This is actually very embarrasing, but I feel I have to share this. I got really drunk this Sunday - didn't plan to, I'm always rather careful with alcohol, but I was in a really cozy, small pub with two good friends, one of which was buying us Newcastle Brown and Guinness. How can you say no to that?
So, I got far too drunk. I managed to get home and go to my room before throwing up out the window a couple of times, and then I went to bed.
If only things stopped there...
The next morning, I wake up staring at my bed, part of which is drenched in dark green fluid. It's right next to my mouth, so it was fairly easy to guess what it was. "Fuck", I thought. I looked around and could see that I'd also puked onto the floor. That wasn't the worst part, though - I moved around a bit, and could feel the feces.
I found some boxers in my drawers, and pulled them on, determined to take a very cold shower. I open the door and look on the floor, where the boxers I was wearing last night was lying. I picked them up, and could feel the crap.
I don't think I've ever felt as low as then. I couldn't remember it, but I must've tried to take a crap after I went to bed, and I can't have done well.
I've never felt more embarassed or depressed. I've never actually been sick after drinking before, but how can you avoid it when you're offered 8-9 bottles of great beer - for free?
I shouldn't be posting this. This is awfull embarassing, not to mention it's actually private matters - but I'm punishing myself. So, avoid making my mistake, and please, laugh at it.
... over the bloody amazing album that Death - Human is.
Seriously, I'm not that big a fan of Death. Most of their albums bore me.
But this... This is a masterwork. It might very well be the perfect death metal album in existance. At least for me. It has amazing guitar playing which I as from today am struggling to learn, it has funky basslines for those inclined to properly listen, the drumming is mindblowingly fast, accurate and original (intro to Flattening of Emotions, oh my gods)... The music is evil, heavy, jazzy and groovy at the same time, and the leads soar in the sky while the rhythm is as down to earth as can be.
I am shocked and appalled that Death didn't produce any more truly awesome albums, but then again, nothing can beat this in terms of death metal musicianship.
*Goes back to struggling with 16th notes at 220bpm*
Yeah! A week overdue, but it got here today, and it's sweeeeet. There's a couple of pics on my profile, they're not hard to find.
I've yet to put on some proper strings (it's got the standard 09 D'Addario, I'll be using 10 Ernie Ball), and the frets look like they could use some polishing (I've no idea why, though, it's a new guitar) but the guitar is awesome. The pickups are extremely clean - I can boost the gain by more than 50%! The neck is really great, being neck-through and all that, I was kinda worried with it being a Wizard 2 neck, which I haven't liked before, but somehow, on this guitar, it's different. Maybe it's just placebo, I don't know, but it feels great. A little fatter than the Wizard 3, but not much of a noticable difference. It's just a shame there's very little room between your fingers and the body at the very top frets (24th), but I think it's something I'll get used to. I don't really play up there, anyways.
The bridge is surprisingly comfortable - I was afraid of one which would grind my hand if I were to rest it on the bridge itself, but that's not the case. It feels no different than resting your hand at a tremolo, despite the fact that it looks like the bridge has some sharp edges. It's awesome.
The guitar does look a tad "cheap" - the neck bindings and plastic nut contribute to this, and it is made in Indonesia, but the body kinda makes up for that. It's single-handedly the greatest paint job I've ever seen that's not flamed maple top or whatever. The pictures I took with the flash on looks like the guitar is a portable universe with multi-coloured stars, and the chrome hardware makes the guitar sexy as hell. Some have said the inlays look like they're 6-string sharktooth inlays put in a 7-string body, and for all I know, they are. I don't see what's bad about this, though - I like this way better than "normal" sharktooth inlays.
This guitar is, simply put, awesome. It might very well replace the RG1527 as my main guitar, but I'm going to have to keep both. The difference in sound has made me much more anxious of changing pickups in my RG, though - it's really opened my ears as to how muddy the stock Ibanez pickups REALLY are.
If you want more pics, check out my thread at SevenString.org:
My back is ruined. I've spend the better three quarters of the last 24 hours trying to piece my new computer together, and now it works. I have to press F1 every time I boot up because the normal CPU fan plug doesn't work, but I'll see if I can fix that. If not, no big deal.
Computers are more unpredictable than humans. Really. Two hours ago the computer kept turning itself off, and yesterday something on the motherboard burned, but today it works - but I haven't done anything different now than I did then. All the connectors are plugged into the same plugs, yet this time it works.
Oh well... Shame I can't enjoy the ridiculously improved graphic cards yet, because I have to write shit for school tomorrow.
Recently, I've been confronting quite a few religious people, and met the argument "if there's no god or afterlife, what's the meaning of life?"
It's a rather silly argument.
People who believe in an afterlife/nirvana live under the belief that our existence on this planet is simply a test to see if you're good enough for heaven or not. You can hardly deny this - a life lasts in average 70-80 years in our western world, afterlife lasts forever.
What kind of meaning does that bring to life?
What it means is that if you do good things, those things are good because some god decides they are. Still, that depends on you believing that god is good. Who are to say that it's not? ("It" means the god. Unless you've seen it yourself, calling it a "he" or "she" is sexist, and stupid.) For all we know, it could've been lying to all those far-gone prophets who wrote down god's words in a book called... Well, it has many names and many translations, actually. And they all differ from each other, and unless your god had in mind specifically to separate people after observing the tower of Babel, making them foreign to each other, spawning extremists recruiting children and suicide bombers, it seems rather unlikely that it got misunderstood by some people. A god has to be omnipotent, right? And if it's omnipotent, that means it can't be misunderstood unless that's what it wanted.
That means that god either wanted there to be several religions with opposing morals, ethics and beliefs, or people somehow messed the religions up as time went by. I don't think there are any other possibilities. If the first case is true, it'd mean that any god-believing people being critical to other religions shouldn't be because that might simply be another test, and in the second case, god speaking to us would also be just another test. But who are you, or anyone else, to say your religion is more "right" than any others?
Anyways, back to what I was saying earlier. How do we know god is good? For all we know, it could've been lying to all the prophets, all the people who wrote down the sacred texts, even to whoever you've met who think they've spoken to god. Most people have never spoken to god, yet they trust it's good. How can you trust someone you've never met? The religious might say, "I just know, that's how god works" etc. Well, consider this. Every other religion, you think or know are based on "wrong" beliefs - misinterpretations of god's words. They "just know", too. And you'll know that they know wrong, and they will know you're wrong. This would mean, all religions are equal. And if all religions are equal, there either has to be several gods with separate heavens and hells which means every religion saying those who don't follow their way is wrong, or there are misinterpretations of god's words - and the probability of christianity being wrong is just as big as the probability of islam being wrong. All you're basing your belief on, is a hunch that your "god" is the right one, the one that will guide you into heaven. And what do you base this belief on? What makes you follow, for example, the christian god rather than the muslim one?
Allow me to tell you. You do it because you feel it's right. Its morals are the ones that appeal the most to you. You don't follow the muslim beliefs because you think women shouldn't need cover their hair every time they go out, you believe in forgiveness rather than punishment etc. I'm not going to cite everything islam stands for, because I don't know everything and might just as well be mistaken about some of the things. The point, however, is that when you decide to follow one religion in preference of all the others out there, you're listening to your own morals and seeing if there are any religions that seem to match up with them.
Well, guess what? You're not heeding the call of any god, you're simply heeding the call of your own common sense. If you believe in forgiveness, you don't need to become a christian in order to practice forgiveness. Why not do it yourself? It'd certainly make you a better person - rather than doing it because it's what a god decides is right of you to do, you're doing it because you feel it's the right thing to do. Why does there have to be a god in the picture for it to make sense?
When I'm dying, I don't want my last thoughts to be about how good it's going to be in the afterlife because I followed the rules of the one true god. I want to think about how good my life has been, how proud I am of having helped make the world a better place, all with my own will-power. I want to think back at the poor people I've helped through hard times, I want to remember the purring of my cats lying in my lap a cold winter evening, I want to remember the people I've loved, the people I've guided through life, giving a helping hand whenever they needed it... All on my own. And I'll know my life mattered to some real people, and maybe I've made so many people grateful they'll return the favor to the rest of the world, and I will have made the world a better place for humanity. All on my own. I hope I'll be able to experience all this, and I hope I'll help people realize they need to do good things for themselves and for others, not for some god and not for a pleasant afterlife. Working for charity loses its meaning once you start expecting salaries.
In these modern times, physics is much discussed, especially put up as a sort of alternative view on reality to religion. Either you're the rationally thinking person who needs things proved, or you're the religious dogmatic person who believes there's a god just because it seems right. There are plenty of people in-between, but they're not usually very reflected or articulate.
I, however, think that the border between the two is far more vague than most people believe.
Let's analyze religion for a moment. Religion, once you take away all rites and prayers and whatnot, is the belief in a sort of god (or gods). Atheism, of course, is the exception. There's no real way of proving there's a god - there's been plenty of arguments, but most of them are based on false assumptions, and most religious people who dare bring them up, end up falling back on the good old "you just have to believe it". So, a truly religious person has to believe in a god/gods blindly, and you'll end up finding out that while a god cannot be proven, it certainly can't be disproven either. Religious people have accepted the explanation consisting of gods - to them, it seems fit, it seems sensible, and it's certainly impossible for us to prove wrong.
Physics, on the other hand, takes a different perspective. It analyzes what we know for true (anything physical - trees, stones etc.) and tries to find theories that fit them. Then physicists use the scientific method (do various experiments to try and negate their own theory) to see if the theory fits or not. The more successful experiments supporting their theory being true, the more probable it is for the theory to be true. Scientists never believe their theories to be 100% true because that can never be proven, but you can get pretty close to 100% with the help of time and some common sense. For example, we know a force exists that pulls objects to the ground, we see and feel it in action every day, and we call it gravity.
Still, how close can physics get to actually describing the real world as it is?
First of all, I need to stress the fact that physics is based on two things: Human kind's observations and mathematics. Without observing a stone dropping to the ground when we drop it, we're pretty much bummed on proving gravity exists, and without mathematics, we're left without a way to explain how the universe really works - at least in applied physics. You can describe how gravity works; When matter starts clustering, it starts pulling on matter near it, but you'll need maths to actually find out exactly how much the Sun's gravity field pulls on the Earth, and so on. And, much more importantly, maths provide us with a way of defining how gravity works - after enough research, it produces a formula in which we can enter the appropriate data, and we'll find out, for example, how to launch a sattelite for it to orbit Earth.
Let's take human observation first. Some of the things physicians know exist because we observe it every day is: Light - which we know exists because we can see it. Gravity - which we know exists because we can feel an apple hit our heads, and we see the stone dropping to the ground. Thermodynamics - because we can feel the heat of the water in the shower. Magnetism - we can see two magnets pull on eachother at a distance, and probably some other things as well. None of these things can really be proved to exist in any other way than observing it, and physics starts as an alternative to religion in finding explanations to the things that happen, this time leaving gods out of it.
The very first theories we derived from observation, consisted of invisible, omniscient and omnipotent gods who creates the world and controls it. Then came the idea of the elements - earth, fire, water and air, which developed into today's idea of atoms built of neutrons, protons and electrons which are even now being split into lesser sub-particles. These atoms are so small they cannot be seen even with the strongest microscope - that's as good as invisible, if you ask me. We're only using this model because it seems to fit, it seems sensible, and it's hard to prove wrong - which does not make it true, but very probable. There's also some new, much more complex theories still in the works, like quantum mechanics or string theory, and much points to that since Einstein's relativity theory, physics theories are becoming harder and harder to falsify, which would imply that physics is getting closer to some kind of universal truth.
Still, all these theories defines the universe on things that cannot be seen. We can easily say, yes, gravity exists because I fall back on the ground when I jump, but it's not so easy to prove that atoms consist of a core and electrons. However, we've yet to prove the theory wrong. Still, the ways we try to prove these theories wrong is through maths - and if you consider maths a language, as I do, then you can at once see the connection to religion. Some religious people will come up with every possible wormhole to explain what's been seen on Earth. If you ask a creationist about dinosaur fossils, he/she'll say they were put there by god to test us, and so on. They use language to their advantage, and make their theory impossible to prove wrong. Who are we to say that physics can't possibly be making the same mistake? We'll simply have to believe that physics knows what it's doing - which takes us back to the theories of gods controlling the universe - we choose to believe in physics because it seems fit, it seems sensible, and it's impossible for us to prove wrong.
Another thing is that physics rely on our observations being true (it also relies on maths, but more on that later). If the light we see when we step outside the door isn't really light as physics see it, then the whole argument on whether light manifests in waves or particles seems rather pointless. Of course, there needs to be some alternative theory on what light is, because something has to exist that sends information about our surroundings to our eyes. Still, it doesn't need to be light, it could be something we haven't discovered yet. Or, rather, light could be something radically different from anything we know or think (or think we know) it is. Yet, we see the light, and we are part of the universe, therefore there must be some kind of energy bouncing around that manifests in light. All that remains for us to do is try to find out what. (Religion usually leaves this for physics to do.)
And that leaves us to one thing: Taking the things we sense, and filtering them out to find out which we want to define as true and which to define as nonsense. After all, we can easily be tricked into thinking our eyes see things that "aren't really there" when we dream, or, say, smoke weed. In the end, we've come to the acceptance of the theory that we hear and see waves, we feel friction, and we smell and taste chemicals. Still, all this is simply electric signals sent to the brain, and there's no possible way of finding out whether they're true or not, because the very same electric signals are what we hold for true. Some of them are filtered out as dreams and optical illusions, but most are not. But the only reason we know to tell the difference between the dream world and the real world is simply because our brain knows to be sceptical to anything it isn't used to, prepared to or in other ways finds unlikely. The brain learns what it should hold as real and what it shouldn't. When the definition of truth is "what we're used to", I think it's fair to argue that truth is undefinable. While we're getting on the far philosophical side here, it's very important to know that the world we think we know is only the world as we see it, and although we've come to some kind of consensus about things, such as colours, we can never hold anything for true. We've learnt what "green" is because people have always pointed at a green colour and mentioned the word "green", and if you point at something red and say it's green, you'll be corrected. Still, just because every single member of human kind has been taught colours from birth doesn't mean what we know is true. Two people may agree that some grass is green, but they might very well be up for a surprise if they were to switch eyes. We don't know, and we may never know.
The second thing physics largely relies on is mathematics, and this is really an uncertain field. The one question here is, does math define reality (i.e. does the universe follow mathematical rules) or does reality define math (i.e. mathematics is a "language" deprived from the universe itself, a language optimised for the single purpose of explaining the universe)? Do the mathematical rules such as the rules for calculating mass match because the universe follows mathematical rules, or have we simply found a way to express numbers that matches up with how the universe seems to work? These two overlap eachother a bit - the universe could have its rules set, but it doesn't necessarily need to know that E=MC², just like a human don't need to know maths in order to raise its hand to catch a flying ball. In any case, it seems that the language of mathematics is one that fits into the universe very well, and we've come to some astoundingly simple formulas in the end. (Some are advanced, though, and pi (3.14159265358979323864...) certainly has a lot to explain for itself. Any creator with something so specific as humankind would certainly have gone for a much more elgant number, such as 3.5, 3.33... or just 3.)
Anyways... We don't really know that the mass of a cube equals height x width x depth. It's true, but that's because that's how we've defined mass. Just the same, why couldn't it be that in E=MC², E has simply been defined as MC², either on purpose or by accident? Does math define reality, or does reality define math? Is there an underlying set of rules that apply to the universe, or is it just that we've found good, simple formulas that fit in so well because we've made it that way? I hardly think there's any way to prove which is right and which is wrong... If I am to draw a zig-zagged line onto a coordinate system, you'll be able to find some kind of function (formula) behind it, no matter how randomly I've tried to draw it. It'll be a highly advanced function, but there will eventually be one that fits if you look long enough. If I drew several different ones, there'd be some kind of function that defines each one of them, too, and if you had all the sufficient data, maybe you'd be able to tell what the next line would look like based on brain chemicals or something. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a mathematical system planted into my subconcious, telling me what kind of random zig-zag line my hand is supposed to draw. No, you have to really believe in the maths if that is to apply. You have to believe blindly. And how can physics be put so far away from religion if atheism is a religious position, and you need to believe blindly that maths define reality for physics to define reality?
If mathematics really do define reality, then I have two different theories as to how the universe is built. The first is that there's some kind of divine being, not necessarily any kind of god, but some kind of soul in or outside the universe that defines how the universe works, in this case by maths. The other is that the particles and waves and whatnot in themselves somehow know how to act (in this case according to certain mathematical rules), and this would have to mean that each particle would need to be of a highly complex structure. If it were not so, we'd have to accept the answer "because" to the question of why gravity, magnetism and everything else works as it does, and I don't science would approve of that. Yet, these smaller particles which would make up quarks, neutrons, protons and electrons would also have to know how to behave somehow - and you'd have to ask yourself the question of whether there's a divine being or a complex underlying system every time you found a smaller particle. So either there's something in the universe which defines how things are going to be run, or the universe is divisible into infinitely small particles. Or you could chooce to accept "because" as an answer.
And that's what it all boils down to. If mathematics is the language which is perfect for describing the universe we live in, and it can be used to define reality, then why does it? Because. Why do atoms work the way they do? Because. Why does mass cluster up and then attract more mass? Because. Why does God send people to hell if he loves us all? Because. Physics can define HOW the universe works, but not WHY. Religion takes a stab at it, but fails as there are still a lot of things left unexplained. All we can do with either one is use our knowlege to the best. Some will use maths to calculate how to stop asteroids from hitting Earth, others will use religion to find meanings in their lives. Some will pray to their gods that asteroids will not hit Earth, others will use science to find a meaning in their lives. You can certainly argue that atheism lays down better terms for people than any religion does, and I'll argue alongside you, but you certainly cannot argue which is best fit to explain our universe, physics or religion, because in the end they both boil down to the same thing. If anything, physics has more answers to the "how", which undoubtedly makes it much more practical for research and development, but none really have the answers to the "why" unless you're ready to accept "because" as an answer.
No theory, either defined by physics or religion, can ultimately describe the truth, not even relativity, beautiful as it may be. There will always be the question "why" and the answer "because", once you ask enough. And while the asking might not bring us closer to the truth, it still might, and it'll comfort us to have a belief on how the universe works, no matter if it's because of gods or quantum mechanics. And humans need comfort. If you really seek enlightenment, then accept that there are things we will never know, but try to aquire as much knowlege as possible anyways. Don't take any theories or truths for granted, but define your own reality. The only true wisdom comes through knowlege of the unknown.
Despite its good reputation, I can assure you, Norway is a crappy country.
We have had some awesome deviants in the black metal society, but even most of them have gone mainstream these days. Ever since we were christened, this country has been going downhill and now we're lapdogs of the USA, our politicians refusing to admit we're in war in Afghanistan even after one of our soldiers were killed in open combat. Our pop-culture is as good as ruined, 30% of the kids are all "gangsta pimp yo", 30% are emo punk kids but don't know it or won't admit it, 20% are girls who spend like $200 on clothes every week because their parents think they're special, and nearly 20% either play WoW, CS, care about nothing but school or something similar. Only like 2% are actually intelligible people who don't care for fashion or vanity, actually know what's going on in the world and have some kind of grip on reality past where and how much to drink the coming weekend.
Despite having the acclaimed highest living standard in the world, we're so spoiled that everyone wants to be engineers (and gods know there's a market for it, so no one is stopping them) and we have a huge shortage of actual workers. That means we're hiring immigrants, paying them half the minimum wage before taxes because they're not educated like we are, they've just spent their time learning it outside a school. Politicians complain about this but at the same time want to join the EU, which will make it perfectly legal. We're one of the richest countries in the world, yet apartments cost 3 times their worth unless you want to spend 2 hours on a bus every day to get to school/uni, and usually it's delayed anyways. We still have poverty despite the fact that we might have the best basis in the world to prevent it. There are year-long queues to get into necessary surgeries because we're lacking health personnel, and yet every year we spend money on war in the middle-east that's worth 3 years of full medical supply to their hospitals. We decide to pay $5 for 0.3 liters of water rather than get some free from our taps, because it's top-quality from some spring no one knows where is, and gladly pay several times the real worth of clothing that we throw away only a few months later because it was the wrong colour anyways.
All in all, a fucked up country, and yet I'll bet there aren't many places that are better. So much for national pride - if only we could go back to the viking age. I'd pay a fortune for that.
These days, you can't wear a palestina scarf without being asked sarcasticly over and over whether you actually know what the palestinians strugge for or against, becuase 50% of the people wearing it really doesn't. I've even met a few who didn't even know it was called a palestina scarf, and just picked it up because it "looked cool".
Second to capitalism, fashion has to be my biggest enemy in the world. It's turning guys into faggots, it's ruining anything that used to be called punk, promoting anything that's called emo and making girls think they're made out of china while dressing and starving themselves until there's not much left of their humanity and they've happily realised their dream of being soulless sex objects, even if it involves spending 2 hours in the bathroom every day trying to look as flawless as those photoshopped models. Fashion's even ruined politics - everyone these days can call themselves a socialist, no matter if you're right or left, and it's cool to be a socialist, especially if you dye your hair black, wear tight pants and bring an acoustic guitar to school. You might get a lot of hatred from the capitalists because they think you're communists - but let's be fair, the people calling themselves socialists have misunderstood the word just as much as the anti-socialists. And anyways, they're all conformists so you're allowed to hate them back.
It's trying times when you're 17, have long hair and a beard, play the guitar, are a socialist and try to actually care about what's going on in the world rather than the amount of friends you have on facebook.
OK, I've had this baby for about a month now, and I guess I'm starting to form an opinion about it.
Let's take the good things first:The sound is really great. Whether because of the 12AX7 tube or simply because it's a great amp, it sounds awesome no matter what I throw at it; everything from cleans to blues overdrive to mild distortion to death metal distortion. Second, the variety of amp models really didn't dissapoint me. On other modelling amps I've been used to finding only one or two that I liked and never used any of the others - this is nothing like it. Every model has its uses, and each one can get a distinct sound within different sound images - for example, the botique clean model is of course great for cleans, but add a distortion pedal with the distortion turned to the minimum and put the gain to the max and you'll have a warm, soft rock distortion. The same goes for every other model - you can do a lot of crazy stuff with it.
It isn't all great, though. The metal models (nu metal, uk modern, uk 80s, us higain) sound crappy on their own - it might be because of my crappy pickups, but I still have to use my MT-2 with the distortion turned to the minimum in order to open up the sound a bit. Even at full gain, without a distortion pedal I'm not able to get palm muted notes to sound good. They sound good if you use a lot of chords (power chords), but they don't seem to be capable of handling single string action. However, combined with my pedal (I'm sure an overdrive or maybe even an equalizer pedal will do the same) the distortion is downright brutal. I just think the amp should be able to handle it on its own. Second, the effects were a bit of a disappointment - they sound great, and while the controls are a bit messy, you have a lot of space to configure the sound - but you don't get a lot of room to operate with different effects combined. It would've been better if the effects were mounted on two different knobs, so that you'd have more freedom to choose which effects you wanted. But I guess I'm best off buying a selection of pedals anyways. Another thing I'd have liked would be to save my own presets as amp models, or more channels to save presets on.
I'd reccomend this amp to anyone - the amount of things you can do with it definitely pays for the price several times over, but it might require you to experiment a lot with pedals and the equalizers before you find your niches.
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Raziel2p's blogs, last updated : June 16, 2008
