2017-12-24

Alıntı: Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons (Culture Series)

    ‘Of course I don't have to do this,’ one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. ‘But look; this table's clean.’
    He agreed that the table was clean.
    ‘Usually,’ the man said, ‘I work on alien — no offence — alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that's my specialty . . . like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalogue, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But . . . the job's never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get re-evaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled . . . but,’ he slapped the table, ‘when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you've done something. It's an achievement.’
    ‘But in the end, it's still just cleaning a table.’
    ‘And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?’ the man suggested.
    He smiled in response to the man's grin, ‘Well, yes.’
    ‘But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important, either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway,’ the man laughed, ‘people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,’ the man said with a smile, ‘it's a good way of meeting people. So; where are you from, anyway?’

2017-09-22

The Game?

Sometimes I feel as if I've lost a game whose rules were unknown to me.

2017-08-17

From now on it's "blank screen" only for me

What scares-- no, actually, annoys me is not that we could be a computer simulation but that a cheap one at that. We could have been created by a trillion-year-old hyperpotent 42-dimensional being who can do quantum calculations in his head, as a screen saver to amuse himself and his coworkers. Moreover, this creator, godlike to us but an average schmuck to his friends, could be poised, any megayear now, to return from lunch and erase us from existence with the flick of a greasy finger.

2017-04-28

Alien

There's a horror movie called "Alien?" That's really offensive, no wonder everyone keeps invading you!