Subjective Morality

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Synthetic organisms who commune to make every decision and giant, octopoid robots that destroy all life every 50,000 years? Those are mostly original. Big insects are not. Plus, biologically speaking, giant insects couldn’t survive in normal gravity because their exoskeletons would be too heavy. This is why insects are so small today; when they lived in the water, millions of years ago, they were much bigger.

Mass Effect 2 basically tries to justify the Collectors by making them genetically modified Protheans. Yeah, whatever.

And those scions are fuckin’ annoying.

I was in AP calculus the other day and several of the junior girls in front of me were talking about how they weren’t going to go into AP English next year (a class that I’m currently in) because English is so hard. They were talking about how they don’t know when to use a comma and a semicolon and all the other punctuation marks. I really wanted to butt in and teach them, but I didn’t. They brought up an interesting idea though: a high-school class for grammar. They complained that they didn’t know the precise rules of English grammar because none of their English teachers ever taught them, which is probably a part of the whole “descriptivist” trend in education that’s been going on since the 70’s; foster critical thought by giving the students a prompt and having them write about it. It’s true, you don’t see English grammar taught like it was in the fifties, where the teacher stood at the front of the class and had the students memorize what he wrote down on the board. The last English class I took that taught any sort of grammar was in sixth grade, and even then it was just the basics of clauses. I pretty much taught myself proper grammar by studying what I read, back in 9th grade. That method worked pretty well for me, but it depends on what you read. If you’re studying fan-fiction on the net, don’t expect to find good grammar there.

So, back to the idea of a grammar class. It could be optional, giving students a choice in whether they take it or not, but I think it should be mandatory. Grammar is essential when you get to college English; you can’t expect to get a good grade on a college English paper and not know where to put a comma. It should be taken in either sophomore or junior year, because freshman year is too early and senior year is too late. The curriculum would be moderately paced, so that no one’s left behind. They could cover certain relatively short books, like Camus’ The Stranger, and study the grammar and syntax, to help them understand.

It appalls me every day how many kids at my high school don’t understand basic English grammar, and I think this class would go a long way in resolving this problem.

Chris Pirillo is a very popular techy. He’s the first Chris on Google, he’s broadcasting his entire life on the internet, he makes YouTube videos, and I am officially sick of him.

It’s not that I hate him; I just can’t stand him anymore. He’s a little boy at heart, and it shows a little too much in his videos for my tastes. What really put me over the edge, though, were his new grammar nazi videos. So you know what I’m talking about, I’ve embedded one below:

Chris, these videos are insulting, annoying, and don’t solve shit. Someone who’s making these grammatical errors is not going to change their ways because a hairy Italian imp yells at them, and this is why I’ve unsubscribed from you. I would rather see some interesting tech news than this shit. Bye-bye.

Did you prefer OS X Tiger’s cute lightness to Leopard’s graphite grey? There’s two small terminal switches you can use to get leopard to look like this:

Open up Terminal (Applications -> Utilities) and enter these two commands:

defaults write -g AppleUseCoreUI -bool NO

and:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues NO

Log out and then back in and you should see the changes. If you want to revert back to Leopard’s look, you just need to replace NO with YES in the terminal commands and run them again.

PS: This also works with Snow Leopard.

This is a response to an article in Win7 News, which you can read in its entirety here. The author, Deb Shinder, is a Windows/Microsoft fan. I am decidedly more in the Apple camp. In her article, Shinder talks about the popular perception that Microsoft copied aspects of OS X’s user interface for Windows 7, and then goes on to explain how various examples of said copying aren’t really good examples. After this, she then goes on to a larger thesis: that it doesn’t matter if Windows copies OS X or if Linux copies OS X or Windows, because they all descended from the first GUI developed by Xerox. I don’t really care about that last thesis; I don’t have any qualms with it. I would just like to address some of the more ridiculous points in the article.

Point 1: “I’m writing this on a Windows 7 computer, and I have a Mac running Snow Leopard sitting right across the room. Do they look alike? Not really. Are there similarities? Sure – they both have taskbars (which Apple calls a dock), they both have desktop icons, they both have “pretty” interfaces. The Windows 7 taskbar is far more functional, though: if I hover over a dock icon on the Mac, I get nothing but a pop-up of the application’s or folder’s name. If I hover over a taskbar icon in Win7, I get a preview of every instance of that app that’s open.”

I have to dispute that the Windows 7 taskbar is more functional. This is just my thing, but I hate having to take two steps to get what I want when one would do just fine.¹ If I have IE open with multiple tabs and I click on its icon in the taskbar, I get presented with all the open tabs. No, clicking on IE doesn’t switch me to my last open tab, it asks me which tab I’d like to switch to, which gets really, really annoying after awhile. The main function of the taskbar should be to, um, switch tasks, not ask me which task I’d like to switch to, which requires more thought and time.

Point 2: “Some say the ability to pin apps to the taskbar in Windows 7 is a case of copying the dock. But we have been able to put apps on the taskbar since Windows 95, in the form of the Quick Launch bar. There’s nothing new about that.”

Oh, sure, Windows users² have been able to pin apps to the taskbar for a long time with Quick Launch, but with Windows 7, the two jobs of task managing and app launching have been combined in the new taskbar. How is there “nothing new” about that?

Point 3: “How about desktop gadgets? Did Microsoft copy Mac’s widgets? Not really. Leaving aside the fact that gadgets were introduced in Vista, not Windows 7, they don’t work the same way as the Mac widgets. Although both are small applications that provide information (clocks, weather, stock market info, etc.), there’s a fundamental difference in the way they’re implemented. On the Mac, the widgets reside on the “Dashboard.” When you have the Dashboard displayed, you can’t do anything with your other applications. When you click on an application window, the Dashboard disappears. I can’t find a way to be able to work on a document and see my widgets at the same time, as I can so easily do with Windows gadgets.”

Who said gadgets were introduced with Windows 7? No one. Spotty rhetoric, this. It’s a totally moot point anyway, as Konfabulator (now known as Yahoo! Widgets) was the first widget application, dating back to 2003.

Point 4: “What else? The Start button? The Mac puts its Apple button on a whole different taskbar, across the top of the screen. It contains some of the same things as the Windows Start menu: recent items, the options to sleep, restart, shutdown or log off. But it’s not nearly as flexible; the Windows Start menu displays your favorite applications in the top left section, most recently used apps in the bottom left section, and links to commonly accessed folders and tools (documents, pictures, music, downloads, the computer, the network, devices and printers, Control Panel) in the right section. Windows 7 also places the Search box here, whereas the Mac’s search tool is at the far right of the top taskbar.”

First, that thing at the top of the Mac’s screen? Yeah, that’s a menubar, not a taskbar, you know, because a menubar has, like, menus and stuff, whereas a taskbar has, like, tasks. Second, WTF? Why are we even talking about the Start Menu? I’ve never once heard anyone say that Microsoft copied the Start Menu from Apple. Only Microsoft could come up with something as unpolished and overcomplicated as the Start Menu. And third, Spotlight pwns Windows Desktop Search.

Point 5: “As I’ve mentioned before, Apple has “borrowed” or “adapted” just as many ideas from Windows as the other way around. They’re just now getting around to releasing a 64 bit desktop OS, they’ve “copied” Exchange support from Windows, Leopard introduced “stacks” for combining items in the dock (emulating the “groups” that did the same, years before, in Windows). Apple’s Quick Look for viewing documents in the Finder without opening them seemed a whole lot like Vista’s Explorer preview pane, which came first. I could go on, but here’s my point: just because two operating systems have a similar look, or even have similar features, that doesn’t mean that one is a “copy” of the other. And if Apple folks think it’s such an outrage for Microsoft’s operating systems to adopt features that are similar to their own, why don’t they feel the same sort of outrage about all the new graphical interfaces for Linux that look so much like Mac and Windows? Heck, if Microsoft were really out to “copy” OS X, wouldn’t they have ripped off my very favorite thing about the Mac interface: the genie effect?”

What are you smoking? How did Apple copy Windows by making OS X 64-bit? Was 64-bit technology invented by Microsoft? I don’t think so. Exchange support? How is Apple supposed to have exchange support before Microsoft does? Exchange is a Microsoft product! You’re comparing Stacks to task grouping? Seriously? And don’t even get me started on the differences between Quick Look and that useless chunk of space called the Preview Pane.

Listen, all of these points? They don’t matter, because the fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple innovates. When’s the last time Microsoft’s done anything radically different? Windows is still using technologies from twenty years ago. Apple completely rebuilt Mac OS from the ground up only 9 years ago. Just look at the Zune: why did Microsoft want a piece of the PMP market? Because of Apple’s iPod. What is the Zune HD if not a less functional iPod Touch? The Zune HD even has a message on its side that says, “hello from seattle” (sic). Sound familiar? What about Windows Mobile? When’s the last time Microsoft released an update for Windows Mobile that wasn’t just a shoddy paint job? ‘Sbeen awhile, it has.

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

I recently downloaded several OpenBox themes by Sebastian Sareyko, provided by the ever-awesome K. Mandla, and one of them, Blat, was just so nice that I had to mod it:

My changes are fairly subtle except for the window-buttons, but I like them. If you like them too, you can download my mod here. There’s a .obt as well as a source folder so you can make your own changes.

Below is a list, in alphabetical order, of some of the common and not-so-common acronyms in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

General Acronyms

A.C.D.C. = American Council of Disseminators of Cable

A.F.R = Les Assassins des Fauteuils Roulents (Wheelchair Assassins.)

ACOA = Adult Children of Alcoholics

ACOG = Adult Children of Gamblers

ACONA = Adult Children of Narcotics Addicts

ALGOL = ALGOrithmic Language

ATHSCME = It’s not clear what it stands for. It’s a company that makes really big fans.

B.S. = Before Subsidization (Before the subsidization of time, wherein companies purchased the rights to name a year after a product, i.e. Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Year of Glad.)

B.S.S. = Bureau des Services sans Specificite (The Québécois acronym for O.U.S.)

C.T. = Charles Tavis (Hal’s uncle and the headmaster of ETA after Hal’s father kills himself with a microwave oven.)

C.U.S.P. = Clean U.S. Party (The party of President Gentle.)

E.T.A. = Enfield Tennis Academy

E.W.D. = Empire Waste Displacement

HmH = Headmaster’s House

M.G.M. = Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts

M.O. = Modus Operandi

O.N.A.N. = Organization of North American Nations (The new country formed by the combination of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.)

O.N.A.N.C.A.A. = Organization of North American Nations Collegiate Athletics Association

O.N.A.N.T.A. = Organization of North American Nations Tennis Association

O.U.S. = Office of Unspecified Services

P.A.C. = Political Action Committee

P.G.O.A.T. = Prettiest Girl Of All Time (A.k.a. Joelle v. Dyne.)

S.A.S. = Substance Abuse Services

SOP = Standard Operating Procedure

TP = Teleputer

U.H.I.D. = Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (A group that Joelle joins after her face is marred by her own mother, who accidentally throws acid in her face while trying to mar herself.)

U.S.D.D. = United States Department of Defense

U.S.T.A. = United States Tennis Association

V.D. = Victory by Default

WASP = White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

W.H.I.N.E.R.S. = Wounded, Hurting, Inadequately Nurtured but Ever-Recovering Survivors

Y.D.A.U. = Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

Eschaton Acronyms

AMNAT = American Nations

CONFORCON = Conventional-Force Concentration

INDDIR = Infliction of Death, Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response

INDPAK = India + Pakistan

IRLIBSYR = Iran + Libia + Syria

LIBSYR = Libia + Syria

MAMA = Major Metro Area

REDCHI = Red China

S.A.C. = Strategic Air Command

SACPOP = Strikes Against Civilian Populations

SOUTHAF = South Africa

SPASEX = Spasm Exchanges

SUFDDIR = Suffering of Death Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response

SSTRACS = Sites of Strategic Command

My English teacher taught us about Dante’s Inferno today, and he used this diagram of the levels of Hell. I thought I’d reproduce it for all you fine people:

(It goes without saying that you should click on it if you actually want to read anything. Excuse the typos.)

So, a breakdown and elaboration on the diagram is below.

Objects in descending order:

Gate of Hell: Self-explanatory.

Antechamber – The Neutral: Those who were neither good nor bad are chased by stinging insects through a field of maggots while a constantly changing banner flies overhead.

Acheron: The first river of Hell; newly-dead souls are ferried across by Charon.

King Minos: Judges each new entrant into Hell to decide where they go.

The levels of hell are divided into three main groups: incontinence, brutishness, and maliciousness:

• Incontinent: This section is reserved for those who lose control of their emotions.
• Brutish: Reserved for those who are attracted to sin.
• Malicious: Reserved for those who misuse reason for evil.

C1 – Limbo: Where unbaptized babies and virtuous pagans go. There is no torture. Kind of a boring place, really.

C2 – Lustful: The lustful are blown around by perpetual hurricanes to symbolize the whirlwind of their passions and excesses.

C3 – Gluttonous: Just as they acted like pigs in life, the gluttonous are forced to acts like pigs in death, made to wallow in a vile slush of all the yuckiest things you can think of.

C4 – Avaricious (greedy): The greedy wasted their time on Earth by hoarding useless money, so they are doomed to doing useless manual labor forever, much like Sisyphus.

C5 – Wrathful/Slothful: On the shore of the river Styx, the wrathful are forced to fight each other forever. On the bottom of Styx, the slothful perpetually drown in the swampy water.

Styx: Swampy river, filled with a bunch of nasty stuff.

C6 – Heretics: Heretics are trapped inside burning tombs, symbolizing their disbelief in life after death.

Dis: The city of Hell. The name makes sense: disrespect, dishonesty, disillusionment; it’s a very negative name.

C7 – Violent: Divided into three sections: the violent against man, self, and God:

• The violent against man are submerged in the river Phlegathon, which is a river of boiling blood. The level of submersion is relative to the level of bloodshed that person committed.
• The violent against self are turned into trees that can only talk when they are hurt, as Dante learns when he breaks off a twig of one and then hears a tale.
• The violent against God (blasphemers) are stuck in a desert of flaming sand while fire rains down from above.

C8 – Fraudulent: This circle is called the Malebolge, or “Evil Pockets.” It’s divided into ten bolgie.

• B1 – Panderers: Forced to march while being whipped by demons.
• B2 – Flatterers: Steeped in human excrement.
• B3 – Simonists: Inverted with their feet burning.
• B4 – False Prophets: Have their heads turned around on their necks, representing the way they mislead people in life.
• B5 – Corrupt Politicians: Immersed in a lake of boiling pitch.
• B6 – Hypocrites: Forced to wander around in lead robes.
• B7 – Thieves: Forced into a pit of snakes, the bite of which transforms them into other creatures.
• B8 – Evil Advisors: Encased in flames and can’t be seen, as their thoughts couldn’t be seen.
• B9 – Sowers of Discord: Forced to mutilate themselves over and over again.
• B10 – Alchemists: Afflicted with horrible diseases.

C9 – Traitors: This circle is divided into four sections: Caïna, Antenora, Ptolomaea, and Judecca. The sinners are immersed in a lake of ice known as Cocytus.

• Caïna – Traitors Against Kin: Named after Cain, sinners are submerged in the ice of Cocytus up to their necks.
• Antenora – Traitors Against Country: Named after Antenor of Troy, sinners are submerged deep enough that they can’t bend their necks.
• Ptolomaea – Traitors Against Guests: Named after Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, sinners lie supinely, submerged in the ice except for half of their faces.
• Judecca – Traitors Against Benefactors: The deepest level of Hell. Named after Judas Iscariot, sinners are completely encapsulated in ice. Lucifer exists at this level, buried waist-deep in the ice. He’s described as a giant, shaggy demon with six wings and three faces, each a different color: red, black, and yellow, and each chewing on a specific traitor: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. He continually cries and beats his wings for escape, but the wind from his wings only freezes his tears and traps him further.

Hero—a word that conjures up the best in humanity; those who save frightened (and not all-together bright) kittens from trees, those who dive into a lake to pry old men from the seat of their sunken cars (seniors are notoriously bad drivers, after all), and those who go off to fight wars in far-away countries and kill those who would wish to do harm to those in said fighter’s native country. These examples could be heard by anyone asking passersby on the street what they think of when they hear the word hero. Like everything in the world, the conception of what is heroic changes over time, with the moods, fads, and advancements of society. What people considered heroic in the 10th-century is not what they considered it to be in the 14th-, and certainly not what they consider it now, in the 21st-. The stories of Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and the author’s sister, provide a good contrast to these different concepts of hero.

Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon heroic poem written sometime between the 8th- and 11th-century. It tells of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose mead hall, Heorot, is besieged nightly by a monster named Grendel. Beowulf comes to aid Hrothgar from his native land of Geatland, across the Baltic Sea, and waits for Grendel to come to Heorot. When the door of Heorot bursts open and Grendel appears, Beowulf takes no action until Grendel eats one of his Geatish comrades, watching how the monster works, and then when he (Grendel) reaches for Beowulf, grabs Grendel’s arm and, showing incredible strength, rips it off:

[Beowulf] kept him helplessly locked in a handgrip. As long as either lived, he was hateful to the other. The monster’s whole body was in pain, a tremendous wound appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split and the bone-lappings burst. Beowulf was granted the glory of winning; Grendel was driven under the fen-banks, fatally hurt, to his desolate lair.

Grendel is driven off to die, and Beowulf plus a troupe of Danes and Geats go after him, where they find that he has died in his mere, and Beowulf is highly praised for his deed:

Then away they rode, the old retainers with many a young man following after, a troop on horseback, in high spirits on their bay steeds. Beowulf’s doings were praised over and over again. Nowhere, they said, north or south of the between the two seas or under the tall sky on the broad earth was there anyone better to raise a shield or to rule a kingdom.

Beowulf does many more heroic deeds in his life, including killing Grendel’s mother and fighting a dragon, where he meets his match: “[Beowulf] had survived every extreme, excelling himself in daring and in danger, until the day arrived when he had to come face to face with the dragon.” Beowulf is killed by the dragon, punctured by its poisonous fangs: “Then the bane of that people, the fire-breathing dragon, was made to attack for a third time. When a chance came, he caught the hero in a rush of flame and clamped sharp fangs into his neck. Beowulf’s body ran wet with his life-blood: it came welling out.” Beowulf slays the dragon with the help of his young relative, Wiglaf, and then dies and is buried in a tumulus by the sea.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is the tale of Sir Gawain, a knight of Arthur’s fabled Round Table. In the tale, there is a knight who is entirely green, from his armor down to his beard, and he challenges Gawain to strike him with his axe, if he will accept the same blow in a year and a day. Gawain agrees and cuts the knight’s head off:

On the ground the Green Knight got himself into position, his head forward a little, the bare flesh showing, his long and lovely locks laid over his crown so that any man there might note the naked neck. Sir Gawain laid hold of the ax and he hefted it high, his pivot foot thrown forward before him on the floor, and then, swiftly, he slashed at the naked neck; the sharp of the battleblade shattered asunder the bones and sank through the shining fat and slit it in two, and the bit of the bright steel buried itself in the ground. The fair head fell from the neck to the floor of the hall and the people all kicked it away as it came near their feet.

The Green Knight was not dead after this, as he lifted his own head up and reminded Gawain to honor his promise and come to the Green Chapel in a year and a day, where he will be waiting. The rest of the tale involves Sir Gawain traveling to find the Green Chapel and fulfill his end of the challenge. He comes across a beautiful castle, owned by Lord Bertilak, who informs him that the Green Chapel is only two miles away and that he should rest in his castle until the anxiously-awaited date comes. Bertilak also proposes a game wherein he will go hunting each day and give Gawain whatever he catches for that day as long as Gawain gives him whatever he has earned the same day, at the castle. While Gawain rests in his room, Lady Bertilak makes a habit of trying to seduce him, but they never exchange more than innocent kisses, which Gawain gives to the Lord after he returns from his hunts, bearing his kill for that day. The first day yields a deer from Bertilak and a kiss from Gawain and the next day yields a boar and two kisses. The third day, when Lady Bertilak comes to seduce Gawain, she gives him a silken green sash and tells him that as long as he wears it, “No man under Heaven can hurt him.” That evening, Gawain accepts a fox from Bertilak in exchange for three kisses. The next day, Gawain travels to the Green Chapel wearing the green sash, where he finds the Green Knight sharpening an axe in preparation. Gawain bends over to receive his blow, but the Green Knight holds back twice, and on the third time, strikes softly, merely leaving a scar on the back of Gawain’s neck. It is then revealed that the Green Knight is really Lord Bertilak and that Lady Bertilak was pretending to seduce Gawain. The strikes corresponded to each day that Gawain and Bertilak exchanged what they had earned; two feints for the days that Gawain gave Bertilak kisses, and one soft-strike for not giving Bertilak the green sash on the third day. Gawain feels shameful for not honoring his pact with Bertilak, but Bertilak tells him that he is the purest soul he has ever met, saying, “I’m convinced you’re the finest man that ever walked this earth.” Bertilak admonishes Gawain to remember their encounter as he goes forward in his adventures.

The author’s sister is a single-mother living below the poverty-line whilst struggling to graduate college and find a better job. Currently, she has a tough life, and the author is truly humbled every time he sees what she has to go through. The author recently asked her several questions about heroism:

AUTHOR: Would you consider yourself a hero, modesty aside?

SHELBY: No, I really don’t believe I’ve done anything in my life to warrant me being called a hero.

AUTHOR: Would the modern definition of hero include perseverance in the face of incredible hardships?

SHELBY: Yes, I think a big part of someone being a hero is to have perseverance and face hardships head-on without fear.

AUTHOR: How would you define hero?

SHELBY: A hero is someone who is perseverant, determined, selfless, and also flawed in some way and willing to admit when they make mistakes, because how else will they learn from the mistakes they make? Also, a hero is someone who can be looked up to; someone other people can admire.

AUTHOR: List three things that you’ve done in your life that you consider to be heroic.

SHELBY: Working at Heartspring for the past 5 years, educating children with autism and special needs. Being a single-mom of a three-year-old and supporting myself. Being the first grandchild to graduate from college. [The author would like to point out that technically she will be the second grandchild in the author’s family to graduate from college, as the author’s cousin, Cammie, had already graduated, a fact that the author did not want to mention at the time of this interview.]

AUTHOR: What are some of your duties at Heartspring?

SHELBY: Educating special-needs and autistic students so that they can be more independent and show more socially appropriate behaviors in a classroom setting. I also mentor other staff and new staff in the residential house that I am assigned to. [Also, the author would like to point out that this “educating special-needs and autistic students” sometimes involves the changing of adult diapers, which, if nothing else, displays a courage that the author can scarcely imagine having himself.]

AUTHOR: Describe a typical day for yourself.

SHELBY: Waking up with my daughter, getting breakfast, working on things to increase her vocabulary and understanding. Monday-through-Friday afternoon I am a fulltime mother with my daughter, and Friday-through-Sunday evening I work 40 hours at Heartspring to support us.

AUTHOR: Who are some heroes that you look up to?

SHELBY: My parents and my brother. The support-system you have at home really comes to define you as you grow older.

Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and Shelby all show courage in their various exploits: Beowulf in facing Grendel, Gawain in going to meet the Green Knight, knowing he would probably die, and Shelby by just living (and changing adult diapers). Beowulf and Gawain both severed some ligament from another being’s body, something that (as far as the author knows) Shelby has not done. Beowulf and Gawain do their heroic deeds for different reasons: Beowulf to help Hrothgar and further his reputation, and Gawain because he accepted the challenge from the Green Knight and therefore would not be chivalrous if he failed to meet all the conditions of said challenge; in Shelby’s case it’s more that she just wants to live and make sure her daughter has a better life than herself. Beowulf and Gawain both show incredible strength, as Beowulf rips a monster’s arm off and Gawain cuts a man’s head off, and Shelby, while strong enough to restrain a full-grown autistic-and/or-mentally-imbalanced person, cannot really compete as she is held to more modern standards of strength. All of them are loyal: Beowulf to Hrothgar, Gawain to his code of chivalry, and Shelby to her daughter. Beowulf and Gawain are both adept at using weapons (though Beowulf prefers hand-to-hand when he can). Shelby has at least fired a gun once in her life (that the author knows of), but she has never actually used it on another person.

The Norse concept of a hero was someone who died by kicking as much ass as possible, and kicking it courageously. Norsemen believed that the female horse-riders known as Valkyries flew above every battle, scanning the turmoil below for soldiers who fought courageously, and upon seeing one, swooped down to take them up to Valhalla (or valor-hall) where they would enjoy mead in the company of Odin, their highest god. That differs quite a bit from today’s wars where soldiers can just aim-and-click and poof! their target is gone, often without ever knowing who shot them. Today’s soldiers never have to hear the crunch! of their opponent’s bones as they run them through with a sword (or cut their head off with an axe, in the case of Sir Gawain); swords are not used anymore for warfare, now that we have the simplicity of guns. In our modern world, war is fought with a higher goal in mind than dying heroically: we want to pick off the enemy one by one or blast them away in groups, and win the greater battle; there is not that microcosm of soldiers trying to be courageous and honorable in order to get into Heaven. This dichotomy shifts the modern concept of hero away from war and more into everyday occurrences, because there is no heroism in simply pulling a trigger. The modern hero differs from the heroes of the medieval era, like Sir Gawain, in that the modern hero has a more complex and diluted sense of loyalty and chivalry that Gawain displays and so values. The modern concept of a hero is more complex: A modern hero is someone who perseveres through incredible hardships and grits their teeth and continues on, no matter the economic, socio-political, or personal conditions at the time. While there may be many different concepts of hero that have existed throughout the ages, there is something similar in all of them: A display of the extraordinary; whether it be courage, chivalry, or perseverance, all are qualities of a hero that set them apart from regular people.

Microsoft, in a not-so-well-thought-out move, has actually let this horrible, horrible, horrible advertisement for Windows 7 launch parties out of the torture chamber basement to see the light of day (not to mention the stares of disbelief and disgust of several thousand unwitting people). What do you get when you cram four people into a room, give them a script to read like mindless robots, and then have them pretend to like each other? This monstrosity:

Around the 5:42 mark (and I’m amazed I made it that far), the black guy asks, “Can you believe that Microsoft put the launch of Windows 7 in our hands?” I’ve got a better question: “Can you believe that Microsoft actually made this and then put it on the internet?” Sadly, I can, having experienced the utter strangeness of the Seinfeld ads (and MS has had even stranger ads before).

Common’ Microsoft, you guys were doing OK for awhile with the Laptop Hunter ads (not). Get it together!