Just watched my bro play Assassin's Creed. His pimped CPU is allowing him to play it at mostly high video settings smoothly. On a 20-something inch wide screen LCD. Compare this to my laptop. I set everything to the absolute lowest settings. And I cannot get past the 1st scenario in the tutorial. It was a major lagfest. GG.
Now the difference between his desktop and my laptop has finally dawned on me. It is incredibly huge, even though his costs only 500 more than mine. Damn.
Recently, I saw this troll on some forum saying that "God exists" and daring people to prove him wrong. All replies were basically trash except one, which contained reasons that I've never encountered before.
This person said that if God is omniscience, then he would not need to change anything in the universe, because he would have known about all these problems and created everything in such a way that things would not end up in these situations in the first place.
And because God is omnipotent, he definitely would have the power to enforce the above at the very beginning.
Unless He wanted his creations to suffer. Unless he wanted Satan and all other problems in the world to exist. Unless everyone is wrong about perfection and Utopia except me, that perfection is really a balance of good and evil, that a place where only good things exist is not Utopia.
Either these, or He doesn't exist. Proof. LOL!
A flash movie on www.newgrounds.com again brought up the Tibetan issue. Now that I've read more about it, it seems so complicated. In fact, it is just as complicated as the Israel thing.
First, on the Tibetan side, we have accusations from the Dalai Lama that the Chinese are creating a form of apartheid system, where the Tibetans are oppressed. Also, due to a huge influx of Han Chinese into Tibet, they believe that "pure" Tibetans are bound to become extinct. This country was supposedly a peaceful place filled with peace-loving monks.
Second, we have the Chinese side. Tibet was once a starving land. The Chinese, while occupying Tibet, also rescued the Tibetans from starvation. Not only did they send food to the region, they imported rich Chinese soil to the mountainous(thus infertile) lands and taught the people modern agricultural techniques.
I guess it is because of this that racism probably arose. The Tibetans were a pretty poor bunch then, though it's much better now. Their monks, though many, were not farmers. Anyone can guess what they did for the lands that feed them. Buddhist teachings and spiritual enlightenment is pointless when the people are starving. Parents strive to make their children seem like reincarnations of late monks by making them say the right things and memorize certain words, just so that they will be accepted into the monasteries. Therefore, to some of the Chinese who have seen the situation, the monks are a group of lazy people they do not respect, even now.
Of course, China profits from this. By having this land, they gain a direct path to other countries like India. Plus, Tibet does have a few mines. In these ways, both sides prospered.
In the eyes of the Chinese, the Tibetans are an ungrateful people. They sacrificed their precious soil and food in a time of turmoil to feed a people who are unable help them in return. And now that the Tibetans are not as poor as before, they kill Chinese people. What atrocity!
Alas, things are never that simple. The love for one's land, culture and people are always naturally within humans who have lived their whole lives in their homelands. So the Tibetans want independence. If they were to be granted that, China will lose dignity, prestige and a few resources. It will be painful for China, but it will, by no means, be too damaging to them overall.
Meanwhile, the Tibetans will lose 90% of their government's revenue. The people will need to start paying taxes. They will lose direct access to their food supply from China. There will be chaos because their new government will have a hard time solving this problem and many others. China will probably embargo them for decades to make up for their losses. Which will make the Tibetans lose confidence in their new goverment unless something drastic is done. Like propaganda. Or civil unrest will be rampant.
Or perhaps the Dalai Lama will save the day. Buddhist teachings will feed the people. Prayers may turn edible. The lamas will start to farm. Who knows?
In the end, it really is hard to say who is right. I mean, how much of the history we read is even accurate? Even if they are, both sides have valid reasons to do what they are doing, and to stop doing what they are doing. The western media is just doing what they've always been doing - making foreign issues seem more serious while ignoring their own countries' problems.
Why don't the U.S. get rid of all the homeless people, drug addicts and racism in their own lands before trying to save other countries??
Here's an exceptionally fantastic idea. I want to take the longest train journey possible without going in a loop, from Singapore. From Singapore, one can take a continuous train ride all the way to, as far as I knew before googling, Vietnam.
But now with some research, I found this blog here and this blog detailing what can be the longest non-continuous train ride in the world without going in a loop.
In the first, the blogger did it in the year 2000, and he travelled through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Turkistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Originally I expected it to end in Scotland, but I guess going through Norway would make it even longer. But the total cost is pretty huge. In 2000, it cost this guy US$4000! 1000 for visas since he didn't wait in each country, 1000 for tickets and 2000 for accommodation.
But the thing is that this trip is kind of like backpacking through Asia and Europe, except this uses mainly the train. But the idea is fantastic! I thought of it during dinner last night. Somehow it just popped into my head.
What this guy did was just take trains and stop a while at each stop. He'd walk around, take photos and stuff. Sounds like quite an intense journey though. It took 30 different trains and 60 days! The planning must have been seriously tough. He must have had to do some research on all the train schedules, know all the necessary languages and where to get accommodation when he had to stop and wait.
The main difficulty would be the language barrier, I guess. Without knowing the right words, I would not be able to ask for help. The visas wouldn't be all the bad now since travelling through most of EU only requires a single visa now. I will need visas for all the Asian countries and Eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, I seriously want to try this someday!
Apparently, Europe and Asia is really a single landmass. The only reason we were taught them as 2 continents is mainly due to cultural and historic reasons. And some social inertia. Probably coz the Europeans want nothing to do with Asia. And Australia will cry if everyone finally agrees that Asia and Europe are one continent, coz it will be so lonely. LOL!
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