Thought of the day

Yesterday evening I went o a boot fair (also called a car boot sale, if you’re wrong, like Wikipedia).  I have this vague dream that I will one day come across a Leica M6 + Noctilux and someone who doesn’t have any idea of the value of either.  Which I’d sell to someone who likes that sort of thing *, via eBay, and put it towards my (currently non-existent and fantastical) EOS 1Ds Mk III fund.  Instead I came away with thirty packets of pork scratchings (£1 per ten pack) and twenty packets of Pom Bear (“”) – a teddy bear shaped snack, and the following on DVD, for £5 in total:  A History of Violence, A Scanner Darkly, and series one of Rising Damp.  The Rising Damp DVD is a major win at that price, because I don’t think it’s available new anywhere now.

I was kind of reticent about going because it’s the first day in about a month that my hip has not had any problems. The worst thing is that it hurt to cough or sneeze.  Seriously hurt, like a flat-head screwdriver inserted in the hip joints, and harshly twisted.  The sneezing bit is a problem when you have hay fever, and live near hay.  I found that if I leaned forwards prior to a cough or sneeze, and grabbed my knees it mitigated the pain somewhat.  I don’t believe in jinxes so I’ll say now that hopefully yesterday’s quick burst of energy won’t lead to another severe flare up of the hip.  It doesn’t feel too bad.  But it didn’t feel too bad the night before the last major hip flare up started.

But enough pathetic raspberry-ripple whining **.

There was a really attractive woman on one of the stalls.  So staggeringly attractive that I was quite prepared to override my natural shyness, and try to strike up a conversation.  However, something got in the way – a tiny yappy dog.  I fucking hate tiny yappy dogs.  I’m not one of those people that thinks a dog has to have a specific utility (a gun dog, or guard dog etc.) but there is something so stereotypical about yapsters it makes my head hurt.  Then I saw the Daily Express  in her Range-Rover and thought (somewhat ironically) fuck-that, and lost my semi-erection faster than stumbling across gore on the Internet.

* Leica are very nice but I’d prefer a 1Ds Mk III.  A Nikon D3 would be OK also.
** Thought of the day: Apparently it is healthy to talk about that sort of thing.  I think it is fucking pathetic, and boring.

Is it worth getting upset about retarded moon landing conspiracy theories? I think it is. They depress me. I watch them because I think it is good to watch things you disagree with (within reason). The primary problems with conspiracy theories are that they use common sense as a rhetorical device, and cornerstone of an argument. They promote the idea that common sense is an acceptable way to view the world, and they malign history. Common sense is often wrong because it is based on evidence known to the person(s) applying it. It’s like examining a stock market without reference to all of the incentives at play. It is a stab in the dark, borne out of ignorance, and it is good for nothing other than the most simple of situations.

For instance, when moon landing conspiracy theorists talk about film being too brittle to work in out of space – which is common sense – they overlook (or are ignorant of) the efforts NASA put into making film work in space. Etc. Conspiracy theories thrive on ignorance. And the lengths some people will go in order to disregard evidence that clashes with their theory is astonishing. No-one likes being wrong.  Especially when it’s pointed out, but, being able to hold onto a belief regardless of the counter evidence, requires conviction. And having strong convictions is good, right?

Static electricity was described by Thales of Miletus on observing that if you rub amber it attracts minute particles. The word electron is Greek for amber (ήλεκτρον).  Jeremy Clarkson will never make such an observation, and is a twat. And so is Richard Hammond.  James May is probably OK.  Although, for all I know, he could be into badger baiting.  He probably isn’t.

Amber is cool.

I have no clothes awareness. By clothes awareness I do not mean taste or fashion, rather thinks like putting T-shirts on the wrong way around, and not noticing throughout the day. Or forgetting to wear underwear. When I put my mind to it I’ve got a fairly good memory, so it’s not a question of senility, or mad cow disease, or other awful thing. I just put T-shirts on the wrong way around, – occasionally forget to wear underpants – , and inadvertently put socks on that don’t match. It’s like my brain is elsewhere when I’m dressing, and once dressed I’m usually thinking about things, so don’t notice the mistakes. People have confused it with making some kind of statement. It’s not. My back is often so bad I have trouble sleeping, thus I am often awful in the morning. The morning is when I dress.

I ordered some clothes today. I need new kit. I’m beginning to look like Catweazle had he adopted the apparel of the modern bachelor. So I’m going to shave the goatee and maybe get a proper hair-cut. “The squarest haircut you have good man/woman!” is how I’ll greet my hairdresser. Although if they take that seriously I could end up looking like I have a rectangular head. A Muppet gone wrong. Then end up having to shave it and look like a footie hooligan. Or a shaven bollock pulled taut, adorned with a Mr Potato Head DIY kit. A bad back doesn’t affect your temperament. This post is a testament to that.

PS

World: Fuck you!

It occurs to me that people who have never been wrong are either lying to themselves, arrogant pricks, or exceptionally boring people. I’ve been wrong loads of times. I pride myself on knowing that – because if you can acknowledge your own stupidity you have gone some way to rectify it (apart from the unknown unknown stupidity). Some of the things I did as a teenager, retrospectively, shock me*, and I’m pretty sure that applies to lots of people (I have a collection of funny anecdotes about various people that I’m saving for later to smuggle out in the form of fiction). My attitude towards things like youth crime and bad behaviour are borne out of the knowledge that people can change. Rather than people being lost causes – immutably good, or bad, or clever, or stupid. I believe in non-religious redemption. And I think the ideal society enables people to redeem themselves and, within reason, forgives.

And there’s an important caveat: I was lucky enough to have a good family network, to have gotten well paid jobs, to have been born with a bit of smarts and good memory, with people constantly pushing me back into education, and a host of little things many just don’t have. So don’t mistake this for an argument that given the will it’s easy for people to make something of themselves. A kind of “I did it, so I don’t see why anyone else can’t” argument. Such arguments are right-wing bullshit. Oft spouted by self-made men who forget they’re not normal. If idiot kids don’t have the support networks that are available to many people by default, then it’s a shame if they live in a society that offers poor alternatives.

* Can’t say I was ever a danger to anyone other than myself though. Other than the occasional punch-up.

Let’s shoot the shit Internet public. If it’s the case that:

• The behaviour of children is mostly influenced by their upbringing – which, for most people, is provided by their parents.
• Said parents were children in the past.

It seems very strange to call for a return to the past in order to deal with moral panics bad behaviour among young people.  Maybe I’m saying is way out there illogical because you rarely hear it used as a defense against fucked up rose-tinted diversionary over-simplistic actively harmful nostalgia “things were better in the past”.  The good old days.

Cause there is no moral vacuum, people are generally less fucked up than the past (less: racism, wife-beating, children-beating, abject poverty, bad health, ignorance, and a lot of other negative shit, man),  and people that tell you otherwise should be birched.   The future, upcoming recession aside, is bright and I’m pretty optimistic.  Optimistic is not equal to complacent.

Just for the record Brown talks a great deal of bollocks too.

I’ve just watched Hilary Clinton concede. But this is not specifically about her. To get that far in politics politicians must really want the job. With a burning passion. I think that is no more apparent when you see a politician spouting platitudes and clichés in order to win votes. Because, working with the assumption that most politicians are good people, with noble intentions, and intelligent, they must know how predictable and boring much of what they have to say is; the soundbites, staged impromptu style visits on demographically correct representations of voters, day after day. Promising to listen, to restore some aspect of a mythological past, or the promise of change. Thing is, they may very well mean it, and if they’re tolerating the bollocks machine to get elected, I don’t envy them in the slightest. That’s a hard world. Man.

Alexander Kwiatkowski and Grant Smith on $135pb oil.

I’ve gotten into quite a few arguments about Scientology. Because, with a few caveats, I think adults should be able to spend their money on whatever they like and I think Scientology is a religion. As I outlined here. But now Scientology (or people acting in their name) have plumbed new depths of stupidity.

Do you remember the video of Tom Cruise (since hosted by Gawker here) that was removed from YouTube? The one that prompted global protests against Scientology?

A key point to remember here, the salient point, is that the removal of a newsworthy video sparked protest.

Well. The same thing has just happened to Mark Bunker of XenuTV fame (the guy that released the Jason Beghe video):

Mark Bunker’s statement.

I didn’t photograph the last anonymous protests in London because I had bad guts and third demonstrations are less interesting than first and second demonstrations. People are usually bored by the third demonstration (see second London demonstration pics by me here).

Removing Mark Bunker’s videos is an almost guaranteed way to reinvigorate the protests and bring in even more protestors.

Heck, even I feel like protesting (rather than just taking pictures) and I don’t even feel that strongly about Scientology. As for YouTube: This is yet another example of how they’ll cave in at the first opportunity rather than give their users the respect they deserve.

Web 2.0 is about making money from the talent of your users and showing them little or no respect over profits.

If this sort of thing is tolerated it could happen to you next. Send Mark Bunker’s video, as linked above, to people. They should know.

I think there should be a general rule of blogging that when you’re depressed you shouldn’t blog.  Almost universally it comes across as self-indulgent shit.  Earlier today I posted a post that in retrospect was so mental it was potentially funny.  In a laughing at a mental tramp bothering people outside of Boots kind of way.  To give you a vague idea of what the post was like, at the end I compared the Conservative party and New Labour to a saggy pox afflicted arse.  I had a mental picture of diseased cheeks belonging to the same arse.   Thing is: I hate people that try to convince people of stuff. It’s not that I object to people expressing their opinions it’s just I think it’s possible that vehemence is a mask for ill-thought out ideas.  With stuff I’m sure about if people agree that’s fine and if they don’t they don’t.  I’m still right. If I’m being vehement it is a sign of not being sure I’m right.  So the long-winded psychiatrists wet dream of a post had to go.

If someone has emailed me in the last 24hrs I may have accidently deleted your message. Please re-send. It was in my spam bucket and I deleted before reading the subject/from bits. Then looked at the picture in my head, realised that the fifth message down wasn’t spam, and that now I can’t recover it. I am stupid.

Thought of the day

Don’t delete your spam before checking whether it was legit or not.

There is a video doing the rounds on the internet of a US soldier tossing a puppy off a cliff (click here to watch it). It purports to be shot in Iraq. It looks and sounds real. Cruelty to animals is wrong. But I think it has to be placed in context. Caveats apply:

If you’ve ever been to a country that has a problem with feral dogs, you’ll know that dealing with wild dogs can be a total pain in the arse because they’re unpredictable. They’re mostly scared of people, because, as scavengers, they’re chased away with sticks and shouts. Other times, with children, or if they feel threatened, they’ll bite, and in packs they can attack. They can carry rabies and present a public health issue. Under Saddam Hussein the infrastructure in Iraq was held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and tyranny. After the invasion, the coalition political leaders, those so keen on war, had no decent plan, at all, to deal with the aftermath. Rather depressingly, it’s been repeated by politicians calling for a pull-out of Iraq; with no detailed plans to deal with what happens next.

During the invasion, and its aftermath, all of the pest control, public services, and public service infrastructure, were destroyed, looted, or both, here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say at the time:

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things … stuff happens”

The destruction of public services was allowed to happen. Simple things like pest control were looted out of existence – and worse was to come. The people who dealt with practical things, the people running ministries, what was left of them, emigrated to neighbouring states like Jordan and Syria, or were fired in the de-Baathification of the Iraqi state. As a result wild dogs are a bigger problem in Iraq today, than they were prior to the invasion. And they were a problem prior to the invasion. Tossing a puppy off a cliff isn’t the best form of pest control, but placed in context, it’s different from someone buying a puppy in a pet-shop specifically to toss it off a cliff. It’s still cruel and it’s still wrong, but given the situation soldiers are in, dealing with the arse-end of geopolitics, it is, to my mind, forgivable. Many people seem to be more incensed at a soldier tossing a dog off a cliff than they are about the situation soldiers have been left to clean up.

For hosting the Quackometer after Netcetera (Quackometer’s webhost that I won’t promote by linking) took a shit on it by caving in to spurious litigation. In my opinion, of course. Read all about it here.  Positive Internet came to the rescue.

Thought of the day

Would your webhost fuck you over?

1 and, further, 2.

Thought of the day

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 

Thought of the day

28 gun crimes committed in UK every day

and

The shocking truth

The paradox of cracking down on certain crimes is that they rise – it’s a bit obvious that one.  If you crack down on drugs, recorded drug crimes rise, if you crack down on guns, gun crime rises. Note – deaths from gun crime are down and injuries were up so insignificantly the Telegraph doesn’t quote them.  Even as a context free percentage.  I wonder sometimes whether people are thick or whether they want to scare people into conforming to whatever politics of the day they follow (see also the Independent re: recession (not going to be catastrophic in Europe or Asia) or catastrophic global warming (yes, global warming is a major problem, but no it’s not like the movies)).  Maybe they’re just desperately trying to conform to whichever readership they chase.  It’s all very 20th Century.  The Independent is right in this case though.  And people being scared of crime is scary.  It diverts public money irrationally, it creates fear, it demonises people (see The Daily Mail/The Daily Express on Romanians today) and it creates a situation where people cannot debate based on evidence.  Only beliefs and feelings.  Not good. 

See also:

 Risk of becoming a victim of crime at 27 year low

David Icke appeared on Russell Brand’s radio show on Saturday.  It was a broadly uncritical interview – less critical than his Richard Dawkins interview, somewhat exposing his personal biases.  To be fair, it makes entertaining listening.  Unlike many media outlets Russell’s show does have a wide variety of views represented so Icke is one voice among many.  The interview is very funny.  Particularly the bit where David Icke accuses Father George Bush of being (a presumably reptilian) paedophile.   Pedolizard.  I think Russell Brand, in common with youth today,  is deeply sceptical of the media and political establishment.  Obvious ironies aside.  My father remarked, over Christmas, that things, the cultural mien, remind him of the 1960s.    He thinks there’s a generation gap and that the media and politicians are totally out of touch.  As a result of disillusionment caused by foreign policy, the internet, and stubbornness of the traditional media.

Listen to David Icke and Russell Brand here.

I think one of the great downsides to generation gaps, real or perceived,  is that they can lead to indiscriminate scepticism.  The broad scepticism towards politics and ‘the system’ during the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to many good things. It also gave rise to much irrationalism and muddy thinking.  I believe a similar situation exists today.  There is a generation gap forming under the nose of a political and media establishment that is still firmly rooted in the 20th Century.  Among many young people there is a broad scepticism towards government, politics, and the media.  Much of this is positive.  Many young people seem willing and able to Google and get information from multiple sources.  And savagely mock the absurd.

Scepticism without critical thinking can be dangerous.   Because in those circumstances a rejection of the mainstream can lead to unqualified acceptance of  any ideas regardless of their logical consistency or evidence.  Conspiracy theories – for instance.   People accept them because they do not have critical thinking skills. They don’t have critical thinking skills because our society does not encourage critical thinking outside of fields where it is required.   They’re not stupid people.  There is a paradoxical situation in which people can be deeply sceptical and lack the critical thinking skills to distinguish the things they should be sceptical about.  It’s a real shame.  People that believe in conspiracy theories are seeking answers, which is something that should be applauded, but unfortunately they’re barking up the wrong tree.

An example of this is the rise of David Icke.  He is more popular than ever. I quite like David Icke.  Really.  I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I think his theories are wrong.   Even a cursory examination of what constitutes evidence for many of his theories, parsing his arguments, leads to rejection of them on the grounds of consistency and lack of evidence.  But there exists a situation today whereby those with undeveloped ideas of what constitutes evidence, and lacking critical thinking skills, are led to David Icke and his kind.   Many young people with legitimate scepticism of government post-Iraq/post-Blair/post-Bush  are ambling into the hands of 9/11 conspiracy theories, people like David Icke.  Much in the same way many hippies were led down blind alleys by religion, drug culture, and ill thought out ideologies.

In an ideal world books like Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics would be mandatory secondary school reading material.  If I had the free cash I would by a few thousand copies of each and  give them away.   A basic understanding of statistics and basic critical thinking skills are essential for understanding the modern world and essential for positive changes.  Otherwise people act with scant regard to evidence which, as has been proven time and time again, leads to very bad things indeed.  In an ideal world the revolution would be everyone being able to think critically.  Scepticism minus critical thinking equals wasted energy.

I don’t get people who upload copyrighted clips to YouTube by pointing a video camera at their television and re-recording the material.   The legal position is similar to someone who covertly records a film in a cinema.  The law is stupid, however, attempting to circumvent it by recording from a camera pointing at a television is also stupid.

Thought of the day

Celebrity news is thought to attract viewers.  Does it represent a net gain in viewers, or temporary gains?    How loyal is an audience attracted by the saga of Britney Spears?  Can main-stream news channels compete with dedicated celebrity news outlets?  Has diversification in the name of popularity increased or decreased viewing figures for all channels that have gone down that route?  Is there an niche for news channels that  provide quality analysis of important news?  Is it possible to diversify to the point that what distinguishes a news channel is gone?  Do Perez Hilton and TMZ do a better job at covering the minutiae of celebrity news than CNN or the BBC?  What happens when they, and entities like Heat Magazine, get their own digital television channels?

Thought of the day

With online news polls vote for the most stupid option – regardless of what you actually think.   It’s funny and only idiots take them seriously; it’s not like there’s any serious consequences.

Thought of the day

Headlines like “2000 and hate” (today’s Sun) get me down. Four people in the UK died violently on New Year’s Eve. From thence the headline is derived and makes violent deaths on New Year’s Eve look like they’re a precedent. I have spent the last ten minutes looking at the news archives for the previous two New Year’s Celebrations in the UK, and as far as I can make out, one more people died violently this year than on December 31^st 2005, and at least three people were killed (doing a quick tally of the headlines) on December 31^st 2006. While a 1/3 increase in deaths on New Year’s Eve is tragic for the 4 families involved, running in on the front page of a newspaper scares old ladies.   No wonder we’ve seen prison overcrowding; with headlines like that people would vote for Oliver Cromwell. 

Tripping over a freshly killed rat in the dark is jarring. My cat brought a huge dead rat into the house. I tripped over it in the hall. It was squishy and still warm. Rigor-mortis had not yet set in. It had no pulse. It must have been six inches long and looked kind of peaceful. I tripped over it in the hall. Cats are bastards. The rat is in the kitchen bin.

Thought of the day

Ultimately cats are animals.

New Pornographers (updated with correct link) and Happy Mondays.

Thought of the day

Arseburgers.

Human all too human (Heidegger).  A cunt.  There are clever cunts don’t ya know.

Thought for the day

There is nothing vile about vagina.  Cunt is a deeply misogynistic word.  However it does have emotional impact.  If anyone has words with similar impact/utility that are less misogynistic please email me, I will use it instead.  I feel a bit of a cunt using it.