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.

Happy Solstice

Posted on Sun, 21 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

How well do you know Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? I have to admit straight off that I really think of this as the Shrek song.

There’s a BBC test, based on there being (at least) two top twenty Christmas number one contenders singing the same song.

Leonard Cohen’s ironic and mournful Leonard Coheniness seems to have been completely obliterated in the current overblown version by the winner of a some TV Pop-Idol-Celebrity-X-factor or whatever contest. (I think that I’ve given you a clue to the last question there.) It’s now rapidly becoming an item of Christian pomp-rock. Maybe it’ll soon fit into the Exterminator’s mother’s collection of Christmas songs written by Jews.

I’ll let you go to try the test now. “Do you know your Hallelujahs?”

Nativity Evidence

Posted on Sat, 20 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

A London church commissioned a market research survey which found that most people don’t believe in the nativity story. 70% of those questioned didn’t believe it, including a quarter of the Christians who replied. A fifth of Christians also didn’t believe that Jesus was both God and man.

Without being wholly convinced of the validity of this research, I am cheered by the thought that most English people – atheists and Christians alike – seem to be still sanely sceptical.

St Helen’s Church in Bishopsgate, London, which commissioned the survey, has produced a film of “sound evidence” supporting the Bible’s account.

(I couldn’t find anything about the survey on the BMRB site or the church’s site but I found a bit of video about Christmas there. I thought it was a parody site.)

The “evidence” cited in the BBC report seems to be that:

“Jesus was born while Augustus was emperor of Rome just before Herod died… we’re talking about events that are anchored in real history not in ancient Greek myths.” (Simon Gathercole, Cambridge University)

I like this line of argument. If I say that green cows are somersaulting down the street, does the story gain any reflected credibility if I also mention that Barrack Obama recently became President-elect? So saying that events that supposedly took place around the year 0 AD took place at the same time as other events around the year 0 AD can’t possibly provide support for whether the doubtful ones are true.

Does the bible even mention Augustus? I don’t think so, but I have no intention of actually reading it to find out. The book of Matthew apparently mentions Herod as being the person who ordered the massacre of the innocents. Wikipedia suggests that

Most modern biographers of Herod do not regard the massacre as an actual historical event. Many scholars portray this and other nativity stories as creative hagiography rather than history.

Indeed, even a hundred years ago, the Catholic church must have found the massacre of thousands of babies story a bit hard to defend to:

The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1910 suggested that these numbers were probably inflated, and that for a town of that size probably only between six and twenty children would be killed, with a dozen or so more in the surrounding areas.

In fact, with reference to the gospel of Matthew, the word “identity theft” springs to mind.

The Early Christian tradition attributes the Gospel to Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples. Beginning in the 18th century scholars have increasingly questioned that traditional view, and today most scholars agree Matthew did not write the Gospel which bears his name. Most contemporary scholars describe the author as an anonymous Christian writing towards the end of the first century. (From the Wikipedia article on the gospel of Matthew)

If the BMRB survey is to be believed, almost 3/4 of British people accept this academic evidence and doubt the supposedly “sound evidence” offered by St Helen’s Church, Bishopgsate. How encouraging is that?

Oh, the shame

Posted on Thu, 18 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

It seems that I have been channelling the Archbishop of Canterbury…..

(Or vice versa.) (If you can channel living people.) (I’m sorry, I don’t actually know the channelling rules.)

Williams said the credit crunch had been a “reality check” in a climate of unsustainable greed, and it should be used to provoke a fundamental rethink of the pursuit of wealth. It demonstrated that the country had been “going in the wrong direction” by relying on financial speculation rather than “making things”, he said.
It was “a reminder that what I think some people have called fairy gold is just that – that sooner or later you have to ask: ‘What are we making or what are we assembling or accumulating wealth for?’.” (from the Guardian)

Unsustainable greed, relying on financial speculation instead of making things, not believing in fairy gold. I spout this stuff every day.

When you find yourself agreeing completely with the Archbishop, I suppose it must be Christmas.

Muppet disestablishmentarianism

Posted on Thu, 18 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

At last an opportunity to work the word antidisestablishmentarianism into everyday conversation. Well, OK, then disestablishmentarianism, but there must be Anglicans who’ll argue against Rowan Williams on this, so the magic longest-word-in-the-English-language should get a few airings over Christmas.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has revealed himself to be pretty much in favour of disestablishing the CofE, according to the Times and the Guardian.

It seems that the Archbishop has been swinging like a pendulum do, being alternately for and against the disestablishment of the church. Now he’s edging to the side of disestablishment. From the CofE’s perspective, establishment seems to come down to whether they have the monarch as their head and whether they have to turn up at state events. I can’t see that they would lose much from a formal separation of church and state. Nor, it seems does the right-wing of the CofE.

Reform, a network of mainstream Anglican evangelicals, at odds with Williams over the divisive issues of gay clergy and women bishops, agreed that disestablishment could be a positive step.
Yesterday its spokesman, Paul Dawson, said: “There are many advantages of being an established church and to lose these would be no small thing. To become disestablished would mean, as Rowan Williams seems to be suggesting, a rethink and sharpening of the prophetic voice of the church to the nation and this would be something welcomed by many.” (from the Guardian)

If these people favour disestablishment, it seems to be because they believe they could take the CofE more easily down their militant “traditionalist” path. In which case, continued establishment looks surprisingly appealing.

Blimey, there may be a reason for liberally-minded non-believers to favour Antidisestablishmentarianism after all.

The archbishop also praises Richard Dawkins’ “panache” and appears to compare himself to Josiah Bartlett, the fictional president played by Martin Sheen in the West Wing.

Oh, and he seems to quite like the Muppets, according to the Guardian.

.. he also discloses that his favourite films are The Muppet Christmas Carol and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. (from the Guardian)

Oddly unique combination of favourite film choices there. Muppet Christmas Carol? We’ve all heard of it but it would be difficult to squeeze it in to your Top 1000 best films, even if you’d only ever seen 100. The Tarkovsky one? IMDb it and find it’s a 1966 Kruschev-era film about an icon painter. IMDB reviews say it’s brilliantm but even its ardent fans say that it’s not exactly an easy movie to watch. For example:

It is a difficult movie to follow. One might liken it to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake as a work of genius so monumental and complex, and so disdainful of traditional narrative form, that it requires extensive thought and study to understand it. And even after studying it, watching it repeatedly, and reading Tarkovsky’s own comments about it, one still finds it opaque in many ways. (from IMDB)

Don’t all rush out and get the DVD, then.

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.

Live by the sword…

Posted on Thu, 11 December, 2008 by ATGW

For years now, politicians of all flavours have been busy manipulating public opinion and cherry picking how they present information – all with the aim of convincing the largely apathetic voting public to agree with their crackpot ideas. As you can imagine, however, this has its own share of problems.

As an example, today on the BBC Radio 1 news show (*), there was a terrible indictment of just how mixed up people are. Basically, the Prime Minster Gordon Brown is trying to gain some media-credits with his claims that he is “tackling knife crime.” Obviously the PM and current government are unpopular at the moment so here we see yet another example of how politicians no longer have a political view, but will do what ever they think they can to get support from the barely coherent, rabid, tabloid media.

The knife crime panic is a great example of this. All year, we have been subjected to scare stories in the media about how knife crime is on the increase; if you believe papers such as the Daily Mail there are more stabbings than there are people. I am not for one second trying to imply that knife crime isn’t devastating for the victims and their families – but we need some form of perspective. While there were pockets of increased incidents, the chances of Joe Blogs UK becoming a victim was pretty much the same as it always has been.

However, our media-hungry politicians (on all sides) read the building tabloid-frenzy and jumped in early. For months we had debates about how bad knife crime was, and what were the government going to do about it. This was stoked with the public being drip fed “news” each time a cute, innocent kid got stabbed. Each one was delivered in that wonderful way the tabloids have of making their readers think that the one incident they report is just the tip of the iceberg – in reality, when things are so commonplace, the media loses interest in them… Seeing a great chance, the government (and opposition) built upon the general irrationality of people – isolated incidents were blown out of proportion, personal anecdote was given much greater emphasis etc. So far, so typical. This is all politicians have done for over a decade.

Today, the PM tried to deliver his latest great accomplishment.

The PM announced that the new “crackdowns” implemented by Police in high-risk areas had managed to bring down knife crime. Wonderful. I am sure he expected nothing but fanfare… Sadly, the general public are too depressed and gloom-laden to take good news like this. Also, for years we have been indoctrinated into the idea that out microcosm of life is more representative of society than anything else – which means no matter what the PM claims, people think things are getting worse. From the BBC Pages:

The Prime Minister has spoken to Newsbeat after the government said the latest police crackdown was working.

The government says stabbings are down and fewer teenagers are carrying blades in the 10 parts of England and Wales where there’s been a big effort to tackle the problem.

The figures also show under-18s going to hospital for stabs and cuts are down by a quarter and more serious attacks have dropped by a fifth.

Great news. It doesn’t really say much about the government policies though. Nothing like enough time has passed to know if this is a long term change or a simple “blip” in the numbers. Equally, there is no way of knowing if the “massive” (**) increase was a statistical blip. The information provided doesn’t tell us if the crime has simply moved elsewhere, or if this is part of a national downturn in knife crime. It really is a non-news item. There isn’t enough information for the viewer to do anything but rely on how the sparse numbers are spun to the public.

Shocking, but this is how the government have wanted us to interact with news for many a year now. If the public were given all the information that drove national policy, half the crazy things we suffer now would never have survived.

Equally comical, is how Gordon Brown reacted to the predictable nonsense questions. According to the BBC, the text messages from their listeners saying things like “I was stabbed 2 years ago, how has knife crime gone down” were a valid counterpoint to the governments figures. A normal, sane, educated person would have laughed and said “shut up crazy fool.” But this is gold to politicians – they want people to think like this so that future crazy laws can be passed. This lead to a very bizarre exchange:

Newsbeat: The statistics on knife crime say one thing. We’re hearing other things from our listeners.
Gordon Brown: That’s why we want to get knives off the street. I’m not complacent at all. A lot of young people are stopping carrying knives but we’ve got a long way to go. And that’s why today you’ve got all these people from all different walks of life; sports people, from the world of entertainment, from radio, from television, all saying, working with the community groups, no to knives. (blah… blah… blah…)

A touch strange. The PM is saying nothing as an actual response. It is certified 100% content free. Isn’t that nice. That was just mildly odd but it was followed by this:

Newsbeat: The stats that you’ve published today seem to show that knife crime is down. A nurse at Bristol Royal Infirmary says stab wound admissions are going up.
Gordon Brown: What I want to know is how we can actually get knife crime down and how we can make sure it stays down. Making sure it stays down is more policing that’s visible on the streets, a presumption to prosecute if you’re seen to be carrying a knife, tougher police and prison sentences when that happens, shops banned from selling knives to young people and schools and community groups doing an educational process whereby young people are discouraged from carrying knives.

What? Listen to it on the radio. Newsbeat phrase their statement as a question. You can hear the question in the reporters voice. She is expecting an answer. Granted she seems unable to actually ask questions, and just makes statements with a rising emphasis at the end to imply a question, but if you speak English you can hear the questioning tone. However, our glorious PM ignores it. It is really like he has been asked a different question and Newsbeat dubbed their own over the top of it. Nothing he says bares any relation to the question.

Bizarre.

Are we really in such a disconnected world that any of this makes sense? Do politicians think this is acceptable? Do reporters? (He wasn’t challenged on it).

Equally sad, but much more common, is the idea that the experiences of a nurse at the Bristol Royal has such an insight into national trends that their comments outweigh national reports. Even if they are the person who records every admission (and the cause) they have no idea what is going on in Liverpool, Barnsley, Truro, Southampton (etc.). The national statistics are based on reporting from various sources and show the national trend. Knife crime can go down 90% nationally but still show an increase in a region. That an otherwise well educated nurse doesn’t understand this element of statistics gives me concern over how disease surveillance is carried out.

The BBC mentions the “crime hotspots” that were targeted, and show a reduction:

The 10 knife crime hotspots are London, Essex, Lancashire, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire, South Wales and Thames Valley.

Unless the Bristol Royal has moved across the River Severn into Wales, it is not in that list. It could show a trillion percent increase and the governments figures for the crime hotspots would still be down. This nurse’s experiences may be 100%, but they are irrelevant. The only way this person could have had real impact was if the debate was about knife-crime admissions to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. But it wasn’t.

Still, in this day and age of citizen journalism, no one was going to say this. The nurse’s (and others) comments were treated as valid counterpoints to the report and dutifully skipped around by the PM. Are the BBC’s news reporters really so empty that this seemed reasonable?

Sadly the answer seems to be “yes.” Well done Great Britain, I am so proud.

—

(*) Please note, this is a link to the current newsbeat page – the actual content I am talking about here may have gone by the time you read this. If you can, though, this is worth listening to. Its almost like they re-recorded the PM and asked him different questions…

(**) For an arbitrary value of massive.

Lard Buddha vs Chocolate Jesus

Posted on Wed, 10 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

Spot the difference between a relatively-godless religion and a god-heavy one.

Gurkha chefs won a silver medal in some military cooking competition with a lard Buddha. Well, not really much of a news item, but 100 hours of solid and “boring” lard-sculpting must count for something. At least some Gurkha Buddhists can obviously mix comedy, creativity and philosophy in a way that could shame the monotheists.

Compare and contrast this appealing effort with the hysteria over chocolate Jesus in 2007, which sparked a response the BBC, perhaps hyperbolically, described as an “outcry.” (A bit strange, given how much more appealing chocolate is than lard, when measured only by the criterion of edibility.)

A New York art gallery has decided to cancel an exhibit of a chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ after protests by a US Catholic group…..
We’re delighted with the outcome,” said Kiera McCaffrey, spokeswoman for the League.
Ms McCaffrey had called the exhibit “an assault on Christians”.

The chocolate fuss was as nothing compared to the Piss Christ issue. Although to be honest, it seems as if the artist was blatantly taking the piss. $15,000 of funding for a plastic crucifix and a cup of urine. (Then again, Damien Hirst can get sums exponentially larger for pieces of “art” that are physically created by his workforce and his work doesn’t even make you laugh. So, good luck to Serrano.)

That one actually made it to the Congressional record. I started counting the rant words (“outrage”, “shock”, “indignity”, and so on) but got distracted by the idea that it was obviously some game of outrage bingo. With congressmen trying to outdo each other in their plundering of an imaginary Rhetorical Rage Dictionary.

Do I even need to mention the Mohammed cartoons furore? And so on,

So congratulations, Gurkha chefs, for your charming lardtastic efforts.

A theme (park) develops

Posted on Mon, 8 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

As the curator of an office desk biscuit wrapping museum, how pleased was I by Charlie Brooker’s latest Guardian piece and the comments it brought in? (Rhetorical question. The answer is “inordinately.”)

Charlie Brooker was saying that the Lapland Museum that opened and closed recently was his kind of visitor attraction, unlike the slick delights of Disneyland or Alton Towers.

“Santa’s gone home. Santa’s fucking dead.” As theme park slogans go, it’s a winner.

That wasn’t the official slogan. The staff were reducing to yelling it at reporters. This attraction seems to have been a muddy field with a billboard, a couple of Christmas lights and a four hour queue to spend another £10 (on top of the £25 admission) to get your picture taken with Santa.

Charlie Brooker runs with the idea of crap attractions, like the Norfolk’s Collector’s World:

It consisted of room upon room of bizarre, apparently unrelated artefacts. There was a “Pink Room” dedicated to Barbara Cartland, a telephone museum, a collection of antique cars, some sort of hideous-sounding “gynaecological chair”, and best of all, a hall filled solely with memorabilia relating to the actor Liza Goddard, which apparently included pullovers and a mug she’d once drunk out of. Exhilarating and frightening in equal measure, I’d imagine, especially if you’re Liza Goddard yourself.

The commenters could put this half-hearted attempt to create a really rubbish day-out in the shade though.
Step forward:

Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick: “home of the first pencil!”
Noel Edmonds theme park, called Crinkly Bottom
Barometer world
Prairie Dog Town, Kansas
Cheeseworld in Southern Australia
Diggerland, “basically a glorified pit with mini JCBs you can play on, and big JCBs you can look at.”
Musée du Jambon in La Roche en Ardenne. (A ham museum)
‘The Mosquito Museum in Sweden
The Bakelite Museum in Somerset
The Penis Museum in Iceland
The Drinking Water Museum
The Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Unsurprisingly, the Creation Museum gets quite a few mentions. For being rubbish, quite apart from its ludicrous content. Another more appealing comedy Christian theme park was visited by Babykangaroo

This is my favourite of all hilariously bad theme parks: Tierra Santa in Buenos Aires
http://www.tierrasanta-bsas.com.ar/galeria.html
A 10-metre high Jesus is resurrected every half hour and you get to view a waxwork show of the story of “Creation” involving mechanical animals. The rest of the time you hang around “Jerusalem” waiting for Jesus to do that thing again, whilst planes fly scarily low over head as it’s right next to the airport.
Bloody brilliant. I highly recommend a visit.

Obviously, if the word kitsch didn’t exist, something like it would have to be invented just to describe this single attraction.

I don’t know why, but the museum visited by kbfrome appeals to me the most:

….I defy anyone to better The Pilchard Experience, the museum about pilchards in Cornwall somewhere. Three of the shittest hours of my life. And my parents were entranced by every aspect of it

(Don’t book your visit, though. Distressingly, the Pilchard Experience is no more. It’s closed. I googled it. Although Cornwall seems to have plenty of other pilchard-themed attractions)

jemimapiddledick said:

I always fancied a visit to McLeod Cuckoo Land. A theme park based on the 70´s horse riding cowboy law enforcer. Alas, it was just a VIZ creation.
Shame.

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 🙂

Is this Britain?

Posted on Sun, 7 December, 2008 by ATGW

In the past (“Emailing a myth“, for example) I have commented on how people send out emails which are basic rants by right wing Americans, but they change a few references and try to pass it off as meaning the same over in this green and pleasant land. It seems, however, that there is still a hard core of people who do not realise that the UK and the USA are different countries, and have different histories.

In the online edition of the Mail today (yes, I know, the only reason that you would buy the paper version is if you ran out of toilet paper), there is a comical ranting “news” item about a woman who is upset that the Nintendo version of Scrabble had some rude words in. From what I can see the words she objected to were tits, fuckers and shit. Oh, woe is me. The evil of language. Now, before I go on, I have no real issue with her for being upset. As the parent of a child under the age of majority, she really does get to decide what words her 8 year old is exposed to at home. I may think different words would be better, but I have no say in their house. It is comically likely that her 8 year old son is already fully conversant with all three words from the school playground but that is another conversation.

The only issue I have with this woman getting newspaper space to complain about this is the basic lack of parenting she shows. If she wants her son to learn new words, while still controlling what those words are, she needs to spend time with him. Real time. Talking and playing time. Not buying him a Nintendo and fucking him off to his room time. (mini rant over)

Predictably, the real comic value comes from the comments. I am sure the only reason rags like the mail have comments is so that idiots can stand up and think they are important. Equally predictably, it is the religious right that wade in. Look at this line in baffling idiocy:

No OUP, Britain is not a modern, multicultural and multi-faith country, it is an historic, British and Christian country and publishers like you do not have the right or the place to delete words from our language and replace them with one’s of your choosing!
Nigel, Somerset, 7/12/2008 12:14

Mindbogglingly, this has been rated “up” at over 30 times. Sadly for Nigel, pretty much everything he has said is wrong. It is hard for him to be more wrong. (I suspect this is the mail fucking up its comments and this was in response to a different article)

Britain is a modern, multi-cultural and multi-faith country. No matter how much he may want to cry otherwise. We have mosques. We have Hindu temples and Jewish synagogues. We pretty much cater for every current world religion to at least some degree. You can put your head in the sand and claim otherwise, but reality will prove you wrong every time.

Being “Historic” is not the polar opposite of modern. You can be a modern country with a long and proud history. In fact, Britain pretty much meets that, as do most countries with a “long and proud history.”

Saying Britain is British is comical, so I will ignore that, but saying Britain is a Christian country is interesting. Yes, we do have a state religion but you are not forced to subscribe to it. We are not a “Christian” country in any meaningful sense.

Lastly, this is the Junior Oxford English Dictionary. It is for young people. It has a limited set of words it can hold, so logic screams out that more popular words should be included. I dont agree with the word choices but I am more than capable of teaching my children the missing words. For the record these are the ones removed: (categories made by the Mail not me)

NATURE
Bluebell, budgerigar, cygnet, dandelion, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, kingfisher, magpie, marzipan, minnow, newt, piglet, primrose, starling, willow, wren.
CHRISTIANITY
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe, abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, monk, nun, pew, saint, sin
HISTORY
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade

Now I am intrigued why cracker is “Christian” rather than a food, but I suppose PZ Myers has a lot to answer for… At the end of the day, there will always be some words excluded. Get over it. There are more nature ones missing, and I very much doubt evolutionary biology terms get much space.

The next (and last) comic comment I want to poke is:

It is disgrace. This country is based on Christian principles and through these principles this country became prosperous. Why this country started hating itself? Who these modern politicians want to please by fighting Christianity? What is the ultimate aim of multiculturalism? We’ve had enough of this “modern” liberal nonsense.
Alex S, London UK, 7/12/2008 16:37

What blatant nonsense. What christian principles? Does Alex mean the invasion, enslavement and economic warfare that characterised a significan period of our history as Great Britain. Which Christian principles had the Irish subjugated, the Scots slaughtered and Catholics in hiding? What Chrisian principles allowed us to enslave half of Africa? Crucially, this is a country that has been in existence since long before Christ, so how can we be based on his teachings? Does Alex S think we have a pledge of allegiance and watch the superbowl?

I am not sure where Alex has aimed his comment, I can only assume it is also for the dictionary one. Removing some words with Christian connotations from the dictionary is not an attack on Christianity.

Why are Christians so quick to cry oppression and suppression?

The world smiles with you

Posted on Fri, 5 December, 2008 by Polly Unsaturate

The British Medical Journal reported today that happiness was infectious.
(James H Fowler, Nicholas A Christakis, 2008, Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network:longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study, BMJ 2008;337:a2338 doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338) (How’s that for a serious reference?)

Well, Fowler and Christakis didn’t exactly say that happiness is infectious. That was what the free bus newspaper said in the pop-science report. But it doesn’t seem too far off the mark.

From the abstract:

Objectives To evaluate whether happiness can spread from person to person and whether niches of happiness form within social networks …
Results Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.

I’ll sidestep a long debate over their methods and conclusions* and just temporarily assume the conclusions are correct. Some of itheir data supports a standard “common sense” conclusion. If you are generally “happy”, you make people around you feel happier. Unhappy people make other people feel sad. Most people would agree on the basis of their own anecdotal evidence.

You could account for a lot of the effect through the processes of human interaction. We all spend most of our time communicating in one way or another. It would be strange if emotions expressed in our communications didn’t influence other people.

All the same, it’s a fascinating suggestion that emotions are being transmitted as if they were infections. “Memes”, maybe, although I don’t like using the term, except as a metaphor, and it’s far too easy for metaphors to get taken as literal truths. (Universe created in seven days, for instance.)

The BMJ article doesn’t suggest an explanatory transmission mechanism. This is disappointing, given that they have managed to come up with a measurable concept of “happiness”. Sort of sidestepping centuries of philosophical debate, really. Not invalidating it – a few indices can’t account for human consciousness – but approximating emotions in a quantifiable way, so the researchers could do statistical tests and chart their results.

Off the top of my head, I can guess at a few possible mechanisms – admittedly, all are crackpot theories, but they could be tested – such as people tending to synchronise their brainwaves with those of people they are close to; the action of pheremones; subconscious mirroring of others’ physical state, and so on.

Footnotes, even, as well as references.
* E.g Sampling factors that might have influenced the results included genetics (they focused on family groups), environment (living in a spatially limited area and, so, probably in the same social strata) and the tendency of people to associate with people that they identify with (they looked at friends.)

Support DRM Free Music

Posted on Thu, 4 December, 2008 by ATGW

In a departure from my normal stance on the subject, I think it is time people put a little money where their beliefs were and supported Amazon in its foray to DRM-free music downloads.

Amazon is selling MP3 music, free of any digital rights management crap, for as little as 59p a track. Now, for those of you who are used to music being free per track this might seem expensive, but it is cheaper than most of the services like iTunes – and more importantly this sells you the music in the right way… you are allowed to play it on your iPod, your Laptop, your old mp3 player etc. One of the things that used to constantly infuriate me (and ensure I would never actually pay for music there) on iTunes was the problem with how portable the music was.

I have an iPod, I have a phone that plays MP3s, I have a laptop, I have a car MP3 player, a windows PC, a linux PC and an MP3-enabled music station. If I buy a peice of music I am the person who chooses which device can play it, not Apple. When I had various CD or tape players, it was down to me as to which device was going to play the music. I didnt have to contact EMI for a new licence every time I bought a new cassette player so why should I start now?

None of this is meant to suggest the only reason people pirate MP3 tracks is to have more portability, but it is an element. It is important that companies like Amazon show iTunes et al., that giving the users choice can be a profitable business model. Is the brand name of iTunes really worth an extra 20p a track when you can only play the track on your iPod?

If you like the idea of DRM free music and if you think that 59p is close to a reasonable sum of money to pay for music you like, then please go to Amazon and download a track or two. It doesn’t have to be many! Unless people make the effort to purchase DRM-free music over DRM’d music, the industry will never change.

By the way – I am sure Amazon is not the only source of DRM free music at a reasonable price. Please feel free to advertise any other sources here. Play.com springs to mind, where are the others? Find one you like, and buy some music. Then tell your friends to buy some.

Footnote: I gain nothing by you buying things from Amazon. There is no affiliate-ID in the link. This is actually something I think is a good idea to support.

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Why Dont You Blog?

Challenging the Zeitgeist

Category Archives: Society

Don’t make me keep saying this

Happy Solstice

Nativity Evidence

Oh, the shame

Muppet disestablishmentarianism

In the kingdom of the blind

;-) (TM)

Die in a hail of gunfire

Live by the sword…

Lard Buddha vs Chocolate Jesus

A theme (park) develops

Cameron is a consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant

Is this Britain?

The world smiles with you

Support DRM Free Music

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