Myriad

After one year - Crepuscule just reached 10,000 visits since it has been registered at ClustrMaps.
What is 10,000?
In a Chinese angle it doesn't mean anything...
Some websites do that in a minute and some condominiums in Shenzhen host it with only few cases of SARS.
The Myriad thing is also a term meaning all of phenomenal reality in the Tao and in Greek philosophy. Because once upon a time this number was huge. Now it only looks important if you're referring to a quantity of years or conquered hearts.
How big numbers have been elevated to such importance so quickly? That is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online Maoism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise and the individual is dumb.

"The illusion that what we already have is close to good enough, or that it is alive and will fix itself, is the most dangerous illusion of all. By avoiding that nonsense, it ought to be possible to find a humanistic and practical way to maximize value of the collective on the Web without turning ourselves into idiots. The best guiding principle is to always cherish individuals first."

The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism [5.30.06] By Jaron Lanier

Ramasutra's "El Pipo Del Taxi"

Prodigy Ram's new E.P. has been released.
Check his Nuevo-paranoia infection.

Who's to blame for 911?

All right, who's the moron who tried to park his Boeing in the conference room?
That's the kind of question that triggered what we can call a national sport in the U.S. -- elaborating 911 conspiracy theories. Manifests and videos are proliferating and saturating new media. Internet is teeming with revisionists claiming that Al-Qaeda's attack against America is a crappy fake. Well, it's getting really hard to see the truth.
That's why I'd like to invite you to express yourself with the little survey below:

Before seeing the result I'll give you my opinion. Yes, the official version from Internet attributing it to the Illuminati is frighteningly working and could be easily supported with the killa documentary of Phil Jayhan and Korey Rowe. This thesis could even be extended to the virtual autopsy of the towers used in many other documentaries showing some civil engineering experts saying that maintenance budgets had been drastically reduced few years before the tragedy. This is the suspicious and zealous way to truth-requiring a geeky documentation. It seems to be a protective reaction of the Mediterranean civilization that can't take this issue of the David-Goliath myth - a civilization not ready for burying its genitors, preferring to go in a methodical masochism than accepting an alien David.
On the other hand we have the TV version, the first one we had and which is now on theaters. Well this one doesn't sound right to me and to most of my Muslim friends. WTF, you need to be whether neo-Christian, white or both to be crazy/stupid enough to kill so many people without making sure you've a good backup plan!
Ben Laden is an extreme dude but come on, there is a gap in-between blowing few stuffs in Europe and bringing down 600,000 tones of steel and concrete. And unless Al-Qaeda's core is cold war software it ain't strong enough to suicide people who can pilot a 757. And there we go, so many AND...

On "Transsexual makes you laugh" I claimed it's inevitable for the American empire to crack - BTW I'm not taking too much risk here every empire cracked - and I persist!
Just note that I didn't spot where we are on that graph - on the level abscissa corresponding to the entropy of an indicator. So where are we in this declining trend?
Well, I don't know... And nobody knows. We might just have passed the climax of the empire. But if you compare Free Fighting with what the Romans have been hatching 2.000 years ago for their "entertainment", it still looks slightly too introverted to me...
The second indicator that would tend to prove we didn't even started this decline is the amount of non-American people who still doesn't want to know that it doesn't matter if the project Apollo really propelled human race to the moon or not - as it doesn't matter if there was really somebody in flight 93. So what does matter?
You darling, YOU! You matter.
So click him!

Hong Kong, Capital of Capitalism 2

You might have flown over Hong Kong, Capital of Capitalism which was a messy statistical analysis about the relevancy of seeing HK as THE Kapital of Kapitalism, but I think this picture is just proving me right. Capitalism belongs to the people.

I swear I didn't photoshop anything, it's right there at the end of Queen's Road (Wanchai).
After arguing with a chinese friend that YES veggies (I mean the real ones, which taste good and bring you stuffs) don't grow all the year and YES there are seasons - NO you can't continually eat tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries for the whole year - I found this gem. This is just killing me... I can't stop laughing silly. Maaan!

BUY DUSK ON AMAZON

Here you go in Paperback, only for those who are still able to read something on paper.

Tarski's Lesser Truth Theorem

Everything I'm saying is bullshit.

The set of numbers which encode true sentences of number theory, is not definable in number theory.

Myth of the World Wars

Arrogant Romans of the third Millennium, you are delirious!
Your knowledge does not complete nature, but only kills your own. For once, please, Childs of Greece, measure your height as a knower against your depth as a responsible person who can do something. Of course, you clamber on the time rays of Kronos towards salvation, but you also climb downward to Kaos' fury. At least, be brave enough to face your fantasies and try to understand you're already deeply exploited by the myth of the world wars.

Not to mention cultural divergences on facts' importance, there is something extremely sinister in the commonly accepted way of presenting 20th century's history. As a result of a simplification process most of us see it as a linear and continuous timeline with two important periods - World Wars.
Cold war is generally not accepted as a third one and except for mister W, present time is definitely not accepted as a another issue - a fourth one?
But don't you see it's a little too chewed up to simplify the first trigger with a conspiracy assassination in Sarajevo and the second one as a result of the first one? Balkan tensions are easy to blame. Remember when your grand parents were loudly claiming they would rather put Hitler in charge than the Jews. Stakes are easy to blame. Wouldn't it be equally consistent to start First World War back to 1871? Paris is easy to blame.
A more relevant standpoint would not try to fit those singularities in any scary definitions or delimited periods, but rather to accept your belief in War as the continuous process at work. But then be very vigilant, this elevates you up to a critical Nietzschean superhistorical standpoint.
To keep it up with this, you need the hyper-context in which history is clearly and thoroughly grasped. You'll know -- as even the greatest and highest spirits of our specie do not know -- how your eyes have acquired the way in which you see and the way in which you constantly demand that everyone see - constantly because the intensity of your awareness becomes radically different. A serious person who has not, through many examples, specifically determined, known and grasped this point is overthrown by the appearance of a mighty conspiracy who in a given shape presents the highest form of fanatical dedication - exactly where your greatest pitfalls lie.

However, let me leave hyper-history to its despair. Today for once, Romans, be joyful with your lack of wisdom and make your day happy for yourselves as active and progressive people, as men who revere the process.
Let your evaluation of the historical be only a western bias.

At the source of the open

Because many people still mix up Open Source and Communism and because I perceive Communism as a bastardized idealisation of the "Kapital", here is a very simple attempt to embrace the Open evolution with a fundamental value -- in the scientific meaning -- to green conversion approach:

Figure 1: repartition of Open Source philosophy exploitation (2005)

Chronologically speaking, this new business strategy arrived at the same time as Capitalism swallowed Chinese economy (or vice versa). That's why anybody who knows China enough is hardly able to see what remains from Communism within its shiny outfit. Ok - stop -- I slack off for science's sake that has no clue about Chinese internal goings-on - if countries were kids at playground do you really think China would equally share the snack?
No, of course not - Who would do that anyway? The Arabs, maybe - so at least Chinese would not come and steal your one - be happy Mao Donald just doesn't want to give you a damned bite. This is the real face of Communism within a globalize capitalism - a peaceful disdain for others fantasies.
On the contrary, Open Source is over-intrusive. It's like the teacher giving you cooking lessons. Its philosophy doesn't give room for disdain. It's the most accomplished reconfiguration of Capitalism - the most advanced runt of globalization - for worst and best we already feel the mass being mesmerized by its penetrative potential and every day it's breaking through deeper inside the Middle Kingdom. Because colonial infiltration of goods isn't welcome anymore, now it's time to use science and harmless education pipelines.
There is no secret anymore. Whether you like it or not, you'll have to deal with it! If you don't, you'll just fade away into Digital's oblivion.

I foresee growls at my interpretation of the Open Source paradigm. But wait, which Open Source am I talking about?
I was talking about the strong dogmatic one - the one using a precise licence definition that carefully prevents anybody from reusing it to cook his own recipes.
So what is the weak one? Which concept will it get mixed up with? Yet another "ism"?
Is Open Source Open?

En français/in French

Goolag

Here we are... There ain't no SF anymore - no soul fantasy - no phobia for the meek - no excuse for anti-tech legions - no thrill for the hopless.
n/china struggle is so deeply rooted within our reality that younger generations prefer living virtual life in MMORPG; that an irreversible economic alienation as been contaminating our daily routines; that the androïd meme doesn't look like a vanguard trend within conspiracy theorists but more like an irresistible wind of change.
If I can feel it, there is no way to press any hypothetical backward button.
Not really an abdication, it's more like a global awareness brewing among world population. We live a state of melancholy; we're humanityless.
Om Ma Ni Pe Me Hum