![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 19th, 2006 07:55 pmHmm, the item I paid $38 on the 9th to have delivered from the US to the UK was only dispatched the other day, on the 17th. Why the hell was I paying that much when they could have sent it by whale more quickly? (Fellow geeks, feel free to insert a joke about high bandwidth but poor latency here.)
Work's going ok; I still don't like actually having to do a full-time job, but it's fair to say that this is significantly more enjoyable than my other jobs. I get the relative freedom of my 2003 job combined with the pay of my 2005/2006 job, so it works out ok. And I get games consoles on my desk.
As is becoming usual for Monday nights, I went out last night for the "metal downstairs and emo upstairs but I've never been upstairs" night. For years and years, I fought a quiet battle to get my preferred music - metal, obviously - to be taken seriously. The problem is, when I go out and there are a load of people on the dancefloor punching the air and singing "Flash of iron, leather, spikes, and swords... mighty warriors with metal on their side!", I don't know if I've won or lost.
Afterwards, on the solitary walk back through the dark back streets of Nottingham, I noticed the stars out in reasonably full force. I don't get much of a view at my current place, nor indeed from the last abode. Ironically the best view of the night sky was probably back when I lived in St Anns, which was pretty much the worst place I lived in by any other measure. Every couple of years, I live somewhere with a good view of the sky, and I learn the names of some of the stars. Then I move house, spend a couple of years in a place where I never see them, and forget the names again.
Still not bought a new mp3 player. Must check again to see if there's anywhere cheaper than eBay...
So, the Thai government got overthrown in a coup. Generally, I try to be morally relativistic... no absolute good and evil, right and wrong, all cultures have valid reasons for their choices, etc... but wow, some places just seem very uncivilised. Their elected legislature is a thin and fragile veneer over the clashes of tribes and warlords, of a literal or metaphorical nature. I think cultures just go through phases, and that you can't have the democratic phase before you've had the monarchy stage, the partial suffrage stage, the imperialist expansion stage, etc. And what we see in many countries is the result of prematurely foisting democracy on societies that aren't universally convinced of its benefits. However, I don't think that democracy is the final stage either.
Work's going ok; I still don't like actually having to do a full-time job, but it's fair to say that this is significantly more enjoyable than my other jobs. I get the relative freedom of my 2003 job combined with the pay of my 2005/2006 job, so it works out ok. And I get games consoles on my desk.
As is becoming usual for Monday nights, I went out last night for the "metal downstairs and emo upstairs but I've never been upstairs" night. For years and years, I fought a quiet battle to get my preferred music - metal, obviously - to be taken seriously. The problem is, when I go out and there are a load of people on the dancefloor punching the air and singing "Flash of iron, leather, spikes, and swords... mighty warriors with metal on their side!", I don't know if I've won or lost.
Afterwards, on the solitary walk back through the dark back streets of Nottingham, I noticed the stars out in reasonably full force. I don't get much of a view at my current place, nor indeed from the last abode. Ironically the best view of the night sky was probably back when I lived in St Anns, which was pretty much the worst place I lived in by any other measure. Every couple of years, I live somewhere with a good view of the sky, and I learn the names of some of the stars. Then I move house, spend a couple of years in a place where I never see them, and forget the names again.
Still not bought a new mp3 player. Must check again to see if there's anywhere cheaper than eBay...
So, the Thai government got overthrown in a coup. Generally, I try to be morally relativistic... no absolute good and evil, right and wrong, all cultures have valid reasons for their choices, etc... but wow, some places just seem very uncivilised. Their elected legislature is a thin and fragile veneer over the clashes of tribes and warlords, of a literal or metaphorical nature. I think cultures just go through phases, and that you can't have the democratic phase before you've had the monarchy stage, the partial suffrage stage, the imperialist expansion stage, etc. And what we see in many countries is the result of prematurely foisting democracy on societies that aren't universally convinced of its benefits. However, I don't think that democracy is the final stage either.
