I planned to have it ready for to­day, but my cur­rent con­sult­ing job (mi­grat­ing a firm from Ex­change to FLOSS) is get­ting a bit gnarly (most­ly be­cause of Out­look 2000) (Yes, I know).

It may be done this sat­ur­day, maybe next tues­day, I just don't know yet.

Thanks to Se­bastián Bassi, there is now a span­ish trans­la­tion of the first part of the se­ries. You can read it here.

Al­so, be­cause of a mis­take I made, to­do.py has lacked mean­ing­ful com­ments for a while. That's fixed now.

Al­so, there is a new RSS feed specif­i­cal­ly for this tu­to­ri­al se­ries.

Yes­ter­day I was spammed by a new age por­tal called Por­talmi­co. The name is strange, since in span­ish (their lan­guage) it means "Mon­key Por­tal", but that the heck, af­ter adding me to the Face­book group they want­ed me to join, post­ing they are spam­mer­s, then leav­ing, I start­ed to think...

What ex­act­ly both­ers me about these guys? And de­cid­ed to en­ter their por­tal and see what was await­ing me be­hind the gates.

Ap­par­ent­ly these guys are heav­i­ly in­to 2012. How­ev­er, they don't ex­pect the end of the world, but a "cos­mic awak­en­ing" and they call this event "im­por­tant to the whole galaxy". This seems to be caused be­cause of a pe­cu­liar­i­ty of the mayan cal­en­dar. Whoa. And I thought the guys at Stop, unix time! were over­do­ing it.

One would be tempt­ed to ask, if mayans were so awe­some, how come their civ­i­liza­tion was such a mess? [1]

But that's not it. That's not what both­ers me. Brain­less ado­ra­tion of poor peo­ple who did their best to live their lives 600 years ago is not such a ter­ri­ble thing, (even if it is not the smartest thing ev­er). What both­ers me is the creduli­ty.

Let's see...

• Kar­­ma?

• Tra­di­­tion­al Reik­i?

• An­gel­s?

• Clas­sic Pla­­ton­is­m? [2]

• At­lan­tis? Lemuri­a? [3]

• Rein­­car­­na­­tion? [4]

• A kid that spoke at 8 mon­th­s, and psy­­chol­o­gist­s(!?) say he was try­ing to read peo­­ple's auras?

You will be hard pressed to find a post there that's scored less than 8 in a 1/10 scale, so al­most ev­ery­one seems to agree that all these things ex­ist/ are true.

In fac­t, the on­ly thing that came to mind that noone there seems to be­lieve in is hid­den mes­sages in the Torah and big­foot, but maybe I just did­n't look cor­rect­ly.

So, I think I now know what both­ers me. The lack of taste. If you be­lieve ev­ery­thing, you be­lieve noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar. If you ac­cept ev­ery­thing, you are not look­ing for truth. If you hold all things equal, noth­ing is spe­cial.

I find the per­spec­tive of a world where ev­ery­thing can be true, ev­ery­thing has the same val­ue, ev­ery­thing is the same... des­per­ate.

These peo­ple sound des­per­ate. They sound like they are adrift at sea and try to hold to any pass­ing twig, be it a crys­tal, a drowned con­ti­nen­t, or a char­la­tan.

Dear fel­lows at por­talmi­co: the on­ly thing that make life worth liv­ing is peo­ple. Yes, peo­ple. Not god, not mayan prophe­cies, not an­gel­s. Peo­ple.

Go out, meet some­one, have a nice life. What hap­pens af­ter that, if it is to hap­pen at al­l, will do so any­way. Be good to peo­ple, and trust that god (if he ex­ist­s) is worth any­thing and will wel­come you to his best con­do, be­cause if he does­n't... well, he was not re­al­ly worth ador­ing any­way.

So, I think I come out of this div­ing in­to non­sense with a clear­er, if a bit sad­der mind. Yes, they are spam­mer­s. Yes, they be­lieve child­ish fan­tasies. I hope they get bet­ter.