Democracy in Egypt

Last days we've had a hell of a lot of work at the office, and I'm not very aware of what's going on around the world, but I do have read about the fact that in Egypt there was a military coup that removed the president (or prime minister, or whatever was his title) and put another guy in charge, to prepare new elections.

Since the guy who was in charge before was proposing some changes to make Egypt law follow islamist, I believe that lots of people and reporters from the right approved this action. Meanwhile, I've heard some people from the left (not many people were talking about it but I've heard some) saying that the guy had been elected with a democratic vote, and therefore removing him with a military coup is bad for the democracy.

In this case, I find myself agreeing with anyone thinking that this was a good thing. First of all, violence against the people of a country is always bad, and therefore if the army starts killing pacific islamist supporters of the ex-president, that is clearly bad. However, the problem here was that the ex-president tried to made laws that would turn Egypt into another Saudi Arabia, another Yemen....

Basically, I believe that religion and politics should never ever be together. One thing is how a country is governed, and another thing is what you may or may not believe when it come to religion, which I believe can be categorised as "Morals". I think I read some time ago about the difference between "Moral" and "Ethical". I'm still unclear about the differences in some specific cases, but I believe that an ethical behaviour tries to be fair with everybody and tries to give everybody as much freedom as possible without denying freedom to someone else. By difference, a moral behaviour tries to establish a number of things that are considered right and wrong, and then delimitate the freedom of the people based on these categories.

The most clear and easy example would be the topic of marriage. Marriages that go against ethical principles, in my opinion, are done between parts where one of them does not want or cannot have their saying while getting married. For example, the famous argument of marrying dogs would be unethical, because dogs cannot express their opinion on the matter. The same happens with arranged marriages, if families force a marriage, this is unethical. Any other marriage done between two adult people that are consensual and wanted to do so are ethical. Meanwhile, if we use moral to decide what is a correct marriage, we may get to the conclusion that the only possible marriage is between a man and a woman, or that forcing a daughter to marry a man is morally correct.

I am of the opinion that all laws should try to be as ethical as possible. Governments actions should also be as ethical as possible. And I believe that people, as a whole, should not have anything to say about it. Let me clarify that....

In Egypt, the guy who got elected wanted to use the Islamic law as the basis of the laws. Islamic law, as any religious-based law, uses morals. Some things are moral, some things are immoral, and the immoral ones are legally punished. I believe this is wrong. However, you may say that it was something democratically chosen by the people, right? Well, first thing here is that, even with lots of supporters, I believe that the percentage of people that voted for this guy was around 25%. It may be more than any other option, but this still leaves 75% out.

But even ignoring that....by applying a moral code of laws, you're forcing your morals into lots of people that may not share them and may not agree with them. Even if a huge majority, 90% wanted this, there's that 10% of people who basically were forced to "convert" to these unshared morals. Therefore, I believe this is clearly wrong and should not be done. Instead, if you make ethical laws, everybody keeps their morals. Then, if 90% of the people have certain morals, they can still apply these morals with themselves, and avoid immoral things. They're free to do so, while leaving the people with different morals free to act differently. Ethics gives you freedom, even the freedom to have the morals you want.

Therefore, whatever the votes, whatever the support, the guy who got elected was doing something wrong in my opinion. Sometimes it may be hard to differentiate between something ethical and something moral, but basing all your laws on religion is quite clear a moral thing. Religion is not the only thing that can add morals to laws, though, and one needs to be always careful and try to stay on ethical grounds when making rules for everybody.

I would add a comment about democracy. Democracy is not voting every 4-5 years and letting the elected government do as they please. Democracy is not governing for your supporters only. Democracy is not denying rights, even when a majority of people actually wants to deny those rights. True democracy is to let everybody have a voice, an opinion. And true democracy is deciding all together what to do next, hearing at least every side of an opinion, and letting each side influence the outcome, while at the same time never imposing subjective things even when a majority would like to do so. I don't believe it is democratic to, for example, ban dancing, even if a majority of people agrees. If the action is not limiting another's person freedom (basically, not hurting anyone), even a  majority of people should have nothing to say about it.

When this does not happen, it doesn't matter how it is done, but the government needs to be kicked out (and kicked hard).

And kicking out the government is always going to be a good action in this case.

Faster Than Light

Lately I've been playing with different games, and at some moment I may make one post about them. For the moment I want to talk about one in particular.

Some weeks ago I decided to get another indie game that I'd heard very good things about: Faster Than Light. It seems it was a kickstarter project, and lots of people really liked the idea and it became quite popular.

The basis of the game is rather simple: You have a spaceship with a crew and a certain equipment, and you need to escape a rebel fleet following you, contact your allies with important information and finally defeat the rebel mothership.

The thing that is rather refreshing for a videogame is that you do not pilot the spaceship, or aim its weapons. What you do is manage the tasks that the crew does, reassign power, select targets and weapons, and manage in general some basic aspects of the ship.

You start in a space location, in a randomly generated universe, and you need to navigate through several sectors. In each sector you need to jump between several locations, and in each locations you may have random encounters with other people and ships, you may have combats or you may shop and repair your ship.

Everything except the initial ship configuration is randomized. Even when you found the same event decsription twice, the outcome of the event may be different. Sometimes you have crew or equipment that gives better options in these random encounters, and sometimes you can get huge rewards or huge drawbacks.

Apart form that, you usually combat lots of ships, including rebels, pirates, slavers, automated droids and other aggressive species. You start with some weapons and some power, and by buying upgrades and equipment you need to add and distribute power to increase your ship capabilities, until you reach the final sector and fight the mothership.

The game is....well, hard. You cannot permanently save one point in time, if you continue playing after saving you will lose that save, and if you get killed, you need to start from the begginning. There are lots of options, and the wrong configuration can kill you pretty fast. After several games, you learn what works best, but still it's rather hard to get to the final sector. Once you're in the final sector, the Mothership, which requires 3 combats, one after the other, can quite easily destroy you in the first fight without you landing a shot, even when you were winning all previous combats.

Even while being a difficult game, and depending a lot on your luck given the randomness of the encounters, it's very easy to grasp the basics. It's also a game where a round till the last sector takes at max around 2 hours, which means that you can play 10 minutes, save, and continue later. This is a thing that I really appreciate, since you don't always have time to dedicate 1 hour to one game, and some games require that hour just to advance a little bit.

It kind of follows the idea of old games, where the difficulty was hard, and where if you got killed, that was it and you had to start again. It makes things more interesting after all, since each gameplay does not take very long anyway, and then you can just restart. Most modern games let you fail as many times as you need until you get the hang of it and pass that spot. This makes it easier to play, specially if you don't have much time to dedicate to it, but it also makes things much less interesting, since it's just a matter of reloading to the last 5 minutes, with no penalizations. FTL is much more severe in the penalization, and that makes you more involved during a playthrough. 

Becasue of all these properties, the game is incredibly addictive. You always want to get further, to try some new configuration, some new weapon. While playing, some special events give you access to other ships, and in each ship you can also unlock a different basic configuration, so the replaying value is huge. Some ships may be a little overpowered if you know how to use them, but oh well...after being destroyed so many times, it's also good to have some ship that can rip to pieces most of the obstacles you'll find.

I have finished the game in easy, once. Let's just say the Mothersip is quite the big bastard. However, depending on your luck, it can also turn into a curbstomp battle...this single time I won, I had managed to grab 3 burst laser 2 plus one ion bomb. The end result was that I did not even have to repair the ship between battles, and the first 2 of them were done really really fast. Then again, it was mostly luck to find a shop that sold that weapon, since the items in the shop are rather random too.

Summing it up, this is a really addictive game, really good while keeping things simple and fast, and really hard. I highly recommend it, and since the prices is quite low, I'd say to buy it, since you're supporting this style of game that tries to innovate in original ways.

St. Petersburg, Sochi and Abkhazia

During the last month, we've been doing a lot of travelling and visiting. We've been very busy, and we're not done yet by far. First, our trip to St. Petersburg.

My wife has a cousin living in this city, so they invited us to see them and to be able to visit. We used some national vacations in May, and went there.

St. Petersburg is a big city, with wide streets, public transport, big buildings, etc. The city itself is pretty new, it was made around 300 years ago, and you can notice it. Even in the centre, streets are wide and nice, with lots of space. The city is beautiful, but the streets are like any other big city. Maybe the architecture resembles Paris, since lots of buildings were done by French architects.

The thing that really makes a difference is the palaces. In the centre, if you raise a stone you will find a palace. These palaces are all impressive, loaded with details, and really luxurious. We visited several of them (including the Ermitage, which doubles as huge art museum), and we did so in the right order: when we thought that we had seen the most crazy luxurious palace, the next one was always proving us wrong.

We were very lucky, and we had lots of sunny and warm days. We were told that was some kind of exception. With the palaces, several big and curious churches, museums, the streets of a big city,the water channels, the tours and the family visiting, we had a great time, and we did lots of things.

After St. Petersburg, we had two visits in Adler in rapid succession. First it was Fatima and Marius, two of our friends. Then it was my uncles, Jose and Silvia.

In both cases we played games, spent time together and had fun. But the other effect of their visit is that we finally spent some time visiting Adler, Sochi, and the places around them.

Adler is small, and we really could not offer much to visit apart from a small tour in the centre and around the coast. Sochi is bigger, and we manage to see some more things (not many, but some). Sochi really gives the impression of a small coastal city, not unlike the ones you can find in Catalunya's that are not extensions of resorts (those resemble Adler).

The best discovery was what's around these cities. We knew there were forests and excursions, and we knew that it was considered a nice area, but we had not checked personally.

We did several trips around, organized and otherwise, and now we know what's around. There is lots of very beautiful and dense forests, small rivers, lots of waterfalls, mountains and nature. It's really awesome.
Some of the places were clearly too touristic, charging you to enter an area of forest and with annoying shops and people. However, they were still very nice. We also discovered two things:

1-Most excursions spend a huge amount of time passing by small areas that produce wine, honey and other things, and make you try them. This becomes bothersome, specially when you spend too much time in then. However, its a price to pay to have a cheap excursion, and its true that the products are handmade and usually very good.

2- This one I suspected it, but we confirmed it. Culturally, lots of Russians seem to be afraid of silence somehow. In restaurants, they put music channels with very loud music. In touristic places, they sometimes put speakers and some background (or not so background) music. And when you're in a tour with a guide, the guide NEVER shuts up. They speak constantly, in a stream of words, repeating themselves, advertising stuff, explaining what's around at that moment...but without pauses if they can do so. It gets tiresome really really fast, and plenty of times you would prefer a shorter explanation and more quiet time to just enjoy the place...

Anyway, around Adler and Sochi there's lots of things to see, lots of nature, specially lots of small rivers that look awesome.

Finally, during this weekend that is ending, we went to Abkhazia.

For those who do not know about this place, Abkhazia is a region inside what's considered to be Georgia. However, this region is independent from Georgia, and considers itself another country. Russia recognises it, among other countries, but Georgia doesn't, and in general it's not officially another country. Georgia and Abkhazia made war against each other several times, and rather recently (it seems the main war was at the beginning of the 90s, but there was another one 5-6 years ago). Right now you can't cross the border between them.

Abkhazia, therefore, is a country with not many laws, and not much money. It survives for the moment, until next war. During USSR times, it was part of it, so it has buildings and stuff from that time.  Between the wars, the location and all that, the country is half abandoned, half being reconstructed. However, people said it was very beautiful, and worth a visit (in Adler, we live around 8 km away from the frontier with Abkhazia).

We booked a hotel in the capital, Sukhum, and we went with Jordi Gomez, Jordi Nadal and Misha (who had the car to go there).

It's one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen.

First, the country is half abandoned. There's not many people around, much less than in the Sochi area, and you notice it. Second, since it's a poor region, there's less industry, clearly, less things going on. There's construction, and lots of places are not maintained, so there's trash sometimes, or really bad and rusted structures, but the nature is extremely clean. You don't feel the dust that covers everything in Sochi.
The water in the sea shore, and in the rivers and lakes is extremely transparent. When the place is deep, the water looks blue, as in light clean blue, incredibly intense.

The mountains are very green, and there are high peaks and awesome views. The zone lives from tourism and tours, so there are zones with some people and lots of guided excursions, but still there are looks clean and impressive.

The main road is in a very good state, much better than the Russian ones. Smaller roads are much worse, half abandoned and destroyed, but you can see that there is some effort of rebuilding, at least in the main road.

The driving is crazy in here, people go very fast, they advance people with no visibility, or with cars coming from the other side. It's also normal to find cows and goats in the middle of the road, just laying there. The buildings and structures, as I mentioned, can be half new or almost abandoned, in very bad shape. There is no security whatsoever in lots of places, and clearly if you do something stupid and hurt yourself (like jumping to the sea from one dock), well, nobody is going to stop you, and it's your problem. There is lots of surreal things. You get the feeling that most things are abandoned, and people is using ruins. Nature is clearly taking back some areas, while there's some constructions going on too.

However, even some buildings look beautiful abandoned (but not all, of course). The cities are like some kind of mixture of classical structures with some soviet buildings and lots of ruins and half-build things.
The things that are new, like some lights, buildings and roads, look very new, clean, much better than anything you can find in Sochi. The dust cloud that you can notice in Adler is nowhere to be seen in here.
In the capital, the street next to the coast was full of people, occidental-looking and apparently happy. It's a poor region, but it seems they live relatively well. The only thing is a permanent war thread, that paralyses things. It seems some buildings are abandoned because they don't want to waste resources in them to be destroyed again soon (and you can see bullet -or shrapnel- holes in some of them).

Of course, not everything is perfect. I mentioned the crazy drivers, the animals in the middle of the roads, the secondary roads in extremely bad shape, the region insecurities with Georgia...but there's also the lack of personal security, the trash, the burned and destroyed things that are common around the region, or the recommendations to not go around alone, specially if you're a foreigner...

However, the feeling we have gotten in the end is that it's an extremely beautiful area, calm, very clean, with gorgeous nature and landscapes, old ruins, and "funny" things happening around you. We liked it a lot, and we would recommend to go there, if you manage to make all the paperwork to visit it and go back to Russia and you have a local guide...

An Ideal Apartment

The baby seems to have started moving in a noticeable matter. I haven't noticed yet, but my wife can tell when the baby wakes up.

We're in the middle point now, and we're of course excited. One of the things I've done lately is to start looking for an apartment to buy.

When I was little, I imagined that at some moment I would own my own house. The house prices bubble crushed this idea hard. When I was in the middle of my degree in university, i thought i'd be lucky if I could afford a normal rent. However, the "good" part of this crisis is that apartment prices are going down, with no sign of stopping anywhere in the near future. I believe at least a year will pass until they reach a reasonable price, and after that, for a while, we may have an inverse bubble (people expecting the prices to go down some more amd not buying at the real price apartments should have).

They're still stupidly expensive, mind you. However, they don't seem to require all your savings plus 50 years of mortgage anymore. I believe that, if prices keep going down, it may be possible to pay close to one third/one half of it with savings only (well, it depends on the apartment, of course).

First of all, even with the current crisis, the political situation and the overall stupidness of the country, I would like to live in Barcelona, eventually. I like houses, but in Barcelona it's not really possible to get one (unless its a little hole, in ruins, or crazy expensive). In U.K. and other countries is more common to have houses for middle-class people in cities, but in Cayalunya non-posh houses are present only in small towns, urbanizations or in the middle of the mountains.

Therefore, I would like an apartment in the city. As per the situation of the apartment, I'm fond of the Sants-Les Corts area, since it has everything you may need (markets, schools, shops, bars, restaurants, metro and train stations, not far from university area, not far from the center..). However, the area where I've always lived, Clot-Sant Andreu, has also most of these things, so it's also an option. After these two, lots of places in l'Eixample are very nice as well, specially next to Sagrada
Familia. Anyway, I'm not eliminating options.

For the apartment itself, that it has elevator is mandatory. You can live in a place without elevator for a while, but you will always have lots of extra difficulties. First floors or basements are not a good option, I'd prefer something higher than the average street light. The higher the better, but I'm not picky after the first two floors.

Once inside the apartment, let's start with the size. I would like to have 4 bedrooms. The main bedroom would be for us, of course. I think it could be around 10 square meters, if we want a big bed and a big closet to put all of our thingies. It could be smaller than that, but around 10 seems the right size. Then I would like to have 3 smaller bedrooms, 6 square meters each, at least. I lived all my life in one such bedroom, and that's enough space to consider it decent. 2 of those bedrooms would be for possible future kids, and the third one would act as an office or guest room (as in, it should work as both).

Two toilets are mandatory, I hate the idea of having only one, after experiencing it in other houses. One should have a shower or bath, bidet (also mandatory), closet and all that, and the other only would need a toilet. Any extra thing would be nice, but not necessary. I believe the big one could be around 6 square meters, and the small one only needs 2 or 3.

The living-dining room should be big enough to allow two big different areas: The couch/TV area and the table area. We'll talk about these later, but I believe the minimum size should be around 20 square meters. The kitchen needs to be big enough to fit all necessary equipment, but it doesn't have to be bigger than that. I'm not sure, but allowing it to be 10 square meters seems enough. Maybe part of this can be a small laundry room or something similar.

A terrace is optional, but welcomed. Let's say it adds 5 square meters to the total.

Adding everything up, we have a minimum of 72 square meters. However, depending on the distribution of the house, we will probably have corridors. Some corridors may be nice, but they add a lot to the total area. Let's assume not the best distribution, and add 20 square meters made up of corridors (I believe it's a reasonable number given the rooms the apartment would have). This pushes the total size of the apartment up to 92 square meters. Being generous, let's say a round 100 square meters.

So, my perfect apartment is around 100 square meters, including some small terrace, 4 rooms, 2 toilets, one big living room and kitchen/laundry room.

Apart from size, I would like to have natural sunlight (preferably during the morning or a bit after noon time, before evening) in the main bedroom and the living room. The rest of the rooms do not necessarily need sunlight, but they should have exterior windows, and if there is another building in front, there should be enough distance to avoid being able to jump from one to the other...The toilets should have some type of window or ventilation system better than just a small grid with a fan in one corner (otherwise humidity is quite a danger).

I believe that the apartment I described is reasonable enough. I can make concessions (not all rooms have windows, not as much sunlight as I would like, etc.) if the apartment closely resembles this description.

Now, let's talk about some internal details. First, I would prefer an apartment with no furniture. Furniture raises the price, and with some possible exceptions, I would prefer to choose it myself so it fits in very specific ways. I want to use space wisely and according to my taste. Our current apartment in Adler is awesome for the moment. Howver, for long-term stay, it has such wasteful distribution and furniture I could cry. I want to avoid this, even if it implies not being able to prepare all rooms when we buy the apartment, since it may be too expensive to prepare everything from the start. As for the condition of the apartment, I would prefer a new apartment, not older than 20 years.

Since we would have no furniture, ideally, there is something I'd like to do: All apartments usually have the electrical installation (and water, gas...) inserted in the wall and covered with plaster. If there are problems, you need to make holes and plaster it again once you're done. I would like to leave all this in the open, not hidden in the wall. Then, I would like to put some type of wooden cover (or any other material better suited for this) over these lines in the walls. This cover would be removable at will, and would allow a higher degree of customization. I don't know if it's a reasonable idea, but in my ideal house we would have that.

Since we would have an easy way to lay new cables, we would then make sure all rooms have all the necessary electrical plugs. These necessities could change with time, but it would be easier to control. Another thing I would like to add is network cables. I would need to decide a place for the router, and then I would like to set up a network with different connection points (that could be just ethernet inputs on the walls). Each bedroom would have one of these, and the living room would have one too.

With an ethernet cable network, I would get a good router with 5 entries for ethernet cables. If necessary, we could get some small switch instead. This would be set up as a private network, and it would be different than our wireless network, also set up.

Another thing that I could set up using the wall covers is a tower computer in the living room, with cheap processor, memory and motherboard, but decent sound and graphics card(with HDMI), and a lot of disk space. Maybe even a raid configuration for backup purposes. It should also have a DVD player, and maybe a Bluray. Then I would connect this to the network as the main house filesystem, and I would connect a good sound system and our TV to this computer, to be able to easily play videos and music from the filesystem or online.

There are other details that would depend on the distribution of the apartment, but another thing I would like is a proper gaming table. It would be in the living room, and it would be wide and big, enough so 6 people can play table games comfortably, without space constraints, even with some of our bigger table games like Arkham Horror.

Anyway, that's the apartment model I'd like to have. I know I will not even be living in Barcelona in at least 1 year, and who knows what will happen in this time and later. Maybe Spain breaks, maybe the euro crashes and our savings are worthless, maybe I will not have a job....However, I still like to think about it, check current apartments, and imagine our future place...

Logical fallacies and religions

Today i read a post in facebook that made me angry. I will proceed to copy the text here, so you know what i'm talking about:

"True story.

An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned to her and said, "Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, "What would you want to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the atheist. "How about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?" as he smiled smugly.

"Okay," she said. "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?"

The atheist, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don't know shit?"

And then she went back to reading her book."

That's the text. You may consider it a harmless joke, but I find it very annoying.

It reminds me of another text that went around some time ago, where there was an atheist teacher and a student discussing spiritual things, where the student made the teacher sound foolish. At the end, the text claimed this was also a true story, and that the student was Albert Einstein.

Where to begin? I'll start with the logic side.

When argumenting things, you need to use logic if you want to make a good point. I will say that sometimes arguments have convinced people without using logic, but thats because we people are all idiots and easy to manipulate. Lets ignore the idiot factor and agree that you would need logic.

When trying to argument something, you would need then to use arguments that make sense. Eventually, you may realize that in a discussion, there is a core principle, from which all logical arguments are created, that is different in each side of the discussion. With good arguments, you can agree to disagree on the core principle, or correct the other's logical process, in which the core principle is the same but one of the steps was logically incorrect.

Anyway, that's usually too much trouble, so the solution is to center your attention to we the idiotic people. To do so, you can use logical fallacies, things that seem like arguments, but aren't.

The post I copied here uses a very nice logical fallacy, the "strawman". The strawman fallacy consists on creating a character that defends the position contrary to yours. Optionally, you can add other characters with your position. Once you have this, you make this character explain the opposing argument, or defend it in some way.

Once you have done so, you can argue against that argument. Since you control the strawman, you can make him unable to respond, or answer foolishly. If this was a real person, the outcome would probably be different. With the strawman, you can shamefully make them unable to respond.

As an example, let's imagine the same story, with two differences: the man smugly(another trick, to show he's stupid) asks to talk about the one true god that we all should follow and about heaven and hell(let's say christian god). The girl answers in the same way. The man shouts "shut up, heretic!" and detonates a bomb he had strapped on him, blowing up the plane.

You see? All religius people are ignorant (they dont know about shit), smug and condescending (trying to teach a little girl), and violent fanatics (shouting angrily and resorting to bombs). It's very essy to "prove", because they're my characters and I can make them do whatever I want.

Of course, the story I just explained sounds stupid. That was its point. This techniche is widely used by lots of sides in different types of arguments. It provides examples of other point of views wihtout letting them defend themselves or while making them stupid, thus making the wanted point more reasonable to the reader, or listener.

The story with the student used the same fallacy, plus the appeal to authority. This one is also widely used. In the student story, it was claimed that Albert Einstein was that student. This is not even true, but it's irrelevant in this case. Let's cringe in horror and say he did say these things. So what? Albert Einstein was a great physicist, so I would listen to his opinion in physics. I would not care about his opinion in cooking, because he's not remembered as a cook. He is an authority, but an authority in some topic. Appeal to authority tries to prove something by simply saying someone important said it. The missing detail is to say that whoever said it has to be a respected expert on that topic for it to be considered useful. And even so, it's not enough if there's no solid proof behind the comment. I believe it was Aristoteles the one who thought that arrows without a pointy end would move faster. He was a great thinker, and he was very wrong in this.

Summing it up, to properly use an authority they have to be experts in the discussed field and have undisproved research defending that theory. Otherwise its as useful as proudly declaring your 3-year old son agrees with your idea and thinks you're awesome(good for you, but irrelevant in a discussion).

Since we're talking about religion and logic, I'd like to add a few comments about religion itself. As explained in Dogma, I'm fine with people having beliefs, or ideas. I'm less fine with organising such beliefs in a strict ruleset that needs to be obeyed and shared, accompanied by a big organisation with military-like structure to help its diffussion and power-gathering.

Anyway, it's ok to have beliefs, just be smart about them. Don't use fallacies, and use your brain. I'm more familiar with christianism, so I'll use it as an example:

1- Your sacred book is a list of guidelines, of moral and ethical stories, written by several people among the years and, sometimes, edited by people in power who had their own agendas. Don't take it literal, and don't take it as proof of something. Your book was not done when cars existed, and therefore it does not reflect some of the heavy changes society has gone through. Your book was not written by God, it was written by people, and usually religions agree on the fact that people make mistakes. Focus your attention to the morals, not the content. For example, Christ was trying to spread the message of loving each other, and not doing stuff to people that you would not do to yourself, and otherwise. He was also warning about greed, and about the corruption of money and power. Use logic to apply this message, if you want, and try to fit it in your life. You may realize that organized religions may have twisted some of the ideas for their own purposes, in the process...

2- As mentioned, your sacred book is a number of moral tales. Don't assume they happened for real, and concentrate on the meaning. Science will prove again and again that some of the stories do not fit in our world. It will not be an opinion, it will be proof. For example, evolution is not an opinion, it's a fact. To say otherwise is stupid. To let this shatter your believes, right now, is stupid as well (when it was discovered it was more normal that it impacted beliefs). If you really have beliefs, accept that you may not know how "God" created the world, or in which ways it was made to work, and think that science is just discovering these facts. There are lots of things still unclear, more than before, i'd say. If something as simple as evolution makes you doubt, your beliefs were not that strong on the first place...

3- Be tolerant. I don't know about all religions, but in general I believe that the idea behind most of them is to be nice to each other. If someone's actions are not insulting you directly or damaging someone, let them be. I believe most religions say that people not following them will be judged by God and be punished if they deserve it. Therefore, don't presume to know God's will, and let people do whatever they want. If you belief they're wrong, they will be judged anyway, right? If you're trying to "save" them, well, i'd say you may want to try, but you should know when this intromissions are not welcomed, and avoid them. Specially, avoid any intromissions that would start with you being angry. Remember the free will part, everyone should be able to apply it, don't reduce it in others. If someone is sinning in your eyes, that's their problem, not yours.

4- Religions are not (usually) being attacked by non-religious people. As mentioned, discovering how the world works and realising that your sacred books and ideas mention something different should not be considered an attack. People may react badly against religion when religion is telling them what to think and not allowing any flexibility whatsoever. Always remember the catholic church(even if you're not catholic) during the time of Galileo. The church did not like to have proof that earth was not the center of the universe, and denied it and attacked people who defended this idea. Whatever religion or believe you may follow, think if you're doing exactly the same, and try not to. Just use your brain, and adapt the core principles to this new data. What is more important, if humans evolved or not, or if humans should do good or not?

5- If you believe in the fact that there is a perfect being, and that we humans are far from perfect, accept that this can perfectly apply to you and all the people who created and/or are currently part of your religion. Question things if the messages and the actions do not fit, and always use your brain.

Some time ago I read a brutal sentence that sums up the point i'm trying to make. The sentence said more or less the following thing: "Religions are like dicks. You can have one and feel proud of having one, but it's wrong to try to put it in other people without their permission".

Things one notices living in Adler

These days we're in St. Petersburg, visiting relatives and the city. The place is very nice, and so far we're enjoying the trip.

This has also allowed us to see another part of Russia, a big city this time. After seeing these two sides of the country, one can start knowing what may be usual and what is just happening in Adler (or maybe in little towns in general).

First thing, i already commented it, but in Russia, looks are very important. There is clearly a lot of time and efford dedicated to it. Our apartment looks like an old palace, and other apartments in the same price range had similar styles. If they didnt resemble a palace, they resembled an executive secret apartment for lovers and parties. Practicality is ignored when there's money, and the important thing is to look impressive. More normal apartments look like anywhere else, practical and cozy.

The importance of looks also applies to women (not so much to men). Its not the same for all of them, but lots of women wear very high heels, little dresses, make up and complex hairstyles, etc. For office work it may not bother, but we were rather surprised by a hairdresser with 10cm heels, which we cannot understand how did not hurt her enough to change to slippers after the first client.

We've been told by Russian women that they're not really integrated yet at work, and people usually treat them as mere decoration in worplaces, so i guess that's part of the reason...

We can confirm that driving is rather aggressive everywhere, but i believe Adler has proven to be much worse than a big city. In here traffic seems more normal. In Adler it was easier to see people burning tires in preparation to start moving their cars at high speeds...to stop 5 meters later and let people cross the street.

There is a lot of soviet-made blocks. In Adler it was harder to see this type of building, but i've seen the same type of neighborhood in Vilnius. These buildings look in bad shape from the outside, and they seem to have been made from small cubes. You can still see the lines of union quite clearly in the outside. Inside the apartments, they can be very nice. However, any public part (elevator, stairs) are usually not in good shape. The buildings are usually tall, 15 floors or more. They are separated from one another with wide streets that serve as parking spots for the cars of the people living in them.

There is lots of poverty. Sometimes not very evident, but still there. Lots of little cheap shops, lots of shady-looking markets, lots of people with clearly low-qualified jobs. These same people seem to have had no access to good educations (lots of low-level workers here do very, VERY stupid things, specially in construction).  Lots of these workers wear leather black jackets, dusty and old. Feels like some unofficial uniform sometimes. Lots of these people follow a curious clothes-conservation system. In order to avoid damage when cleaning clothes, they don't clean them. The result is....not good. In Adler it was much more noticeable, thanks to all the workers brought for the olympics, but in here we've also noticed cases like this around the city.

On the other hand, there are lots of luxury shops of one kind or another. Its easy to find jewelry shops, expensive restaurants, bosco shops (which charge a lot for any simple sports clothes), electronics, etc. You can also see lots of clients of these shops, and it seems lots of people also have a lot of money. There are lots of very expensive cars in the streets (specially in Adler, considering the total population). It seems that there is little middle class in here, just lots of lower and upper class.

There's lots of flower shops, that seem to be doing well. It's common to give flowers for lots of dates and reasons after all...

There's lots of dust in the streets. As mentioned, maybe as part of the socialist years, people pay lots of attention to personal possessions. Public things are more abandoned, and less clean. The subways in St. Petersburg are impressive, and the center is very clean. However, less turistic spots, or turistic for russians only, are more abandoned in general (Adler is very dusty).

St. Petersburg is a normal city, like Vilnius or London. Adler, in comparission, is more like the result of providing shops and services for a few hotels and resorts that happened to be there. These services needed their own houses, and more houses were build around them. It doesnt have a city feeling, or a town feeling, it's more like something that spontaneously grew, and now they're trying to adapt it so it works as a town.

Adler has a weird weather. In general, it is warm and nice, while having rainy days, more than in Spain (which is normal). However, it can be VERY windy. This winter, there were 2 days when we had strong warm winds. Walking in the street felt like being under a giant hairdrier. Temperatures went from 10 to 30 degrees, and the wind was strong enough that one of the dish antennas that we have in our apartment (and we don't use) got ripped off from its metallic hanging place. That was an extreme case, but other times it has been windy enough to make it hard to close windows.

And well, thats all for the moment, just some impressions and things we've noticed around here...

Protests and unemployment

Time for another small rant about things in Spain.

I try to follow the news in Spanish newspapers, and things are, as usual, bad. The latest report, from today, is saying that around 6.2 million people are currently unemployed in Spain. From the active population (people searching for a job or working), that represents around 27%.

This is retarded. I mean, the government is showing that they cannot do shit. The old government was exactly the same. Aleix Saló explained the problem very well in his last video, but it's still surprising how stupid and useless they can be.

Spain needs to make it easier to create companies and to make contracts. Last reforms only made it easier to fire people. Again, this is a faulty logic. The idea is that companies that do bad could fire more people so they get better. The problem is that said companies usually depend on people buying their stuff. That same people who do not have jobs any more. Ergo, you're just making the problem worse, not better.

Latest reports are also showing that the whole idea being followed against the crisis (to reduce public debt) does not work, and it was based in faulty studies. An important economist is explaining something quite evident and basic: countries in crisis have big debts because of the crisis, not the other way around. Things will not get worse just because your country has debt.  It's because things are getting worse that companies are closing, work-related taxes are not paid and the country has less money overall, thus increasing the debt.

Anyway, I'd like to talk about a form of protest that is lately happening in Spain, the "Escrache". This type of protest consists on bringing the protest to the house of the persons responsible for the problems. So, instead of making a demonstration in some central square, you do it in front of a member of parliament, explaining that their ideas are doing bad stuff, and trying to convince them to change their opinion and talk about it.

The main organizers of this type of protest are the people affected by the lack of consumer protection that Spain has regarding mortgages. The European union has already said that the Spanish legislation regarding mortgages is unfair and not compatible with European law. The current government has ignored this and hundreds of people are kicked out of their houses daily.

These people have started to organise themselves, to prevent police from removing them from their houses, and they have presented to the parliament a petition to eliminate the debt after giving the house. Basically, with Spanish laws, it's not enough with being kicked out, you still need to pay whatever you owe to the bank, minus the house price. These people are saying to modify that, so at least, if you give the house, your debt is cancelled. This is already done in other countries, but not in Spain. Besides, in Spain the bank has all the rights when executing these agreements, and the consumers have almost none.

These people presented this idea to parliament, and the ruling party has ignored it completely. So, these people have started going to the houses of the parliament members, to tell them and their families, in person, that not having a house is a big problem and to reconsider their vote.

The ruling parties (several of them) has started to scream that this is an outrage, this is antidemocratic, it's pure terrorism, and things like that. They have concentrated attacks towards Ada Colau, a spokesperson for the affected, as if she's their leader or something  when she's  only a spokesperson. They're following the traditional attacks against other parties, in a situation that doesn't fit, and it's confusing them, making them even more moronic.

This "Escrache" brings in me opposed feelings. They have a point when they say it's not very democratic. After all, if 100 people protesting in front of your home could change the opinion of a government, it would not seem fair. It's the majority of people the ones who would be able to change your opinion, not a few that  just happen to know where you live and go there to protest. They are free to do so, but if they could change politics like that, it could be abused. It should also be pointed out that they have been very pacific so far, and therefore considering them violent or "terrorism" is stupid.

However, this would be true in a true democracy, where the government actually tries to check what people want (with polls and referendums and votes), and tries to correct their policies to match the opinion of the majority of the population. Spain is not like that at all. In the newspapers it has been proved already that the current government accepted more money than what's legal from big companies, specially banks. The same banks that are rescued, protected, and have special laws that defend them and strip their customers of rights. These payments have been distributed among the leaders of the ruling party, and have not been declared. They are clearly illegal, and represent the fact that big companies are asking for favours to the government, which does what the big companies tell them. Last government probably did the same, it's just the evidence has not surfaced yet.

In this situation, where the big companies, a minority, is actually controlling the government, I think Escraches are the only possible protest. When you live in a dictatorship, the ethical thing to do is to overthrown the dictator. You cannot expect to do it nicely and legally, since the laws are imposed by unethical bastards who need to be kicked out.

If you are ruling only for your rich friends, dictator style, you need to be pointed out in the street and be told you're a bastard. And if (or when) somebody gets too tired of living in misery and poverty because of you and instead of killing themselves they just shoot you in the face, you will have it coming.....

Mansions of Madness

I don't remember if I've mention it before, but we really love tabletop games. We love making meetings where we can play them in group, and we have a nice selection of them that we have moved already a couple of times around the world, when changing houses.

I believe that around one year ago, for christmas, we got as a present this big game, Mansions of Madness. The game is set up in H.P.Lovecraft world, with cults, monsters from other dimensions, elder gods and stuff like that.

We already had one game from the same universe, Arkham Horror. We really like that game, its hard and compelling. It doesnt have any exploration component, but the feeling is similar to a Survival Horror, managing your resources and always having some shortage. There is lots of combinations in the game, and a certain randomness, but it adds to the excitement, and you get really involved while playing.

Mansions of Madness is different, but with a similar feeling. For starters, one of the players is the bad guy. The game is based on fixed scenarios, that allow several combinations, but they are more limited. Before the start, the bad guy needs to prepare everything according to that scenario.

The combat is much more random, based on cards, the attacked monster and the weapon used. In general, the game tries to set up everything as an ongoing story, even random events. All the cards have some little story, and after some turns special cards that advance the story are revealed.

The game has little figures representing the players and the monsters, and each player and monster has different stats and skills. The players need to explore the map, find clues towards their objective, and kill monsters. The "evil" player needs to command monsters and play nasty cards against the players, while trying to complete their "evil" objective.

The game sounds and looks awesome. However, it has problems. We've played it twice, and both times the same problems became apparent.

The first problem is that only one player explores. Most clues are protected by some key, and most keys are part of former clues. Therefore, the first player who gets the first key will be the only one finding all the clues (unless they drop one of the keys, which is a waste of time if done voluntarily). The other players are left with the task of killing monsters...which is not boring, but there may be moments with no monsters, and in general it feels as if you're not part of the important things in the game.

The second problem is that the "evil" player is overpowered. Its really easy to play game-breaking bad cards, which makes things less interesting. Cards, seems to me, should be more balanced.

The last problem, which seems to me the worst, is that there is no mistery, except in one scenario. You can find what you need to do by simply visiting all rooms, and just using the keys in the order they're found. The game advertises itself as a mistery, but most of the time you're just dragging the players from one side of the map to the other, with no possible thinking.

I believe that the game has a lot of potential. It has really great ideas, and the mechanics are really good and innovative, but the scenarios need to be improved. Mistery should be added, and there should be more posibilities and actions to take.

I believe that adjusting the rules and creating some scenario with more story parts and a bigger range of options can make this game a great one. However, i haven't made these changes yet, and the game as it is now feels like something is lacking...

Liberal Policies

There is a new video from Aleix Saló, Europesadilla. I'm sorry, this time I could not find English subtitles yet. The video, as always, explains the situation in Spain in a funny but direct way, while showing that we're totally and utterly screwed unless we kick some current leaders and their friends out of the power.

In the video, they explain two economic and politic ideas that are currently clashing in the democratic (or "democratic", like Spain) countries around the world. I thought I'd made a rant about these ideas, specially regarding the public services...

At heart, both ideas want to make life easier for everybody. The idea towards socialism defends that government has to control companies, offer services, give money support and redistribute wealth, so people have jobs and money and are not exploited. The liberal idea says that this control and redistribution makes it harder for companies to prosper, and without companies people will not have jobs and will not have wealth.With more freedom, companies thrive and hire more people, and share this wealth with their employees, redistributing it. It also defends that public services are inefficient, because they don't have as an objective to create wealth. All this money lost in the public services makes wealth to be lost for no reason. It also defends that we should be free to choose which service do we want, and by having a public service this freedom is denied, since we need to pay for the public one.

Lately, both sides are being considered as worthy options. However, I'm taking a side, and I consider the other one unethical, for several reasons. I'm talking about the liberal side, of course. I believe it can only make the situation much worse.

So, let's concentrate on the public services issue: The idea is that services will be more efficient being run by private companies, plus we will have the freedom to choose which service we do prefer to pay. If presented like this, it may sound reasonable, specially in a moment of crisis.

The problem is that private companies have a clear objective, to make more money. Please notice that the objective is not to make money, but to make more of it. A company that always wins the same amount of money is not considered successful, and may even be considered a failure. The point in the modern world is to always grow, forever (an impossibility), so when you're not growing, you're failing at your job as a company.

When these abstract services become things like healthcare or education, you can see the problem: These services are vital in making us, as a society, able to deal better with life and work. If your only concern when making these services is how much money they will gain, while keeping the service barely acceptable, you will cut costs in any way you can. It's good not to waste money, but in these services a cut in expenses may mean thousands of dead people that would have lived otherwise, or thousands of idiots who are unable to think higher thoughts when doing even the most basic tasks, which will result in poorer results in these tasks.

I'm not saying money should be ignored in the equation, but that the equation should prioritize first, the quality of the service. Then, it should try to equalize expenses so the balance gets closer to 0. If you have benefits, invest them in growing. In private companies, the directives and the stock owners get part of these benefits, so they will try to increase this amount. Some directives will even try to maximise short-time benefits, so they get a big chunk of them and then the company can crash, since they will be retired and enjoying the bonuses they got. Eliminating them from the equation guarantees that money will be dedicated only towards the improvement of the service. As per motivation (people say that public workers are unmotivated  with some truth to it), I kind of agree that, sometimes, public workers do not do as much as they can. However, I believe that this problem can easily be solved: Treat all public workers like private ones. Make it easier to fire people according to their productivity, and establish productivity evaluations. Offer also the possibility to ascend in ranks (and salary), if you choose to do so. If you make somebody unfirable, no matter if it's public or private, you have a problem if they turn out to be lazy, so make sure you can do something about it....

As per improvements, another argument is that without the motivation of money, the services will not try to become more efficient. About that, you can always make public evaluations of the services, auditories and plans for improvements. Since it's a public company, it's easier to implement. Private companies, unless demanded by law, will not have such checks, and I agree to the fact that the law should not interfere too much with private companies, apart from requiring some taxes and guaranteeing a certain level of well-being and security for the employees. Also, when a private company tries to make improvements, the underlying cause, as mentioned, is money. With the public one, these improvements can be triggered by other reasons, and problems that would be considered too expensive to fix can be resolved in the public ones, since the economic benefits are not as important.

Of course, I'm not saying all services should be like this. If you want to get rich, go ahead and create a private company that offers some non-vital service, and do whatever you legally can do to increase your money. However, there is a list of services that should always be available in a public way, that are too vital to be left only in the hands of private companies. Services like healthcare, education, security (firemen and police, and even the army, although I believe armies should not get a big part in modern, civilized countries with no problematic neighbours) or some basic transportation should be always available for everybody, in public form.

One of the arguments against that is that your freedom to choose a service is denied: Part of your money is taken to pay taxes for those services. This argument assumes that you're rich enough to pay for any service you want. One of the things that is usually said about freedom is that your freedom ends where the freedom of another person starts. Basically, you're free to do things as long as you're not decreasing the freedom of another person to do them. If we try to follow this, if you force people to choose such vital services (instead of having always the public option available), your're decreasing their freedom. Not everybody is going to have enough money to pay for these services in the first place, so if there is no public services, you are denying their freedom to use these services and to choose what to study, or even more basic, their freedom of getting better and live after falling ill.

Defenders of liberal theories will usually be rich, or people that believe they are rich enough to have freedom in paying the service. I believe that those critical services can be offered by private companies, as long as there is a public service offering the same, and if you have enough money to pay for the private one, please go ahead. However, eliminating the public one because you have the freedom to choose does not mean everybody shares this same freedom, so the public one should always be available. Denying it destroys the freedom of the people who do not have enough resources, and the only thing that does to the people who do have the resources is to charge them taxes, not killing them.

Anyway, just a rant about the latest decisions taken in Europe  where some bastards are trying to turn everything private, even when examples like USA and UK show proof of the big disaster that this will cause...(ask USA about their healthcare, or ask UK about their private train system and some of their hospitals....)

Some other day I'll rant some more about politics....

Doctor Who

We just finished watching the last chapter of Doctor Who, aired last Saturday, apparently. Other times I have mentioned this series, but I have never explained much about it...

Doctor Who is an English series, very VERY old one, that started as a way to teach some science things to kids, mixed with fiction. It evolved quite rapidly into a full science-fiction series with different plots, the teaching part mostly forgotten. The tone varied, and even if considered for kids most of the time, there were more adult themes thrown into the mix.

We're talking about lots of years and changes here, it started in 1963 and continued for a long time. In 1989, a big break in the series started, and it was not continued until 2005, with a movie in the middle of it, in 1996.

They got away with all this changes by the fact that the Doctor, the main character, is an alien with human form, that can regenerate when about to die. Using smart applications of that theory, they have changed the actor playing him all along these years. The Doctor is also accompanied by a "Companion", usually a girl, although later years there has been some more variety. To change companions, they just need to show that one of them got tired from travelling with him, and then the Doctor just finds another one (after some brooding). In some cases the companion has accidents and dies or is lost somewhere, but well, the end result is that they change.

The important thing, of course, is that the Doctor travels in a spaceship that is also a time machine (in the shape of a blue police box), so they can explore other planets and universes, the future, the past, even the present, and in some extreme cases, complete other dimensions.

Depending on the writer, things try to make more sense or less, from a scientific point of view, but it always tends to the "less sense", just for the fun of it.

We started watching it after the big break happened, and we have only watched the chapters emitted after 2005. Alba recommended them, and we really enjoyed them^^.

Anyway, the main writer for the first new seasons after 2005 had been Russel T. Davies. The plots had  been complex and interesting, plenty of times with some common theme present in most of the season's chapters.

The actors playing the Doctor in the first 4 new seasons were Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant. Tennant in particular has done an incredible job, and is one of the best Doctors ever.

Of course, being the main writer does not mean you write all the chapters, there were other writers. One of these writers was Steven Moffat, a fan of the series since he was a kid, that has done work as the writer of other successful series. In the first 4 seasons, Moffat wrote one or two chapters in each of them. And they were awesome. Truly incredible chapters, scary, creepy, interesting, touching, funny chapters, all at the same time.

The chapters are The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
.
Watch them, even if you're not going to watch the rest of the series. Specially, watch Blink.

When Davies decided to end his period and leave it to someone else, that someone else was going to be Steven Moffat. The actor playing the Doctor would change and Tennant would leave too, but the fact that Moffat would take charge promised to be awesome.

The new Doctor ended up being Matt Smith, and even if not as good as Tennant, his doctor is quite interesting too, more goofy and in another world, less serious, but still giving a nice touch to it.

Moffat, however, was a disappointment.

His plots are usually much more simplistic than Davies, and make much less sense (when he starts getting into time travel, the amount of bullshit that doesn't make any sense with everything established beforehand is astounding). He made some awesome chapters before, but when he got free rule over it, lots of chapters resemble pure fan fiction, where he crams 6 different alien species (that appeared in the old series that he watched as a child), without making any sense of why they are here or why they're fighting with or against the Doctor.

Moffat is a fan of not explaining things too much, but you need to draw the line somewhere, and if you killed an entire dangerous alien species, and/or locked it inside some other dimension, when they appear again without further explanation it feels kind of...cheap. As I said, like cheap harry potter fan-fiction, where all of a sudden Hermione falls in love with Draco, logic be damned.

That's half of the chapters...the other half, the problem is another one. In the other half of the chapters, where things make sense, the world feels...empty. Davies was an specialist of showing probable real-life consequences of some alien attack over London (for example, people leaving London for Christmas because every previous one some dangerous thing was happening in there). It's little things that help to create a world that has internal workings and makes sense.

Terry Pratchett, I believe  has mentioned several times that the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork, that he created, makes sense because you can imagine it working even when the heroes are not around. It has a life of its own, it's not only a background scenario where plot happens.

Moffat missed precisely that for a very long time, and there were lots of chapters that felt as if there was no other world population than the 6 characters shown in screen....the feeling was that something was weird in that world, it was not really logic, it was half empty.

The last 2 seasons where Moffat has participated had these big problems, the plot was going all around the place, made little sense, introduced 5 minutes-characters as some kind of star guest and other similar bullshit.

There were good chapters (for example, I liked a lot The Doctor's Wife, done by Neil Gaiman, a writer of books that I really like), but the overall feeling was a disappointment.

However, even with problems, we could enjoy chapters, it's just that not as much as before...and the two-three companions of these 2 season managed to become interesting and nice. After a while, the companions had a life that made sense, and this added much-needed logic to the world.

Anyway, we've noticed that the chapters are getting better, and I really enjoyed this last chapter.

The current season, that stopped months ago and just now is being continued, has had already 2-3 chapters where the "world half-empty" feeling has disappeared. Maybe it's a little thing, but with these chapters, I finally got the feeling that we were in the same universe as the one done by Davies. There was a retarded chapter too (Moffat doesn't understand time travel at all sometimes, or contradicts everything we've seen, including things he has said), but overall things seem to have improved, and it's getting back to a very interesting place...

We'll see how the next chapter goes^^