Googling your carbon footprint

Posted on Sun, 11 January, 2009 by Polly Unsaturate

I decided to have a cup of coffee rather than randomly searching Google for a few minutes. For the good of the planet.

The Sunday Times reported that 2 Google searches have the the same carbon footprint as boiling water for a cup of tea. (I am hoping the same applies to coffee but I’m erring on the side of caution by forsaking half a dozen notional searches.)

These statistics aren’t completely convincing, being generated, as they were, by a guy who’s set up a website to sell a clean conscience to websites.

People want websites they visit to be eco-friendly. CO2Stats helps you attract and retain those visitors.
CO2Stats is the only service that automatically calculates your website’s total energy consumption, helps to make it more energy efficient, and then purchases audited renewable energy from wind and solar farms to neutralize its carbon footprint – all for a flat, affordable monthly fee. (from co2stats)

The estimated carbon footprint of your search varies wildly between

[Wissner-Gross’s] research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos. (from the Sunday Times)

So, “stick to really dull webpages and don’t visit YouTube or sites that use Flash” sounds more immediately effective advice than buying spurious energy credits.

In any case, this turns out to be at the low-end of the carbon footprint estimates:

….. carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use).
Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.

Wait, if using a PC at all emits ~60g an hour, ie, 1g a minute, doesn’t that mean you are saving 0.8g a minute by looking at complex websites?

And that bit about “depending on whether you have to switch your PC on” is really confusing. (When I work out how to use my PC without switching it on, I’ll post the information here.)

I am sure that computer use is mostly a waste of energy. I am sure that big powerful servers are even greedier than my PC.

However, I’m not convinced by the idea that you can buy your way out of responsibility for ecological damage. Paying to generate some less-polluting-energy doesn’t mean that the more-polluting-energy you used before suddenly disappears.

Congestion charges, aviation carbon taxes and so on. They all suggest that you won’t cause ecological damage if you can afford to pay for it. It’s like buying and selling medieval indulgences.

This would be great if the Earth was susceptible to bribery. I think these schemes are usually just ways for us to avoid taking any real steps to stop destroying the Earth. In some ways, they are worse than doing nothing, because they give us the illusion that we are taking serious steps to save the environment and that we can do this without any major inconveniences.

And they give the climate-change deniers some pretty obvious strawmen to direct their denying at. For example, here are some of the comments on the Times article:

When does this global warming hysteria end. It seems like all these die-hard environmentalists would like us all living in huts with no electricity, comforts, or heating. Especially considering this freezing winter (against all predictions), I’d like to see them go first.

Like a mouse climbing up the leg of an elephant with rape on its mind. Global warming at/isn’t going to happen

I call for a moratorium on publishing articles like this one. The amount of CO2 generated when my head starts to steam is much higher than a Google search. Multiply that by the millions of sane people who agree with me that GW is a crock and GW might actually come true.

(Replace the misused “sane people” with a more accurate “Americans” and you get the flavour of a lot of these comments. What is it about living the USA that makes some people unable to see beyond their own carports?)

The calculations are ridiculous and blatantly misleading.
But no surprise, it appears that this will be another cold year and the “environmentalists” are running up and down in a total panic that they failed to fully socialize the world while for a few years was a bit warmer.

And why should we care how much energy Google uses…because of the myth of Global Warming that is being forced down our throats.
2007 was the warmest year on record, no wait, we were wrong about that, the warmest year was 1945. Artic sea ice will be gone soon, no wait, we were wrong about that

It looks as if even people who are too monumentally stupid to see that a cold year doesn’t in itself invalidate climate change are still bright enough to see that these figures are a bit bogus.

Why give them ammunition? The idea of a “carbon footprint” as an individual moral issue, susceptible to individual guilt and contrition is just mistaken. It’s obviously good to do whatever we can as individuals, but it’s a social and political issue, which needs serious social and political solutions.
(end opinionated rant.)

Melanie Philips hate-speech

Posted on Sat, 10 January, 2009 by Polly Unsaturate

Flattering to the UK population as it might be to see the UK described as “gentle civilised Britain”, I suspect the evidence doesn’t exactly stack up. (You could ask the populations of Majorca or Falaraki or Ibiza if they recognise this as description of a British tourist, for a start.)

This was in the headline of a piece by Melanie Phillips in the Mail Even by the reliably rabid standards of Melanie Phillips, this must represent a new departure. The heading is:

Violent Gaza protests reveal how gentle civilised Britain has changed into something very ugly indeed

I have to assume that Melanie Phillips doesn’t have a history GCSE, so she may never have heard of the many centuries of political violence that constitute British history. I also assume that she is 12 years old so never heard of the political violence of the 1980s. Kudos to the Mail for not being ageist and recruiting children as its columnists.

Hmm, wikipedia confuses me. It turns out she was born in 1951. She studied English at Oxford. (I guess it must have been difficult to get in without History O level…) I have to let her wikipedia give aflavour of her.

The BBC has said that Phillips “is regarded as one of the [U.K.] media’s leading right-wing voices”, although she defines herself as a progressive and a defender of liberal democracy. She began her career on the liberal left with the Guardian newspaper, and her gradual drift to the right of the political spectrum has been mirrored by her journalistic career: she now writes for the right-wing Daily Mail. She has used her Daily Mail columns and her blog to criticise, amongst other issues, progressive teaching methods, scientism, militant Islam, and what she sees as anti-semitism as a means of defending Israeli policy; to oppose equal partnership rights for homosexuals; and to support strict anti-drug policies. She has described President-elect Obama of the USA a “revolutionary Marxist.”

Also, in case you couldn’t have guessed-

Phillips argues that evolution is “merely a theory

Bear in mind that this is a woman who sees Obama as a “revolutionary Marxist” At least this gives some consistency to her characterisation of the UK as in thrall to fundamentalist Islam, backed by a fifth column of revolutionary lefties. A conspiracy into which she pulls the Liberal Democrat’s leader (ffs).

For silence is complicity, as once gentle, decent, civilised Britain changes before our horrified eyes into something very ugly indeed.

The Mail has talked up the demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza to the point that it claimed that 100,000 people attended and that police were knocked unconscious.

Violent clashes occurred between police and around 20,000 protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in London (from the Daily Mail)

In notable numeric contrast, he BBC news site (NB the BBC is itself a minor Daily Mail hate target) says:

The Metropolitan Police says 20,000 people marched but the BBC estimates the figure could be as high as 50,000……
It is estimated there were several hundred police officers dealing with around 200 protesters outside the embassy…
BBC correspondent Robert Hall said given the number of people involved, the protest had been peaceful.
“But as darkness fell a small number of people, several hundred, have begun confronting police and missiles have been thrown,” he said.
“Although these are ugly and unwelcome scenes, they do not represent what has happened for most of the afternoon.”

Note that the BBC’s estimate of fighting protesters is one-hundredth of the Mail’s. Yes that’s one hundredth. How impressive is that for a margin of error. (Hmm, which estimate comes from an internationally respected organisation and which from a right-wing rag?)
The Daily Mail’s implication is that political violence is on a huge scale and is some alien (probably Islamic) import. It must not even have access to its own back catalogue – or else it mistrusts its own words as alarmist propaganda 🙂 – which would pull out hundreds of examples of demonstrations in which an irate minority kicked off.

But no chance. If there’s ever an opportunity to make middle England even more bigoted and scared, you can always rely on the Mail to take it.

Weird women’s subculture

Posted on Wed, 7 January, 2009 by Polly Unsaturate

There’s a weird female blogosphere subculture that I discovered by accident. It may not be news to other people but it was certainly news to me. This will came across as utterly unsisterly but I find these women even scarier than their male counterparts.

There was well-comment-savaged post on fundies say the darnedest things, which reported a blog post including the following:

My kids had the following conversation at the store yesterday, very loudly, and within ear shot of several other customers:
John (4 years old): Barack Obama, and the devil, and the government are worser than anything else in the world.
Isaac (5 years old): Mom, John actually told me that he thinks Barack Obama is worse than the faggots.
Ah, precious moments!
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6

In my determined naivety, I think these really stunning quotes are usually poes, because I don’t believe such people can really exist. This one seems so far off the human decency scale that it couldn’t possibly be real. Surely?

I followed the link labelled stevenandersonfamily. Argh. It’s genuine.

This isn’t in fact the blog of “Steven Anderson”. It’s the blog of his wife Zsuzsanna (Pause for ten minutes trying to find a way to pronounce that.)

After reading a few posts, your heart actually goes out to Steven Anderson himself. He must have committed some heinous sins for his god to have married him off to this woman. He “pastors what I consider to be the greatest church in the world, and also runs a fire alarm business to support our ever-growing family” He’s working 60 hours a week to support this “stay-at-home Mom” who also home schools their 5 children, the oldest of whom is 7 years old. You can hardly blame him for making sure he’s out of the house.

The blog is a dizzying mixture of straightforward momsy stuff about how to make a baby sling or taco soup with pronouncements that make me instantly think of a smaller-minded and less self-aware version of Mrs Lovejoy in the Simpsons.

For example, how about “Did I already mention that I hate IVF”

….”Infections” is a nice way to say that these women have been rendered infertile by the STDs that run rampant in Africa, diseases that would almost certainly be passed on to the babies created through IVF. Sure, I feel bad that people live in a country where they were probably infected by their own parents, but do we need to continue that cycle of disease through sponsored IVF procedures? Besides, maybe instead of handing out condoms like candy, these people should be taught not to live like animals and sleep with everyone and everything that moves….

Repress that gag reflex. There’s plenty more.

The second reason given was “abortion”. Why any humanitarian organization would pay a woman to have IVF who has previously aborted a baby is beyond me. Obviously, she doesn’t love kids.
I won’t even get started on the “unsafe deliveries” part. It means that deliveries in their hospitals are unsafe because of ancient, dangerous, and dirty equipment. Of course women would fare much safer to just have the baby at home on their own, like millions of women have throughout history. Delivering a baby in Africa is no more dangerous in and of itself than delivering a baby in America. It’s the people who are attending the birth and interfering with it that are the danger.

I guess she’s unfamiliar with historical maternal mortality rates. 100 years ago, death in childbirth was a common hazard for women living in even the most advanced countries. I am also baffled that she has taken the idea that woman are paid to have IVF. The news article she refers to says that doctors are planning to offer “cheap” $200 IVF to women in Africa.

The bottom left of the blog has a list of things to do instead of watching the tv – almost all bible related, where they aren’t homemaking related. I can’t resist posting this list of the projects she’s working on, for its neat encapsulation of her world:

Projects I am currently working on

taking down Christmas decorations

writing on a dozen or more unfinished blog posts as I have time here and there

Knitting little squares of various patterns that I want to teach at our church’s next ladies’ activity

Sewing matching PJs for all the kids

Potty training Miriam

These are “projects”? Well, I reckon her projects of teaching her unfortunate kids to parrot her self-satisfied racism and homophobia don’t need any more working on, because she’s already managed to warp their minds to the point that she is actively boasting about it online.

I’ve characterised this as a subculture rather than the character-expression of one simple-minded female because she has loads of links to other similar SAH-moms (stay-at-home, that means) who devote their lives to breeding, homemaking, child-rearing and worshipping a man who is happy to support these hobbies. They also homeschool their kids. I promised myself that I wouldn’t rant too much about these people because their blogged lives speak for themselves. But, some of them really take my breath away:

thegoodoldway for example. Here are a few random quotes:

That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet,chaste, keepers at home, good obedient to their own husbands , that the word of God be not blasphemed. Titus 2: 4-5
I have had a few jobs outside the home over the years. But I am glad that God’s will commands me to be a stay-at-home wife and mom.

We file our taxes in January so we get our tax refund this month and I will be able to finally start wearing skirts and dresses all the time. I still wear sweatpants around the house because I only have a few skirts. I don’t have any dresses as we have been out of church for several years.

I am baffled by the skirts thing and I’m someone who doesn’t even own a pair of trousers or jeans. I have loads of dresses and I’ve definitely been out of church for many years. I hadn’t heard that churches even had a “no women in trousers” dress code… Ah she explains it. For some reason, the god of abraham has decided that women should wear only skirts. And men trousers, I assume, which means that he hated the ancient Romans and Scots and greek soldiers. Why didn’t he take the trouble to kit us out properly at birth then?:

I believe that men should be the head of the household and the provider also. Women should be keepers at home. She should be a good wife and good mother to children and devote her time to her family. That is her job. She should dress in skirts and dresses and dress modestly. She should teach her daughters to do the same.

I suddenly remember that these women have daughters. Sisterly solidarity raises its head again. Those poor girls! Oh, and sons. Human solidarity, then. Those poor boys!

Here’s Rose from Missouri. She has ten kids and three grandchildren. How interesting do you think her day is?

I had my usual day today, got up and made coffee, took Cassie(stepson’s girlfriend) to work over in Kansas(that is a half hour drive there and a half hour back). Started dishes as soon as I got back, fixed hubby something to eat, took hubby to work, went to the store to get some drain cleaner( the drain in the basement backed up). I started fixing dinner about 4:00p.m.( fixed beef stew). Picked Cassie up from work. Did the dinner dishes( yes, you read that right). Steven is watching the idiot box, so I may go someplace and try to read. I haven’t read my Bible yet today. I have been reading 3 or 4 chapters from Genesis a day and the Proverb for the day. I started this on January 1st. …. Later, I have to go pick hubby up from work(he gets off at 11:30), then I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow!

This is pretty representative of the entries. How many dishes washed per day, how much she likes flannel sheets and so on. My heart half goes out to this woman, living a life so dull that bible-reading is the closest she gets to thought. She doesn’t even have one of those stickers that say “since the start of the Iraq war, x babies have been killed(*).” So I don’t want to seem too harsh. But the hideous sticker that says “have you been fooled by feminism” hardens my heart.

And I link to the blog of yet another of this strange sisterhood, called the On a Quest for Plain Living It has a sort of women-insulting parody of proverbs 32 and ends with:

Let us all strive NOT to be like this. We can have so much influence in our husband’s lives if we just allow the Holy Spirit to do a work in our life.

She got this from Christian Homekeeping which has a post on how to be a good wife. It’s as repellent as you might expect.

The term “passive-aggressive” suddenly takes on a real meaning for me. These women get to play house and rule over a small kingdom of offspring by flattering and manipulating the “hubby” into making it all possible for them. There’s no common project shared by equals.

These are women in the 21st century USA – with all the material and social benefits this brings them – who’ve all been to school and who all have equal rights. And they are somehow desperate to roleplay some parodic mix of an old testament prophet’s wife and a 1950s advert housewife.

Do they imagine for one minute that anyone outside their family and friends cares how many points little Jacob got at football or at point they thought it easiest to tidy up on Christmas day?

It’s not that I think childcare and cooking and cleaning aren’t important or that I’d ever mock anyone for enjoying these things. It’s the bizarre view of men and women that they express through how they do those things that enrages me. And their interpretation of childcare can be actively anti-social. Teaching babies to mouth hate-speech doesn’t constitute “care” to me.

(* They mean US abortions rather than living Iraqi babies killed. The latter number doesn’t really seem to bother them.)

If you can’t beat them

Posted on Sun, 4 January, 2009 by Polly Unsaturate

vjack reported an Alliance Defence Fund “alert” about one of his posts. It’s cheering that the ADF actually read and worry about atheists’ arguments, although I reckon few bloggers would welcome that kind of attention.

This led me to look at their site, follow a few links, and wander around the reaches of the Christian right.

Quietly giggle at the argument that the self-styled “pro-life” movement is the true inheritor of the 1960s new left. Which in this context is somehow a “good thing”, flying directly in the face of the values expressed in this stuff. (I don’t understand it either, unless the objective is to trick people who don’t assume the New Left represented the lead horseman of the apocalypse) This, erm, unusual argument was put by Richard John Neuhaus, who turns out to be a Lutheran-pastor-turned-Catholic-priest, described in Wikipedia as:

A close, yet unofficial, collaborator of President George W. Bush, Neuhaus advises Bush, who simply calls him “Father Richard”, on a range of religious and ethical matters, including abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, and the defense of marriage amendment
Laugh out loud at the Reagan Ranch. This seems to be Graceland for people who would find the living quarters of a 1950s singer to be too interesting. It’s run by the Young America’s (sic) Foundation (motto: “The Conservative Movement Starts Here.”) I initially assume it’s a parody site, on the basis of some seriously mind-numbing content.. This is a typical press release, ffs:

The President and Mrs. Reagan had breakfast together this morning at their residence at Rancho del Cielo, where the weather is sunny and warm. After breakfast, the President attended to routine paperwork and is now getting ready to go horseback riding. After riding, the President will have lunch with Mrs. Reagan and this afternoon, will clear brush on the ranch property. The Reagans will have dinner together this evening.
Stop laughing rather swiftly when I bump into The Young America’s Foundation National Journalism Center Internships in Washington DC This Journalism Center seems to specialise in getting its conservative-by-definition students placed in major news outlets. For instance, here’s the 2008 tally of placements

.. media outlets around the Washington, D.C. area, including Fox News, CNN, BBC, Comcast Sports Net, Roll Call, The Washington Times, Washington Examiner, Human Events, Evans & Novak Political Report, The Michael Reagan Show, The Sean Hannity Show, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, National Review Online, News Max, London Daily Telegraph, and Doublethink Magazine.

Aren’t rightwingers continually bleating about the “liberal media” and its bias against them? Well, this is part of their fightback strategy. From the FAQs.:

Q: What are you seeking in a candidate?
A: The National Journalism Center seeks candidates that are dedicated to becoming a better journalist, becoming more responsible reporter, and combating media bias.

(How many grammatical errors are there in that answer? Yeah, ok, pot/kettle, but they must have had enough time to check the FAQ pages surely. And I’m not a journalist, let alone a journalism training centre.)

Being from the UK, I have only the haziest idea what “interns” do and I suspect this idea is not 100% accuarate, based, as it is, on the Clinton/Lewinsky saga. But I guess it’s work experience, for a $1000 a month stipend, apparently. I look at the list of articles published by the Fall 2008 alumni (Let the Americanisms run riot 🙂 tr: “people who did the course this Autumn”)

I naturally assume it’s News Biscuit link when I see:

‘Bridge to Nowhere’ leads nowhere

But it’s a real article in the American Spectator. By an alumnus.

(Here’s a gratuitous link to Apathy Sketchpad’s fine News Biscuit Annual post anyway)

Young Catholics share similar political and social views

(Yawn.)

A handful more in the same vein. Straight reports of not very interesting topics but professionally done. The site shows the optimistic fresh faces of the student alumni. Imagine getting the opportunity to work for the Washington Post and to get paid for doing it. They must feel pretty grateful to the Young America’s Foundation. I start to feel churlish about mocking the project. Then I turn to the page showing Books and Articles by NJC graduates.

I’ve heard of some of these graduates, such as Ann Coulter. (Hmmm.) Here are a few titles from the alumni’s publications. I have only picked out about one in four and I stopped at the letter K in the alphabetical list., in order to retain the will to live. So you can take it that there are plenty more where these came from.

The Writing Christian
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror
Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right
Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church
Robert E. Lee on Leadership
Polluted Science: The EPA’s Campaign to Expand Clean Air Regulations
The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS
Enemies of Eros: How the Sexual Revolution is Killing Family
Economic Casualties: How U.S. Foreign Policy Undermines Trade, Growth, and Liberty
The Age of Reagan: The Rebirth and Triumph of the American Spirit
The Rise of the Nanny State: How Consumer Advocates Try to Run Our Lives
Fostering Environmental Prosperity: Multinationals in Developing Countries
The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good
Investor Politics: The New Force That Will Transform American Business, Government and Politics in the 21st Century
Global Taxes for World Government
Global Bondage: The U.N. Plan to Rule the World

Not only are these books apparently so uniformly US-style-rightwing that you wouldn’t be surprised to find this was the Unabombers’s reading list, they sound so far beyond dull that the concept would have to be reinvented. Liberal, left-leaning media, indeed. 🙂

Put them in the stocks

Posted on Sat, 3 January, 2009 by Polly Unsaturate

The average person is not a criminologist. This is as obvious as saying that the average person doesn’t have many skills in dentistry. You’d think long and hard before you asked a random person in the street to fill one of your molars.

So, I’m pretty gobsmacked by a cracked new plan to give the public the opportunity to vote on punishments for convicted criminals.

Research carried out by the Cabinet Office has persuaded her that greater community engagement would not encourage vigilante activity or excessive punishments. (from the Guardian)

Yeah, right.

The mad ministers supporting this plan are keeping it for minor offences, because they know full well that letting rabid local prejudices determine the penalties for more serious crimes would lead to some horrific outcomes. But this implies that people found guilty of minor offences are likely to get less fair treatment than people convicted of major crimes. They might have the details of their offences posted online, for instance.

Smith feels that although the police are becoming better at informing local people about the progress of prosecutions, too many people “disappear” into the criminal justice system. She argues that “justice seen is justice done” and is backing plans for courts to set up local websites informing people of the fate of criminals and cases.

So, commit some minor offence and it is posted on the net for your friends, family, boss and any potential employer to find forever. If you assume that one offence of disorderly conduct should ruin your chances of getting employment for life, then fair enough. However, I thought that the possibility that people could incur a penalty and return to normal life after paying it was inherent in any concept of justice.

Anyone who thinks that it’s OK that getting found guilty of any minor offence means that you’re branded a criminal for life had better get used to there being a huge marginalised group of people with less than no chance of ever getting legitimate work. So, basically, forced to commit crimes to survive.

There are so many things wrong with this plan, I could rant for days. For example, penalties would be decided locally, so would clearly vary from place to place. Sentences are supposed to “reflect communities’ interests”. What if you lived in an area where most people oppose your race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, style of dress, or whatever? Would you get fair treatment. Or where you are really popular with the local “community leader”? Or vice versa.

What sort of people will feel they have a right to vote on the penalties for petty crimes? Smug bigots, busybodies, self-appointed community leaders, Daily Mail readers and so on. Is their thirst for vengeance going to be assuaged or fed by getting the right to lord it over petty offenders? Obviously not. They’ll see no reason why their solomonic wisdom shouldn’t be applied to more serious offences. And it’s hard for the government to argue that it’s OK to go down the medieval route for low-level crimes but that serious criminals should be protected by 21st century laws.

The government is already treating the opinions of people with expertise and training in dealing with petty offenders – the probation service – as irrelevant. On 30 December, the Probation Officers Union NAPO expressed unease with the government decision that people doing community service should wear reflective jackets that announce that they are serving a sentence.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, said organisations, including churches and charities, that offer unpaid work placements for offenders had become wary of using the vests after incidents of offenders being abused by the public, including missiles being thrown at them. “Many of these organisations are faith-based groups who believe it is not their role to oversee humiliation,” he said, adding that in one area a group of youths had chanted “nonces, smackheads, lowlifes” at one work group. (from the Guardian)

Well, yes, public humiliation is not actually acceptable as a penalty. I am pretty sure that the EC Human Rights Act and international law say something about “cruel and unusual” punishments. And that’s in terms of NOT using them.

The justice minister, David Hanson, fuelled the debate last night by saying he rejected the results of the Napo survey and expected all 42 probation areas to implement the introduction of the high-visibility clothing. “The public expects to see justice being done, and this is what the jackets achieve,” he said.

Hmm. NAPO claim to have evidence that offenders are being bullied and that charities don’t want community service workers to be stigmatised BUT the “justice” minister won’t accept this. He’s not interested at all really. When it’s a question of buying the Daily Mail reader vote, centuries of painfully developing a more humane justice system can go by the board.

“The public expects to see justice being done,” my arse. Is there any evidence for this, at all? Must we assume that the same imaginary people who are badgering Jaqui Smith for the opportunity to have an ID card are also badgering the Justice Minister to provide visible evidence that people convicted of minor offences are being punished? If this is the public’s expectation, it hasn’t been met for a good few centuries. The public used to get to see criminals thrown to the lions in Ancient Rome and to see public executions in pre-modern Europe. Is a public execution a reasonable expectation? Many people were so enraged against the parents of Baby P that they would have felt that execution was reasonable . Would they have the right to watch this over the internet if the death penalty was restored? Failing that, surely the public won’t be satisfied until they can watch Baby P’s murderers in jail on 24 hour webcam over the Internet.

Would this be OK with the minister, if the public’s need to see justice being done is so paramount?

Comically ironic that the case involving a search of a Tory MP’s office (over systematic leaks by a senior civil servant) has had most of Parliament enraged at the shocking suggestion that they could be subject to the same laws as everybody else. The incident seems to have well nigh destroyed the career of the police officer in charge, in sharp contrast to the very limited career damage suffered by senior police officers after the mere shooting of an unarmed Brazilian. Ironic also that the Blair era cash for honours investigations managed to go absolutely nowhere but brought complaints about the waste of public money on pointless police investigations… .

Silly me. There is one rule for MPs and another for the rest of us. So, I would like to share with MPs the mantra of the onward march of UK repression “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear.” 😀

Waahaaa

Posted on Wed, 31 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

Rogue state fosters terrorism. That isn’t what the media are saying about Israel’s actions, despite the fact that a rational look at the situation in Gaza would support this conclusion. Every Israeli action of this kind drives the Palestinians further into the camp of extremists, as every other alternative is denied them.

A strange conflict arithmetic appears. Over 300 Palestinians dead, and 3 Israelis at yesterday’s count. The 3 Israeli casualties appeared as a rolling news banner, as if dead people are significant. Rightly so. But Palestinian casualties are treated as numbers, approximated and spurious. We are being hypnotised into seeing a hundred to one as some sort of equality of death, as if the value of a non-Israeli life is somehow one-hundredth that of an Israeli life.

On the rolling news broadcasts, images of Palestinians screaming and crying in grief are shown among a confusion of images of demonstrations and mass panic street scenes and Koran waving. At best, a local Englishman explains their situation in a half-screen box. Any attempt to follow what he is saying is disrupted by the flickering voiceless images of Palestinian chaos. The message is “You cannot understand these people. They are nothing like you.”

Israelis are interviewed in the circumstances of normality. Standing by their cars, discussing the events in English and expressing their concerns in the context of normal conversation. Israeli politicians are interviewed in modern well-set up studios. They say things that us Europeans tend to disagree with but they are recognisably like us. Reporters stand outside their comfortable hotels and discuss the day’s tallies and discuss Israeli reactions.

The overall impression seems to construct view of the Israelis that seems well nigh taken for granted in the US – that they are just like the people in USA or Europe or Canada, it’s just that they are insanely being bombarded by a load of Islamo-fanatics who hate their freedom and democracy and advanced way of life, etc.

Hmm. It’s not as if this is deliberate news management or anything. (Yes, “I am being sarcastic”, to quote Homer Simpson.) I initially thought it was just a side effect of the world’s journalists naturally gravitating towards interviewees who speak their language and can be easily reached from their hotels. And I was pretty depressed that, in the supposed age of the citizen journalist, traditional factors like accessibility and language and official control of information sources still frame the “news” so decisively.

But, it’s not just that.

“Israel is not currently permitting international journalists to cross into Gaza” (From the BBC report of a journalist who is Gaza resident)

Well, it’s not apparently permitting international medical aid to pass through the Mediterranean – as it admitted ramming a boat doing just that or it didn’t, according to UPN, according to which news source you believe – so it’s hardly going to allow foreign journalists into Gaza.

Hence, you can read lots stories like this in the New York Times.

A piercing shriek went up and a young woman fainted as the body, wrapped in a white shroud, was brought into the packed funeral hall.
On Tuesday, this fast-developing modern port city about half way between Gaza and Tel Aviv buried its first victim of a rocket attack: Irit Sheetrit, a 39-year-old mother of four

But, as far as I can see there very few people reporting for the Western media from within Gaza. Here’s one, a worker for an Islamic charity, writing on the BBC about the psychological effect of this on the children and about how hospitals are overwhelmed with the number of injured and dead people.

At the hospital I saw something I have never seen before – dead bodies outside on the floor. Everyone in Gaza has a relative or a friend killed or injured after these attacks.

Here’s another from the Guardian on a family that lost 5 daughters in one bombing raid. They lived in a refugee camp. Their lives were already shit and then they lost 5 daughters in one raid, while they were sleeping.

The Israeli strategy is based on a an insane belief that they will undercut support for Hamas by going ape on the Palestinians till they drop support for Hamas. This shows a level of ignorance about history and human psychology that seems almost wilful. The news management might have a fair amount of success in shaping how the USA sees and responds to this tragedy. But it is hardly going to convince the rest of the world. It’s not going to convince the people of Gaza of anything except the need to oppose Israel at any cost. It is not going to convince any Arab countries that they have any solution to the question of the Palestinians beyond slow burn genocide.

In the process, the Israelis are recruiting for Hamas, they are recruiting for Al Qeda. And, if the international community fails to put a stop to what they are doing, it is doing the same.

The abortion debate

Posted on Tue, 30 December, 2008 by ATGW

One of Heather’s recent posts (Lies make the baby Jesus cry) has attracted a few comments. This is odd because most of our readers rarely comment (shame on you) but in some respects unsurprising because the post was on the constantly emotive topic of abortion. In a nutshell, Heather expressed some doubt on the “testimony” presented by an anti-abortion website which described very late term and post-birth “abortions” (murder to normal people) as if they were regularly carried out.

The source had a statement which read: “Generally the practice at the time….and up until 2002 was to end the life of an abortion survivor by strangulation, suffocation, leaving the baby to die, or throwing the baby away.” Heather quite rightly (IMHO) pointed out that this was most certainly nonsense. Strangling a baby after birth is not an abortion.

Anyway, one of the commenters (Lee) has brought up a few points that I felt needed to be elevated beyond the comment thread and given a post all of their own:

Aren’t you talking about an old issue? The girl in the video was born in the 70’s…

Got to answer this yes and no. This is an old issue in that people have argued (and lied) about abortion facts and figures for a long time. The website Heather addressed stated this practice continued until 2002 (old only in internet time). The post itself was made on 17 December 2008, that isn’t even old in Internet time.

The woman in the video was born in 1977 (still not “old”) and yes, US Abortion law has changed between then and now. The “landmark” Roe vs Wade was in 1973 and allowed for an abortion to take place up to three months into the pregnancy. This is not final term and is not post-partum.

Killing a baby after it has been born is now, and was then, murder. In 1977 it was illegal to terminate a baby who was about to be born naturally, unless a doctor stated the mother’s health was at risk (Doe vs Bolton). You can argue that “corrupt” doctors would sign off on anything being a risk to allow a late term abortion but that is a whole different discussion – and can never be prevented unless you rate the mothers life as subordinate to the unborn child.

Maybe I misunderstood the point of your post.

It seems likely, but I actually think you got the point.

It seemed to me you were implying that the girl in the video is lying about the circumstances of her birth.

Yep. If Heather wasn’t implying this, she should have been.

Now it gets fun:

I watched the video (thanks again for the link), it seemed interesting, she didn’t seem to be lying…

Ok. You watched it and thought she was telling the truth. I watched it and thought she was lying. Where do we go from there?

People lie for all kinds of reasons and people will also present a lie as the truth once they have become conditioned to believe it. If the woman in the video was brought up to think they were the circumstances around her birth, she will believe it with all her heart and can easily pass a polygraph. It doesn’t make it the truth though.

I did some research.

So did I. This is why I think there is a healthy dose of lying for jesus going on here.

Not extensive…

Maybe you should try to do some more extensive research. False modesty is not a virtue.

I’m just a blog reader, but it was pretty easy to find information that proved what the girl in the video claims.

I can search the internet and find proof the Earth orbits the Sun. I can find proof the Apollo moon landings were a hoax and proof that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is false. Doesn’t make any of them true. What she describes is illegal, and was illegal in 1977. Who was prosecuted following this? Where are the court records of the trial?

I suppose lots of other people would have proved her birth certificate (signed by the abortionist) and her medical records wrong by now if she was lying.

How? Show me her medical records detailing her birth. Her birth certificate would have been signed by a doctor just like everyone else, it wont have “Abortionist” in big letters after his or her name. Equally, claims like this – which hit the emotional triggers of lots of people who want it to be true, rarely get subjected to scrutiny.

Crucially, read / listen to what is actually said. The woman claims she was born alive before the “abortionist” arrived and was transferred to a hospital. Her records will begin there. She (and her parents) can make any claims they want about the precursor events.

The claims are unverifiable. They are improbable based on law at the time. They are unlikely based on human nature. What conclusion do you draw from that?

Are you saying that these kinds of failed abortions didn’t happen, or don’t happen? (now there is a law against letting infants die if they survive an abortion…so hopefully they don’t happen anymore).

“Failed abortion” is a wide-reaching phrase. Abortions are carried out in the first trimester (and were in 1977) so it is monumentally unlikely a natural, live and viable birth could take place while in the abortion clinic waiting room. I would be surprised if you honestly thought that US hospitals in the 1970s left babies to die.

The US congress took it seriously:
Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001 [Linked to http://www.nrlc.org/federal/Born_Alive_Infants/BAIPA_%202001_HJC_report.pdf]

The link to the Right to Life website speaks volumes as to the selected choices of information sources. The fact that Congress were convinced to “take it seriously” in 2001 doesn’t lend much support. The blog Heather referenced said this was still going on in 2002 and, there is a tendency to pass legislation on things that are already prohibited if there is enough political pressure to do so. With abortion there is certainly the political pressure.

It does raise one big set of questions though. Prior to the legalisation, and regulisation, of abortions how many babies were left to die, how many were born then strangled, how many mothers died due to complications, how many women died in back street abortions? (etc). Anti-abortionists are not “Pro-lifers” if the mother’s health is sacrificed for the baby. Banning abortion does not make it go away.

If you really want to reduce abortions, without going down the dreaded road of contracption, then plough all your funds into making society better for the parents. Improve healthcare, improve education, improve social supports – just be ready for when a certain section of society realise they get paid for having kids and breed like rabbits. Despite what the anti-abortionist propoganda claims, 99% of abortions are not “lifestyle choices” made by people who feel a child will cramp their demon-worshipping activities.

Lies make the baby Jesus cry

Posted on Tue, 23 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

Blurring the line between abortion and infanticide doesn’t seem to upset him, however. Or some serious infant weeping might break out over this story on the Pomegranate Apple blog:

Gianna Gessen: A Story About a Birth
“To everyone’s great shock and surprise, I didn’t arrive dead but alive on April the sixth 1977 in a Los Angelos county abortion clinic”
“What’s fantastic about this, about the perfect timing of my arrival, is that the abortionist was not on duty yet. So he wasn’t even given the opportunity to continue on for his plan for my life which was death.”
“So a nurse called an ambulance and had me transferred to a hospital which is absolutely miraculous. Generally the practice at the time….and up until 2002 was to end the life of an abortion survivor by strangulation, suffocation, leaving the baby to die, or throwing the baby away.”

There’s even a video to support these “extraordinary claims.”

Hmm. How unconvinced am I that a full-term or close-to-full-term baby was minutes away from abortion? Quite unconvinced, to put it mildly.

(I could put this more forcefully, of course, but any sane readers will be able to judge the validity of this tale for themselves.)

How unconvinced am I that it was standard practice to murder babies that somehow sprang fully-viable from a botched abortion? Yet again, I have to report that this information seems so unrelated to “truth” that it may be from a different species.

(I am also pretty dumbstruck by her characterising an abortion doctor as someone with a “plan for my life which was death.” )

I find myself almost weeping on behalf of an absent baby Jesus at the sheer dishonest effrontery of this tale.

Don’t make me keep saying this

Posted on Tue, 23 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

Another of those polls that make you worry about the quality of some teachers and wonder what all the endless inspections they have to undergo are supposed to have achieved. A MORI poll found that

More than a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers. (From James Randerson in the Guardian)

This is pretty much what the Teachers TV poll suggested in November. Maybe it’s the same poll and the Guardian’s confusing breaking news with news that Randerson already wrote about months ago. I can only hope so.

Steve Jones and Dawkins responded, using phrases like “very depressing” and ” a national disgrace.” Quite.

In the kingdom of the blind

Posted on Mon, 15 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

(This is my attempt to play one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. And rant. About money.)

The BBC’s Have Your Say invited people to comment on whether they are “worried” about the collapse of sterling to approximately the level of the Euro.

Most people – including me – understand absolutely nothing about international exchange rates beyond whether it will cost more to go on holiday. So, you could predict that most commenters would be complaining about not being able to spend as much in their fortnight in Spain. With the odd exporter or hotelier seeing it as good for their business. Fair enough.

Harder to understand are those commenters who see the collapse in the value of the pound as the fault of the UK Labour government (which they also persist in seeing as being committed to socialism, in the face of the evidence of years of NewLabour devotion to the demands of big business. )

Ignore the fact that even Bush’s government has gone further towards nationalisation than has the UK government, making at least some demands in return for the injection of billions into the banking system. Our government can’t even make the generously-supported banks respond to the interest rate cuts that were made just so that they’d pass them on and lend money.

Can people really not see that the near collapse of the western economies is:
(a) the result of the workings of capitalism, pure and simple. Capitalist economies must have boom and bust. It’s inherent in the system. How did we delude ourselves that a few years of relative prosperity in the system somehow meant the end of history?
(b ) global. We’ve been going through decades of globalisation. No one government can shape the global economy. If any one country can have a real impact, it would have to be the US. The UK is just a bit player.

Free movement of capital, freedom of currency markets, and so on. All that Chicago School economic bullshit that convinced global governments that allowing the rich to keep on getting immeasurably richer was necessarily good for everyone.

My inherent cynicism about the economic system was shown to be actually childishly naive by the Madoff story. The BBC finally gave it a billing today, under the headline “Banks hit worldwide by US fraud” (showing that the UK is just as bad as the US when it comes to ignoring any news that doesn’t involve its own nationals. It’s news, now, only because British banks have been seen to have been ripped off as well.)

Some of the world’s biggest banks have revealed they are victims of an alleged fraud which has lost $50bn (£33bn).

$50 billion dollars. A fair proportion of the amounts that taxpayers have stumped up to prop up the banking system. That’s a good few dollars for every person on planet earth, including the millions who never see a yankee dollar’s worth of cash from one week to the next.

The head of the Nasdaq. LOL seems inadequate, but I’m saying it anyway. That’s the head of the Nasdaq. Whole economies rose and fell on the whims of the Nasdaq.

US prosecutors say Mr Madoff, a former head of the Nasdaq stock market, masterminded a fraud of massive proportions through his hedge fund and investment advisory business.
Mr Madoff is alleged to have used money from new investors to pay off existing investors in the fund. (from the BBC)

Isn’t that called a “long-firm” con, in the criminal world?

Who would imagine that national Serious Fraud Offices and Securities and Exchange regulators and the heads of international banks wouldn’t spot one of the oldest scams in the Book of Old Scams? They really should have read more crime novels and “true-life” gangster confessions. Because reading balance sheets doesn’t seem to have been their strongest suit.

I love this casual aside in the BBC report. (That’s “love” in the sense of “grudgingly admire the bare-faced cheek while being incredibly grateful that I’m too poor and profligate to have any money to invest”)

Among the potential losers is Spain’s largest bank, Santander, which owns the UK High Street banks Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley.
The bank had a direct exposure of 17m euros ($23m; £15m), but clients of its Optimal fund management unit have another 2.3bn euros invested in the firm run by Bernard Madoff.

So the bank lost 17 million euros to the scam. Small change by the standards of current losses. On the other hand, the customers who trusted the bank’s investment nous lost 2.3 billion euros. (2.3 billion euros: savings, pension funds, jobs, services, yada yada yada.)

Inside or outside the casino, it looks as if “the bank never loses.” Well, not its own money, anyway.

;-) (TM)

Posted on Fri, 12 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

I plan to trademark the question mark (?), plus the charming upside Spanish question mark (¿) and the German ß letter. In fact, I might as well trademark any letter with an umlaut, (Ü) or a cedilla (ç) And I might as well claim the trademark ™ and copyright © symbols, while I’m at it.

I may be forced to sue the world’s dictionaries and keyboard manufacturers, if they won’t just start paying on their own accord. Don’t worry, normal people. Of course, I’ll let you use my letters for your own humble non-commercial purposes. I’m only going to claim against the thieving bastards who use my letters for gain without paying me my well-earned compensation.

A Russian businessman has trademarked emoticons. (In the UK, the media usually call rich Russian businessmen “oligarchs” for some reason, as if non-Russian billionaires don’t wield any power. The BBC calls him a businessman so I reckon he’s probably just moderately wealthy)

For instance, 😉 is now one of his.

I want to highlight that this is only directed at corporations, companies that are trying to make a profit without the permission of the trademark holder,” Mr Teterin said in comments on the Russian TV channel, NTV.
“Legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us,” he was quoted by the newspaper Kommersant as saying.
“It won’t cost that much – tens of thousands of dollars,” added the businessman, who is president of Superfone, a company that sells advertising on mobile phones.
But he said he does not plan on tracking down individual users of the emoticon.
He also said since other similar emoticons – 🙂 or 😉 or 🙂 – resemble the one he has trademarked, use of those symbols could also fall under his ownership. (from the BBC)

It’s not April 1. Next explanation is a publicity stunt. It’s worked then. (Although it’s hard to think why Russians would be motivated to buy mobile phone adverts on the basis that the company owner has a sharp eye for a scam.)

On reflection, trademarking expressive-punctuation is the standard 21st century business model in a reductio ad absurdum guise.

It doesn’t involve any messy production. (I guess that makes it count as eco-friendly and carbon-neutral.) It doesn’t incur any costs for materials or machinery. It doesn’t really employ any people so it cuts labour costs to the bone. (I don’t think lawyers count as people.) It certainly wouldn’t involve rewarding the creative thinkers who originally started using punctuation marks to express moods in text shorthand. It couldn’t generate any income except through trickery. It’s an entirely imaginary product, made out of screen pixels and worthless in itself.

Doesn’t this sound like most of what passes for the “commanding heights of the economy” now? It’s as if “modes of production” and “relations of production” have been rendered meaningless and irrelevant, as if whole economies can detach themselves from reality for ever. As if economic bubbles can never burst…..

😉

Die in a hail of gunfire

Posted on Thu, 11 December, 2008 by ATGW

Who would have thought it, eh? Some crazy people have jumped on the Mumbai Massacre bandwagon to espouse their crazy ideas. Amazing…

Disappointingly predictably, certain individuals are using the massacre to promote their own crazy agendas. On the “Cybercast News Service” yesterday there was an article in which it was claimed that the killings would have been prevented if India didn’t have such strict gun laws:

India’s strict gun laws are partly to blame for the success of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, according to the head of an Indian gun rights group and a U.S. expert who has examined the impact of gun laws on crime and terrorism.

Abhijeet Singh, founder of Indians for Guns, told CNSNews.com Tuesday that if the citizens of Mumbai had been allowed to carry guns, terrorists would not have killed as many people as they did–and might have been deterred from attacking in the first place.

Wow. It still surprises me a little that people can (with apparent seriousness) claim that if everyone had guns, there would be less gunfights. I can see an element of appealing logic, although it flies counter to the current anti-knife crime campaign we have in the UK, which seems to be working. The idea hangs on the fact that Terrorist X wont carry out an attack because if they do, the people they attack will be able to return fire and kill them.

Flawed logic.

First off – if this was true, soldiers wouldn’t be attacked. Islamic terrorists are reasonably prepared to die in the course of their actions, so the return fire is not a deterrent. Equally, even if everyone is carrying guns, the terrorists still have the huge advantage of being the attacker. A crowd of people goin about their daily business is in no state to drop to cover and return handgun fire when they are ambushed by assault rifles. The terrorist has the initiative, dictates where and when the attack will happen and can still kill large numbers before fire is returned with sufficient effect to defeat them.

Another line of reasoning was that if the public had all been armed, the terrorists would have killed a few, then the return fire would have got them – reducing the overall casualty figures.

Wrong, but less flawed. Most people are not combat trained. Despite all the range time gun-lovers carry out, despite all the films they watch, and magazines they read, combat shooting is something very, very different. Battle inoculation is so important that soldiers undergo it so they can experience what being under fire is like – hopefully to reduce the chance they will fuck up when the time comes to fight. Even with all this, and months of specialist training, soldiers make mistakes in the heat of battle. Some people will panic and shoot randomly, some will miss, some will be good shots but poor at target identification. The potential for carnage is beyond belief. The only thing you could hope for is that the terrorist would be just as shocked by the bullets flying in every direction they’d panic and fuck up as well. The problem is terrorists have often been to training camps, where they are taught what it is like…

The whole idea is insane and creates a wonderful scenario for any budding terrorist planners.

Imagine the scene: A shopping mall filled with several hundred armed people going about their daily business. One armed terrorist, dressed like everyone else, walks into the mall and opens fire, dashes to cover, fires again and lies low. The crowd are under fire. Everyone draws their guns and shoots in the direction they think the attack is coming from… At this point, the mall is filled with people seeing other people pointing guns at them. In the ensuing carnage there is only a moderate chance the terrorist will actually get killed, if he has any sense he could easily lie low enough to avoid being hit. Better still, when the security forces arrive, they are faced with how ever many survivors there are, all shooting at each other – how do they decide who to take out?

It is pure madness. Is this really the scenario these people want, or do they think all the members of the public will do cowboy style quick-draws, drop to one knee and double tap the terrorists in the head? By Zeus, the madness makes my eyes water.

Guns do not keep you safe. They do not stop people shooting you. At best they give you the chance to shoot back, but a holstered gun is useless. Carrying a gun makes you a target for everyone else with a gun. Carrying a gun, at best, gives you a false sense of security.

As ever, the comments for the CNS article are a fertile ground of madness. Some of the more, erm, entertaining ones:

Quote: “Distributing weapons to general public is not the wise and right idea to counter the terrorism.” Hmm, that’s funny, the citizens of Israel found the exact opposite to be true. You think maybe they might have some experience in the matter? Here in Michigan, USA, I carry a loaded pistol every day, everywhere I go. Nothing unusual, just normal everyday business. It’s nice to feel like a citizen instead of a subject.

Erm, no.

I, for one, have had a gun put to my head. I was lucky to have survived. I have vowed to never go through this again without a fight. Dispite my handing over everything to the robber, he still shot at me, but missed, thank God. I can’t carry at a bar, but look how many people are assulted leaving the bar to go to their car. Where would my pistol be? Locked in my car. Big help, isn’t it! I would like to see just one time where a person with a carry permit has gone on a shooting spree in a church, school, sports arena, or entertainment facility with a capacity of 2500 people plus, as these are the places Michigan law forbids my having my weapon with me at. Note! I can carry in a church with the permission of the church. It looks to me like none of the Government Law Makers or any of their families or friends have ever been assulted, so they don’t know what it is like. I suggest they get their heads out of the sand, look at reality and come up with laws that are reaistic.

God and Guns – dont they go together well… This person misses the whole point, but it isnt surprising really. I have been shot at, I have had mortars fired at me, I have had petrol bombs thrown at me by rioters. I was carrying a gun at the time and it didn’t help at all. This person doesn’t want protection, they want to be able to shoot the robber, after they have been robbed. Wonderful escalation that will result in the robber just shooting them first. I defy anyone in the real world to draw a gun and kill an attacker who has a loaded weapon drawn and pointed at them.

Armed,law abiding, citizens protect a nation and its people. But, an unarmed population is at the mercy of their own government, home grown thugs and terrorists as well as invaders from outside their country. Gandhi was right on!!! A realistic pacifist knows that force is the only way to meet force in the end. “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” — The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times) speaking at the “Educating Heart Summit” in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate

Well, while it may be true that “armed, law abiding citizens” protect a nation, they are called “soldiers.” Having every citizen armed is certainly not the same thing and does not protect a nation. An armed population is just as at the mercy of its government as an unarmed one. The realistic pacifist mentioned is not a pacifist, pretty much by definition. Self defence is important but if carrying a gun is not defence. A weapon is designed to be used to attack someone. Armour and a Sheild were defence, the sword was the offensive weapon. In modern times the gun is there for offensive activity. If you want to defend yourself, buy a kevlar vest and helmet. Yes, a good (military) defence is a good offence – however that does not carry over to every day life – unless you shoot all passers-by just in case.

If you are so scared that you feel the need to have a gun tucked inside your pants, fine – as long as you dont draw it anywhere near me, I don’t mind. Just remember though, that now you have a gun you are a threat to everyone around you who doesn’t know you. How do they know that you aren’t a screaming madman about to go on a killing rampage? What if you look at them a bit funny and they think its time for the offensive-defence…

Personally, even having been to most of the worlds war-zones, I’d rather not carry a gun.

Cameron is a consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant

Posted on Sun, 7 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

There must be a word for people who turn other people’s tragedies to their own benefit. That is, a word that wouldn’t set publicity-hungry Daily Mail readers into a full-blown “Fury”, if it appeared in an Nintendo version of Scrabble. I stole the phrase above from a TV comedian. (Sorry, I forget who it was. I’ll credit him or her if I remember.) It has the advantage that you can fit quite a few cusswords into the template and still be sure that you’ve made an accurate judgment.

In this case, Cameron is speaking to the Daily Mail readers. (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonants to the power of 1 million or so) The topical prop for his speech is the case of Shannon Matthews. Shannon became Maddie-level famous when she was “abducted.” Her mother made tearful TV pleas for her return, sobbing to camera, while clutching a cuddly toy. Oh, and tried to get the sort of millionaires who stumped up for the Madeleine McCann appeal to give her loads of money. Her use of the people around her and the media was as masterly as you’d expect from a Jeremy Kyle devotee. (Sobs, props, appeals to class and community loyalty, going straight for the emotional jugular every time.)

Only it turned out that the mother had planned the whole scheme. The child was being hidden, drugged, in the mother’s boyfriend’s flat a few streets away from her home. Mother and boyfriend were arrested. The child was reportedly much happier being looked after by the kidnapper than her mother or current father-substitute.

Hell seems to have no fury like a tabloid tricked. Shannon’s mother has now become the archetypal underclass hate figure. And if the right-wing tabloids and their ideological chums in the Conservative Party (and New Labour, sadly) have been made to look like gullible consonant, vowel, consonant, consonants by one poor person, the poor are surely going to have to pay.

Hence Cameron’s bizarre column in the Daily Mail
DAVID CAMERON: There are 5 million people on benefits in Britain. How do we stop them turning into Karen Matthews?

As if that is an ever-present danger…. One in 5 million. That seems like a very very low ratio of “Karen Matthews” to “people on benefits.” Unless she has some strange epidemic condition and isn’t so much going to jail as getting put into quarantine.

As far as I can see that makes 4,999,999 people on benefits who haven’t kidnapped anyone. Who somehow manage to survive almost on air alone and still don’t feel the need to drug their own children to keep them quiet in their kidnap-den.

Why stop at people in benefits? Karen Matthews was female. How do we stop x million women turning into Karen Matthews. Well, they’d have to have children. How do you stop a lower-value-of-x people turning into Karen Matthews? Or Northerners? Or people whose first names start with K?

It turns out that Cameron has strung together a few isolated and horrible incidents involving children, (spread over a couple of years) to say that Britain is b0rked. And the solution is – guess what – not expanding the life opportunities or providing better support for kids on the edge- but

And, yes, we do need tougher punishment, longer sentences and more prison places. But it’s not enough just to treat the symptoms of social breakdown – we need to treat its causes.
The Conservative plan starts with supporting families. ….. ”

By cutting benefits, if you read past the rest of the waffle.

If that’s being supportive, I’d hate to see what constitutes undermining.

The Guardian/Observer website has a report on the Tory benefits plans.

Tories to probe long-term jobless
Out-of-work families face close scrutiny of their children and home life under new opposition proposals

Blimey, it’s almost worth celebrating the massive recession we are apparently entering, if only because lots of Mail-reading people might suddenly find themselves forced to experience what it is really like to survive on benefits. To become “scroungers”, even 🙂

Browsers found to be made from china

Posted on Sun, 7 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

A suspicion has arisen that all standard browsers are made of china*. Bone china. I.e. as fragile as Wedgwood tea service.

The evidence is that it seems impossible to click on any given link without one browser or another falling over.

Each browser self-destructs in its own way. Each has its own list of unfavourites, with its own set of rules about the sticking point at which it will no longer follow a hyperlink.

I must have misunderstood Tim Berners-Lee’s original scheme, but I had the idea that displaying pages and following hyperlinks to open URLs were the whole points of a browser. I don’t care what else they can do. Using Netscape 0.0001 (or something like that) on dial-up would be more effective than using FF (latest update), IE (I admit to still having IE6), Chrome and Opera.

FF swallows memory as if it is running the space shuttle on the side. Ok, I had a few plugins but I’ve disabled them all and it’s actually got markedly touchier rather than more accommodating. It will die instantly if it doesn’t like a page. It makes sure it takes every open tab with it. At its most petulant, it takes the whole operating system. It then offers to reopen the tabs when you try to restart it. Naturally, it tries to open the murderous tab and dies again.

IE6 doesn’t top itself as readily but it can barely display any sites without spilling the main content down to its own new div at the bottom of the page. It has a highly developed aesthetic sense and often decides that some stylesheets are just too ugly, so it just won’t use them. It has serious attachment issues – it will often refuse to release memory, no matter how impeccable the shut down process has been.

Installing Chrome was shooting myself in the foot, in browser format. I stupidly let it nominate itself as default. That means, any link I click on opens Chrome. I don’t like its hairtrigger nature. A millisecond pause as the mouse passes over a hyperlink and its opened the page. I don’t like the open and close tabs buttons. I have yet to close a tab without accidentally opening half a dozen tabs each offering a “Most visited” that shows mini screenshots of sites that I have visited once – by accident (ref: the hair trigger bit, above) and which come back to haunt me forever.

Opera is the Gap browser (reference to Piers Anthony.) I forget its existence until I’ve already got frustrated enough to do impromptu impressions of someone with a terminal case of Tourette’s. (Terminal, geddit… Sorry) Then I have no passwords stored anywhere so I can’t actually get into anything I have any login privileges to. So I might as well not bother.

These browsers are studded with so many updates, extra features and dial-home-devices that I am seemingly operating an unpaid outpost of Mozilla, Google and Microsoft. And running the space shuttle.

Right, browsers, pay attention. I’ve had it up to here with you. Just open links when i click on them. Is that too much to ask?

*(That’s made “of” china, not made “in” China. I wasn’t suggesting that browsers might be forged or contaminated with melamine.)

Not before time

Posted on Sun, 30 November, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

Bin Laden’s driver may have helped bring about the Beginning of the end for Guantanemo, according to the BBC.

Well, this is a closure long overdue, to put it mildly. But the repercussions may take much longer to play themselves out. On the subject of the return of Yemeni citizens to their own countries,

..the US is concerned about Yemen’s ability to monitor and rehabilitate them.
Three of the seven men involved in an attack against the US embassy in Yemen in September were former Guantanamo detainees who had gone through the Yemeni rehabilitation programme. (from the BBC)

Hmm. The US government held these people, without trial, in torture conditions for years. I don’t think you can blame the Yemeni government for the ex-prisoners’ desire to harm the US.

This shows that Gitmo was effectively a terrorism training camp. At the very least, it will have massively boosted the will of former detainees to attack the USA. Beyond this, its very existence has boosted the ideological support for Islamic terrorism, in general

In the week of the horrific shootings in Mumbai, this seems a particularly stupid strategy.

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Why Dont You Blog?

Challenging the Zeitgeist

Category Archives: Rants

Googling your carbon footprint

Melanie Philips hate-speech

Weird women’s subculture

If you can’t beat them

Put them in the stocks

Waahaaa

The abortion debate

Lies make the baby Jesus cry

Don’t make me keep saying this

In the kingdom of the blind

;-) (TM)

Die in a hail of gunfire

Cameron is a consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant

Browsers found to be made from china

Not before time

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