

You see, I’ve just barely exacted with my life and I have my wit (and accompanying smarts attitude) to thank and blame on the matter. Let me tell you what happened.In the past few days two things have descended upon the town of Spokane. A Science Fiction convention and the smoke from a hundred fires across the state. It is the former about which I want to talk. That’s not to say the smoke hasn’t played its part. After all, who hasn't been affected by the drifting smoke choking up one’s lungs, burning one’s eyes, cutting down one’s vision, infecting long distances with an apocalyptic haze? But even if the wildfire smoke provides an interesting atmosphere—to say nothing of how it infects the hearts of humans—it’s not the focal point of my excuse.

Let me begin, before I lose any more of you readers. I attended the scifi conference on Friday and after listening to a couple discussions, I found myself in a less visited corner of the convention center, my skin tingling and tightening as I felt a chill. After making sure I wasn't being watched, I sat at a couch and propped up my legs on the table, which was also supporting a sculpture—all made of melted bottle tops combined to represent a robot contemplating a human skull, an obvious bullet hole in the back of the skull’s head and exit hole through the teeth.

Leaning back and inhaling the sterile convention center smell, I realized that I'd sat on a book. I pulled it out from under me and examined the cover: on it a gallant woman rode a chariot being pulled by naked men. They were headed to a shining light at the end of the road.

It was thin, the book, and so I read through it, the writing clean enough for me not to stop and the premise interesting enough for me to flip the pages. When I was finished, unsure with the ending, I threw the book on the table where it collided with the sculpture.

It was then that I noticed a shift in the atmosphere and the smell of something like rotting feet. Out from the shadows in a corner stepped a large man. I froze. For not only was he large, not only did he wield a large sword, but he moved with the kind of nimbleness that signifies a specifically potent violence.

“Treat the book with a little more respect, small man.”

I should have left, but the challenge was there in the air. “The fuck’s it to you?”

He stopped, surprised, and looked me over, eyebrows raised. In the distance I could hear the yells of an award show somewhere in the convention center. “What did you think of it?” he asked.

I still wasn’t sure. After all, the aftereffects of the book weren’t finished with me. The thoughts it evoked had drifted down to my throat—stuck there like nettle—and only now had dislodged and moved to my stomach. I certainly wasn’t sure about the story, for it revolved around earth several thousand years in the future, humans now taken over by a bio-nano AI which infected, or “saved” the race by merely changing a few aspects of human’s reward/punishment system with regard to the decision making process and thus ushering in an era of peace. Not that I was entirely certain, but the book seemed to be saying that something close to a utopia had come about because the AI punished the material bias (the spring from which flows violence, according to this book). Yes, I know; this link was tenuous at best, though I enjoyed it as a premise, nonetheless.

The book revolved around the AI as protagonist. Hard to pull that off, but this author came as close and anyone in history has (in fact, the back page had the code for the AI—pretty impressive). But as the AI evolved, it soon found itself fighting other versions of itself. In the end, after a devastating battle kills off half of humanity (still shackled from doing violence themselves), the AIs come to a detente. The story had series written all over it. And it certainly had me thinking—a sign of a good book—but since I didn’t like how the question was phrased so I said, “Odd story and the cover doesn’t make sense.”

The man roared and I jumped just as the sword cut the couch in half. Before I could say anything my legs propelled me out of the room and down a hallway, the man in pursuit, close behind me. I turned a corner, ducking as the sword cut through the wall above me.

I kept running and turning, my heart pounding hard, my eyes looking out for a group of people—anyone… where were they when you needed them?—with whom to find safety. But whatever convoluted hallway I went down, I could not find a soul. Soon I realized—my pursuer gaining ground, breathing heavily, the big bastard not slowing down one bit, that sword cutting through the air every so often and hitting the walls with thud and covering my sweaty backside with plaster—that there were no rooms wherever I went and that, furthermore, this was something of a labyrinth.

Was I in the art show? Every now and again I would run by carvings in the wall or a sculpture—odd things, really, they had to have been for the scifi convention—and turn. But there was no one else around. And as I ran and turned past more and more blind corners, as I ran deeper into the belly of the convention center, the air grew heavy and cold, the little light from before almost non-existent now, and my legs growing heavier, the adrenaline diluting and my thoughts dwelling less on flight and more on fight. Because I couldn’t run for much longer.

I made another turn and saw a sculpture, almost up to my waist, like a large fist. Mid-stride, I picked it up and spun and let go. The man came around the corner, his sword on his shoulder and the statue hit him on the jaw. I caught a glimpse of his eye rolling skyward as the sword clattered to the ground and he collapsed. My hands resting on my knees, finally catching my breath, I looked at the sculpture; a metal thing, this fist, the little knots in it were a mass of people and creatures and robots, all in some form of sexual or violent gymnastics with another.

The man—the giant, really, for he came up to my waist when lying down—groaned. I dragged his sword away. Returning, I startled when I saw the figure of an old bearded man shuffle into my view. The old man leaned on his cane staring at the felled giant. I wanted to say something, but decided against it. The man examined the statue now; failing to pick it up, he pushed it about with his cane.

“You don’t like art?” He glanced at me and I was suddenly aware of his power.

“It’s not that…” I paused as he tenderly touched the giant’s chin. Were they friends? Would the old man now pursue me? I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing escaped. I was feeling cold now, my sweat taking its time to evaporate.

“You best be gone,” he said, his voice cackling.

He didn’t have to repeat himself. I stumbled out of there and soon found myself turning by dint of sword scars on the walls and walked out through a pair of double doors and into the lobby where I had been initially accosted by the giant. The couch was still sliced in half and a handful of people were staring at couch then shifted accusing eyes towards me. I asked if there was a book here and they pointed. I grabbed it and left before anyone could ask me questions. Soon, I was in the smoky outside, thinking on what had just transpired and if I should show my face there again. 





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Heart beats, redux

 Hard to pin down the many muses that push creativity, that drive that which causes me to write. Now, I keep a notepad as well as a million sheets of paper at hand to write down whatever it is I have in the form of an idea for future use. Much like Stephen King, I am of the mind that I'll jot it down, but if it doesn't lead to much—the note isn't valid, it doesn't speak of that great of an idea etc—I can disregard it, though having copious notes helps mitigate this.  
Nevertheless, there is something to be said about that burst of energy, that need to write. And so when I wrote a short essay about hearbeats, it felt like I was writing it from a few disjointed notes. But, a few days ago I looked through my notes (from my trip to Europe) and realized that I had already written about this. 
Of course, I my first thought was that this was early onset dementia, but I soon talked myself out of it (barely). I'm not sure, however, what it says about my writing ability that what last month was an essay has been rediscovered as a short story. Your thoughts? Read it below (raw form):
If you’re lucky, you’ll get 3 billion heartbeats in your lifetime. Now, what you do with those heartbeats is all up to you. Some people try to forget that they have hearts beating away in their chest. Some are aware of it all the time; these people have a countdown of heartbeats. Only a couple billion left, and yesterday I wasted 100,000 heartbeats in a day. Oh what folly! Well, that kind tends to coddle their heart, taking care to give it the right food, to let it yammer away. Others, aware, want to stuff it shut, not right away, but these people are always feeding their heart the foodstuffs that could only lead to disaster, to fewer heartbeats than normally would be.

Of course, it goes without saying that not all your heartbeats will be equal. There may even be a sort of curve. most people think that the last billion are no where near as good as those first. Funny to think in such terms, I say. There are some trains of thought which think on every heartbeat as important. I’m not sure about that, though meditation seems to have changed a lot of that, in terms of having a real working relationship with your heart.

I’m a maximalist, when it comes to making the best of the time you have with your heart (and this might be the closest thing I have that comes to my modern day’s philosophy). In other words, make themes out of every single heartbeat, not now and in the future.

There is, of course, the other type of maximalist, the one who simply wants to extend the amount of heartbeats without regard to the quality of those heartbeats. These people think that it doesn’t matter where you end up adding those heartbeats: in the beginning of in the end. Though I agree that every heartbeat is precious, I would rather add those heartbeats in the middle, but that’s my own prejudice.

Some people believe that not all heartbeats are equal. Now, when it comes to us versus those other species, I would agree, though I wouldn’t take it too far; still the very idea of a heart—evolutionarily speaking—is certainly something I find extremely miraculous. But even amongst humans one can see a very specific strain of heartbeat-exceptionalism. It is this vile strain that I try to combat on a daily basis. The other strain—a derivative of the previous one—treats others, especially those your heart hasn’t met, as worthy of only derision; as if these “others” had no heart of their own.

That being said, I try not to impose my own beliefs upon others… but I do implore you to have an honest and open relationship with your heart.

The man stopped talking and looked at me. “So,” he said, “what’s your belief system when it comes to the heart?”

I was tied up to a chair, wondering why I was being forced to listen to this, wondering which part of the interrogation this fit into. Was it merely to pull me out of my shell?
“I think you have the numbers right,” I said.

“Are you being a smart-ass?”

If this were a test, I was failing. I reminded myself to act more pliable. And yet I didn’t want to speak, and yet I liked the man… Perhaps that’s what the damned heart speech was meant to do, meant to make me like him, make me absolutely willing to answer. I could picture hims studying my file, learning the intricacies of my likes and dislikes, my reading list learning that I was partially one who enjoyed science, as well as being one who enjoyed a turn of phrase: the ability to learn to see the world in a slightly romantic way that stroked my ego a from this he would twist what I had and make me want to please him… man he must have been an expert.

“No,” I said, fighting back a spate of trembling. For no matter how much you prepare your mind for trials and tribulations, especially when confronting power, to say nothing of legitimate power (and let’s not forget me and my middle class upbringing which practically whips fealty to state power and its reps from an early age and turns it into a religion), your body, your lizard brain, it knows, and so it starts to rebel, it starts to embarrass you and tremble and threaten to piss, because fuck all your reasons and ethics and morals, this is about survival!

“Then?” He leaned forward, now looking friendly. Must have liked seeing me cower. I straightened out my back.

“I suppose,” I said, now thinking that the whole idea of one basing their belief system on the heart wasn’t that asinine, “that you should treat it with respect. Give it what it needs and you’ll likely get what you need.”

He screwed up his face, stepped away from me and “hmmed” as he started pacing in front of me.

Finally, he stopped and pointed at me. “So you’re a utilitarian?”

“Not sure what that means,” I said. But I knew exactly what he was trying to do. His partner had already done the whole scare approach, the part where they lay out the rules I’ve violated and then show me the futility of fighting them, that I was in their hands. So perhaps I had shown too much of a backbone when presented this evidence, even if it had been fake evidence.

Therefore they knew I knew all their tricks, and this speech about a philosophy that didn’t really exist, couldn’t really exist, perhaps it was meant to show me something about the futility of fighting powers greater than one. That the interrogators had been given the powers of God, and so I was to bow and pray to whatever he chose. That perhaps my recalcitrance had been indicative of the “right forever in the gallows, wrong forever on the throne” attitude that I had been schooled in. That they saw all this and were here to teach me that even a game of shadows such as power can be based on nothing and still hurt one so much? To show me that they were powerful enough to make up anything they wanted to, and so the next thing would be to make me believe it.

If so this nice guy routine was about to be followed by something cruel. I clenched my jaw, waiting for the beating to hit me hard. I will be strong, but the flesh is weak.

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It's here.... New novel, pre order now!

 So I'll make this short and sweet with much much more to come in the next few days. First and foremost is the fact that my latest book, the Labyrinth of Souls (see picture above) is now available for preorder, with the book coming out on the 31st of October! Of course you can share this with whomever you like! I'm pretty excited about this book and will be adding more information about it in the upcoming days. Also, I'm more than willing to hear any feedback from you, dear readers.


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Chess vs Shogi

During our last day in Tokyo, that beautiful clean maiden of a city, I forced my better half to come with me and find a place to play shogi. I had been disappointed because no one seemed to be playing the game out on the streets. Come to figure, there were clubs, and so after looking it up we went searching. We went to a neighborhood that smelled like the usual clean Tokyo with remnants of noodle dinners, and were quickly lost, as the exact address was hidden in Japanese characters we could not discern. I walked up and down the narrow street, surprised that there wasn’t a huge sign somewhere. Dropping into a restaurant, I asked a woman sweeping up about shogi. My horrendous accent must have thrown her off, for she stared at me. Luckily, I remembered a movement, a jerk with two fingers, to indicate movement of the pieces, of the game. Ah, her eyes lit up and she dropped her broom and walked out into the street, indicating that we should follow her.

For some reason, people were following us, and the woman telling them something or another about us. A businessman, seemed to understand our precarious situation and when the old lady pointed at a building, then the businessman, he nodded and with a slightly accented English, told us it was on the second floor. We went up and there was a club with men hunched over those wooden shogi boards, the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air.
At first, the people in charge didn’t want me to come and play, but some of the members chimed in and said that I should be allowed. I was given a slip of paper and immediately the nearest English speaker started a game with me. They were amazed that an American had bothered to learn the game; I told where: the internet, parent to many children these days. What kind people. They all gathered and talked, happy that I was from New York, that I played somewhat well (they were being nice on that account), and crushed me to a pulp in the three games I played against different people.Each time in each game, I struck too early, mainly for a lack of a better idea, and each time they parried my strike and punished me. It was a cruel punishment, a slow one I could see coming once my strike had missed. And the buildup (remember those slow pieces require this kind of attack, a smothering attack, if you will) that leads to a slow evisceration of my forces, then King. It was humbling to say the least, but I enjoyed being in the midst of locals who played the game (unfortunately they mainly looked older, I wonder if the younger generation even bother to learn the game, a source of national pride, from what I hear). Certainly, I needed to learn more, but I enjoyed that moment, as it proves once again that nothing beats playing a person over the board, whilst a game on the internet doesn’t have the same feel as the game of minds.


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Free Speech

I wrote about free speech earlier, where I decried the crime of being offended (while still trying to look at the entire situation) should not have pushed people to silence others. In fact, I disagreed with many people who said that trying to silence someone was not the same as a free speech violation, and that, duly, we should all watch what we say. Even xkcd [1] chimed in to say you cannot offend. Right. Again, this is in line with the core of the Constitution (I'm speaking specifically of America now) while being completely against the spirit of that amendment. Yes, you're violating someone's free speech, and the very thing this nation relies upon is in danger when we try to silence people and not engage them.
I'm actually not sure why people find this hard to understand: that the first amendment is all about increasing the chance for dialogue and we should try to foster such an idea everywhere. And yet though in the past it was the right that really tried to use other methods of censorship, it now seems that the left is doing it more and more (for whatever ill-conceived reason); and even though this is against some of those old power structures of the right, this rarely achieves anything. As Coates says, it's just asking for a better class of racist since even if someone like Clive Bundy isn't around, there are still many racist policies around. So stop being so easily offended. And I'm telling this to people with whom I agree with on many issues.
Sad it is. But just because you gain a slight upper hand, don't immediately go for some odd purge (of the media as it) as the people who once purged you did once. We should always aim to be better.






[1] Though I certainly don't take much of what that cartoon says seriously, since it's much fun about nothing

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Chess vs Go

It’s funny how, when I was younger, I used to see pictures of chess on some article and would brim with some pride at having skills in a game that was universally considered a symbol of strategy. I was, hyper-provincially speaking, decent at chess, and most people I met face to face (again, meaning weekend players, not the rated kind) I could dispatch without too much concern. Not that I didn’t know where I stood. The internet was just budding then, and online testing revealed at best a 1700 rating, though I was sure it would be much lower against those who knew what they're doing. 

Upon more thinking, however, I'm sure that the symbol of chess as strategy needs to be retired forever. This isn’t to say there is no strategic component to chess, or that it’s some peasant’s game (though that has been hinted at in China that the real aristocrats play go). Rather, if one is to allude to a game with more strategy to it, there are better choices. Even within the realm of chess, there’s shogi, a game which requires some more strategy than its western version. See, shogi is the Japanese version of chess, and has a few elements which makes it less of a tactics game and requires more long term thinking (though it has no end game, and thus lacks that beautiful ending that people enjoy in a long grueling chess game). 

But I digress. Back to chess. It’s been said that chess is 99% tactics, and given what most grandmasters still say, this seems to hold true even today. The lowest estimate would still have chess in the 90% for tactics. See, if one goes down a piece in chess, it’s more or less game over. The position would have to be horrendously bad for the player with extra piece(s) not to come out on top (I’m not, of course, speaking about a a short sacrifice that would soon yield more pieces or a checkmate for the person who just sacrificed). 
Now, when it comes to Shogi, even if you gain a handful of pieces, the weakness inherent in most of the pieces, and the ability to drop pieces, makes it so that advantage isn’t as pronounced. Now, I’m not exactly proficient at shogi, my visit to Tokyo proved that, but there was a kind of grasping as I played the game that I knew couldn’t be easily solved with the correction of a few tactics. Nevertheless, allow me to delve into the matter of shogi, as it is my most favorite version of chess. 
Shogi is, if anything, an interesting ode to cultural differences and how those differences manifest themselves in the realm of games. Today with a worldwide board game culture that may seem a distant phenomenon, but allow me to dive into the details: shogi came to Japan, we can only assume, as the original chess game, or as a version of the Chinese game (though many say it originated in India, there is still some level of discussion as to whether or not it was there or China). The game in Japan took on many different variations. There’s chu-shogi with a large 13x13 game and and other, close to esoteric, versions with hundreds of games pieces to each side. A few hundred years ago there was a dwindling of all the different versions and the 9x9 game, with drop abilities, came into being. 
The drop ability is what makes Shogi so damn interesting. And it originates from the samurai habit of changing sides once one is captured so that they may live on. Hence, when one first sees a shogi game (coming from the Western version) one sees that there is only one color. The pieces are pointed, designed to be used for either side. When you capture the other side’s piece, it’s in your hand and thus can now be dropped anywhere on the board, with few limitations. 
Indeed, the promotional aspect of shogi also makes for an interesting game. In Western chess, the point is almost always to promote the pawn and get a queen. Usually that ends the game. A passed pawn can make for a lot of strategy in the endgame of chess. In shogi, one can promote all but two kinds of pieces, and the promotion ends up being an integral part of the game (last three ranks allow for promotion). 
I mentioned different pieces, and shogi has many different ones. Of course, it has the king, with the same objective as western chess (kill the opposing king). And a bishop and rook and weaker pawn (in some respects, the drop feature allows for one to remake the pawn as needed) and a weaker knight. It has other pieces such as  the lance, and the gold and silver generals. Outside of the one rook and bishop, the pieces are all very immobile. The generals, some of the stronger pieces, are really weaker kings. Only if they are in hand, about to be dropped are they even close to being worthwhile. One can ravage the opponent’s one side, but if the king is safe on the other side, that doesn’t even mean that the game is close to being over. 
I’ll leave the complete strategy for another time, not that I would do much but add a beginner’s view of the matter. Nonetheless, one cannot abide by the western chess tactic of gaining a slight advantage, then squeezing the opponent (trading/reducing works well in chess, at least at my level) until that advantage is more pronounced. You cannot get away with that in shogi. I’ve tried and failed miserably. 
Of course, being an American, there are many disadvantages to shogi, the largest one being that outside of Japan, few people play the game. One thing I don’t like are the pieces. They are merely flat, pointed, with the names written on them. To some extent, the kanji is beautiful to a foreigner, but one cannot help but think that representational pieces, like western chess, would work the best. 
And when it comes to go—especially the 19x19 version, but even in the 9x9 one (though this one has more tactics involved)—there is something to the gameplay and the strategy that still has me enthralled with the complexity of the game. If one is to be generous and say that chess is 10% strategy, then go is usually about 90% strategy. 
For a game with such simple rules, it’s nothing short of a magisterial game of strategy. As a chess player, I can sense my habits of getting tenacious in a tactical fight in the corner, working against me. It’s hard to fight it. Nonetheless, it is easily the most complex game (within reason, of course, one can simply take one of those shogi games with hundreds of pieces per side and say it’s more complex, but that doesn’t mean it’s a feasible game to play, or play well within a reasonable time, is it?) that I know of. Of course, history adds to this, adds to this ability to have a long strategy component.
One other matter people who play go try to bring up is the fact that go isn’t playable, on a high level, by computers. In chess, since the original games of the 90s, computers have come a long way and now easily dispatch grandmasters in matches. Meanwhile, they haven’t yet beaten the best in shogi, though that is a matter of mere time. Meanwhile with go, computers are no where near even professional level of play. This is will change, and I don’t think anyone thinks otherwise, but it does say something about the complexity of the game, even if one is to disregard what the computer does to gain its proficiency (nothing at all like human, and certainly nothing “beautiful”, mainly it’s search tree pruning, while with go more pattern recognition is needed). 
That is the least interesting aspect in comparing the games. Again, we’re not computers. A game of seeing and deciphering blurry photos would have humans on top, but that wouldn’t mean that the game is complex or interesting. What one can do is compare the two games and play them. Again, the strategy component in go should be immediately obvious to anyone coming from Western chess, or even shogi. Enjoyment takes many different levels, and complexity is not necessarily the main one. One can easily fall in love with the battle aspect of chess, versus the multi front war aspect of go. One can also personify the pieces in chess as something to like. Whereas go’s egalitarianism could drive people away (and even shogi’s pieces, I must admit, don’t inspire much, visually speaking). Design certainly matters, though I think my American side is showing its face here. 
So, give these other games a try if you haven’t already. They are surely interesting and worth your time, even if finding over the board opponents is too hard. As for me, I’ll keep working at improving my pathetic go game. As for shogi, I think it can catch on as a more strategic version of western chess. All such games only take a matter of time. What I think it lacks is some level of aesthetics, a beauty that could be corrected with 3-d pieces, still designed to point one way, to flip upon promotion that I will be working to solve soon.  And for those photos, I hope that they will soon learn to place go pieces, with a view of the full 19x19 game, in all its complexity.


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Algo and his notoriety

Everyone here on this blog knows about Algo and his incredible infinite story. In addition there's the story of him tattooing his own skin to create a story too great for any of us to contemplate. Oh, the trials and tribulations of those artists greater than I! 
I personally applaud Algo’s most recent surge into notoriety, some positive, a lot negative. Of the latter, I’m uncertain as to whether or not this is good; after all, in the literary world any outside attention is better than none, isn’t it? Yet who can say that the death threats and twitter mobs who have engulfed this hapless writer and any thread that mentions his name are any good? That Chinese and Russians and NSA troll teams have decided to take the author on seems like an unneeded insult heaped upon injury. There’s even talk about placing the author on the no fly-list, or perhaps on a watch list. I truly hope that these are only rumors.
First, let me talk about the positive: the artists who, now legion, have decided to map the fractal story, the one which never ends. Many have used methods familiar to us all [link to art story], but many are now trying to judge stories as per the direction they’ve taken, are taking. This is, as you can imagine, highly subjective. Artists have gotten into turf wars over this. 
There are some who are merely acting binary and mapping positive or negative outcomes from the single original node (I’ve talked to Algo, who says that having a starting point was one of the biggest mistakes he made for his never-ending story), while other have segmented a circle into nearly infinite slices, to achieve what they want. There is nothing bad about this. However, I do want to quell rumors about the recent bombing of a tech company (the negative).
Some are saying it only happened after the company announced that their web crawlers mapped the entirety of Algo’s universe (impossible, says the author, some of the fractal story was deliberately designed so no algorithm could get through it, not to mention it was too big for that possibility; it would be like saying a computer had solved chess) that a series of drone, motorcyclists and car bombs hit their offices worldwide.
To this, I say it’s only fiction, how could it possibly evoke such a reaction? No, the tech company was working with intelligence and military agencies to target known enemies (though a few glitches turned up misses, or unknowns who were killed then labeled unknown enemies). It was this that got them targeted, I assure you of that much. 
But no one in the mainstream media is saying anything about this. They are simply focusing on the matter that there appears to be a few religions that were based on Algo’s story. The author is not entirely certain, though he did receive several letters that exceeded the usual love of a fan, some asking him to come and live out as chief prophet somewhere in the wilds of forests or of large cities. 
What these religions are based on, isn’t quite certain; in fact all that I’ve heard are rumors. And when something is substantiated, it’s still merely the fact that a group of people have indeed decided to claim part of Algo's infinite sprawling mess is something they believe. That is all. 
Some experts claim that it’s merely the idea that something infinite has been written and that this allure alone is enough to bring in some people as true believers, that the infinite itself is a representation for God, or a God. That’s why the claim of the tech company to have mapped the entire story provoked the bombing attack.
Yet other experts claim that there is the fact that, if this story is infinite [1], this means that somewhere in the fictional-infinite-story there lies non-fiction, and that, in fact, there are non-fiction stories about the future and thus one can predict the future if they find the right story (everyone by now has heard of the story where the stockbroker found a story within Algo’s that allowed him to predict and short the market to the tune of billions, but surely money has rarely been a good foundation for a religion, has it?), or perhaps they will find the cure to all their ails if they look long enough. 
And yet other experts claim that the religions must have grown from the way many people gathered in small groups to share small snippets, or to search together for a truth that may or may not have been within reach, and the atomization of society allowed these meetings to grow into a religion.
I’m still not sure what the reason for the religions have been. And I still don’t think that such an outcome would require a violent outbreak of those in the religion because of some small violation of what they believed. Or would it? It still seems more likely that the tech company, forever breaking laws and citizens privacy rights finally made an enemy that fought back. But the religious aspect, I must admit, seems so much more interesting, doesn’t it?

[1] And here too, there is much controversy. There is talk that the story is no where near infinite. That one man cannot but create a drop of what is needed to be infinite, so the stories here abound, in that even if Algo had a factory of underpaid writers helping him create something, there is no way that he could create it, so it’s not only those writers, but coders creating a way to make stories, and thus the story (still infinite, still growing) is growing at a rate where no one can truly say they have read it even part of the way through. 



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Greece, Grexit, #ThisisaCoup

As anyone who reads this blog will know, I am trying to find better ways to read the news (and perhaps always improving upon this process). So when it comes to something that's big news and seems to be a story about simple economics (and so one would hope there would be much to agree upon in terms of economic policy). Yet what I see presented is, again, something like a horrid but necessary situation.
Now, much of this is not so much a matter of anything horrendous, just the media's need to present such a situation in the light of a showdown (and thus, probably, increase ratings). Yet, again, it seems that for someone who wants to get to the bottom of the entire situation, there is much chaff to get through. And so it goes, you say, but I think my own experience with this situation (one I didn't have much experience with, and thus had to find someone trustworthy, in addition, I didn't have much time to do the searching). 
To be certain, I have a bias here and read the blogs of a handful of economists, from whom I have learned that Greece is being hammered by German banks for no other reason than spite. Hard to disagree with this, is it? In addition to #thisisacoup being true, there is the matter that not only were Germans offered more leniency in the past, not only did they owe Greece reparations for WWII (and didn't pay), but they loaned Greece all this money so that the Greeks could buy from these banks. In other words, there is something of a narrative in Germany (inept Greeks living high on loans, they don't work hard, and this is their just desserts) and I imagine in the banks, and no one is really pointing this out. Even the Economist, who one would think would be in their forte here, have a weak response on the matter of the austerity project (as per, there's only a listing of what must be done, nothing to the weakness of said austerity in destroying the economy).
This isn't just a matter of the Masters of the Universe (who, for some reason are being painted as the serious ones, when, again, they aren't), for many people in Europe feel this way too. They sense that the Greeks need to get what's coming to them. Economic warfare it is, then. And conservatives here in the US who (usually the ones silent when Bush was in charge, but angry when the Kenyan-Muslim came into power [/s people]) think that America is going the way of Greece, because, you know, it has to be. Meanwhile on the far left, people seem to see the horrendous hand of banks taking over democracy. And this time, there is nothing masking these takeovers. 
The funny thing is that the far left, if filled with more vitriol for the banks than the conservative section of the world, seem to be more in line with the facts: there is nothing good that will come from the euro project and even less from the austerity now bludgeoning Greece. The economists, having pointed out all the hypocrisy use less verbose language, but come to much the same conclusion (is spite that much more different of a word than powers punishing a state that isn't toeing the line?).
And as for the rest of the conservatives and the Europeans who all would rather not deal with facts, but rather the morality play that has themselves as clean, while the other (Greece now, though the IMF and its history in Third world countries is something else) is being immoral and needs to be punished. Again, same story repackaged for a different time—the facts be damned, the human suffering be damned too. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Just a quick thought. I have mentioned how I think The Economist has fallen out of favor with me, and this is just another example. Note, however, that the article appears to be very even-handed. And yet it misses so much of the truth while being true that, as Chomsky would have it, it very much shows how propaganda works (while the far left article, though correct, isn't "serious" and thus overlooked by the elites). I have yet to give a full post on my contentious relationship with The Economist, but I will in due time.

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