Nature of Man

… nothing that happens to Man is ever natural …

Ode to Multiple Universes

I do have worlds enough and time
to spare an hour to find a rhyme

to take a week to pen an article
a day to find a rhyme for ‘particle’.

In many worlds my time is free
to spend ten minutes over tea

And steal the time from some far moon
so words can take all afternoon,

Away beyond the speed of light
I’ll write a novel in one night.

Aeons beckon, if I want ‘em…
…but I can’t have em’, ‘cos of Quantum

(Terry Pratchett)

Special thanks to hazel who, in her eclectic knowledge, pointed out that this references Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, therefore I fixed my translation to reference the Bulgarian translation:

Ода за множеството вселени

Да, имам аз, миледи, свят и време
да търся рими - тежко бреме:

есе да пиша дълго - дор седмица,
и ден да търся рима на ‘частица’

В безброй вселени времето ми стига
и чай да пия, да разтворя книга,

и миг откраднал от луна далечна
със думи да играя цяла вечер.

С отвъдпределна свръхсветлинна мощ
ще пиша нов роман на всяка нощ.

Зоват еони с време на аванта …
… уви, недостижими зарад’ Кванта.

(Тери Пратчет)

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as if it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. — Book of Revelation 8:10-11

Soon to be 21 years since the disaster.

This lady, Elena Filatova, is a crazy motorbike enthusiast who likes to ride in the abandoned roads in the radioactive zone. She has some great photos and footage of postapocalyptic Chernobyl (which some indeed translate as “wormwood“).

Don’t miss this haunting video of Huns & Dr. Beeker’s song “Ghost Town”:
Download 54M mpeg hires
Watch online

In case you’ve wondered, this is what a dead city looks like:

(Say that three times fast. While eating a waffer!)

Okay, I’ve written about chess before, and also about geek chicks, so now it’s time for the crossover:

2005 French Champion Almira Skripchenko and 2005 Russian Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk

Taken from here, via the blog of the best geek comic ever, xkcd. Whose author digs Gaiman! Truly, everything is connected to everything. In the case of the Gaiman-related comic though, no two adjacent circles are of the same color ;) This is also the place, where I learned about Lojban

Update:

Can someone please just tell me what happened? I mean, first we payed for fast food that will make us all fat and tired. So then we pay for elevators so we won’t have to climb the three stairs up to our apartments, and then we buy a friggin’ Stairmaster machine so we can burn away while watching someone make REAL food on TV. Now if that doesn’t make us winners, I don’t know what will… Heh, I bet we would just hang ourselves if the world just cut us some slack. And now you think maybe you should see a shrink just to help you feel alive again. Yeah, that’s a plan! Just tell us who to pay…

You see its really all about time and choice. Fast food saves us enough time to squeeze lunch in exactly when we want it, the elevators save us just a little more, the Stairmaster lets us choose exactly when to walk the stairs. Time is so important these days, its becoming a fucking disease. I guess the way it is, its just bound to kill us all in the end. Now with all that time and money we stashed away on all these expenses, I can only assume that the tickets to Hell are really expensive and for some reason its important to be first in line.

Yes, the Pain of Salvation album Scarsick was leaked, and they sure have something to tell.

Here’s pieces of the story of God and Mr. Money from their last album, Be, in a marvelous live performance.
You’ll also need the lyrics.

Imago
Dea Pecuniae
Iter Impius
Martius/Nauticus II

Just a short time after posting about the problem, serendipity brought an answer.

Lojban (IPA [ˈloʒban], official full name Lojban: a realization of Loglan) is a syntactically unambiguous, predicate logic-based constructed language which was created by the Logical Language Group in 1987.

Lojban:

Has a grammar that is based on predicate logic, and is capable of expressing complex logical constructs precisely.
Has no irregularities or ambiguities in spelling or grammar, so it can be easily parsed by computer.
Is designed to be as culturally neutral as possible.
Is simple to learn and use compared to many natural languages.
Possesses an intricate system of attitudinal indicators which effectively communicate contextual emotion.

Also

Lojban was designed as a human language, and not as a computer language. It is therefore intended for use in conversation, reading, writing, and thinking. However, since Lojban can be processed by a computer much more easily than can a natural language, Lojban-based computer applications are a natural expectation. Due to its unambiguous grammar and simple structure, it can be easily parsed by computers, making it possible for Lojban to be used in the future for computer-human interaction, and perhaps conversation. Lojban’s predicate structure is similar to AI, suggesting it as a powerful tool in AI processing, especially in the storing and processing of data about the world and people’s conceptions of it.

This is the language legislation should be written in. Well, this is an answer, whether it is the answer is yet to be determined. As far as I could tell from a brief research, noone has thought yet of using Lojban as a formal language for legislation, but I feel it would work fine.

I will have to dust my logic knowledge to see what kind of reasoning can be done with first-order logic, but the features they sell to the linguists are impressive enough. Unambiguity. Easy to process through a computer. Easy (?) to translate to a natural human language (though the language itself is supposed to be easy for humans to learn as well).

There, the problem of (provably!) fair legislation is solved, next in line is the problem of (provably!) fair and secure voting. Bruce Schneier gives a secure protocol in his book, but if I recall correctly from the brief skim over the chapter, it has some practical problems. The question is, what “democratic” government will allow secure elections that cannot be faked…