Obama's Orwellian Journey~

In a late response to Obama's speech when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize... I'm just going to quote US Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Once we are committed to wars instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where war is p[e]ace...

Ref.

Miller, S. A. (2009-12-11). "Anti-war forces bristle at Obama's Nobel speech". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2009-12-12.

Nobel Prize Inflation

When I first read that Barrack Obama, incumbent president of the USA (for those who have not been living on this earth in the last couple year or so), won the Noble Peace Prize I thought it was a hoax: some news editor couldn't wait until April 1st '10 probably; it seemed like the only plausible explanation.

But no, we are witnessing what can only be described as Nobel Prize inflation. My theory being that the Norwegian Nobel Committee thought they should follow the international trend set by the economy in recent years and reevaluate the meaning of the prize alongside with the devaluation of the fixed prize money (about 10 million Swedish krona, which is a bit more than US$1,2 million) attached to Nobel Prizes.

For a man who has been in office for only 9 months and has yet to full-fill the promises he made during his campaign, to be put on the same level as Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi is not just premature; it's pre-embryotic if you ask me.

To quote:

The Times of London (in some online opinion piece):

"the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace."

Mairead Corrigan (1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate)

"[g]iving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country's aggression and domination."

Of course, it being a political faux pas to do otherwise, no official representative from any government has said anything else but positive. I distinctively remember Obama muttering the word "change", a lot; seems nothing has...

Happy Hangeul Day

헬로 에브리바디! 헤피 한글 데이~

투데이 이스 한글 데이 인 고리아, 이트 셀러브레이트스 더 인벤티언 어브 더 고리언 알파벳 바이 더 고리언 킹 세정 더 그레이트.

^_^;

Recap...

Okay... I realize that this blog I have here is becoming increasingly vague... and I kinda end up restructuring it to the point that the restructured structure is kinda structureless. Not a good thing, I can't seem to make up my mind about what to write here. Some social commentary? life stories? random ramblings (mostly these have been posted here)?

And then I linked my facebook notes to this blog... and twitter to facebook, and now everything is interconnected and in the end it all means not a damn thing.

Mostly cause my facebook became a mesh of at least three languages regularly featuring, which is confusing to most, and I've done that here as well. So I kinda need to decide... which language, which subject, and why a frikkin' Uni of Broken Glass...

because in the end that's what it is: broken glass, there is always broken glass...

O D. Brown, D. Brown! wherefore art thou such and idiot?

Well, here I will explain just why. And I must say I do it with a nearly physical sensation of pleasure at the mere thought of this. I'd describe myself as tingly (can't help the little Whedon ref. ^_^)

While of course not being the perfectionist when it comes to the use of the English language, or any language for that matter, at least I get my linguistic facts straight (about the only thing about me that is, you know, quote-unquote straight)

But let's start with the issue in question, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (Published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26312-0), pages 11-12:

For two hours, Becker interpreted an endless stream of Mandarin symbols. But each time he gave them a translation, the cryptographers shook their heads in despair. Apparently the code was not making sense. Eager to help, Becker pointed out that all the characters they'd shown him had a common trait-they were also part of the Kanji language. Instantly the bustle in the room fell silent. The man in charge, a lanky chain-smoker named Morante, turned to Becker in disbelief.

"You mean these symbols have multiple meanings?"

Becker nodded. He explained that Kanji was a Japanese language [apparently this was revised to read "writing system" in later editions; "Kanji language", above, remained - ed.] based on modified Chinese characters. He'd been giving Mandarin translations because that's what they'd asked for.

"Jesus Christ." Morante coughed. "Let's try the Kanji."

Like magic, everything fell into place.

The cryptographers were duly impressed, but nonetheless, they still made Becker work on the characters out of sequence. "It's for your own safety" Morante said. "This way, you won't know what you're translating."

Becker laughed. Then he noticed nobody else was laughing.

Not only Becker laughed of course... but so did I and every person with even a grain of sense of Chinese characters in them. Naturally both hanzismatter and linguaphiles on livejournal have utterly ridiculed this already. Since the book has been out for more than 10 years, well I'm sure others have as well. Nonetheless, please just continue ridiculing it for no other reason than that Mr. D. Brown deserves it.

Now you would expect someone with an interest in Cryptography to know for a fact that there is no such thing as a Kanji language, doesn't exist. It's like diet friendly chocolate... idiotic to say the least. Of course there is no such thing as Mandarin symbols either, doesn't exist. Like the easter bunny humping snowwhite, it is... well you get the picture.

Just for those not understanding: Kanji are Chinese characters in use in Japan, they are simplified in some cases (not in all), and are one of the three writing systems used to write Japanese. Mandarin is a spoken oral dialect in China (a full fledged language in my opinion) and does not refer to the characters used to write it, those are called Hanzi (aka Chinese characters).

Now appart from that these characters cannot be read alone out of sequence. Neither is it possible to translate them character-by-character out of context, because Chinese, Japanese and Korean (the major languages that use them) have many characters that have multiple meanings or are used in compounds.

Apart from that D. Brown is just a bad writer. Not necessarily referring here to his stories alone, I find his writing style just... "poor" is the best word that comes in mind.

So questionable writing style, less than correct cryptography (read: idiotic), and stories that well... I know that fiction means fiction, but still.

Well maybe Mary Magdalene was really married to Jesus of Nazareth. Maybe they had a hundred fat children, who knows. Or maybe not, maybe Mary was actually Sharon, the assistant of the all-round family entertainer: Amazing Jesus (unfortunately he doesn't do children's parties) on his tour Changing Water Into Wine... At least, some do seem to think ^_^