E.T.'s herritage

I know that outer-space civilizations are a fascination for most of us and especially for Hollywood producers, but the recent bombardment of not so brilliant movies to the utmost, with some exceptions, makes me ponder. Luckily (or not) they came up with variations of the subject:

• the classical fighting of the invasion: Battle for L.A.
• superpowers movies: I am Number Four
• save your sorry behind: Skyline
• 10 paces duels: Cowboys & Aliens

...and many more that I've probably left out; not talking into account what's to come in 2012 (Chronicle, Battleship...)

So, where does this invasion come from?

I am here to expose 2 theories (probably one more plausible than the other, but who knows)
Firstly, all of this redundancy is another repercussion of the excessive consumer society, hitting this time the movie industry. There's a couple of alien movies that worked; people get intrigued by the subject, then less imaginative directors come up front with copycats of the movie concepts and the cash continues to flow. This pattern can be applied to any film genre especially correlated with the increasing amount of motion pictures coming out each year.

The less rational explanation but my favorite, since I have a certain weakness for the Conspiracy Theory, is that someone wants us to be prepared. If you look back this trend started along with the rumor about 2012, the start of a new era, which was also subject of a movie; at that time there was "The day the Earth stood still" and it escalated from there. If you add the latest discovery of the twin planet ("Another Earth" rings any bell?) and the current economic and social instabilities all of this seems to make sense. Maybe some major stuff is awaiting and we should get used to the idea.

Actually the whole reasoning of the second theory could serve as fuel for the first, and probably it does, but that doesn't mean that it is faulty to 100%. What do you say?

Passive introspection

Here is something that's been making me wonder for some time now: Does our subconscious have masochist traits?

When I let my mind wander around, at least once a week it comes up with some dumb event from the past which I regret it happened. Moreover, it makes me relieve the strange feeling that I had about myself even enhancing some discomforting aspects.

What is strange is that pleasant memories usually need to be triggered by an event or an interaction with a person or an object. In general they don't pop-up in moments when the active part of the brain is on stand-by.

So, is it in our nature to be self-doubtful, insecure and disappointed of ourselves? Or is just me the one who has all these weird passive behavioural manifestations? The thing is that I'm quite happy with what I am...but maybe my inner-self thinks otherwise...

Past-Future

It was assumed to be an alteration of the Matrix, it is a phenomenon that most people encounter several times in their lives; I, myself, have lived it pretty often. I'm talking about deja-vu.
Every once in a while it might feel like the same thing has already happened just the way it does at the time; and I want to know what is all of this about!
The thing is that there are no real theories behind the event; it can't be lab-s(t)imulated so it is nearly impossible to study it. So all the real ideas are as plausible as the fictional ones.
What's uttered is that deja-vu could be related to syndromes such as schizophrenia or anxiety or that it's a malfunction in the perception of memories, which would place stuff that happened milliseconds ago in a far distant period of time.

Opening the gate to other worlds, first we have dreams. The phenomenon is depicting something you've dreamed in a vivid moment; but dreaming something that particularly precise, ain't it wicked? (But I have a strong feeling that you'll be reading some other stuff about dreaming here soon.)
 There's also the Matrix proposition, but that's a bit far-fetched.
And so we're left with the final explanation, which I tend to embrace in a supernatural way of seeing things even though Fringe is not my cup of tea...drum-roll...Deja-vus are glimpses of memories from other dimensions that the person has already visited. So our minds go wandering from time-place to time-place and their keep little tokens that come up when you except the least.
I guess that makes us all visionaries (if we could trigger the reenactment at any given instant) or is my dark side darker that I thought, with its deja-vus any other month...

Home Sweet Home

Reading one of Rucsy's posts reminded me of something that it wanted to talk about: the idea of 'home'.

Once, when returning from one of my field trips, and as the train got closer and closer to Lyon I told myself: 'Almost home...' then I realized that the saying 'Where I lay my self is Home' kinda suits me (See that rock that's my pillow! - geek joke)
So after a deeper analysis it got to me...home is where I live long enough so that the any occurring external stay would seem relatively short. For example, a place where I lived 6 months is considered home compared to a couple of weeks round-trip out and back in that place; this could even extend to a one day trip during a week long stay. For instance, and this is a bit sad, I often recall more of a I'm home feeling coming back to, let's say, Strasbourg after a 2 weeks holiday at my True Home.
In this case I would say that I have no home, since I don't associate the universally generated feeling for Home with a particular place or surroundings. Or, more poetically, the whole Planet is my Home, which might be actually true...even though there are rooms that I prefer to others. 
I guess that in my mind the notion of home is related to routine, to the ordinary everyday life, once again time-relative. And it would seem that it has nothing to do with a specific environment or certain people (parents most likely). Because I do get the fuzzy felling when I'm about to see close family and old friends but it is not dictated by geographical coordinates.
In short, Home = spot where I currently live and hold an activity, more of a HQ.
So, am I a mechanical nutcase that doesn't get what really matters out there?...your turn, now: Where's or What's your Home?

Consume or Be Consumed

A couple of hours ago, I did my weekly survival shopping and I couldn't help noticing the staff of the supermarket (the Crossroads one) and especially the phrase printed on the back of their work uniform:
Comment je peux vous aider à mieux consommer?
  ( fr. for How could I help you so you would consume better?)
 Well, the English translation might be a bit shady, here consume means eat, drink, use and all other regular activities you might have with their products. But I emphasize the use of this verb: with all the debates about reducing all sorts of consumption (energy, water, food...) and having a more responsible way of life, the Economy Bosses are still developing the idea of a consumption society. I mean they could have said: How could I help you so you would choose better?, but NO, our brain must be focused on consuming, on spending money in a mechanical manner.
I would go even further and point out alternative meanings of this verb which are: use up, deplete...
This could be, in fact, the next unfortunate step the human society has to take. But, I'm am not here to overthrow the system, because, sincerely, I don't know a better one, I just want to point out the more or less subliminal messaging. So my advice would be: keep the Machine going but be careful with that Warning indicator, it has to become the priority and replace the speedometer.

Something that has less to do with consumerism but more with velocity: why do people feel the need to slow down their walking pace or even stop in the middle of a way where there are no possibilities of passing them (like escalators, tight corners, door ways...); and I've noticed that the probability increases when you're in a hurry.

Off-topic no.2: Another stringent need of pedestrians is to spread out on bike paths even though the rest of the sidewalk is free, and often to got deaf at the same time; also, the more difficult to avoid they are, the slower they walk...

Monkey Business

Here is an interesting study on TED:





Now, some personal comments:

There is a slight difference between the 'coin' insertion in human society and the one done in this study. The coins appeared as a development of the barter system, because it got difficult to transport and exchange merchandise for other merchandise. In the the monkeys case, there was no economic development, the currency was artificially introduced into their existence. So they still function on a barter system: the give away their useless chunk of metal in order to get very useful food. And they know that more trinkets mean more food so they steel the coins from others; this only proves the slick savage side in humans...
Also, they don't save up the coins; well, this option was never revealed to them, every time, one shinny disc equals food; this is also a false comparison with our society, because we save up money but do bad investments...This thing could only show is that there are no scientist monkeys to wonder what it would happen if 2 coins would be given away.
Last thing, about the gain/loss study, it is purely psychological, in one case there is a chance of winning nothing which we want to avoid and in the other one of losing nothing, which is more appealing. Faced with the 2 situations at once we would probably admit that they equivalent, but something inside makes us act in one way or the other. For the monkeys this thing is more visual, but I guess it resides in the same behavior pattern as us, only difference is that the monkeys can't evaluate probabilities...you will surely say that this was one of the aspects of the study; true, but still, I wanted to say this and to add that with statistics anything can be proved all that matters is how the topic is approached.

All in all, we have residual instincts which need to be channeled in precise directions and not to be left to wander and take control of purely rational decisions.

Motored-Homes

I've been living and working in Lyon for more than 4 months now ( less than 2 to go...) and every day I have to take public transportation to get from one to another.
A part of this daily route involves a bus taking a strip of highway, and not any highway...the A7 highway. For those of you who don't know: the A7 connects Lyon to Marseille and the famous Côte d'Azur area; on top of that, it is also the extension of the A6 highway, which comes straight down from Paris.
At this time of the year this looong patch of asphalt is the traffic jam paradise and the drivers' nightmare, because every western European living above the 45° lat N who wants to get to the French Mediterranean shore by car has to go through here. And this brings me to the topic of this babbling post: tourist transportation...travel trailers or caravans to be more precise.
Being stuck in traffic, I have all the time I need to study the diversity of the vehicles surrounding the bus. So after a thorough research I came to the conclusion that about 5 - 10% of the tourist cars are travel trailers; and a crushing majority from The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.
The question is: why would you want to spend your holidays in a caravan?
It small, tight and crowded. You have to clean it more thoroughly than a car. You have to live on a camping site so you could use it...and, thus, be surrounded by others; and my guess is that these wonders of automotive industry are less soundproof than a hotel room. You also have to charge it up and empty all the recipients...
If you own it you must take care of it the rest of the year when it will be taking up space in your garage. If you don't own it you have to hire it every year. Moreover, there are special traffic limitations that apply to you but not to the other cars. Ok it can be useful if you have to drive in shifts to get somewhere, but upon arrival I want a real bedroom. I mean what kind of holiday is that where your jammed in less than 10m² with all the facilities crushing you; I lived for 5 years in 10m² rooms and there are better options, especially if you need to rest and enjoy your time.
You will tell me that with a caravan you can stay anywhere...maybe..if you have enough power. But isn't it more "genuine" if you would stay in a small hotel and get your tent and backpack when you're in the mood for some wilderness?
I didn't do the maths to sum up the expenses, but my rough guess is that you don't make too great savings so that the trouble would worth it. 
Just sayin'...so, what are your thoughts on these motored-homes?

The WorldWideWeb in numbers

I got this video from a friend, and it's impressive:



There are 1.73 billion internet users (actually almost 2 billion today), compared to 1.1 billion undernourished people and 1.4 billion who don't have access to water (the same number as the email users).
In percentage terms the European continent is the most internetized one.
The social networking concept exploded about 5 years ago; today its greatest representative, Facebook, has 6 million views per minute...I wonder how many of them are during working hours... :p
Another phenomenon is YouTube, with an average of 182 videos/month, which means 6/day...that's about half an hour (at least these were 4 minutes well used)
A strong proof that something is wrong with this world is the fact that the most followed Tweeter user is...Ashton Kutcher (4.25 million people are nourished by his wisdom)

All this information flow has also its bad seeds: 80% of email is spam and 150 k zombie computers spawn each day; you could say that it's not much compared to the almost 170 million computers existing on the planet...but 150k today, 150k tomorrow and we get the computer version of Zombieland/I am Legend/ 28 Days After...or any other infected-mindless-walking-dead-based movie.

Ecologically speaking one Google search generates 7g of CO2, so in two clicks you get the same carbon footprint as an electric kettle. Actually, 2 small nuclear plants would be needed to power up all the Google servers worldwide.
Know that the "clean" information technology field is responsible for 2% of the greenhouse effect gas emissions.
Last sad fun-fact: a SecondLife avatar has the same yearly energy consumption as a Brazilian citizen (1752kWh).

So by reading this blog (one in 126 million) you add 0.2g CO2/s into the ecosystem, but now you're aware of it ;)

what's with wikileaks?...

During one of my "TED sessions" I watched this video:

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com

it is about a Wikileaks, an "organisation" publishing confidential information that goes through the cracks in the system. It treated any kind of information and field: politics, economy, world peace/conflict, sociology and many more.
The main idea behind the interview is the role of this concept in the information world and its consequences.
That's what I'd like to point out briefly here.

I mean is it good or bad to give away info supposed to be kept secret.

My answer would be a "gray" one as always. In today's world we think to be and we demand to be more and more informed. So people should be told stuff, even critical ones as long as their security remains unharmed. Mainly these leaks hide information that is kept secret for the benefit of some individuals or for hiding "inglorious" military moments. In these cases, the truth should be known and the ones responsible brought upfront.
But information is also power, and as a comic-book uncle once said: "with great power comes great responsibility"; that is why I think that the impact of the information should be analyzed before its release. Because it can be really security-related, or of great psychological force or simply manipulative, and there are people who would not withstand the "shock" and could be led in certain directions using unfair means.
That is way in my slightly elitist view, I grant the governments the "right" to conceal critical data, and release it when the tides is gone, the sole interest being the well-being of it's citizens and of the entire planet. On the other hand I would prefer not to be fed crap; it consider that ignorance is better than lie. Last but not least, if the greater or lesser leaders fool around "off with their heads" metaphorically speaking; so this kind of media could be a great tool in the enlightenment of the people, just don't be like flies...too much light can burn.