Monday, August 2, 2010

stand up against anti-racist propaganda

-At least two of my friends have reported that an ethnic studies class they took spread anti-white ideas. For example, white men only date Asian women because they are exotic.

-Once I told an indian dude in judo that black people are usually born with a greater proportion of fast-twitch muscles, suitable for explosive movements like sprinting and jumping. You know what he said? "That's racist!" People these days. I wonder what he would have said if I told him that Asian people are shorter than white people.

-Ethnic studies classes always say this: "Race is cultural, not biological. Everything is a cultural construct, and there are no physical differences." WTF? They are basically denying that white people are taller than asian people, hiding their head in the sand and spreading their gospel that every race is genetically identical.

-Ethnic studies classes always emphasize that every race has the same intelligence and ability. That is almost certainly a lie. We do not have enough knowledge to conclude whether or not all races have the same innate genetic intelligence. Given all genetic differences between races of the world, it doesn't even matter if our DNA is 99.99% the same: Obviously this 0.01% can make a huge difference in facial attributes and bone density, so why can't it affect other things such as learning potential? Here's an analogy: Bubba and Bubbette have two children who are not twins. One is orange and one is blue (note my careful choice of colors). The orange one gets and education and the blue one doesn't. In 1950 America proclaims that the blue one is inferior. In 2010 America proclaims that both have identical intelligence. BOTH CLAIMS (racist and anti-racist) HAVE NO SUBSTANTIATING EVIDENCE.

-Ethnic studies classes would have us believe that certain minorities, such as black women and Asian men, are perceived as ugly because of the brainwashing media and Hollywood depicting white people as angelic beauties. They never bothered to consider that some people might really just tend to be ugly! Face is an important universal identifier of attractiveness, ingrained by evolution and TRANSCENDING culture, and different races have different faces. They also never bothered to consider that Asians are very non-hairy, which is a FEMININE feature. Females do not have chest hair, and neither do most Asian men. And most girls do not like girly men; this is also evolutionary rather than cultural, for obvious reasons.

-Music classes would have us believe that Western musical harmony is widespread because of cultural imperialism. They say that as babies we would not prefer one system over another. However, let's note some important facts: The Asian pentatonic scale and the Middle Eastern phrygian minor scale are both SUBSETS of Western chromatic tonality! This means that you can create foreign styles with the Western system, but you cannot create Western music with the foreign system. It therefore comes as no surprise that each of these cultures saw value in enriching their music with new colors. In turn, Western music was also enriched with foreign elements, so it's not like the spread was one-directional.

The civil rights movement involved focus on equality for human beings, skepticism towards propaganda like "whites are superior," and committing to what is right. I ask you now to maintain this attitude towards the new rising tide. Remain a TRUE liberal, and don't hop on the bandwagon of liars out of SHARED FEAR of racism.


Thursday, July 15, 2010

hot chick, drug experiments, and judo dream

RAW TEXT (short version): Took pix Everyone likes me Into society room hit on chick kiss good results. I leave. Days later dream breathe/run to same room sign forms for society no time commitment. Days later drink weird juice fan very cold. I dance but they say "wut u doin?" Not party. Tests. Effects subside but I know movie ends w everyone dying. Oh before that, while fan cold Mr Grantham goes out of room and doesn't let me out. Concerned admin. Ok so he's gonna make us drink another. I slowly then quietly run away. run a lot till I in field near dorm but he appear from other side We judo (he Han now) but he say if I beat him at judo he'll curse/kill me I'm like wtf.


DETAILED RECOLLECTIONS (long version):

I was with my family, and we were leaving this place to go home. Parents and sister had gone ahead, but I had taken a detour into one of many rooms in this building. It is some sort of long but informal dining room, with long tables.

I stride confidently into the room and there's a lot of dudes and a couple of chicks. They are just drinking and having a good time, and they remind me of frat/sorority people. Though no one knows me, everyone welcomes me because I am the new random guy who walked in. Somehow I also strike up a fun conversation with the one hot chick.

There is one adult about 30 years old. He takes some pictures of us. I pose with the hot chick and kiss her a bit. She playfully pretends to reject me but actually likes it.

I say gotta go and run back to rejoin my family and we leave. I realize no one has my phone number or even name. Oh well.

---stuff happens here. I think maybe I even awaken for a bit, then fall back asleep.---

I am jogging back to the dining room place (which I now know to be in UC Berkeley), because I want to get a chance to hang out with those fun people again. I arrive at the sign-up headquarters building, which is empty. The only person in the building is the 30-yr-old cameraman I saw earlier. He tells me he is the head of the organization of these people. I ask what the "time commitments" are. He tells me there are no mandatory tasks, chores, or volunteer activities, or any sort of "time commitment" other than having fun -- no strings attached other than an $80 payment per year for booze and such. So I sign up.

Next I walk into another dining hall style room. The people I met earlier are all there. We start drinking a bit. I also drink some spiked punch.

Minutes later I start to realize the air coming from the fan is very, very cold relative to the rest of the room. Since it is a regular fan with no cooling device I grow suspicious and ask people what is going on. They don't seem to care. Everyone is just sitting or talking quietly; no one is partying.

To try to relieve the tension I get up and dance in the middle of a circle. But they look at me like "what are you doing?" and it's not because of my bad dancing. I realize it is because we're not here to party. We are drinking strange drugs as an experiment for the 30-yr-old dude. Everyone is sitting around idly or talking quietly, looking serious. No smiles. No laughter. I only just realized.

I try to exit the room, but the 30-yr-old dude -- who is now my band teacher Mr. Grantham -- beats me to the door, exits the room and locks the door so I can't get out. I rattle the door handle thinking that he is not evil and will let me leave, but he just glares at me. I look outside the clear windows walls and he is talking to an investigator, apparently assuring him that nothing strange is going on inside the room.

The fan is still unnaturally cold. I know that the coldness is part of a hallucination, an effect of the drug.

The effects are subsiding but I know this dream will end with everyone dying, including me if I don't act soon. The 30-yr-old -- who is now my former Sound Art teacher -- walks back into the room and prepares a bubbly, pinkish liquid in a pot. He begins to offer the liquid to each person, all of whom voluntarily walk up and drink it. There's no way I'm going to subject myself to another, possibly deadly drug. Yet I know refusal is unacceptable and will be punished. So I rise and begin walking towards the exit, slowly at first to not appear suspicious, before breaking into a full-out dream-sprint (meaning, I am running as fast as I can as though underwater).

I successfully escape the room and run up some streets. A car rounds a corner and almost hits me. The man is still chasing me.

Suddenly as I am setting foot on a field (which resembles Duke University more than UC Berkeley) the guy -- who is now the Caucasian version of my Korean Judo Master -- appears from the OPPOSITE direction from which I was running. We judo spar a bit. He warns me that if I beat him, he will curse and/or kill me. My last thought is, "now that is very uncharacteristic of Master Han -- shouldn't he be happy if I beat him, because it means he taught me well?"

Thursday, July 8, 2010

parkour/judo dream

I remember towards the end of my dream that I open my backyard gate a bit and peer outside, watching the silhouette of some dude my age walking towards me. I feel that he is hostile so I start to run back and he fires a couple of shots at me.

I parkour over my backyard's tall cement fence. Since he can't parkour he has to go all the way around to get his car first, during which I hit the emergency red button on an emergency post.

A police car who received my distress call zooms by and a backpack is flung out its window into my arms. I reach into the bag; the policeman has provided me a pistol with which to defend myself.

The antagonist, who is now my friend Sid, has finally found his car and is driving towards me. I shoot at him and his accomplice directly in the head, but either I miss or they have hard heads. Then they get out of their car and run towards me. Finally I drop one of the one who is not Sid after multiple head shots. The other guy (who is also not Sid anymore) runs up to me and I do ouchi-gari on him and then try to get into an advantageous ground position to pin him.

All this time the police officer is just sitting there in his car watching the show.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Dream: President strikes deal with devil

The president, currently an old white male, tells me, "You know, a deal with the devil could greatly benefit America." Then the devil appears. He is a normal-looking guy who is bald. But he is very big, like a giant.

The devil asks the president, "Mr. President, pardon my bringing up a matter of intolerable insignificance... but is there a fly on my head?" pointing to the normal-looking fly on his bald head.

"Why, yes," answers the president. The devil then grabs the fly and flicks it towards the president. While sailing through the air it becomes a large palm-sized mosquito. The president catches this mosquito in his hands and clutches it like it is a valuable piece of gold, speechless with reverence and awe of the devil. But his facial expression soon changes from admiration to dismay, as he chokes and dies from mosquito-poisoning.


More or less what the Devil looked like


More or less what the president looked like

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ideas for the future of gaming

Games are becoming more and more cinematic, featuring almost-photorealistic graphics, 7.1 surround sound (better than a home theater), stereotypical Hollywood music (not a bad thing), and stereotypical Hollywood special effects (not a bad thing either).

After all the technological advances recently made, the biggest pitfall of modern games is still the mode of input. Allow me to explain.

Here I am playing the story for Modern Warfare 2. This scene is set in a sub-urban setting that uncannily resembles Pleasanton. We're driving down a small street in a tank and I see Pleasanton-ish houses to either side, one of which is hanging an American flag from their wall. The unmistakable American format of the "Speed Limit: 25" sign is an intense reminder that this war is being fought in the US. I think to myself, "holy shit this is intense; I've never played a war game set in such a familiar place." And now there are people shooting at me, and I have to run for cover. Behind a house with wooden fences that look exactly like the ones we have in Pleasanton. Oh, and there's 3D sound.

Given all this awesomeness you'd think we'd have invented by now a way to simulate running around and crouching. But no. Just like 10 years ago I still used WASD and the mouse to move. To sprint faster all I have to do is press shift. Oh so hard. In fact the funniest part was the intense scene in which I have to pull a knife out of my stomach to throw it at someone, and it takes like a whole minute to pull it out because I am in pain, and the screen is all blurry and intense, and... the way to take it out is to press F really fast.


Ideas for the future of gaming:

1. An omni-directional treadmill on which you can run. People are trying to develop something like this but so far, demonstrations have not been able to go beyond walking speed.

2. 3D goggles or contact lenses that span your entire vision. This is the one I'm iffy about. Even with one eye closed, we still can choose where to focus. Is it possible to simulate focusing on 50 meters away with the screen is 0.1 inches away? Dunno.

3. High-resolution "texture" (in a literal, not graphical sense) gloves. Each finger of the glove will have a matrix of tiny "pixels" that can be raised or lowered. A rough material will probably have staggered raised pixels. A smooth material will have all pixels at the same level. To simulate sliding your hand across something, simply perform translation on the pixels as you would an LCD screen.

4. A way to simulate parkour: Is there some way to simulate doing a pull-up by using a full-bodied suit with joint locks and strength resistance at every joint, and a treadmill that can also rise and lower in elevation? What about a cat grab (parkour move)? I've been thinking about this and can't come up with a solution. I think maybe if the suit was given an extremity that can stably attach to the ceiling, it would work. Or the treadmill can spontaneously spawn obstacles when you get into range, by folding and unfolding wood really fast.

Feel free to steal any of these ideas as long as it means progress will ensue. I look forward to the day that I can play Mirror's Edge with my entire body instead of just mouse and keyboard.

Oh and I know someone might tell me it would be simpler to just "do this stuff in real life." But it is hard to jump across a 20-foot chasm between two skyscrapers in real life, while pursued by a mob of machine gunning helicopters.

Friday, June 4, 2010

The Ultimate Philosophical Question

One of the most intriguing questions in philosophy (and religion I suppose) is "why was there a world, instead of nothingness?" Well, I've got an even scarier question. It is:

Why is there such a thing as your first-person consciousness? (from my point of view, I substitute "your" for "my")



That question is the ultimate question and sadly slips by many people's brains. I have pondered it since I was three. It was extremely hard for me to word, and I tried to ask my friend this question years ago to no avail; he kept misunderstanding me. He kept saying "because I was lucky enough to be born into this world," which, although true, is completely unrelated to my question.

Hopefully, now that I have worded it a bit better, people will understand the question. In a nutshell, what I am asking is "why isn't the world just full of he's and she's? Why was there a ME?" WARNING: I am not marveling at my fortune for having been born, or put forth in the world, or existed or whatever; instead, I am marveling that there is such a thing as a "me" consciousness in the first place.

Do you understand my question? If so, please discuss, or offer better wordings.


The Ultimate Philosophical Question

One of the most intriguing questions in philosophy (and religion I suppose) is "why was there a world, instead of nothingness?" Well, I've got an even scarier question. It is:

Why is there such a thing as your first-person consciousness? (from my point of view, I substitute "your" for "my")



That question is the ultimate question and sadly slips by many people's brains. I have pondered it since I was three. It was extremely hard for me to word, and I tried to ask my friend this question years ago to no avail; he kept misunderstanding me. He kept saying "because I was lucky enough to be born into this world," which, although true, is completely unrelated to my question.

Hopefully, now that I have worded it a bit better, people will understand the question. In a nutshell, what I am asking is "why isn't the world just full of he's and she's? Why was there a ME?" WARNING: I am not marveling at my fortune for having been born, or put forth in the world, or existed or whatever; instead, I am marveling that there is such a thing as a "me" consciousness in the first place.

Do you understand my question? If so, please discuss, or offer better wordings.