chrisworth.com

Next on the agenda: proposal to re-arrange deckchairs on the Titanic

2010-02-13T09:19:00.002Z

The religionistas are at it again, fervently protesting that their private feelings are the equal of rational inquiry.

Is this - as I hope - the last thrashings of religion, now it's served its purpose (shared beliefs allow civilisations to emerge) where those with a vested interest in maintaining the power structures try to make peace with the other side?

Well, probably not, but it'd be nice to think so.

Take the guy from Manchester - who said: "Science can only explain how something was created; religion can explain why" - well, no it can't. But it can make you feel better about not knowing. But we've won half the battle - this religious guy has admitted science can explain how the world was created, and therefore he admits the whole six-days-plus-a-rest brigade got it wrong.

("Why" is a straw-man question. There isn't any purpose or meaning to existence, save that which we impose upon it. For many people, a belief in supernatural beings is that imposition.)

And this Bishop of Southwark character, Tom Butler, said "the average person's view is that science has disproved religion" - but spoke of the scientific theory of dark matter, which involves "a lot of dark matter which we can't even see, being propelled by forces we don't understand"

(That's the point, Mr Butler. Science isn't a frozen edifice; it's a method of inquiry. It doesn't pretend to have all the answers. Your crew does, and is therefore wrong by definition.)

Butler, then, is a classic god-of-the-gaps man - anything we don't yet know everything about, he points at and yelps, "LOOK! There's god! Over there! Just look!" And a few years later, when science has come to a reasonable consensus about its natural origins, he'll find somewhere else to point.

And as for the mooted "battle between atheists and believers" where those nasty atheists are "misleading the public... claim[ing] science and religion are incompatible" - where are all those militant atheists, then? Where are the demonstrations in Oxford St by white-coated scientists and placard-waving mathematicians? Where, exactly, are all these damnable unbelievers sneakily inserting their rationalist agendas into the national debate?

Or could it be that religionistas just don't like anyone disagreeing with them?

It's a basic tenet of organisational behaviour, after all. People believe in things; a power structure takes root to take advantage of those people; the group defends its turf and its own existence, from the Romans to the Crusades to the Inquisition to Islamic terrorism.

(While it seems incredible today, for most of history the Muslims were the good guys - for around a thousand years Islam was a tolerant, diverse system that celebrated science, mathematics, and discovery. How far they have fallen, in less than a century... and, uncomfortably, it's all Europe's fault. After being attacked by uncivilised savages of medieaval Europe, Islam started Batmobiling, and hasn't come out of its shell since.)

I know I shouldn't make fun of people's deeply-held beliefs, especially when I'm the most tolerant person in town; people are free to believe whatever private feelings make them most comfortable. But that tolerance also means I have right to take the mickey out of such beliefs.

What Chris Watches On Television

2010-01-24T10:38:00.002Z

SkyTV comes to my sofa!

My life's been mostly TV-less. Lots of films, preferably in actual cinemas, but very little TV. Due to a) living square-on to a sharp edge of the notoriously reception-unfriendly One Canada Square (I can see the giant silver obelisk from my balcony) and b) there being nothing good on. (Whenever I visit my parents all that seems to be showing is ballroom dance competitions hosted by a guy I thought'd died in the 80s.)

The visual language of television is very different to that of movies - so little narrative, so many ads - and I've just never had much interest in it. Until now, checking out broadband deals and discovering I can sock away TV, phone and Internet in a single £50 monthly lump. So tonight, all this will change. Because I've just gone for an HD package, and dozens of pin-sharp 1080-line channels are mine for the taking.

In the fridge, there are a large number of bottles of Guinness, the sweet Nigerian stuff, none of that 4% shit here. In the oven is a pizza. Around the kitchen are strategic reserves from the great manufacturing facilities of faraway Frito-Lay. I am ready to enter the strange twilight existence of... the Saturday night television viewer.

In the interests of research, I'm going to spend a solid eight hours channel-surfing. Trying to work myself into the same state of uncritical catatonia experienced nightly by 90% of UK citizens.

Trying to be like them.

Trying to experience the slack-jawed drooling of the British underclass.

Tonight, I shall become one of the lumpen proletariat. And perhaps, in doing so, I shall understand them.

Here we go.

(Bear in mind this blog may sound like I've just been reanimated after a century in the freezer and am awestruck at the way everyone gets around without horses.)

ACT ONE: The Beginning

7pm. National Geographic and Discovery Channel. That's my kind of television. A historical piece about Port Royal, a documentary on Henry Morgan, and another on the way 20 Americans heroically faced down four Somalis off the African coast. (I sense a theme.) They're well-narrated, with high production values, and enjoyable. I am amused by the way the subjects and themes keep being re-introduced by the presenter: it's to provide catch-ups for people who've just switched channels or returning after a break. (In the UK they're shown without commercials.)

I grant you one thing: HDTV is amazing. Rich colours, great detail, and - now 37 channels broadcast in it - the content to match; I can't help but think the waving fields of corn, exquisite cityscapes, and wide-angle wildlife were made for High Definition. (And Sky only broadcasts in 1080i, not 1080p.)

And the Live Pause feature is awesome. Computer and phone marketers could learn a lot from Sky: the way they understand that the most important element of user experience is simply response time. Hit Pause during a broadcast, and there's no wait for the hard disk to whirr up or the software to answer: it's just instant. Five minutes later, I'm watching TV from five minutes in the past. And doing so enables me to skip commercial breaks by fast forwarding into the future, i.e. getting back to the present. I am impressed by the feature, and saddened by my mangling of tenses.

The evening has started well. But there's a long way to go.

ACT TWO: The exhibition(ism)

At 9pm, I start on the Big Numbers: the niche channels and special-interest shows far down the listings. Many are adult. Basically, the format is a girl squirming and jiggling on a soft surface, with constant invitations to phone or text for money. They all have names like "The Boudoir", "The Pad", and "Babestation". Many are trend-blends of several media: the girls take calls on air and read out texts from viewers in real time.

And on every channel, the girls' training includes looking directly at the camera - directly at me. Coaxing, cajoling, pleading me to dial premium-rate numbers and send £2 texts.

This is truly unnerving. It's as if she knows I'm watching her, knows my address and birthdate and why I'm at home on a Saturday night. And given that it's a Sky box - capable of phoning home and keeping detailed logs of everything I've watched and bought - she possibly does.

It's a different paradigm to Internet porn. For a start, it's titillation not sledgehammer: the girls roll around, cast you glances, play with straps and hold phones as if they're warming a dildo. And secondly, it seems to go on forever. 30 minutes and up of the same bed. For the girls, it must be serious work; looking both interesting and interested for up to an hour, when all they're seeing is a cameraman who's seen better days.

Thirdly, the costs for anyone addicted to this stuff seem extraordinary. It's free to air, but the small print (there really is small print at the bottom of the screen) notes that texts cost £2, pictures £3, and calls £1.50 a minute. And that'd hardly be the end of it; once they've got your mobile number all sorts of adult content, probably charging you without your permission by some legalistic interpretation of Opt-In, would come gushing into your SMS Inbox. I can imagine even occasional viewers spending £200 a month on this stuff. This isn't a cathode ray tube, it's a crack pipe.

(I know TVs don't have cathode ray tubes anymore, but the simile with 'pipe' was too good to miss.)

11.20pm. I'm still watching. All the shows are the same, but bizarrely I'm developing my favourites. Babestation Xtra - a chatshow about what's on the main "Babestation" channel - has occupied most of my time so far. If you listen they're talking complete crap; I should be like the non-toker in the room of hysterically laughing potheads (which has happened many times and annoys me to the point of violence) but I'm not.

The percentage content of sheer inwardness should even be celebrated; this is media about media, creating content out of nothing, form from void. This is not merely creative; it is deific. (See, I'm doing it too: making up my own words.) These girls are creatives, as much as Rodin or Picasso. They have seen the world and found it wanting, so they have created Another. And for just £3 you can get a JPEG of it on your phone.

My journey is almost complete. I am, indeed, becoming One Of Them. (Not one of the girls on screen; I mean one of their audience.) Comfortably numb. Utopian, in the sense of being happy where I am for I know nothing better. The Socialism Stalin and Marx dreamed of.

SLAP! I change position on the sofa... then go back to the same position. After all, it's kind of me-shaped now.

I think I'll stay here.

I am content.

While I know intellectually she's not going to do anything beyond snap the odd stocking top and - oh wait, there are boobies too - I can imagine what a thrill it must be for the inveterate couch potato. To see her onscreen, dial a number, and watch her answer and talk back. It's hardly a new TV technique, but ... they must get to know these girls individually, develop their favourites.

If I felt lonely now, I'd feel less lonely now. These girls are becoming my friends. Changing channels actually makes me feel guilty.

Midnight. They get nakeder. "Honey"'s underwear is G-stringlike, barely-there, and the 180s - where she flips from front and back and when the imaginative may, with ambition and alcohol, just about snatch a glance of the holiest of holies - almost make me want to reach for my phone. Well done girl. You've proved that few men can withstand your charms if you persist.

In a world of 1000-minute deals and broadband where content far stronger is available for free in endless terabytes, she's somehow built a business that monetises what's become a commodity by sheer force of her personality. Writhing on a bed somewhere in Romford.

This is surreal. I have to get out. Goodbye, Northern Lasses. Goodbye, Essex Girls. Goodbye, Babestation.

Wait - it's repeating. I've seen this bit before. Click.

Wait. Just a few minutes more.

Act 3: Remains of the Day

1am. I've been here so long, the video's looping. I definitely saw here do that turnover before. It's so obvious I can almost hear the studio hand yelling OK, On My Mark, Get Ready... Turn! Stomach to Back... NOW!

OK, well I'm up to 15 units and the girls are looking better despite being uglier. They're very average-looking girls, in the main: perhaps that's to be celebrated. With reflective lipgloss and the right lighting, you too can have your few moments of fame, gyrating nightly to a few unhappy thirtysomethings with a remote in their other hand. "Reede" for example wouldn't attract a second glance in the street, but onscreen she's just filthy and fully in control. The boobies are out rightaway. Not good. Not good.

But it creates a genuine sense of up close and personal. After all, the audience for these shows is probably in the low thousands, a few guys without girlfriends with nothing else to do on a Saturday. (I stare into the abyss; it stares back at me.) The girls create a very good impression of actually taking calls from viewers, although if I dialled I'd doubtless get through to some less toned individual the other side of the camera.

Goodbye Michelle. Goodbye Morgan. Goodbye Geri. I switch back to the listings, with a pang.

2am. The rest of the dial is a strange mix of teleshopping and advertising. Long informercials the likes of which I haven't seen in over a decade; cheap enamelled jewellery for the proles to spend the dole on; it's a catalogue of teased hair and peroxide and the channels are blending into each other.

And blending into me.

My eyes are heavy. The heating is too warm and the sofa a womb. The remote is like a childhood teddy. The images on the screen no longer mean anything, but they comfort me.

I am become television. I have achieved my goal. Nothing else matters. My world ceases to exist beyond the sofa, and its only channel of communication is the glowing rectangle in the corner.

Buzzzz.....

"Thank you for watching Late Night with Chris. It's 2.15am and I'm signing off... NOW!"

Click.

And Dunkirk spirit died a little more

2010-01-10T10:00:00.005Z

People warned off from clearing the snow outside their homes. A murdered man is criticised for chasing thieves who then stabbed him. And a musician gets a warning for scaring off intruders.

It's obvious what's happening here: Britain's nannying Police State gets really, really worried when it hears about people fending for themselves. All these puffed-up functionaries in our bloated public sector - all desperate to demonstrate their little bit of power is really, really important and you should really take notice of them - are driving Wussy Britain ever-deeper into the morass of mediocrity and blame culture that's characterised New Labour's time in power.

It's the basic subtext of any Labour government: We Are The Only Ones Who Can Help. We, the State, will protect you; we will define your rights; we will look after you. You have no responsibilities except to us. In return, we only ask that you give up every last detail of your private life, that you abrogate any right to decide your own destiny to us. For you, people of Britain, understand that your neighbour is not your friend, every hedge contains a pervert and every action carries legal consequences. There is Us. Only. Us.

Where's the punishment? Where's the deterrent? Where's the acknowledgement that the bagsnatchers and burglars might, just, have second thoughts about doing it again? That's what these stories are about. Dunkirk spirit, and how the UK State discourages it.

And to the health & safety idiots, misguided cops, and owlish government 'advisors': grow a pair.

Britain today: a nation of wusses

2010-01-06T10:48:00.003Z

Whatever happened to Dunkirk spirit?

Ok, there's snow across a large part of the UK. In some places it's over a foot deep.

But most people are over a foot tall. And it seems millions aren't capable even of lifting their feet.

Trains have shut down. Roads are closed. People are battening down the hatches. What worries me is that so many millions of them - my countrymen, the people who've faced down massed armies, built great institutions, and became a major world power through sheer vitality of spirit - don't even make the effort any more.

Anaesthetised by a decade-plus of socialist rule, the British have gone the way of the Italians and French: thinking the answer to all their problems lies somewhere else and should be solved by the State. Nobody provisions his own requirements any more. Nobody has the self-respect and sense of personal dignity to simply fend for himself.

Britain today. A nation of whiney, namby-pamby, moaning lightweights. And it's all your fault, Blair and Brown. If you hadn't made people believe that government should be their first port of call rather than the lowest safety net... if you hadn't encouraged this risk-averse, sue-everybody, compensation-claim culture, where problems are legislated against rather than solved and risk is eliminated rather than managed... then we'd have a people I'd actually feel proud of. But we don't. Sheesh.

2009: as good as it gets

2010-01-01T10:26:00.007Z

My first dream of 2010 was an odd one: watching a frog hop around a psychedelic 70s-style lounge changing not just colour but texture. The frog grew a carpet on its belly, white with black spots, as it trundled across a rug, and reared up to show me. As it journeyed over floor and table and scattered books, it changed colour instantly, perfectly, duplicating patterns and shades without hue or cry. There was a photo album of the frog too, taken by the family whose lounge I was visiting, and in one of the pictures the frog was getting humped by my sister's childhood soft toy. (Also a frog.)

Quite a metaphor. Because that's the world: multicoloured, varying, and you either adapt to its terrain or you don't. If you do, you might as well glory in your abilities, because you're one of the chosen few: the infinitesmal fraction of all possible combinations of sperm and egg that survives to carry the species forward one more generation.

Years don't get much better than 2009, except perhaps for 2010. In the broader world it was another year of New Labour ineptitude, worldwide recession and interfering politicians, but - I'm not part of any broader world. Since I learned to live life on my own terms I haven't noticed booms and never noticed the bust. You just do what you're good at and try to get better at it, broadening your base by constantly trying new things, and always be utterly honest with the people who pay you. That's what life is.

And a new year is the perfect time to make the best of it.

I don't do Christmas, London on New Year's Eve is a zoo, and I hate the cold. But I genuinely love New Year's Day. So full of possibilities. If you did something bad, now's the time to put it right. If you did something great, now's the time to build on it. One year older too, but I don't think of it as one year closer to the grave; for me it means victory over death, another year I moved closer to the possibility of immortality.

Because death is just a cellular-level defence against cancer: as our understanding of molecular biology grows, so will our ability to defy it. Cell division, molecular repair, even the aging process itself will one day be reversible. The first generation for whom dying is an option may already have been born. All I have to do is outlive them.

In the spirit of those great philosophers Calvin & Hobbes in their last-ever cartoon:

"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... let's go exploring!"

"Mentalist" being the operative word

2009-12-29T09:31:00.005Z

I can't stand environmentalists. You know why? Because they're deluded.

Greens are characterised by a smug holier-than-thou outlook that I can't stand. They're after the quick win, the easy thrill, the little action that'll make them feel good, rather than anything that really helps the planet.

But if you mention this to any of them - even in passing - you'll be subject to an endless barrage of violent criticism. Nothing's so important to a greenie as her own self-righteousness. Greens are right, they believe, and they're right without - or even in spite of - any evidence for their practices.

They'll buy a tomato from the local farmer's market in preference to one from the supermarket because it has fewer "food miles" - forgetting that the plane Tesco's tomato came in carried 500,000 of the little red spherical buggers, so driving to the farmer's market released far more Co2 into the atmosphere than the plane on a per-tomato basis.

They'll buy Fairtrade goods, without understanding that if you proscribe a concrete set of measures for greater profit (as Fairtrade does to its farmers) those rules will be gamed to divert the extra funds into as few pockets as possible. (Take a look at all the farmers who can't get into the Fairtrade cartel. As a result of Fairtrade's market-distorting measures, far more farmers are in far worse conditions than ever before.)

They'll make great show of switching off appliances on standby, skating over the fact that a single one-second ignition of their car negates a year of that.

They'll drive the ultimate smugmobile, the Toyota Prius, and London's Mayor will support them by exempting them from certain taxes. While non-smug vehicles with still lower emissions than the Prius - Volkswagen's Polo comes to mind - are unloved, because they don't give the greens that sense of smugness.

They'll oppose bloodsports like foxhunting, forgetting that these activities are eminently sustainable and support thousands of people in low environmental impact jobs in the countryside. And they'll forget, of course, that real life (where your food comes from) IS full of blood and guts. The 'nature' they profess to love is red in tooth and claw, not the hugs-and-puppies cuteness they imagine.

They'll read with wonderment those books about living for a year without money... not realising that if we all went back to being subsistence farmers, the world could support about 50m people tops, and without the magic of trade and division of labour we'd have no great cities, no schools, and no technology. (How many of these people would stay out in their fields when.. they needed a hospital?)

Of course, if these greens - a surprising number are middle-class - really wanted to do something good, they'd be doing something hard. Like negotiating trade agreements that kill off EU subsidies. Or engineering a better wind farm. But no, no, that's difficult. And what greens really want is to feel smugly superior without actually doing anything.

Greenies suck.

There ain't no justice

2009-12-16T13:37:00.003Z

The frothing-mouthed Daily Mail does raise sensible issues occasionally, and this is one of them.

From a legal viewpoint, what the homeowner did was indeed against the law: chasing down a housebreaker after gaining the upper hand, then giving him a good kicking. Good on yer, Mr Hussain. But the judges weighed the application of the law, versus the prosecution of justice... and decided on statute rather than circumstances. Which is wrong.

Since we know the law is not a perfect model of justice, and judges are by definition supposed to dispense justice (and have great leeway on sentencing), can judges not be given the leeway to ignore the law in such circumstances?

Just how far should we follow the rules, when dealing with people who have no sense of feeling bound by them?

It's a dilemma mirrored in every terrorist case, every ASBO, indeed every middle-class person's interactions with the Police State the UK is fast becoming. If you can't win by playing by the rules, what's the point of having rules?

Well, the attackers went into someone's house armed with blades and ropes. By any moral standard, such individuals have signed away any right to be treated fairly. Mr Hussain did what most men would do in such a threatening situation: HE WHACKED THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE BASTARD. Sorry, but that's what real justice is.

(I'm not sure how, exactly, the attackers got off so lightly. Any crime involving a blade is supposed to be a 2year minimum sentence these days. But that's another matter.)

I hope Mr Hussain gets out of jail quickly. And his attackers do something else soon that puts them inside. But beyond that, I hope this makes judges take a second look at what they're really there for. Justice ain't law.

A UK-based Tesla

2009-12-16T12:45:00.001Z

Hmmm, have I espied the only Tesla in the UK? I mean, they're made here (the body's based on a Lotus) but I didn't think any were actually on Britain's roads ,and this one appears to be right hand drive too. Whatever, it's a great indication that electric vehicles are becoming more and more viable for everyday driving.

The middle two-thirds: facing extinction

2009-12-13T14:16:00.005Z

There's a huge group of people in this country causing me more and more concern. It's a strange sensation. I think I might ... actually... care about them.

I'm not talking about the bottom demographic, the low-margin service sector workers who work crap jobs behind counters or carts and - just about - get by. In fact, I hugely admire them. Starting from the back of the grid, coming from difficult circumstances in rough neighbourhoods, millions of people are prepared to work long hours for little money without complaint. That's incredible. While these people have hard lives, there'll always be work for them: you can't export a barista. I don't worry about these working poor, although I do support a minimum wage to recognise their toil.

(Why would an right-swerving ultra-capitalist support a minimum wage? Because if a quarter of the population wants to work but can't support itself by doing so, there'd be no civil society - these are the people who'd be decently ashamed about not working. More importantly, without these ten million people there'd be no market for base-layer products and services like hair grips or Zhu Zhu pets. Heat Magazine and Strictly Dancing are modern Britain's bread and circuses; you've no real problems if you can keep the proles amused.)

Nor do I worry about the top tenth: the professionals, the movers and shakers who shape the base inputs of the economy into useful forms. Their tools are brainpower and laptops rather than hands and time; These people are intelligent and flexible; they can move roles, understand change, adapt like the higher creatures they are. Hell, we can just move country (I've done that five times.)

No, my concern is for the people in the middle. Let's say social classes C and a chunk of B. Basically, it's the people who gave Blair his victory in 1997 and are now paying the price for it. But we should let that one mistake slide, because...

... these people are the backbone of the nation. There are fifteen million of them: skilled workers, white-collar worker ants, mechanics and bookkeepers and long-distance lorry drivers. They're the bulk of the tax base, but they get a lower proportion of their taxes back in services than any other demo. They're over-administered, under-managed, and bullied by a State that sees them as the easy target.

These people are having an increasingly difficult time of it. And there's no easy escape for them. They're pulled on one side by fragility of their jobs: most office and factory jobs are exportable. They're pulled on the other by the pressure on their incomes: taxes taking an ever-bigger bite, gushing straightaway from them to Labour's base of the weak and the workshy. And they're pulled in another dimension by their Futures. If they're private sector, they have no certainty of a comfortable retirement; if they have children, little chance of a decent state education for them; and if they're Londoners, no way to afford a decent sized family home.

These people face a stark choice in the years to come. Get pushed down into the McJobs and spend their lives in simmering resentment. Or try to forge upwards into jobs they're not cut out for, sectors where they'll always be at a disadvantage.

I worry about these people. They will live long, but never prosper.

And it's difficult to fully reconcile these concerns with my core beliefs: that markets should be red in tooth and claw, the drivers of excellence are conflict and competition, and the weak are best left to die so the civilisation can develop. If you're smart, go where the jobs are; if your economy isn't competitive enough, move your resources elsewhere. Open borders, free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. There are winners and losers - and there have to be. It's a big, bad world out there, and the spoils go to the best and brightest.

All of which sounds great in theory, but - I can't stop thinking about those fifteen million people, who just want to work and live, and are losing the chance to do so.

And if I'm having thoughts lik this, it's all too easy to see why so many policymakers think protection and tariffs are a Good Thing. (Doing so, of course, would simply exacerbate the problem, as global GDP shrinks into a set of pinched-off bubbles without the Magic Of Trade to help them grow.)

I hope those fifteen million have a decent Christmas, because unless we have a complete change in government next year, it may be the last time they sit down to eat with any dignity.

Recession-busting marketing strategy

2009-12-13T14:13:00.001Z

Yes, the name of this South London hairdressers' really is "SPEND LOADS PLEASE". What a pity customers don't always do what you tell them.

Yet more creationists given space in the media

2009-12-06T10:54:00.006Z

I dislike Richard Dawkins methods for dealing with the fairytales of religion: he tries to argue against creationists with reason and intellect, and of course religionistas and the ID brigade are by definition neither reasonable nor logical. Why wrestle with a pig? (You get dirty and he enjoys it.) Meeting them in the media plays to their strengths: the god squad use the tactics of the lawyer, the loophole and the procedural technicality, not science.

And precisely for that reason - it makes controversial copy - the UK's national newspapers see fit to give pagespace to deluded fools. Today's exhibit: this bit of Intelligent Design claptrap in The Guardian.

The author neatly demonstrates ALL the faults with creationists: they're just so fucking thick. You could fairly sum up this article (one of the commenters does) as "Oooh! That looks complicated! A god must've done it!"

I understand religion, and have no problem with it. Life is hard, and it'd be really comforting to think some Big Guy is above the clouds looking out for us. And shared beliefs, however factually incorrect, allowed civil society to form and civilisations to get traction. There's nothing wrong with believing in myths, as long as you understand that they're only there to satisfy your need for comfort.

The "best" religionists understand this, and don't allow themselves to be drawn into an argument about how things really happened. For them, it's enough simply to say "I believe". Which is fine by me.

But idiots like the ID rabble are too feeble-minded for that. Their educationally underdeveloped brains don't have the wattage to be comfortable in their own convictions; everyone else must take their beliefs seriously, so they come up with subterfuge and twaddle. And this guy was a science teacher? A schools inspector? Hardly surprising the UK's education system is such a cesspool if the decent teachers have to contend with guys like this telling them how to run things.

Just because someone has a right to speak doesn't mean they need equal airspace with experts who've spent decades doing the hard work of actual research. Let the fools speak, if they wish. But don't give them a national platform.

Giving minarets the finger

2009-11-30T13:04:00.004Z

The Swiss ban on mosque minarets is an interesting decision, because it illustrates the misguided thinking common to most hot buttons: trying to influence a deeper condition by controlling its outward symptoms.

There were only four minarets in the whole of Switzerland before this ban on new ones, so the whole process was bunk to start with. If there's a reason to not approve a tall pointy thing at one corner of a planned building, then disallow it... but do it for architectural and local planning reasons. In the ultra-conservative world of Swiss building regulations, it's highly unlikely many mosques with minarets would ever be approved anyway. The rabble-rousers behind this ban put up a straw man, and whoa, did the Swiss ever fall for it.

(Not sure there are that many church spires in Saudi Arabia, but that's beside the point.)

Like France's ban on the headscarves in schools or Turkey's burqa ban in government offices, they're looking at outward effects rather than root causes. Think of how airports making you take your shoes off, on the basis one terrorist once hid something in his shoe. Or Germany's ban on drawings of crooked crosses, which has given the symbol glamour among skinheads.

A ban on minarets is a bit like those south seas islanders who wave palm leaves around on dirt tracks and build wooden control towers expecting 747s to appear. This is all going to end in tears...

New train station built... in six days!

2009-11-30T10:14:00.002Z

I know it's just a few platforms on a patch of waste ground - but even so, when combined with the complications of merging timetables and pointwork, building a new train station in six days after the Cumbrian floods that destroyed most of the area's bridges was a real feat.

Presumably on the seventh day they rested.

I can't stand that Stephen Hawking

2009-11-25T14:16:00.002Z

In the latest of my occasional series (people you're not supposed to dislike) I've decided I can't stand that Stephen Hawking bloke.

It starts with his self-description in books like Brief History of Time. "I sit in the chair once occupied by Isaac Newton..." Fair enough Steve, but brushes with fame don't make you him. Isaac Newton was on an entirely different level. It takes serious brainspace even to understand calculus and optics and gravitation; Isaac Newton developed them from first principles and wrote the seminal works on them. You are no Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking.

Hawking's chief contribution revolves around an interesting but minor element of blackhole physics, later discovered (and admitted) to be partly wrong. If Hawking were really on par with Isaac Newton, he'd have come up with the fundamentals of string theory (where even better physicists like Ed Witten and Brian Greene are still dancing around on the surface phenomena.)

But it goes further than not being Newton's equal; he was never even in the foremost ranks of today's physicists. Hawking's discoveries are dwarfed even by some graduate students. Far from being a top physicist, anyone in the know at Cambridge would whisper that he wasn't even the best physicist in his own department.

You are NOTHING without that chair, Stephen Hawking. NOTHING!

Simple answers 2: the US representational system

2009-11-25T13:45:00.002Z

I've just realised why Obama can't get anything done no matter how hard he tries: it's the Senate. So it's time for another simple solution to a complex problem.

The solution: give each Senator a vote equal to the percentage of the US population he or she represents.

(Note these are simple solutions, not simple implementations.)

The issue is that while the US Congress is basically representative - California has over 50 votes in the electoral college given its population of over 37m - the Senate is not. Two Senators from every State, each with an equal voice in the upper house. This is the complete antithesis of the most basic principle of democracy (one man, one vote.

In practical terms, this means barely 10% of the US population have a veto over all US legislation. That 10% is almost entirely in the Red States: the god, guns 'n gays crowd. (Apparently they have certain views on abortion, too.)

Worldly-wise, internationally aware (sort of) California and New York, with over 56 million people, have no louder voice in the Senate than ... North Dakota and Kansas.

Now there's nothing wrong with North Dakota or Kansas (or indeed with voting Republican if you're into that sort of thing) but should the interests of a few hardscrabble villages really outweigh the greater good of cities with economies larger than most countries?

I mean, it's hardly unique to the USA (the UK's electoral boundaries favour the Labour Party, whose parliamentary seats require fewer votes on average to win) but nothing in Europe gets anywhere near the situation in Washington.

Odd that the world's strongest democracy is ultimately overseen by a couple of farmers in the vast flat states inland. But the solution, at least, is simple.

In fruitless search of excellence

2009-11-20T11:18:00.004Z

I'm deeply pro-EU, but the recent appointments of two EU officials leave a sour taste.

I mean, look at van Rumpuy. Would you be quaking in fear and awed by his power if summoned to his throne-chamber? You're not exactly thinking, "All is lost! It's Emperor Palpatine all over again!" are you? Even less would you be overwhelmed by admiration of his bottomless well of humanity and compassion, the steel-trap nature of his intellect, or the sagacity of his decisions. Not big on the personal presence, the ex-Belgian PM. And the name - "Herman van Rumpuy" - sounds like a movie baddie, but from a kid's cartoon rather than a Bond flick. His personality is marked by a complete lack of ability to influence others or make hard decisions, and entirely defined by a weak-bellied love of consensus that blows with the prevailing wind.

And you can tell that just from a photo, can't you?

The two nobodies - a almost comically bureaucratic Belgian and an uncharismatic British peer with little frontline experience - illustrate precisely what's wrong with EU decisionmaking, even beyond the undemocratic way in which such appointments are made: there's no sense of excellence. A candidate simply has to be acceptable to everyone; it's never driven by merit, much less vision or ambition. It's the worst kind of public sector jobsworthism: box-ticking, quota-filling, Buggins'-turn mediocrity.

The EU is an incredible achievement. Despite the headlines about corrupt accounting (true) and outdated subsidies (also true) it's bound together 27 nations, many of whom have been at war with each other for much of their history, into a freely trading bloc that adds a percentage point or two to each member's GDP and create business opportunities for everyone. The great mistake of Europhiles was to think it needed to be something more: a federal superstate with its own parliament and president.

Perhaps, ultimately, the appointment of these two nonentities is a good thing: it'll demonstrate just how little influence "Europe" has over world affairs, and the whole bloc will settle down into what it should be: a unified economic area with free movement of goods, services, capital and people. That's what we need: the freedom to grow our economies, not "leadership" from Brussels. And the best thing about van Rumpuy and Ashton is that nobody's ever going to listen to them.

When captchas attack!

2009-11-18T13:36:00.003Z

A "captcha" that made my day that little bit more surreal. Somewhere near the end of the telephone directory is an unhappy woman named Dora G.

Of ancient Constantinople

2009-11-08T18:46:00.007Z

Istanbul!

Seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, capital of the Byzantine world, a city of stunning architecuture and infrastructure back when London was barely a village!

I've been here 72 hours now and I'm enjoying being on the road again. The only thing I don't like about my post-MBA life is I've less time for travel (the interesting kind, anyway) so even four days out is something to be treasured. And treasure this city is. It's a museum of humanity's first millennium. If you had museums where the exhibits kept trying to sell you ornamental rugware.

There are a lot of people in Istannbul, as I noticed when I went off-piste earlier today and threaded through narrow streets in some very poor areas. And it's intoxicating. The throng of massed humanity crammed between decaying Ottoman walls held together by faded posters scented with the grilling of fish and lamb.

But if I tried to sum up impressions of Istanbul in one word, it wouldn't be the usual cliches of heat and dust. Above all, Istanbul is blue.

A blue that isn't everywhere, but is always around: tiling the edges of mosques, rippling over the Bosphorus, a tint in the air over the Marmara Sea seen from my hotel's rooftop breakfast bar. A blue that spices every experience.

And it's between those filaments of blue that you understand Istanbul today.

A city with soaring tower blocks a klom or so from the coastal peninsula, and a swoopy new tramway picking its way between urban centres. Yet where people are cooking food on open fires and spooning spices from merchants' heaps a metre away in the shadows they cast.

The streets are still narrow and full of mysteries. The bazaar is huge and the workshops that fill it are still nearby; this city still lives in an age where people made things near where they lived and sold them from their front rooms.

And best of all, Istanbul has geography. With the two great monuments of Haghia Sofiya and the Blue Mosque plus the steep slopes of the streets as they roll down to the harbour, it's harder than you think to get lost here. Don't worry about east and west; just orient yourself with up and down and you'll get where you're going.

Istanbul's a great town, and I'm glad I made it out before winter sets in. Aside from the heady streets, the museums are terrific and the food's a real catch.

What's more, it's been my first experience of London City Airport. Despite it being my local 'port, I'd never used it before: the geography of the Thames means it's three river bends away as the crow flies, and the planes take off away from town, so I've just never been aware of it.

But you soon realise that the UK's appalling air travel infrastructure isn't a problem with airports per se; it's just a problem with BAA. London City is managed by a different company, and it really shows, with fast check-in, great transport links, and a smooth passage onto your plane. These people's business is to get you in the air, not (as with BAA) send you shopping. And the LCY guys have just bought Gatwick. Good things ahead.

Shibuya comes to London

2009-11-02T15:45:00.002Z

I have many memories of crossing the gigantic X outside Tokyo's Shibuya Station that gave rise to the new pedestrian scramble at Oxford Circus. Just what our capital needs: a rare move away from the over-controlling bossiness of New Labour schemes, and towards an emphasis on personal responsibility. Studies show such junctions reduce traffic accidents while increasing capacity, which - if you've ever spent 15mins negotiating this single junction on a Saturday - can only be a good thing.

Wake up to what?

2009-11-02T14:16:00.003Z

This is a rather strange ad, sending out a somewhat mixed set of messages. Obviously raising awareness of male rape is a Good Thing - but who's the victim and who's the attacker in this photo? Was it kept deliberately ambiguous to avoid flack from Britain's largely anti-gay black communities (i.e. the suggestion is that the black guy's raping the white guy) while still ticking the all-important diversity box?

But there are other issues. Who on earth goes around with "Wake up to rape" actually written on his T-shirt? Do rapists get reduced sentences if they signal their intentions first? I mean, you wouldn't want such a person serving you breakfast in bed.

And if he's the victim, the other guy seems more in the role of seducer than violent attacker. Do male rapists habitually nuzzle their victims' necks in institutional-looking bathrooms before committing the crime? Or get their kit off before the victim's been secured, as the shirtless black guy seems to imply? I just don't get it.

Which means, unfortunately, neither will this ad's intended audience: young males from the lower socioeconomic groups. Yet another well-intentioned public service ad that's cost several thousand pounds of taxpayers' cash falls totally flat.

2009-10-31T10:19:00.003Z

The only thing funnier than the bonkers Daily Mail is its equally over-the-top readers. Take a look at this report on how M&S's £10 Meal Deal - which includes a bottle of plonk - is apparently unwise because it encourages couples to share a bottle of wine a night.

This "British Liver Trust", whatever that is, is doing itself a disservice - by attacking people who drink a little more than clinically advisable (which is itself sensible given we have to live in Brown's Britain) it's ignoring the far bigger problems of cheap booze and girls-drink-free that start the problem in motion among teenagers.

Four or five units a night "unwise" for men? Perhaps - but not by much. And the side benefits of regular drinking - optimism, joie de vivre, the way the world looks better through the bottom of a wine glass when your house is worth less than your mortgage, your taxes go unthanked into countless New Labour schemes, and a raft of services from rubbish collection to road repair now have to be paid for direct from your pocket - make the tiny additional risk to your digestive system worthwhile. In fact, they make living worthwhile.

Besides, most middle-class couples I know would regard the offer as giving them an EXTRA bottle to drink in addition to the one they've already got out of the garage...

2009-10-30T10:47:00.003Z

Another common sign that a country's turning into a Police State: when minor public officials take umbrage at equally minor criticism. Thanks to the culture of authoritarianism made concrete by New Labour, today's civil servants like to believe they should be above questioning.

Did ANYONE actually throw a Windows 7 party?

2009-10-27T10:07:00.004Z

My word. I've only just seen the actual video Microsoft made to promote its "Windows 7 Launch Party" campaign, and I'm utterly flabbergasted at just how excruciatingly awful it is. It's destined to be a true cult classic, even if the spoof versions are almost as funny.

We have a term for this in the marketing biz: "Adland". Adland is that strange place agency people go where the reality distortion field around the product is so vast you think people will actually behave as you want them too. Whose idea was it? Who at Redmond actually thought people would think it cool to sit around each others' kitchens and use Windows 7??!! They're in Adland.

First off - the over-obvious nods to "diversity". Yes, white folks, Windows 7 is so cool that black people will enjoy partying with your elderly relatives! And what's great, too, is that everything's so "informal"! In fact, the younger woman is so certain of this she uses the word "informal" at least seven times during the video.

But the best part - the most self-consciously, toe-curlingly, mood-strainingly terrible part - is the dialogue and the forced actions of the actors trying to pretend their laughter is a natural occurence.

These lines are actually spoken:

"It's best to install Windows 7 several days in advance of your party", with approving nods around the kitchen table.

"Of course, you don't actually have to do all the party activities to use Windows 7." - and the astonished gasps when the geeky white guy says he did THREE activities... holding up three fingers to demonstrate his counting ability. Whoa!

And how about that unintentional slip by the older woman:

"Of course, it's all up to us (correction) you." As if the embrace-and-engulf strategy had accidentally been put in the script and she corrected herself.

And how about this for data security policy: "It's best to just leave your computer on and let people mess around with it!" Remember, it's INFORMAL.

Then near the end:

"Of course, the serious part. Decide what you're going to do a few days in advance, watch the videos, read the handouts" - oh, this sounds a bit FORMAL!

And the black guy: "It'd help me to remember I'm not a salesman at this party." Bet he is in real life though; he's not going to get rich for his acting ability.

Anyway, as they say in the video, "Have fun out there!"

Taking the blows

2009-10-25T11:53:00.005Z

There's nothing like having your own punchbag. I've just bought a "man-shaped" one, "man-shaped" here having the expanded definition of men with no arms, legs, or head and whose bodies resemble an upturned skittle. (And who are capable of levitation.)

The fundamental skills common to most boxing-derived fighting styles - stances, striking, and keeping your guard up - can be practiced with any weighty object. You can even have a go on a wall if you think you're 'ard enough. But the one I've just installed in my garage is the best kind for Krav, because it swings around: it's a moving target.

Set it swinging, and you've got something marginally resembling the kind of big drunken bloke you're most likely to be randomly attacked by, allowing you to practice all the basic blows against its marked targets.

The jab. The uppercut. The roundhouse. The hammer. The sucker. The open fist. The closed fist. You can headbutt it, elbow it, block it with your forearm; this guy just hangs there and takes it.

But because it's suspended, you can practice kicks too. (My weak point; I'm so inflexible at the moment I can't form a right angle with my legs.) The forward kick. The back kick. The roundhouse kick. The kick and spin. Even blocks. You can set it spinning and fight around it, a basic Krav technique. You can even go down on the floor, spinning on the small of your back, fighting upwards.

It's been a long six months of injuring ankle then shoulder; this thing will help me get back to a strength and speed that approach something respectable before I return to Krav class.

There are only two things you can't practice with it: escaping from locks and holds, and taking on multiple attackers. Wonder if I should install two?

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle

2009-10-25T09:00:00.003Z

I'm now a third of the way through Neal Stephenson's grand cycle of Europe (and America too if you include Cryptonomicon as the fourth book after the trilogy) and enjoying it.

I don't read much fiction these days, sci-fi even more rarely. But Stephenson's moved on from his Snow Crash and Diamond Age phase of pure sci-fi - and anyway, he always transcended the author (wrongly) credited with kicking off cyberpunk*, William Gibson, in the same way Gibson was eclipsed by Bruce Sterling. Stephenson is roughly the same height above Sterling as Sterling was above Gibson.

For Gibson was, ultimately, a bullshitter. Brilliant with language, fantastic with storytelling (his short stories, written when he was a young man in his 30s, remain terrific twenty years later) but he was making stuff up: knock it, and it didn't sound solid. Gibson never used the Internet, had no mathematical smarts or engineering training. His work, while poetic and artistic, never had technological rigour. You could feel the electrodes on your forehead, smell the ozone burning off the batteries, but you'd never learn how any of it worked.

Stephenson, by contrast, is a true Geek. An expert Linux user before it was cool, you can finish a Stephenson feeling confident that, if sucked through a wormhole to WWII-era Philippines or the court of Louis XIV, you'd actually know what to do and how to behave. Anyone who publishes an entire book about booting up a Unix desktop (OK, so it was a Wired article first) knows a thing or two about technology.

Stephenson's got faults - as he slyly admits, calling his eight-book sequence "The Baroque Cycle". This is not minimalist writing. Vast chapters are devoted to exchanges of letters, diarist musings, extended descriptions of places and people, while nothing much happens as narrative: this is literature for the pleasure of reading, rather than the excitement of storytelling. You're not experiencing a narrative, you're experiencing a world. It's less reading a novel, more playing Second Life.

But that world he creates - by meandering around in a vast forest of verbiage, never quite getting to the point - is absorbing. You don't just smell the shit in 17-century London streets; it flies off the page and hits you in the eye. Unexpected outcomes, like a heroic figure spending years as a galley slave, happen with regularity, constantly keeping you off guard; events you thought had happened turn out to have been cyphers for the events that really happened. And so on. In short, it's a lot like real life.

The fourth book, Cryptonomicon, was published years before the trilogy (and I read it around '99 I think) but Stephenson keeps the nods to the future non-obvious most of the time, maintaining a distinct non-McGuffin-ness that most Hollywood producers could learn from. There is a lack of depth to characters, their personae being defined by their circumstances of birth and world events they get caught up in, rather than innate characteristics. But perhaps that's how it really happens. Most great events happen to other people. Few Englishmen even noticed the French annexation of Britain, or the Norsemen some centuries prior, or ... in the same way, the Great Fire of London and the Revolution of 1688 are presented as canvas, not oils. London, after all, was then just a sizeable village; there was nothing in Britain to match Venice, or even Madrid, still less Versailles.

And Stephenson makes it real. I think I'll plunge into Book II (Confusion), but I warn you Neal: I expect a bit more narrative this time, or I won't make it to System of the World.

* Gibson the founder of cyberpunk? Yeah? Ever readJohn Brunner's "Shockwave Rider"? That was where it started.