Facebook, the ultimate social platform.

Facebook, a virtual meetingplace, a new market for products with the availability to surgically target their peers, a place to hang out. Facebook has over 500'000'000 users, that is, amazingly, about 7-8% of the world population. In other words, about 83% of the world's internet users. To compare this with something, it took the internet about fifty years to get 600'000'000 users, Facebook used six to get the 500 million. Wait, that's a bad comparison, remember: you can't compare Facebook. (That is not true, another extreme is Tesco, which has half a billion employees, but they don't exist in France, so it doesn't count)



Facebook is a 25 billion dollar industry, with about 1700 employees. And you thought that football is a industry of people who are immensely overpaid? Well, it is, but anyways. David Beckham earns about 80p a second, that is, exactly, 25'245'540 pounds and eighty cents, about 39'730'166 dollars; 0.1% of what Facebook is valued for. Facebook is one industry that actually shits money, literary; all the waste and crap produced by Facebook make money. This is the perfect image of total profiteering, it is the Mona Lisa, to use a figurative imagery, of our time. Though, what it really is: it is the Oidipus of our time, and soon it will be us that blind ourselves with the brooches of irony.

The irony? Well, the irony of sharing, the time use, the social interaction, the illusion. Facebook is built on irony. We, one of the millions on millions of teenagers who use Facebook, log on to this website, everyday, several times, to interact with other social human beings.

We share personal information so that friends and the cute girl from the party yesterday can easily find you, information that is stored for future use, information that is sold to third parties. Everytime you accept a new, cool application on Facebook they gain access on your information. I am not saying that Facebook is creating this database which they are going to use to take over the world, but I AM saying that we are entering a world of total surveillance, and it is spiraling out of control. And we accept this, we don't reconsider or even consider the implications this has on our life today, and tomorrow. Everything you say, every meaning you express, every thought and idea you share, is stored, categorized and used. Personal conversations over 'Facechat' is private in the context that your friends may not see the dirty conversations between you and your secret lover, but Facebook can, but why do you care? Facebook won't tell, will they?

We use hours, and hours every day, hours used to socialize with our friends online. And isn't that why Facebook was made? So we could gather all our friends in one place, so we didn't have to waste time on calling texting, MSNing all my different friends in order to plan a night out, or PJ party at my place next weekend. But wait, what? Facebook was created in order to save time? So tell me then, why do we spend more time on Facebook than we do with our friends? Why do we spend more time on Facebook than we do on School, Workout, Family? There is no such thing as free-time (there is barely a thing called sleep-time), there is only, Facebook-time.

So we use all of these hours online, talking to friends, planning the next weekend, saying yes to events that you will never really attend: we socialize. Socializing is not longer what the Webster dictionary say is "to participate actively in a social group". Socializing is to be, on Facebook.
We live in the illusion that our lives have become more socialized, more active. We believe that we have more gotten more friends, we feel that we have achieved a higher social status, and we love it. We love everything about Facebook, and that is why we will never quit using it. It is a industry of 500 million mindless zombies, posting witty quotes on their wall, responding to their friends 'less' witty quotes. It is a industry that you log on to to milk your cow, or kill your friend in a mafia war. It is the industry of the ultimate social interaction for our time, and the future. It is an industry that captures the attention of students and workers alike, creating a society slowly deteriorating into monotony, and we log into Facebook to escape from that monotony. And if you try to escape, Facebook adapts. It has adapted to several millions websites, it has adapted into Wikipedia, it has adapted into you pocket. There is only one thing that it has not yet adapted into, and hopefully never will. That is, China.

China is the smartest country in the world, it did something that no other country ever thought of, what every country should have done, and therefore saved the future for itself and its citizens: it blocked Facebook.

Raison D’être - The Gods Envy Us Because We Are Mortal

"The gods envy us because we are mortal"

The thing that differ humans from the gods is that only the gods can live in a paradise forever, living in ignorance and bliss. They live in the heavens, where time has no meaning, and death is non-existent. Every day is a feast, a party and a ball. Since they are the creators of all things we know to be (and they have no needs to satisfy and if they did, they could satisfy them easily with their godly powers) they never need to worry about tomorrow, the past or the present. Also referring to the epicureans:

Don’t fear God.
Don’t worry about death.
What is good is easy to get.
What is terrible is easy to endure.

The Gods are the perfect role model for this humanistic teaching. The Gods are not concerned about anything, they need not to fear anything, not even death, and they get what they desire. Where this is a lifestyle that we want, we envy the Gods for their easy and ignorant lives. So why would the Gods envy us when they live the life that we desire, the kind of life we strive to live? Why are the Gods, whom never age, never get wrinkles or diseases, envy at us because we are mortal?

Everyone is dying, and we all will die. Death is diverse; old age, disease, cancer, war and the list go on to the infinite. And even so death is the most common thing we humans share in this world; death is what we try to cure. We pray so that we might live long, or live eternal in the afterlife. We develop medicine and live healthy life styles so that we can live ten years more. While someone dies in despair and others in peace, death shares one common property: Death gives us the reason to live, without death, there can be no life.

And what is life without a reason to live? Where waking up tomorrow has no meaning, because there will always be another tomorrow. What you do today matters, because tomorrow forms by the choices you do now. What you do with your life has an impact on the world and your children. Death gives us a raison d’être, and meaning is happiness. A life without meaning is an empty shell haunting the surface of the earth. Making goals, plans and dreams is our desire to make accomplishments before we die, but if we will live forever, what is there?



The gods are envy at Achilles, for he was mortal. And because of his mortality, people respected him for his bravery and skills. To charge in battle when your life is at stake, and when you do it with such carelessness as Achilles, you make history. Achilles name is remembered because he did something extraordinary in his life, something that others have not. The Gods are remembered because we fear them; we dare not to forget them so we are kept safe from harm. So the gods are envy at Achilles, for the gods are remembered through fear, but Achilles’ name is made immortal because of his mortality.

Stick Figures and Life!

I have found one thing I have talent in; drawing stick figure comics! And not like the previous one on this blog, no, musch simpler than that! Just simple stick figures, with good humor and rubbish punchlines!

But I can't write it on my computer! So either get a scanner or one of those pads that allow you to write on the computer, but I have bad experience with those, so not those ... So scanner then! But couldn't be bothered buying one!



But anyways, I cannot cry, because nothing new in my life has changed! Yet, I feel this despair that never goes away. That is how life is, life gives you a carrot, and then beats you with the stick, so don't be the donkey like me! Be the farmer! Dig in the ground, let the seeds grow, and when it's time, harvest the good fruits given to you by the earth! But watch out, sacrifice is always needed, and hapiness never last if you are too greedy!

(That was a love metaphor, if you didn't get that ... stupid!)

But do you know why I love stick figures better than life? Because anyway how you do it, a stick figure will always be as easy to draw, as last week. But life, only gets harder and harder to live, for each day that passes!

Medicority of the Human kind

Are we alone in the universe? This is one of the questions that have haunted mankind for decades, and even now, we are no closer to the answer.



(Problems watching the clip? Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBIsp8mS-c)

Stephen Hawking has a interesting viewpoint when it comes to the theory of the universe (preferably called multiverse). In this lecture, I refer to the last minutes of Stephen Hawking's speech about the possibility of other civilizations close to our proximity.

If you want to read on the Medicority principle, or the Drake equation, kindly related to my topic.

Now, as I said I refer to Stephen Hawking's last minutes, where he answers to the TED host's question: "Professor, if you had to guess either way do you now believe that it is more likely that now, we are all alone in the milky way as a civilization at our level of intelligence or higher?"

Now, his answer is what I find quite interesting, and it emphasizes what we now talk about these days. "It is more likely that civilizations don't last very long, and destroy themselves". Some decades ago we had the fear of a nuclear war; today we are still afraid of nuclear bombs in the hand of the wrong nations and terrorists. But what more likely is, that we will destroy ourselves in the way we terrorize the global climate, or a nuclear winter as in Fermi and Frost. How we murder each other, and wager war against special groups of people or religion. We walk around, afraid of exploding hypernovas and deadly asteroids, when the real fear, is to be afraid of ourselves.

The failed climate meeting in Copenhagen is a painful reminder that we are not determined to revolt against our nature, so that we might make a change. We can yell and scream at our leaders as much as we want to, but the leaders of the democracy have been elected by the people and the people is us. We are the unthinkable majority, who won't give up a little luxury so that our children can grow up in a clean earth with a sustainable Earth. Referring to the Brundtland Commission, we should today aim to create a "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Wich we today are not.

Human is stupid and ignorant, there is nothing we can do to change that. But what we can do is to choose in what world we want to live in. The world of today is a consumer orientated, capitalistic regime, focusing only to create profit, and how to "best" allocate the scare resources. But for a society like this we need to live in a society, where its people are divided into three separate groups; the poor, the middle and the rich.
The poor class is the biggest, where people live in harsh and inhuman conditions, and serve as a fodder for the richer part of the population. Without this class, we would not have the cheap workforce we have today, and the capitalistic system would crumble.
The middle class is significantly smaller than the poor class, but larger than the rich class. These people provide the services needed for the rich to live an easy and comfortable life. They are depended on the rich, just as the poor. But these middle class men have the possibility, through hard work, to become a part of the wealthy class. But the poor is pretty much stuck. For you don't want the cheap working force to diminish or revolt, so you give them no option to escape from their miserable life.

Another way for the capitalism to thrive is trough war, and is the only way to create consumable goods without increasing wealth. It gives the producers profit, but the consumer gets a good he consumes, but it doesn't increase his wealth in the same way a new sofa would make his property more "wealthy". I refer this idea to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Will human change? Or will we just one day crumble because of our own ignorance and idiocy! I have made up my mind, and I want to make a better world for us, and not only me. We all have to sacrifice something for the common good, and for the future to have future at all. This is not something anyone can force you to, we all make our own choices, and free will is the greatest principle of all. But how much off that will you sacrifice?

The Earth is a lie!

*Click the image to get larger version*

So, in TOK we are talking about the Hollow Earth theory, against the theory saying the Earth is a solid mass of stone and rubbel with a hot, floating mantel inside. Now, my question to you is, why is Rick wrong, the third person, but not Bob and Flynn, the first two persons?