System 13 may disappear for a little bit. Why? I’m in the process of moving System 13 over to my own hosting. I’ll explain why once it’s all done, but for now, suffice to say, WordPress.com didn’t screw up, I’ve just outgrown it (ironically, but more on that later).

I’m hoping it all goes seamlessly, but if past experiences are worth anything, it won’t. So, bear with me. If you try to hit my site and get a 404, or if your feed reader shows that the feed no longer exists, don’t panic. If it’s broke, trust me, I’m working on fixing it. If your feed reader continues to show that the feed doesn’t exist, hit the main site URL in a few days. I’m going to try to keep everything the way it was, including the feed URL, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. If system13.org continues to be silent, check system13.wordpress.com. I know it won’t be going anywhere.

Having said all of that, I hope you won’t have to do anything at all. Hopefully things will go smoothly.

Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

I only signed up a few weeks ago, but I’ve already done a bit of swapping. For a couple of chess books, two books on Wicca, The Tipping Point, and a book on the Lucasville prison uprising, I’ve received or am waiting on:

• Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
• Auschwitz: A New History
• Ethics for the New Millenium
• The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America
  
• Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
• A History of Russia

It’s a great service, at least if you have a few books you know you’ll never read again. For a long while I held onto all of my books, even if I knew deep down that I’d never read them again (or even once, for that matter). I finally saw the light though. If I’m not going to read one of my books, I might as well swap it for something I will read.

As an added bonus, BookMooch has a feature that is tied in with LibraryThing (you do use LibraryThing, right?) Whenever you receive a book, when you mark it as received at BookMooch, there’s an option to automatically add the book to your LibraryThing catalogue.

(Speaking of LibraryThing… WordPress.com chaps, are we ever going to see a LibraryThing widget? If you’re in need of a template for one, here you go.)

Why is this surprising to you? The nature of knowledge has changed drastically in the past 100 years, but society’s expectations have not. It used to be if you had a thirst for knowledge that went unmet in your home or your high school then if you had the means you went to college and LEARNED because it was the only place with books and professors who were expertly educated. Now you and I can go to any Barnes and Noble or any public library and learn anything we want to. Anything. A college education is virtually worthless but no one is willing to admit that because recognizing that would throw a wrench in too many people’s plans. People go to get their piece of paper to show how “smart” they got and leave. If you gave me four years, a library, an Encyclopedia, a Book store and the internet I guarantee you I could learn more than any pompous turd at any college in this country. It’s all about the resume now.

Gracey London responded:

I totally agree with Ben. Unless you’re going to a liberal arts university. In which case you’ll learn all about life and human beings, but probably end up flipping burgers at McDonalds after you graduate.

Is that what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to spend four years of my life getting a Bachelor’s degree, only to end up flipping burgers at McDonalds anyway? I have to admit, I know a few people that have done just that. Go to college, get great grades, get their degree… and they still can’t find a job. Are college degrees worth anything at this point?

Update: Apparently, I’m not the only one with this concern.

Appetizer
Name something you would not want to own.

A snake. I just don’t really understand the reptile-as-a-pet thing. If I’m going to have a pet, I want it to be furry and cuddly.

My wife, on the other hand, is always saying she’d like to have one. Shudder. The things give me the creeps…

Soup
Describe your hair (texture, color, length, etc.).

I have brown hair, which is fairly soft. It also has a tendency to become extremely oily if I don’t wash it every day. My facial hair ranges from dark brown to a reddish brown. And my.. well, we won’t go there. You can guess.

Salad
Finish this sentence: I’ll never forget ___________.

Being a jerk with my dad on so many occasions, usually over stupid stuff. Take my mistakes as a lesson: be nice to your loved ones while they’re alive, even if they do infuriate you at times. Once they’re gone, you’ll regret being an ass. Trust me on this.

Main Course
Which famous person would you like to be for one day? Why?

I can’t think of anyone famous who I’d want to be at all, even if it was just for a day. I’m quite comfy in my body.

Dessert
Write one sentence about yourself that includes one thing that is true and another thing that is not.

I’m of German descent and I absolutely love mathematics!

If you’re interested in the invasion and want to know more, I can recommend 1066: The Year of the Invasion by David Howarth. I read it a year or two ago, and found it to be a great read.

(Click for full size)

Heh.

What’s this 52 Books in 52 Weeks thing about?

This entry contains spoilers about the ending of this book, so if you’ve not read the book yet, I suggest you stop here.

I started Speaker for the Dead immediately after finishing Ender’s Game (my post about Ender’s Game is here). My feelings about Speaker for the Dead are quite similar to my feelings about Ender’s Game: I loved it. I actually enjoyed Speaker for the Dead more than Ender’s Game, however, because Speaker for the Dead fixed most of the things about Ender’s Game that I didn’t care for. There were children in Speaker for the Dead, but they didn’t act so childish as the kids in Ender’s Game (i.e., there weren’t any taunts of “farteater” flying around). Another complaint that I had about Ender’s Game was the term “buggers”, used for the alien race the humans were dealing with. The name just sounded stupid to me. Despite Cas’s excellent reasoning as to why they were called that, I still wasn’t crazy about the term, and I found the term “piggies” in Speaker for the Dead to be even worse.

The only other gripe I had with the book were the many Portugese names, and even with that complaint, it’s more a problem with me than with the book. Being a bit obsessive compulsive about the pronunciation of words, including foreign ones, I kept wanting to check to see if I was sounding out the names correctly. However, as I’ve never studied Portugese, I kept having to dip back to the front of the book to read the pronunciation guide again. By about the 100 or 150 page mark, I was fairly confident that I had things down, but up until that point, it was fairly frustrating. But again, that’s just a quirk of mine, nothing wrong with the book.

Having said those few things, I really enjoyed the plot. It was fun to learn about the pequininos (piggies) through the eyes of what was, essentially, a group of piggy anthropologists (xenologers). I liked how the book displayed wonderfully the fact that different cultures can see things completely differently. The bits about how life in general worked on Lusitania seemed a bit stretched to me, particularly in regards to how the piggies themselves grow up, but it didn’t really detract from the story.

I think it’s safe to say that I have caught the Ender virus. I love this series. I was going to wait until I had finished reading Sharpe’s Tiger before I started the third book in the Ender Wiggins series, Xenocide, but while at the library today, I couldn’t resist. So, I am now reading Sharpe’s Tiger and Xenocide at the same time.

I’m not too happy about this. They did include my name, and a link to the original post, but I’m still not happy about them basically stealing my content to feed their blog. At least I’m not alone; it looks like they’ve stolen content from a huge number of people.

Of course, I was unable to find any contact information on their site (surprise, surprise), so I did a WHOIS on their domain name. I was able to get an email address to contact them, to ask that they take down my content from their site. Now, whether they check said email, who knows. It’s also up in the air as to whether they’ll comply with my wishes.

I guess it’s time for me to put up some form of copyright notice here…

Since you study Russian, I was wondering what actually attracts you to it and to the people and the country. I can imagine someone studying a language on a purely theoretical basis, but it makes more sense if you actually admire or like the culture behind the language. Just thought of this while watching the news actually: Putin, Yeltsin, the protests, the riots in Estonia… It’s all very fascinating.

He also mentioned that the answer to that could prove to be an interesting blog post, and I agree, so here we are.

While I’d love to say that I have a solid reason for wanting to learn Russian – admiration of their culture, preference towards a communist state, plans of visiting Russia in the future – I’d be lying if I said I had such a reason. I began studying Russian right around the beginning of 2007, when I received a copy of The New Penguin Russian Course as an early Christmas gift. That doesn’t really help much in regards to why I started studying the language, though, because I specifically asked for that book as a gift. Now that I try to think back and remember of any particular thing that said “learn Russian!” to me, I’m coming with a bank.

I suppose it’s just a variety of things that led to my studying it. For one, I’m just a language geek in general, and enjoy learning languages. I’ve been studying German for about 4 years now, and felt that it was time that I try to add a second foreign language into the mix. I know one influencing factor was my interest in World War 2. Due to the Russians playing such a large role in the war, I was interested in learning more about them in general (because I knew next to nothing about them). I guess this desire to learn more about Russia and its peoples simply bled off into the language department. When I decided to learn Russian, it wasn’t a thought out, planned course of action, but more of a “hey, what the hell, why not?” thing.

While I hadn’t thought of this reason specifically, I’m glad I selected Russian. As I progress in my study of it, I’m finding that I enjoy the language, particularly how it sounds. I’m also glad that it’s a Slavic language, because by learning it, I’ll have given myself a good base to learn other Slavic languages, if I were so inclined. I don’t know how knowing it will help me professionally, or if it will at all, but I can’t help but think that knowing even the basics of a fairly difficult language will help me at some point, somehow.

When I get a decent base down for my Russian, I’ll probably start working on Spanish. For that language, I do have a reason: it’s practical for where I live. Spanish is the most often spoken foreign language in the U.S., and I’d say knowing some of it would help me career wise. If nothing else, it would let me communicate with all of the Mexicans who have appeared in my town during the past 5 years or so.

So, to give a short answer to my friend’s question: no particular reason. I just kind of decided to learn Russian. (Regarding politics though, communism doesn’t look too bad, on paper, anyway. It’s never actually worked like the theory prescribes, though, so we have no historical example to judge.)

• A very large piece of graffiti, showing (scientifically incorrect) evolution in action. Scientifically correct or not, that’s just awesome.
• First, look at the beta version of AOL.com’s home page. Then, take a look here. See anything that looks, ahem, similar? Heh.
• Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface. Very, very cool. Of course, at this point, we don’t know if it does have water on it, but the estimated temperatures for the planet show that if water is on the planet, it would mostly be in liquid form.
• This video has convinced me to never, ever eat freshly sliced octopus tentacles. Yuck.

Update: I just took another look at the graffiti evolulution picture, and I’m not sure if it’s real. It looks too clean. Does anyone else get this impression? Or even better, can anyone verify if it’s legit or not? I tried going to the main Yonkis.com site, but it seems to be (mostly) porn stuff. It’s also in Spanish, so I can’t read much of what they’re writing about.