My IQ is 131, and That's The Saddest Thing Ever.

From tickle.com:

Your overall intelligence quotient is the result of a scientifically-tested formula based on how many questions you answered correctly. But it's only part of what we learned about you from your answers on the test. We also determined the way you process information.

The way you think about things makes you an Intuitive Investigator. This means you have multiple talents and can do anything you set your mind to. You're able to detect numerical patterns easily and are able to grasp the true complexity of the world, both in its details and in a more abstract form. You've got a sharp logical mind and are adept at using words to get even a difficult point across. The combination of all these things makes you truly brilliant.

How did we determine that your thinking style is that of an Intuitive Investigator? When we examined your test results further, we analyzed how you scored on 8 dimensions of intelligence: spatial, organizational, abstract reasoning, logical, mechanical, verbal, visual and numerical. The 3 dimensions you scored highest on combine to make you an Intuitive Investigator. Only 6 out of 1,000 people have this rare combination of abilities.

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Another test:

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.

Only 6 out of 1,000 people have my rare combination of abilities. Holy Catsmoke, Batman! I'm going to be lonely for the rest of my life! I don't know many people that I can relate to: Chris is good, when we're in sync and such. As is Alan. I can tell something lurks behind Shanti, but he's struggling to cast off everything and just blurt it out - cagey... shrewd, perhaps, and perhaps its not such a bad idea. Let's not forget Niall, too, who's almost there.

I could be sadder. I could exist in post scarcity society. I could be utterly down and out in the magic kingdom. I could, infact, be someone's pet.

More exactly, I could be a house hound on the professional show circuit. I could be forced to recirculate the DNA of my forebears in an incest driven breeding plan, hatched by the befouled mind of middle-upper class dog owners everywhere. The very template of perfection, matching a written description of my breed to the utmost degree - yet so riddled with bad genes passed down from mother to child to grandchild and back to mother, a genetic barbie doll of misproportion. I could, like Bo (a dog on the tv I saw, you aren't expected to know who or what Bo is), suffer from narcalepsy accidentally brought on by successive generations of copying - every time I bark too much, BAM! I lose control of my muscles and fall asleep. All because I'm over excitable and experiencing high emotion.
So messed up was this poor dog Bo, that he could never escape the research lab: he would get half way down the corridor when he escaped, he'd be so excited he'd fall asleep metres away from freedom.

That's a dog's life. It's a warning to myself, that if I manage to succeed my children should be mongrels - mix and match DNA, put into an environment with struggle, and forced to adapt or die. Were I to provide them with everything, my bloodline would devolve and splinter, I'd become a domesticated dynasty.

There's a link between adrenalin and melonin - the domesticated dog has a small brain, and is less agressive. That's because dogs were scavengers, and if you run away when people throw out trash from a settlement, you'll go hungry. So the less likely to run away a dog is, the more food it gets, the easier life is. Soon, nature has selected an animal which is slow, and stupid, and not agressive to succeed: the need for adrenaline dies away.
Melonin controls skin and hair coloration in humans, likewise with dogs. With less adrenaline, colours of all sorts sprang out. That's why cats and dogs come in massive amounts of variety of color: domestication has shaped them.

Once the dogs attached to human society, 5000 years of it saw some really big changes. The good Egyptian hunting dogs are fast and sleek desert animals. They have a longer snout, giant legs, keen eyesight. Design wise, they are perfect. You can bet that hunters didn't breed for these attributes: it would be mind boggling to think that intentional planning made a perfect dog by a bunch of desert farmers barely able to survive.
Instead: a hunting dog's job is to go out and chase something down. The best of the bunch are the quickest - for whatever reason (they have longer legs, or better eyesight). The owner doesn't care. He feeds the dog that does well first, and the others later. The better feeding, the easier it is to get a mate and get it on - passing on the genes.

Through generations, hunting dogs like greyhounds have evolved to be really fast and really slick because it gets them food from their owners. I want to breed greyhounds, not corgies with my descendants.

I better get a move on: with only perhaps three in a thousand women out there with similar attributes to me, and me being an only child, I'm in a race against probability. The O'Connor clan is dying, and I'm the holder of a DNA dynasty.

Shit. Maybe I should settle for someone with a good chew toy and lots of dog food.

Bikerrorism

I am the most dangerous thing on the streets of Adelaide.

Period.

With a cry on my lips of Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever? I set out from my place of work each and every day. What lies ahead is a twilight zone of danger, darkness, cars and terror.
I flex my fingers as I grip the handlebars, I slam down each sneaker shod foot on the pedals, I push off into the darkness. It's a 2.8km mostly downhill run. I must cross at least 3 major roads bloated with the arterial lifeblood of Adelaide: office workers.
I have 21 gears, a headlight and a tail light. I have a pair of shorts and a tshirt. Socks. The sneakers I mentioned before.
That's it, I'm naked to the world as people who make their lives from repeating routine and not having to think hurtle all around me at high speed thinking about getting home to the tv and dinner.

Yet... people are utterly afraid of me. Here's why: if they see you hesitate, you're dead. If they see you think, you're dead. If they see you as anything less than their worst fears, they'll run right over your sorry ass and not think twice.
So, I don't give them the chance.

High visibility terror attacks of lightning speed and utter precision. I miss fenders by centimetres, screaming past knowing that they have to give way and if they don't, I will sue them from my cripple's hospital bed until I never have to do anything more with my life.
I cut across parks, I jump pavement, I weave between traffic. I cross multiple lanes of oncoming traffic, causing them to slow and be hesitant, leading my band of following cars forward into battle in a kind of 21st century road war. Their horns are the sounds of my victory as the surprise registers, the squeal of brakes is my fuck you, world summed up in the voices of metal.
This isn't road rage, this is road bravery. My bell is my bugle, and my front tire my bayonet. I am terrifying, and they are terrified - the roads of Adelaide are Lucy li Bocage: mine, and forever so shall it be.

Bikes over Adelaide

Rejoice, the state government isn't useless. And, free maps too. I suspect I'll be coding something cool out of it, as well as riding around the city.

My Heros

Some of you might have actually been listening to me over the past few weeks, so you might be aware of some of my newfound heros.

Another joins the list: Lt. Gen. Dallaire.

He is a firm believer in God, a soldier by profession but a human by any other measure. He was medically discharged from the Canadian armed forces after having himself relieved from command.

What makes him so important?
The anguish and suffering he experienced as he watched almost 1 million people executed in genocide.
The world looked on, and told him we don't care.

He could not stage armed resistance, and was starved of resources, troops, and international support. At the very start of the UN mission, he ordered 10 of his best troops to protect the new president: they were murdered almost immediately. Outraged, countries withdrew their troops.

After witnessing things that neither you nor I could ever imagine, he drank himself into a drug fuelled breakdown, ending up under a park bench suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
He began recovering, and now is trying to warn the world of future genocide in Sudan, something he calls Rwanda in slow motion.

To this day he can't go near raw meat, as it reminds him of the mutilation and horrors of Rwanda.

"A machete rarely ever kills outright. So... many of these people... suffered."

I find that quietly uttered statement one of the most disturbing concepts: why should any person ever have to make discoveries like that.

Lt. Gen. Dallaire joins many others on my list of heros.

• Lt. Gen. Dallaire
• Australian Humanitarians
• George Welch
• Gary Gordon
• Randy Shughart

So, who are your heros, and what do you aspire to do?

Lost Hope

I've got a photo on this nifty poster.

I still can't find it. This is a small child's football medal I found while being picked up for work. I thought it reflected a little piece of some's lost hope rather nicely.

You can order copies of the poster so get one today!

Full Metal Jacket, A Review

If you've ever seen this movie, you probably thought a lot like I used to about it. A dark war movie by Kubrick, nice to look at but that's as far as it goes.

What made me sit up and take notice was a scene I just couldn't understand, one I'd seen a thousand times before but never as a nearly 20 year old with a successful blog full of interesting bits.

Q: Why the fuck are you wearing a peace badge but have born to kill written on your helmet?
A: I'd like to think I was trying to say something about the dualism of man.

You can see it emblazoned upon the cover and posters for the movie.

I liked the feel of that on my tongue, and I had no idea what the hell dualism was. Alright, perhaps that's a lie, but we'll cover that in a moment. Wikipedia made the relevation clearer for me.

In the west, dualism is good versus evil, the hero versus the villian: clearcut positions on utter righteousness. The entire concept of the American soldier is of one who fights the good fight and dies to a noble and just cause.

In the east, dualism is something different. It's still two sides, opposed to each other, but it's further abstract. It's the difference between a tree and everything else, or two sides of whom neither is more right than the other.

So what is our simple journalist trying to say to us throughout the entire movie?

My eyes were literally wide with the implications here. Constantly we see good people doing bad things.

• "Gomer Pile" driven to insanity by the abuse of his peers and his instructors, who executes his master sgt on the night of graduation from bootcamp.
• The barstardisation of "Gomer Pile" for his stupidity, something which he cannot understand.
• The faux coating to reality and the attitude of never happen to me of the stars and stripes officer, instructing our journalist to lie if need be about what actually happened prior to the Tet Offensive.
• The displays of respect for their enemy by US GIs, we'll never have someone so honourable to shoot when we rotate back stateside - but at the same time mocking the corpse of an NVA regular.
• The final execution of the VC sniper by Joker, which made me realise what was being said. We see him standing over a dying girl, pistol drawn. Visible is his helmet, "born to kill", and his peace badge. As he works up the nerve to execute her, he must rotate to the left - an action which removes the peace symbol from the field of view.

What do all of these mean? The inhuman struggle to reconcile philosophies through violence? I believe the last point, on which I've reflected the most, best illustrates the struggle of man to follow Tao (the way), and achieve balance and simplicity without replacing it with either one or the other.
Sadly, Joker fails, as the will to take a life wins out over the urge to protect it.

Tao is about finding the simplest path in life and taking it: even inaction is an action, so like water flowing down a hill you can do nothing but follow the greater way. There are many other ways, yet everything is predestined. The trick is to not struggle against fate and try to shape destiny, but rather relax and let it carry you. Choosing your path is about choosing the method of least struggle against destiny.
How does Joker find his Tao? By accepting he can do nothing but fight until the war is over, then go home - the mickey mouse routine of the army.

The other beautiful simplicity in this movie that I became aware of: this was an war of ideology. It may have started as a means to stop communism and free the people, but that's not what it truely was. It was a war of duality: The western concept of Good Capitalists (inside every vietnamese is an american just waiting to get out) versus Evil Communists pitted against the eastern dualism of balance through conflict.
The US lost vietnam. Balance with no bias towards one or the other won out. Yet we saw with Joker's struggle to come to grips with his dualistic nature that he was in his way a tiny drop of white in a sea of black - yin-yang.

Have a further read of wikipedia on the subject and see if you can't find things I've missed.