Ugh, this is just a nasty, nasty cold. My sinuses are killing me, I'm hoarse and I've got that sickly wet cough that makes everyone cringe. You don't even want to know about the stuff I've been hacking up.

I was hoping to update a lot more from my first few days in Age of Conan, but even with some LAN action here between Michelle, Nelg and myself, I've spent more time trying to sleep this cold off than I have in-game. Everyone here is sick, poor Nelg sounded like he was heaving his lungs out. He's been staying in our guest room, crashed an extra couple days but now he's limping home.

Update: Sick or otherwise, I'll try to get some more screenshots up. Catch them in the side-panel.
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How to Disagree is an essay written by Paul Graham, explaining eloquently why online conversations turn into (sometimes nasty) debates and breaks down the merits of what typically comprises the arguments.

I'm a big fan of honest debate and Paul explains so well the difference between direct disagreements and the undercurrents. He's stated it well, almost poetically in its conciseness. It's not quite mathematical, but he does present a scale for convincing arguments.

It reminds me of the Monty Python Argument Sketch which demonstrated the finer points of contradiction and other meta-arguments.

I recently got stuck in a baffling exchange on my development blog where I felt under fire not for what I'd actually said, but on tone and derived implications of my intent. I came away from it thinking less of the other person (and least until some time passed) and that's the unfortunate danger of disagreements: That it cements opinion over the exchange rather than the topic.

Regardless of personal example, I do recommend reading the essay. I caught wind of it via Mosh Weitzman's blog and he noted it in more of a political context, which demonstrates how universally it can be applied.

Just on a purely math / statistical point of view and not involving any political banter, it looks like Barack Obama will win the U.S. Democratic nomination, barring some giant shift in the landscape. I'm pointing this out because it's largely ignored by the mainstream news, I suppose they're more interested in making it seem like a dragged out fight even if this conclusion is probable.

CNN has an easy delegate calculator chart that makes it fairly obvious, of the remaining delegates:

Clinton needs 62% to claim the nomination.

Obama needs 44% to claim the nomination.

Obama doesn't need to win states outright, he just needs to fall within that margin, including the remaining Superdelegates.

Clinton won today in Pennsylvania, but not by a wide enough margin to make a serious dent in the seats Obama has already won. By most accounts, it was her strongest state of those remaining and 55% just isn't enough. If she continued with exactly those numbers (which seems unlikely) she still wouldn't stop Obama from going over the top.

Politically of course, it's presumptuous to point this out.

I don't recall it ever snowing in Vancouver past February before and now it has snowed a couple times this past month.

What's even more bizarre is that it's been damn freakishly cold all Spring. We've only had two mildly warm days so far, with plenty of hail and thunderstorms inbetween, which most residents of the lower mainland will tell you are rare here.

The usual progress for Vancouver is a warm-to-hot April, followed by a rainy May and June, during which everyone complains about when our Summer will start, forgetting the warm days before. This year, they'd be right. I'd be hard-pressed to even call this Spring.

Image is everything right? Google has been the golden boy for a few years now, but the dogs were ready to jump on any scent of weakness. When analysts hinted that the souring economy might make Google slip, their stock plummeted for the first time since their great incline.

It's all turned out to be nonsense, hasn't it? Google's Q1 2008 profit report is in a word, exceptional.

This is an example that makes me feel our world has gone insane, that our economy and day-to-day well-being is based upon stock markets, corporate culture and trademark / logo appeal that are all just one step away from disfavour from the mob. It's not enough these days to be an upstanding business that maintains healthy sales and employs a solid workforce: Each and every quarter report must show leaps above the last, else stock tumbles.

Does anyone else not see this as insane and unsustainable? It's inflation at every step of the way, any hint of a ceiling = dropped stock.

It's not like our markets are filled with savvy economic engineers, instead it's become a culture-wide gambling addiction. This is the supposed great free market. And it has very real-world consequences. We even gamble on the very land that we live on.

We've created a very strange culture for ourselves, where the dictators are some sort of wagering mob playing with numbers that I'm more and more convinced they don't truly understand. Sure, they see and craft arcane patterns, but they clearly don't relate to reality, it's far more about perception.

I don't mean to pick on Google in particular, if anything they represent a possible change in business, where the directors of a company hold to values above the dictation of shareholder value. Or at least I hope so.

Yeah, I know... I'm in a heavy-handed mood.

I've learned to just stop browsing on April 1st. Sure, some of the stories are amusing, but it's all fluff when you can't trust any news source, forums poster or blogger.

It's a good day to tidy up my house and do some laundry.

I just noticed this unusual court case in the states where a Judge has ordered two convicted men to learn English as part of their sentencing. My first knee-jerk reaction was that language (or lack of) isn't a crime, but then the more I thought of it, the more I felt it's reasonable as sentencing involving other crimes.

I realize this seems almost a bit right-wingish for me, but should a country have to translate for convicted criminals? Obviously it's the fact that a crime was committed that sways me.

I do also believe that every country has a sovereign right to establish official language(s) and require one for citizenship, though language shouldn't be a factor for landed immigrants.

Though I do admit for myself that trying to learn a second language was supremely difficult.