nihil architecture blogs

…is not scientific. Really the countless myths about that it is and the pseudoscientific arguments that people draw to supposedly back that up a-la Darwkins and Randi are prætentious at best, let us look into a few here:

Burden of proof: You have to prove some-thing exists not the reverse.

Very simple reductio ad absurdum: 500 years back, it wasn’t proven that Pluto existed, was that an undeniable scientific proof Pluto didn’t exist then? It wasn’t proven that America existed to Europeans is that an undeniable proof America didn’t exist then? Is this an undeniable proof any-thing outside the observable universe doesn’t exist? I’m sure you get that the argument doesn’t hold. It’s drawn out of context. All it says that if it’s not proven that some-thing exists is that it’s not proven that it exists. That does not equal a proof it doesn’t exist, until you’ve provided one. It just means the question isn’t resolved yet, what a lot of people seem to not be able to handle. The ‘I don’t know’ option, which is in all but a few cases the scientifically correct answer. Admitting you don’t have enough knowledge to make a scientifically accurate conclusion. Science isn’t out to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to every question. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is præferred when neither is proven beyond all reasonable doubt indeed. But.. biology.. it corrects itself all too often because biologists aren’t that scientific. In more serious (hard) sciences this happens not very often to never in mathematics and the lot. I can’t wait for that the holocaust actually did never happen.

By the way, about proving:

• It is possible to prove of some things they cannot be proven, this does not prove them false.
• It is possible of some things to prove that they cannot be proven false or true, this proves them independent.

Stone argument: Can God make a stone so big He cannot lift it himself?

This one concerns the Abrahamic deity mostly, as other religions don’t dabble in omnipotence all that much. One of my favourites though, not really an argument for atheism but I’ve included it. Okay, let us say we have a formal language in which we can formalise statements about the potency of an object x, P(x) is thus a certain thing that object ‘can do’. That langauge is also able to derive inconsistencies, by showing that certain potencies lead to others being unable to perform. Such as:

• P: The potency of being able to swim.
• Q. The potency of drowning every time one is in water.

Let’s just say it is provable that P -> NOT Q in this system. Let us have a certain x for which: P(x) AND Q(x). Obviously this is an inconsistency as we derived Q(x) AND NOT Q(x). Which is what you want for an omnipotent being. From a contradiction, every-thing follows. It means that every statement we can make in the language is now true. Including negations. Thus the object is ‘x’ semantically ‘omnipotent’. Does it stroke with the logic behind the laws of physic? no. But we’re talking about God, physics are no match for this guy, he’d frag pun-pun like it’s nothing. Also, it means that all objects are omnipotent but who cares.

‘All agnosts are actually really atheists.’

Completely true. Most agnosts are actually really atheists but style agnosticism because they know they have to because of all these arguments here. If you think that is an argument for atheism…

‘Atheism isn’t a faith. Is having no hair a hair colour?’

Ehh, what? This is such gibberish flawed a statement it’s pretty much equivalent to ‘Atheism isn’t a faith, can pigs fly after being eaten by Jews in the holocaust?’ it makes no sense, sorry, it’s absurd.

What a lot of people also fail to realize is that mainstream scientific notions are not inconsistent with creationism but rather so independent of them, they are however inconsistent with Young Earth Creationism, which is some-thing completely different and chiefly an Abrahamic notion. Also, contrary to what many people believe, science has no answers to the origins of life yet. They have a few ‘plausible theories’, which could have happened, but none have yet been proven to have happened. In effect postulating any of these as truth is scientifically equally flawed as some genesis-like story

Let us just take a quote from this, by the way very talentedly-Australian comedian / musician Tim Minchin:

If anyone can show me one example in the entire history of the world of a single spiritual or religious person who’s been able to show either empirically or logically existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their maul choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife… I will give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

I’ve shown in the first argument already why this is so-so. But what’s more important is, even though he has not seen a proof of the impossibility of the task he requests, he is still willing to bet a fucking pianoforte amongst some minor things on it. It seems he’s not going by science here at all, but by his intuition, his gut-feeling. Hardly scientific of course and shows that atheists really aren’t that far from theists in this respect.

Counter-intuitiveness, the state of a situation where your gut feeling or ‘intuition’ says some-thing which is directly contradicted by rational and/or scientific arguments. One is said to be able to deal with counter-intuitiveness when one is able to let the rational arguments take præcedence over the intuition, most people cannot.

Dec 30 20:44:58 <Lajla>    Leik ehh.
Dec 30 20:45:05 <Lajla>    I want this CD.
Dec 30 20:45:10 <PFA>    do you come here often?
Dec 30 20:45:14 <Lajla>    But the catalogue of that label is in a .doc format.
Dec 30 20:45:37 <Lajla>    And I don’t have some-thing which can read .doc…
Dec 30 20:45:43 <Lajla>    And just for the second time.
Dec 30 20:45:48 <Lajla>    I forgot the adres.
Dec 30 20:45:50 <PFA>    ah, i see
Dec 30 20:46:06 <PFA>    Lajla: http://www.doc2pdf.net/
Dec 30 20:46:07 <flawd>    Lajla: openoffice is free and can read doc
Dec 30 20:46:11 <flawd>    or that
Dec 30 20:47:03 <Lajla>    I don’t have openoffice either.
Dec 30 20:47:14 <Lajla>    I don’t really use rich text.
Dec 30 20:47:15 <PFA>    then use the site i just linked you
Dec 30 20:47:18 <Lajla>    Plain text or hypertext, mostly.
Dec 30 20:47:31 <Lajla>    Well, it’s more an idea of principe.
Dec 30 20:47:50 <Lajla>    I mailed the label that they are most likely homosexual and ingaging in Scheiß-fests.
Dec 30 20:47:55 <Lajla>    Scheiße*
Dec 30 20:48:01 <Lajla>    engaging*
Dec 30 20:48:02 <Lajla>    No awi
Dec 30 20:48:04 <Lajla>    wai*
Dec 30 20:48:10 <Lajla>    Godvrdomme.
Dec 30 20:48:55 <PFA>    yeah, you know, that’s true
Dec 30 20:49:09 <PFA>    every time i save in .doc format i suddenly get this massive urge to shit in a cup and find a girl to make out with
Dec 30 20:49:16 <flawd>    Nothing wrong with being homosexual
Dec 30 20:49:18 <layne>    watch it
Dec 30 20:49:20 <layne>    seriously
Dec 30 20:49:24 *    layne has quit (Quit: leaving)
Dec 30 20:49:49 <PFA>    i’m pretty sure Lajla is bi or something, flawd, or at least has no problems with alternative sexualities. he’s probably being facetious
Dec 30 20:50:07 *    flawd nods
Dec 30 20:50:34 *    layne (~layne@localhost) has joined #asbs
Dec 30 20:50:35 *    ChanServ sets mode +q #asbs layne
Dec 30 20:50:35 *    ChanServ gives channel operator status to layne
Dec 30 20:50:46 <flawd>    wb
Dec 30 20:50:57 <flawd>    going to the grocerystore, bbs
Dec 30 20:51:00 <layne>    vpn’d in to my home network and lost conn
Dec 30 20:51:31 <Lajla>    Yah, I’m certainly not ’straight’.
Dec 30 20:51:40 <Lajla>    It’s just a German label.
Dec 30 20:52:09 <Lajla>    Engaging in Scheiße-fests is nothing wrong with either.
Dec 30 20:52:45 <layne>    don’t talk about your shit fests in here please
Dec 30 20:56:17 <Lajla>    And about homosexuality?
Dec 30 20:56:50 <layne>    that’s fine
Dec 30 20:57:06 <layne>    as long as we aren’t getting graphic details of things be it hetero or homo
Dec 30 20:57:50 <Lajla>    Some.. more than 80% of the world I’d reckon would consider two men kissing to be highly graphic if not offensive / immoral though.
Dec 30 20:58:19 <layne>    that’s alright, we don’t go by that 80% of the world
Dec 30 20:59:20 <Lajla>    You are going by the portion that considers people involved into various forms of coprophilia to be highly graphic if not offensive / immoral though.
Dec 30 21:00:41 <layne>    we aren’t here to talk about a shit fetish
Dec 30 21:00:53 <layne>    that’s not why this room is here
Dec 30 21:00:54 <jez>    ok im back :-)
Dec 30 21:00:59 <layne>    stop being a fucking smartass
Dec 30 21:01:05 <jez>    ive setup my worm-like creature (except it’s a meateater … cant stand those weakling herbivores)
Dec 30 21:01:08 <jez>    now pizza time :-)
Dec 30 21:02:16 <Lajla>    But this group is not to talk about homosexality, or Pizza? I’m just noting your bigotry here, think of this next time you talk to some-one with coprophilia and remember that person feels the same homosexuals felt 20 years ago. And think when you talk to some conservative Christian that said feels the same as you do now.
Dec 30 21:02:27 <Lajla>    I shall leave this joke now.
Dec 30 21:02:29 <Lajla>    Good luck.

The log above is a very clear example of a person not being able to deal with the counter-intuitive notion of that said’s view on coprophilia is not different than most people’s views on homosexuality thirty-odd years back. In fact, I’d reckon it to be likely that that person shared them would it be born thirty years sooner.

So, I was at station Amsterdam Bijlmer lately, you know, the part of Amsterdam were aëroplanes crash on low-paid nigger-immigrant escaped-convicts. It has a station which serves as a transit for buses, tubes and trains. Our trains are better than British trains I’ll tell you that, children and low-paid nigger-immigrants go at half price, that includes me on the days I earn little. I was using the bus however there and took a transit to another bus, again full price as it’s in the weekends and my public transport card which I get for free for failing exams at the university doesn’t cover that—else it would be free.

So, naturally you have to wait a while in the cold, which is free as well. I forgot to mention at some point that plane crashes here are not only free, but you can actually get money from them if you play it well. So this random niggerless clearly homeless guy with a bad state of dental health came to me and asked for money, I gave him 10 EUR to which he proceeded to look amazed, most people give 1 EUR or some-thing, some half a euro, and some maybe two. Ten euros is quite an extremely generous donation for some-one who’ll spend it on drugs or plane crashes any-way.

But there were a lot of other people there, so why did this homo pentadens pick me out here, and, indeed get a lot more than would he pick others out. In fact, this happens all the time to me that they pick me out, they have extravagant senses it seems, I never have cash when I come back from pentadental hubs.

I don’t look extremely ‘friendly’, it was cold so I was wearing a long coat, some of my best friends have remarked that they’d be freaked out seeing some-one in that long coat if they didn’t know it was I.

So the answer is obviously that all pentadents are extraterestials who use this as a disguise to monitor our activity for the Obsidian Order.

Seriously. Jewel cases are a joke, a joke, nothing more, a cheap business decision of labels, the end. Mass produced, impersonal ready-made packaging. Just print some inlays in standard format, and people still complain about CDr’s… at least they’re almost as good as the original for a lot cheaper. But jewel cases.. then you’re really just cutting costs to get a lot less, probably man-hours too, jewel cases can be easily ordered by some mass-production company, pressed CD’s in them, little booklet in them which offer you little choice. The difference:

In the custom cardboard fold, the artists probably had some creative input themselves, the jewel case next to it is by some Dutch band, you are a disgrace to het vaderland you hear me? And people complain about Moroccans in this country when there are still black metal outlets who style all they make in Dutch, except their promptly Scandinavian name ‘Öde’, which is probably a leftover from some cheap arse Scandinavian-fanboyism phase ‘Vinterriket’-style.. yeah… your Norwegian name ain’t lookin’ so hot now when you have to evade questions from interviewers eh? I own a lot from Vinterriket by the way in—indeed—jewel cases…

And come on, the day two weeks have passed by in which I have not received a jewel case that was damaged by mail I’ll eat my e-peen, it’s hard plastic, it’s not durable, it’s not designed to be first dumped into a box with all the other packages, then driven in a bag over the country to some airport, then endure turbulence in a plane and than the whole story in reverse, regardless how many bubble wrap. They are designed to be bought at records stores, gently being lifted out of the rack with your manipulative digits and carefully taken home to be stacked in your CD tower. They’re pussies, they can’t handle some rough usages, totally un-black metal ya know whattem sayin’? We all know black metal chicks are masochists who can take a beating, not these sluts. They weren’t designed to be ordered per mail order in the first place. I’ve long given up keeping them in good state, I’ll just replace them when it gets too bad because you can, that’s the beauty of mass-made impersonal shit though.

Stop the fucking jewel cases, they are a disgrace to your music and a fine example of how the ‘black metal scene’—regardless of how obscure you might be, like De Tenetrarum Principio (Correct Latin grammar though, no way), Insinkt, and Total Holocaust Records—in the end still has evolved from a bunch of beer drinking savage metallers who came from some Beatles-listening pop music swine. A lot of these bands still list the contributing members based on what instrument they play… Jesus Christ. That many times I have simply not bought some-thing because of the thought ’sight.. again a jewel case, grow up.’, this problem seems to be solely a problem of the ‘black metal scene’ luckily.. well and all other forms of cheap arse pop music… my Kwoon CD is also in a jewel case but those I’ll just forgive. But the pain of that my entire Trancelike Void, Trist, Vinterriket, and what-not collection came in some-thing made of hard plastic laden with cracks, had some cracks when I opened the package in no small amount of the items. Take an example of Cyclic Law, all releases in custom made carboard folds, or that one release I just pre-ordered from Like Drone Razors Through Flesh Sphere, they’re pretty secretive about how it will look, but it’s 20 ltd. and all items are hand-crafted by the master himself and from what they do tell us it will look pretty elaborate. Takes some man-hours indeed. Take some dignity and respect for your music and say no to jewel cases. ‘black metal labels’ are usually pretty strange any-way.

Those favouring low-intellectual, ludicrously taste-defunct bullshit as The Next Generation, Star Trek “Seven of Nine” Voyager and The Original Series, undeniably your taste is of heniously low a level. So low in fact that would the Great Guide of the Third Empire still be alive, he would send you to a good and merry place to learn that working creates freedom, also he would perform some obscure medical experiments on you to see if you and your twin were stitched together sans anæsthetica, would you two magically turn into a siamese monstrosity belowman limiting the growth and grandiose of the Third Empire.

It is obviously apparent to any person with a taste adequate enough to resemble my own in some faint ways that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is largely and without doubt the best product the franchise, which has lately turned Kirk into a boyband singer, had to offer thus far. Come on, even triëpisodal (word from now on, live with it) characters like Luther Sloan in Deep Space Nine had more character development than even Data—being the only character from The Next Generation one can even notice from if the episodes are aired in arbirtrary order. Gene was a sentimental bitch who probably disapproved of the merciless inhumane mistreatment of Jews during the holocaust too, priorities are essential for a growing Germanic Reich. The moral infallibility of the cast of The Next Generation just reeks of Lord of the Rings, they’re not human any-more, especially Data, live with it bitch, you’re not human, you’re a third class citizen, your penis is made of sillicone flesh, never will a girl dig a low class citizen like you. Deep Space Nine didn’t have ‘good / evil’, the characters were along a line, some of the main characters—as obfuscated that term in DS9 is any-way—also had questionable moral traits. Gul Dukat, maybe a villain? Who knows, some-times an ally, also with his human traits, in the end partly misunderstood (emo), maybe even a deluded tragic hero fighting for the wrong cause, portrayed as still giving up his career for his interracial daughter. Not even Great Hitler would do that eh? And Garak of course, you’d never know if he was the ally or not, you could until the end just see him having been a spy in the lengthily arc of the seven seasons all along. Both ‘recurring’ Cardassians having a far more realistic and complicated personality than the shallow characters of The Next Generation ever had. So many recurring characters taking the lead in so many episode. Garak was perhaps the main focus of the show for some seasons; the lengthily story arcs, the profound implications of all they did being addressed later. The rich world, the moral conflicts, the humanity of the characters of both sides.

The Prophets were a great asset too to the otherwise “”"”scientific”"”" Star Trek (for some reason people still don’t realize you don’t have to keep your impulse engines on if you go through a medium with no resistance, also, if you keep them on you keep accelarating, seeing that they reach eighty per cent of the speed of light in mere seconds according to the manual…), the mystical non-linear godlike nature of them, defying all normal physics, the prophecies, the orbs, the battle against Kosst Amojan. People who fail to realize that this is objectively superior to some stupid battle against the Borg at Wolf 359 obviously have some scary mental disorder which also manifests symptoms like believing Jews are actually human and girls below nine years old don’t crave anal sex, delusionate, go see a shrink, and if you don’t see you’re delusionate that means you’re even more.

And Quark, a main character (because it’s stated so really) but you never know if he’s the bad guy or not, morally dubious, above the law in a way, yet still friends with some of the cast, but not all, the cast doesn’t get along with every other person in the cast, it’s a directed graph. Bashir and O’Brien are obviouly brokebackmountaining off screen, Kira kind of openly hates Quark and has a fetish for strange partly translucent goos, sick girl. Odo and Quark’s bond is most intriguing, he really kind of sees him as a friend regardless of Quark being a borderline criminal. Not to mention kind of a ridiculously hypersexist capitalist, freaky disturbed people, forcing women to be nude when they look like that? Also, it rains like hell on that planet, cut them some slack. Naturally, the bond between Bashir and Garak is most intricate, are they friends? maybe they are. Do they trust each other? obviously not. Besides, again a ‘recurring’ character having a more interesting and plotwise-crucial backstory than any main character in any other Franchise ever had. When Jadzia thought she didn’t earn enough Latinum (It’s just a region close to Rome you know) and went all emo and committed suicide and wrote an emo title song ‘Tears of the Prophets’ for it, they should have made Garak a main cast member and just port Ezri to the ‘recurring’ characters. Ezri was also a splendid action, a bloody reverse-Seven of Nine, trade the shallow and cheaply attractive bold woman for the insecure and cute girl with short hair. If only Jadzia had thrice the net value of boobs combined with the obligatory spandex suit just so we noticed more it would be complete. If you cannot see why this is good, I contend you have been fucked in your eye socket one time to many, a good tip is to re-use the same one every time by the way, loosing stereoscopic vision is a small price to pay for living out your derangedly obscure hot fetishes.

Also, the abundance of recurring-but-actually-main-cast characters made it quite easy to have some play with the main cast without having to adjust the format extensively. Characters like Vic Fontain and Nog—who had a whole episode devoted to their bond together—gaining extensive screentime during the final seasons. Naturally Garak, the recurring character who, rightfully for a change, is the absolute popular favourite of the show and symbol of what DS9 is and of course Kai Winn, being most instrumental in the final episode. Damar, Dukat, Weyoun 8, The Female Changeling, Weyoun 6, Weyoun 7,  that random figurating redshirt I and no-one remembers and of course Weyoun 5.

Favourite characters: Garak (obviously), Gul Dukat, Bashir, Ezri Dax, Vic Fontaine

Favourite plot elements: The Emissary of the Prophets, a large part civilian cast, the past of Garak, the moral struggly, the story arcs.

Favourite reverse-Seven-of-Nine: Ezri Dax.

Favourite badarse food: Gagh, Kanar, Bajorans in general.

Be convinced, woman, or I so hope both, like Sofie. <3

Originally written for arthxahal.

Sect, the name bears uncanny—rather-so actually perfect—resemblance to the project ‘Sect’ within the inner circle of Front Line Assembly, we all know I may hope from being pioneers in the industrial trance genre with their album ‘Teleportation‘. I know this project via a three way split of it with two projects called ‘Bisclaveret‘ and ‘Ab-Intra‘, one whom I can certainly recommend. After the three tracks of Sect came to their turn in the middle part, the monotonous trance-like industrial sounds of noise and mechanical apparatus sparked the thought ‘Are they back from the dead…?’

This was hardly the case, this is a Polish one-man project which just happens to use the same trite name, still be this no indication of trite music, at least not on spoken-of split. The tracks might be short, but the machine-like repetition of trance-like beats with very little melodic influence safe for some strings on the back-ground there and various noises accompanied by some extremely well done intentional glitches made Sect thereon to the winner of the split release. I set out to buy it then, sold out.

As I’m sure any person owning that will request me to trade my daughter and supply of authentic Dutch stroopwafels for this CD, I instead invested some money into buying his album ‘Great Desired Utopia’ from Rage in Eden, a Polish label amusing me with some rather cute Polglish; for some strange reason, I had not listened this album for a time and it was just laying in its splendid digipack in my collection. I made up my mind to review it here before I listened to it the first time, be it a very uninteresting piece of junk one can’t tell a lot more about than that it has a trite name or some-thing I can talk pages about for the fascinating details.

So, the first track of the album is definitely an intro track, and it’s good to set the suspense, you hear by all means it’s an intro track regardless of that it’s about as long as all the others, which is around 3-4 minutes here. Would the whole album be like this, it would in no ungenerous amounts copiously suck but this is naturally not the case. The next track immediately sets the atmsophære of the militant nature of the album which the cover also gives. Martial sounding repetition, machines marching, explosions, smoke rust; industrial decay. The tracks, though each having their unique elements don’t really have an identity until we end up with tracks #05 to #07 which are a sharp detour with the first sounding some-what like a business sedan commercial tune, the second having a certain primal tropical rain-forest feel to it, again rather industrial with various toms and conga-like things. Seven sounds like some kind of elaborate apparatus being put into motion, like the closing of the defences of some kind of fortress as the enemy approaches is to be noticed in the atmosphære of the track. Neither of these three tracks has the 4/4 trance-like feel of the tracks before that and all are rather short with none coming about the two minute mark.

After this the album seems to take another chapter, a very interesting one I daresay. A melody which sounds like some-thing which should be native folk, but what ethnicity, what time, I cannot place it, the instrument is definitely a plucked string and it sounds even ’sweet’ at some points while still præserving a vestigial militant feel to it. Again, here seems to be no clear 4/4 trance-like guidance but instead some beats resembling the work of Nest. Indeed—the whole track has a sort of feel of an industrial; machine-like take on the Finnish project Nest. However this does not sound out of place too much, though is unexpected and one could argue whether or not this should be on this album, as a standalone track this track ‘Dusk‘ is however a very strong one combining elements of Old Vinterriket, Nest and what went before in the album and even In Gowan Ring.

This ‘chapter’ however lasts only one track as the next track is again militant in all power, and stronger than before, a fast page march with various noise like sounds, very thinly layered in a sense baring resemblance almost to IDM artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre in a way in the sounds used. Though I cannot claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of both IDM artists and being able to listen to IDM on a comprehensive level. After this, the album again remains militant, coming up after this with a completely un-trancelike but very hectic and drastic with some nasty unpolished synth lines of which I can understand the artist’s motivation but still feel the choice of synth setting takes some-what away from the music here due to its ‘Ferry Corsten-resemblance’, the only and only murderer of trance back in the days. After this there is a very ambient-like track with indeed no less influence of beat, however the ambient atmosphære seems to take more prominence here, becoming almost that space-like for words like ‘No, I am your father’ to not at all be out of place.

After this point I get some-what confused… the CD clearly says the last one was the final track, but the joy is far from over, there are still four tracks beyond this point. I am inclined to assume they are bonus tracks then. Luckily the CD is correctly tagged and my notebook can read their names.

The first of these seems to be split into three parts, the first being motive and seemingly ever in progression, the break part being more static, also more calm yet more of a militant feel, after this break, it picks up again where it left. The track after this sounds like a nightmare or a dream, what it is I’m not sure, it seems to hover between both. Some parts have active beats, some don’t. After this a good cold ‘assembly line’ track full of suspense yet rather static throughout the track with some WWII-radio-like vocal samples in it. Finally, the last track which is pure aggression and violence, but again with a sophisticatedly crafted atmosphære in it, ending on some-thing which indeed resembles a closure of an album.

All-in-all, the tracks might be too short for some people, they would be for me if I played them as single entities but they seem to be more be passages of one larger work as a lot of them are essentially static in their whole. My personal favourites were ‘Dusk‘, the only one of them fit for listening out of context, and ‘Machine’s Amok‘.

tracklisting:

#01 Thy Legions Come
#02 Here Is No Salvation
#03 Armament Race Part I (Doctrine In Practice)
#04 Armament Race Part II (Prepare For Seldestruction)
#05 Breath
#06 Reconstruction Of Human Nature
#07 Last Command
#08 Dusk
#09 I (Slaves Constitution)
#10 Never Ending War
#11 They Dying For Idea
#12 Product
#13 Machine’s Amok
#14 All That Ages
#15 This Is Not The End

The Titles of the album are well-chosen to reflect the pessimistic, militant, and machine-like nature of the album. Like the Strogg from Quake almost in that machinal warfare is the only way of life.