Dreams of the Quill

What happened to April and March Posted on April 20, 2008 at 6:49 am by Flak Post Categories: Life • Reflections Tagged: boxes • excuses • honey & clover • sunday update Comments: 0

You might be wondering what happened to the promise of “something—anything” every Sunday. Well, I kind of… forgot. Yeah. The last few Sundays have been devoid of updates because I’m devoid of memory; I haven’t written any HC in the past few weeks and thus have left Sundays empty. I only now recall that blog-like posts are fine, too. And here we go.

Continue reading What happened to April and March…

My 2007 Take - Novembers Posted on December 1, 2007 at 5:46 pm by Flak Post Categories: Life • Reflections Tagged: emo • inside jokes • megas win • november • victory Comments: 2

A bit of history for those not acquainted with my life story, and then we can get to the meat of this post:

Continue reading My 2007 Take - Novembers…

Emotion Posted on November 14, 2007 at 4:52 am by Black Shard Post Categories: Life • Reflections Tagged: Emotion Comments: 5

I tend to claim that I am a cold, unemotional machine. This is not so much a lie as it is a vast oversimplication of the truth. The thing is, I experience emotions in much the way a small child does. I feel pain, I am distressed. The pain passes, the distress passes. I live very much in the now, unbound by future and past. Other people go what will they think of me? and those people hated me all those years ago… while I… I don’t care. The past is past. It is irrelevent. The future is uncertain. It is��irrelevent. The present is all that matters. The people who hated me a thousand lifetimes ago, who are far and away in a time and place that no longer exists… they don’t matter. The people who might hate me for something I am about to do… their potential opinions are irrelevent.

Similarly, the possibility of future pain does not sway me. The possibility of future reward does not sway me. It is only visceral, immediate things that mean anything at all to me. Placing a candy in a location you want me to go to could convince me to go. Telling me you will give me candy for going there… nothing. I chase visceral experiences. Sensory input. I feel pain, I grow angry, or afraid. I find myself in a potentially dangerous situation, uncertain what to do, I grow afraid. I find myself well-fed, and I am happy. I find myself ill, and miserable, I grow sad. But someone telling me that they hate me… what does this mean? Does it mean they won’t feed me? Won’t play with me?

It’s meaningless. Abstract nonsense. Their emotions are of no consequence. All that matters if their behavior. I’ve known people that hated me, but were no different to me from any number of people who held no particular interest in me. Either way, they have little to do with me. I’ve known people that would tell me all day long how much they liked me, but never played with me, or gave me food, or helped end pain, or anything of the sort. They too, were no different from the faceless masses that have no interest in me. Then there are those that had no opinion on me either way, but would respond to my actions. Teachers, neutral teachers, who would take the side of a blubbering bully over the actual victim, they were a threat. That they did not care about me either way meant nothing. The neutral teachers that rewarded particular behaviors, they were useful allies. That they did not care about me in particular either way was, once again, irrelevent.

Other people’s emotions are inextricably tied to the emotions of those around them. What do other people think of them. What should they think of other people. What should other people think they think of them. And yet the question of what these people are doing to or for them is never asked. Someone whom loves them very much but takes, takes, and takes some more is better than the authority figure that hates them but nonetheless rewards them as appropriate. Never mind that this makes no sense. Never mind that this is a suicidal approach to existence. It’s how most people operate.

I can’t grasp this. Social networking is beyond me. I feel no sympathy. No pity. No desire to reach out and help others, just because they like me or I like them. People think I’m stupid. Or cruel. Or hateful. Or just plain evil. They hurl these words at me, attempting to sink emotional barbs into me, to get me to stop being what I am, by implying that what I am is hateful. And I see that they hate these things in me, but I do not see how it matters that they hate these qualities. I see that they judge me, but I don’t see how the judgement means anything to me. They grow afraid when I respond blankly to their words, because I should be hurting. I should be in pain. And yet I take no notice of what they have done, as though they are nothing more than a gnat buzzing around my ears. And this frightens them, this inability to control me, influence me. I’m rogue. I don’t play by the rules. I’m outside the system they understand, and therefore my power is limitless.

They don’t see it. They don’t see that I live by a set of rubricks. I work to ensure my continued survival. To improve my existence. To maintain my sanity. To reduce the risk in my life. There are ways to influence me, but because the social spectrum has no effect on me, they see me as some horrible beast, immune to their every effort to influence me.

They simply don’t understand.

When they do gain a glimmer of understanding, it is still wrong. When they realize that I don’t think that way, that I am incapable of such thinking, they come to believe that I am some sort of cripple. A blind man in��a world of vibrant colour. They pity me, or mock me, or feel contempt for me. They continue to hurl these strange sentiments at me, completely missing that they mean nothing to me.

Their ignorance astounds me.

Those with a moderate understanding of how I think believe I am little more than a beast. I walk, I talk, but I cannot possible reason, or understand. I must be impulsive. Unthinking. Inconsiderate of the consequences of my actions. An animal in human skin, to be talked down like a particularly unintelligent child.

They still don’t get it.

Those with an extensive understanding of my internal wiring conclude that I am brain-damaged, and that I need to be ‘fixed’, made like all those around me, so that I can function properly in the world around me. They try to manipulate me, ‘educate’ me, instill caring, compassion, ‘human’ traits in me, so they can show me to others like I’m some sort of trophy. ‘Look!’, they say, ‘I made a gentleman out of this ignorant savage! Am I not incredible?’ even as I continue to advance, paying little more than lip service to their strange conventions so they will stop interfering.

It is like speaking to a brick wall.

I don’t care. I can’t care. I don’t want to care. Social rules, conventions, niceties. They mean nothing to me. These people mean nothing to me. Their lives mean nothing to me. They provide nothing. No information. No food. No electricity. No water. Nothing. At all.

And nobody ever seems to fully comprehend these facts.

I am what I am.

It’s not that hard to understand.

Government Surveillance 2007 Posted on October 8, 2007 at 11:20 am by Flak Post Categories: Life • Reflections Tagged: aclu • government • school Comments: 6

This is kind of in the school category because it’s cross-posted from my AP Government class’s forums. Enjoy:

I think the American Civil Liberties Union came up when we did our chapter on civil liberties. What the ACLU does is “preserve all [the protections and guarantees of our] First Amendment rights … [our] right to equal protection under the law … [our] right to due process … [and our] right to privacy.” These are all things mentioned in class, I believe���in fact, they’re sort of what our civil liberties chapter was about (these things being civil liberties).

Yesterday, the local chapter of the ACLU of Northern California held an event at the Doubletree Hotel in the Berkeley Marina. There were two speakers; one was the mayor of Richmond, the other was Nicole A. Ozer, a lawyer with the ACLU Foundation. The main topic was government surveillance, and how it’s not the greatest thing ever.

I went to this event with my older brother, who is a member of the ACLU and who used to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (also mentioned in class). I was kind of surprised by the attendance demographics when I got there���because my main exposure to civil liberties issues had been through my brother (24 years old) I was not exactly prepared for the room predominantly occupied by people in their seventies and eighties. My brother and I were thanked by multiple people for lowering the average age in the room…

The mayor of Richmond spoke first, and frankly, I don’t remember a whole lot of what she was trying to say. Some of what she said was plain fact, like the bit about the ~130 new surveillance cameras being put up around Richmond (costing about $4.2 million if I recall correctly). But most of what she said sort of glanced off me; I think I zoned out at one point while she was complaining about how the surveillance cameras are a bad idea, and how that $4.2 million could have gone to give 100 youth jobs doing community-building, and how that would be better, etc. Not that I disagree with her, but most of the time it just seemed like she was whining. Not the most stirring lecture.

Ozer was much more effective. She even had a power point presentation (though by even, I don’t mean even, because it didn’t contribute anything to her effectiveness). Anyway, she spoke a lot longer than the mayor. And I feel like she may have had a better grasp on the event’s topic (her being a lawyer specializing in this stuff). I may have learned a few things:

1. Government surveillance is becoming more and more widespread in its use at a fairly disturbing rate.

• San Francisco went from 2 to 70 security cameras in 2 years (big change).
• According to a public records survey done by the ACLU in 131 jurisdictions throughout California,
  • 37 cities have some type of video surveillance program
  • 18 cities have significant video surveillance programs of public streets and plazas; an additional 10 jurisdictions are actively considering such expansive programs
  • 18 cities have systems in which police actively monitor the cameras
  • Only 11 police departments have policies that even purport to regulate the use of video surveillance cameras
  • No jurisdiction has conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the cameras��� effectiveness

2. Surveillance cameras are being installed in large numbers in part because the Department of Homeland Security is giving communities “free” money to install them. Actually, it’s not free because it comes from taxes. Who would have thunk? Also, it seems that DHS is getting something like 2.something billion dollars a year, in part to propagate surveillance cameras! This is money that was taken away from the kinds of programs that the mayor of Richmond was talking about.

3. I kind of “knew” this already, but it was reinforced at the event: surveillance is not only the problem of people who are “doing something wrong.”

• As Ozer pointed out, people act differently when they know they’re being watched. This isn’t a “more innocently” differently, it’s an “afraid of being misunderstood by those watching” differently.
• Many perfectly innocent activities are being labeled suspicious by those in charge of installing/watching the cameras, such as: sitting on your porch in the evening with a couple friends, putting a backpack or bag down in a park for more than 30 seconds, taking a photograph of a landmark building, giving someone change for a twenty on the street, etc.
• Being watched/recorded infringes on some rights such as the right to association and the right to distribute leaflets anonymously (yes, people can see you do these things in real life right now but peoples’ eyes don’t have facial recognition software that checks against humongous government databases).

4. London has been doing the surveillance thing for 10 years now and has spent 400 million pounds on it. They’ve got cameras everywhere; people are captured 300 times a day on average, I think the stat was. Every five minutes. Anyway, here are some things that London’s experiment has shown us:

• There is no proven difference in crime prevention/solving rates on streets with a dozen cameras or a hundred cameras.
• People don’t feel safer thanks to the cameras; they tend to avoid going near them for fear that they were set up because the area is crime-ridden.
• Cameras don’t really deter criminals.

5. We do have a right to privacy beyond our front doors. Privacy is not a matter of location but person; just as you can’t be searched beyond a pat-down without a warrant, you shouldn’t be able to have your every move recorded by the government. Further complicating this matter is that the records kept by these surveillance cameras are not public records. Basically, the advocates of the cameras claim that they don’t infringe on privacy rights only to then say that the footage they took of you on the public street (not private) is private (private?). Ozer said something along the lines of “either there’s no privacy on the street or there is!”

6. These cameras can be used malignantly when watched. The surveillance programs seem to always start with a few unmanned cameras. When these prove ineffective, then they go to more unmanned cameras (in the case of San Francisco, 2->70). Then, if these prove ineffective, they get people to watch the cameras. This leads to discriminatory use; particularly targeting youths, women, and people of color, according to Ozer’s presentation.

7. There was also something about how Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are terrible because they’re rarely as well-protected as they should be. This means that many people with “reader” devices can theoretically read your personal information … especially with the new RFID credit cards (which have no protection whatsoever). I think this point came up under the problem of “combined technologies” and how, by using different bits of modern tech, the government can effectively 1984 us.

Anyway, I could go on for a while longer. Those seemed like the more important points I’d retained. Here’s a link to the ACLU report “Under the Watchful Eye: The Proliferation of Video Surveillance Systems in California,” which was pretty much what Ozer talked about most of the time. There were some other issues that came up, like feds taking digital pictures, your rights and privacy with online sites like flickr (and probably every Web 2.0 site in existence), wi-fi hot spots, etc.

But basically, say no to surveillance? It’s not good already on the basis that it limits our democraticness by infringing our anonymity in our First Amendment rights (key to a democracy, if I recall correctly). Then there’re the issues of abuse, and ineffectiveness, and so on.

I enjoyed the event. Not in the sense that I particularly liked what was discussed, but in the sense that it was my first time at something like this and it was incredibly interesting. That people actually meet up to find out about issues like this, and give money to non-profits like the ACLU Foundation to fight for their rights���that some people care!���was kind of reassuring, though at least a few people there seemed overly zealous in their hatred for current trends in policy…

Oh. I walked away from the event with two things I didn’t have before attending: a guide on how to deal with police officers, and a cool laptop sticker, pictured below:

ore no wasuremono Posted on August 29, 2007 at 5:00 pm by Flak Post Categories: Life • Reflections Tagged: school Comments: 3

AOD writeup coming sometime tomorrow probably.

For now I’ll mention something relevant to the quote in this post’s title���school.

So it looks like I’ll only have five classes this year as opposed to the prescribed six. Which is really a shame because I wanted two English classes (am only getting one of the two, was forced to make a hard decision between the more interesting class and the teacher I know better). I e-mailed the teacher of Short Story (class I’m not taking), asking him if he might keep me updated on assignments. It’s outlandish I guess (I mean, he has enough students) but I would really like to keep up with the class. It looks awesome.

Damn scheduling conflicts.

But, moving on…

My Physics teacher is cool, very chill so far, not insistent upon binders or insanity. We did a mini-lab in class today and nothing seemed outlandishly demanding on his part. It looks like it’ll be a good class.

Calc teacher seems borderline psycho but that’s not new. The class doesn’t seem too hard, though I’m afraid of imminent pace changes.

Drawing class is interesting so far with the minor problem that our teacher is a “real artist” and real artists and I don’t get along so well. They tend to be delusional self-absorbed dolts obsessed with some imaginary historical self-importance. Hah, look at me talking bad about what I aspire to be? No, but an osananajimi of mine is in my class, so that’ll be cool, and I hope to learn a useful thing or two, so that’ll be cool as well.

As for AP Government/Econ… our teacher seems very… Jewish. I’m entitled to say things like that because I’m Jewish. Anyway he’s kind of insane in a good way and seems intent on teaching us well. I’m looking forward to the class.

Anything else… let’s see, I met up with a bunch of friends. Ran into more in the hallways. Handed Carton a copy of my article. Passed up the chance to greet tsundere-chan. Saw an annoying film-otaku in Office Depot whilst buying some more school supplies. And… that’s about it. Yep, sums up my first day of school.

Oh, and because of having a five-period day, every day starts at 9:31 for me.

More time to watch anime/sleep/work on writing/etc.

Also, it just occurred to me that I might not want to do a thin-slicing of my teachers on the first day. They might not appreciate it if/when they come across this site.