May the destroyers of our world rain their cosmic force upon you! Seriously speaking, this is a place from which I get to both curse and praise the world without actually affecting it in any physical way.

26.4.09

Million Part 2

Speaking about our bodies, we have at least 10^13 cells in our body, or ten trillion. Other figures go as high to 50 to 75 trillion cells.
Now admit it. You look at 10 trillion cells, and then at 50 trillion cells, and all you say is 'Oh'. Doesn't matter that the first figure is 1,600 times our world population, and that the second one 8,000 times.
Indeed, this number is baffling in more ways than one. 10 trillion cells fitted into a body 1.7m by 0.1m by 0.4m on average is something rather unimaginable, however real it is. The resources required to keep all these cells alive is just as, if not more, perplexing to anyone without scientific knowledge.

22.4.09

A Death is a Tragedy, A Million is a Statistic

Normally attributed to Josef Stalin, this quote has the dually depressing nature of being both nonsensical and aptly descriptive of human nature.
Why should it be, you may ask at first. A million deaths is at least the effects of one death multiplied by a million times. That is where the problem comes in. Humans don't cope well with large numbers. At some point, differing in various populations, humans start seeing thousands or tens of thousands as digits put together. In the human mind, the numbers are converted to standard form, and then the tens dropped off until it's time for bookkeeping.
Leaving the grim subject of death, take distance as an example. The top two or three stories of Raffles City are left fairly empty to create a large chamber. Looking at it, I wonder at how much space there is up there. Then I look at the sky. The sky has such a deep blue colour and such magnitude we just file it away as background, less important than the 10m-long bus driving up. Well, the sky is almost one thousand kilometres high. To help you, imagine Thailand propped up vertically with its southernmost point on the ground. Its northernmost point would just clear the exosphere. A human barely reaches 2m on average. How puny we are.

16.4.09

Getting Serious

One day, I woke up, took a look at some pictures online. They were so good, I decided to join them. A week or so later, I've uploaded half of my artworks and one avatar. I'm ready to finally join DeviantArt proper.
Actually I joined DA a long time ago. 3 years ago, in fact, but only and only to see all the pictures on each page. Now, looking at a profile made 3 years ago, I realise just how immature I was. Seriously. It's embarrassing to read it and even more so to think about what I was thinking when I wrote it. Of course it's all going to change now, but I might keep it just for the memory. I might post it. I'm not counting on that though.
It'll take some time for the account to be something interesting. Maybe up until late June, calculating all the free time I will have. Before that, whether you read is your choice. After, comes the advertising.

7.4.09

Litany of Tranquility

To be calm is my imperative
To relax my impulse
I let go now to grasp hard later
I look within to visions of a world outside
On glows the flame of my soul
Passing through all things, all things passing through it
Yet unchanging and unending
Monotony is my watchword
Disruption my bane
I shall be

1.4.09

April the First, after March the 31st

Failed to meet the story deadlines...
Have to accept it as a writing failure, which is plenty bad. Bad because I enjoy writing, but also bad because even though I enjoy writing.
Facing troubles in drawing also. Drawing bodies takes far too long, 40 min at a time. Too slow for my drawings at about only 20cm. Plus drawing figures, female ones especially, are difficult.
Just Wikisurfing a bit again, and found some websites on mob control, mind control and lie detection. Fairly random by themselves, but not as a group. In this case, I explored mob control first as a joke, only to see it become something quite serious.
That's it for today, a day after my failure for story submission.