"You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify."
- Dierdrie Walker

"That’s the problem with nature – it’s never natural enough."
- Mark Simpson

"Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one."
- HL Menken

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair

"Silence is consent."
- Paul Haggis

"I’m English, and as such I crave disappointment"
- Bill Bailey

"It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don’t believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it."
- Winston Churchill

Twelve Fails of Christmas


Holidays.

These are periods of a few days or weeks, which you set aside and plan ahead to enjoy yourself. In the event you probably don't enjoy it, but you take some photos to look at later and tell yourself you did.

But there are two kinds of holidays. Ones where you go somewhere new, meet new people and try out new things. And ones where you stay at home (or go home), spend a long time with people you already know quite well enough...and eat too much.

Christmas...is the second kind.

So once you've eaten enough turkey and chocolates to feed a small African country, exchanged giftwrapped socks with distant cousins, made smalltalk with people you normally avoid because of their tedious smalltalk, and got slightly drunk on that bottle of special liquer that's been sitting on a shelf since last year...what is there to do?


Watch TV. Always a favourite.


Watch a DVD.


Read a book.


Practice the guitar. (Which I've been meaning to do.)


Have some friends over.


Catch up on sleep.


Wake yourself up with a refreshing shower.


Or a bath.


A big, luxurious bath.


Have a beer. Always a reliable time-filler. (Even though I hate beer.)


Put up the decorations.


Potter around on the computer. Write a blog post or something - and maybe find a use for some of those pictures which have been cluttering up your hard drive.


Guess which one I did?

So, have a happy Hannukah, prosperous Kwanzaa, merry Festival of Saturn, enjoyable Winter Solstice...or a Noodly Holiday if you're feeling geeky. Anything but christmas.

"Without humor, a sports fan is a religious fanatic."
- Keith Olbermann

"The fact that capitalism is not just, far from being something which makes it more intolerable, is precisely what makes it palpable for the majority. What makes it palpable is its very injustice, and that we knwow it’s unjust."
- Slavoj Zizek

"Americans are brought up from childhood to have no curiosity about anything, because they might not like the answer."
- Gore Vidal

Happy, not Clappy


Aimee blogged, asking what benefits her atheism has over religious faith.

I wrote a response, which grew into a small essay, which I thought worth posting.

"Sometimes i still wonder though, whether i am really any better off now as a non-believer than i was as a believer."

I think it depends exactly what you mean by atheism. To me, there seem to be three common senses, which often get mixed up in people's heads - including atheistic heads:

1) Not believing in a cosmic tyrant - who sees all, knows all, and judges all according to some arbitrary (and inconsistent) moral code.

2) Not believing in anything supernatural or incredible - ghosts, reincarnation, telepathy, the illuminati, shapeshifting alien lizards, time travel etc. At least, until some decent evidence comes along, in which case they're no longer fantasy.

3) Believing that, if a problem is genuine and actually has a solution, whether it's theoretical or practucal, empirical or moral, reason can find it, given sufficient evidence and opportunity.

The third position is a kind of faith, and might be identified with humanism.

Specifically, it's faith based (inductively) on good but not perfect evidence - as opposed to faith based on no evidence, or weak evidence, or actually opposing the evidence. I wrote a lot of paragraphs about different kinds of faith, which I'll spare you.

It obviously can't be proven that every possible real problem is rationally soluble, but given the vast evidence, it's inductively very likely.

You're asking what benefits atheism has. I'd turn it around and ask what harm religion does.

An atheist in the first sense is free to live without the fear of an invisible abusive parent in the sky. They live without cosmic Stockholm syndrome.

The real world is a scary enough place, without inventing invincible demonic versions of real cultural barriers. Atheism here doesn't exactly make you happy, but it does make you less sad, and less scared.

An atheist in the second sense is a skeptic, or a rationalist - someone who's cautious about what they believe, and so isn't easy to fool or con. Again, skeptics don't always make great decisions, but they make fewer foolish ones.

GK Chesterton made a famous remark that ceasing to believe in god left one open to any other belief. It's quite possible to be an atheist in my first sense, but a gullible believer in my second.

I think the third position is, by definition, rationalism - in the broad, lower case sense, as opposed to the continental philosophy sense.

It may indeed not provide the pleasant fuzzy sensations of an imaginary friend, but as soon as you're required to make a practical decision, it's a lot more reliable.

Finally, there are plenty of sources of spiritual nourishment that don't involve irrational belief, so the unbeliever is left far from starving. Music, literature, film and theater are I find quite sufficient, and come with fewer strings attached. And let's not forget friendship, love and indeed sex.

So in short: Atheism doesn't make you happy, but it does make you sensible, and there's plenty of other things to make you happy.

"Go the whole hog, be bigger than god."
- John Lydon

Touched by the Hand


Touch screen technology - a solution waiting for a problem.

I tried it two years ago when I got a new phone. It was sleek, powerful, and an absolute pig to operate. After three days I took it back to the shop and swapped it for one with lower specifications - crappy camera, no ebook reading facility, very limited video viewing, sort-of but not-really MMS ability.

But it was actually usable, and the lack of such 'selling points' as mp3 ringtones, secondary camera and en-suite video editing wasn't an issue because, well, what kind of person buys a phone because it can play last months chart-topper instead of ringing?

However, that contract has nearly expired so...I've got a new one. With QWERTY keyboard for writing my novel, android apps for mapreading, and a 5 megapixel camera that can shoot video at 720x480 and 30 frames per second. In other words...DVD!

It's a frelling camera phone, and it can make movies of up to 2 hours in domestic DVD quality. Or rather it could...if it had a good quality lens. Is it me, or is that combination of overkill and cheap design a bit mad?

This new phone can read PDFs, and other ebook formats. It's got a second camera facing me so I can put video diaries on Youtube. There's an option to upload photos to Flikr immediately upon taking them...before I even review them. Whose idea was that?

It's got a special dedicated button for connecting to bloody Facebook. That alone speaks volumes about what the designers think about and of the target audience.

The battery life is two days - one third of my old phone. Oh, and it's got possibly the naffest name of any phone ever: The Cha Cha. Yes.



All of which I can happily live with. But the touchscreen aspect isn't as peripheral as the advertising copy suggested. It's absolutely central, and there's almost no keyboard alternative - which would be usually faster.

Imagine your computer didn't have a mouse, but you clicked and moved things by putting on a boxing glove and rubbing it around the screen. Gloves aren't precise, so to click anything you need to keep dabbing at the screen until it decides you've hit the right spot. And then you drag a slider up or down to where you want it, except you have to guess because you can't see the slider because...the fucking glove's in the way.

Look, technology doesn't advance by identifying problems and finding solutions. It advances by finding new things it can do, and then casting about for applications.

X-rays weren't discovered by someone looking for ways to diagnose bone fractures - they were a mysterious new wave that got beamed at anything and everything to see what happened, for decades. It was marketed as everything from a baldness cure to a replacement for the telegraph.

Nuclear fission still doesn't have a safe application, but it's still being pushed as an expensive and risky way to run steam turbines. If you think nuclear energy is green, ask yourself what infrastructure it relies on.

Electricity was a lab-bound curiosity for decades. Now we're so reliant in it, civilisation would collapse without it.

You can now get laptops with touchscreen capability - the new super gee-wiz version of the mouse. The one that doesn't work as well as the mouse, and gives you different, worse types of repetitive strain injury.

I've watched software engineers wax lyrical about how touchscreen will enable users to interact with the computers in whole new ways. But they never, ever, speculate what these new ways might be.

Hey, maybe there are uses for touchscreen that keyboards, speech recognition, Kinect, tracker balls and mouses (mice, meese, moose) can't do. There's just been no sign of them yet.



As for my new handset, it's got a full keyboard which might come in handy, occasionally useful apps, a pretty good camera, and I can read miniature books on it.

For everything else - music and audiobooks, battery life and, erm, talking to people on the phone, the old handset is actually superior. So I'll probably be moving the sim card over to it, having effectively signed a two year contract and got a free micro-palmtop.

Oh, and the old handset I bought two years ago: it was obsolete at the time.

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
- HL Mencken

"Well, an idea is an idea. The present one may be right and it may be wrong. One thing is quite certain: that no progress will be made against it by denouncing it as merely immoral."
- HL Mencken

"Serious matters seldom break through to cliché-ridden minds."
- Gore Vidal

"The Church essentially exists to convince the proletariat to accept its lowly earthly lot while taking its money."
- Shawn Baker

"We ought to be suspicious of something that we very much want to believe."
- John Searle

"If a culture stops allowing people the right to fail, that culture will die."
- Tariq Ali

Hey Kids, Don't Do Drugs


You remember I got hold of some legal drugs to see if they gave me some much needed energy? And you remember how I came over a bit weird?

Well they come in packs of two, and I found the other one, and took it just to see what would happen. They're called 'Speed Freak Ultra', but seeing as all "herbal supplements" have over the top brand names, I didn't think much of it.

It's seven in the morning, and I have just spent five hours being...intense. Specifically:

* Dry mouth

* Thirst

* Stomach cramps

* Being rather too wide awake

* Not exactly a headache but a kind of pressure from inside the temples.

* Having a desperate sexual craving. I've been known to have a fair sexual appetite sometimes, but I've never before spent five solid hours thinking obsessively about penises. Sucking and swallowing. Not even when I was thirteen.

* Having no physiological sexual response whatsoever. My nipples have been sensitive ever since I was nineteen when a deeply strange man showed me what they were for. Tonight: slightly less responsive than the average toenail.

As for traces of erection...or that sickly sweet feeling you get near your bladder for which there doesn't seem to be word. Or those tingles you sometimes get radiating outward from your groin. Not a hint.

It's probably good I was alone, as I'd most likely have been a complete pain to any company - though possibly less wall-climbingly frustrated.

It can be fun to mess with your own head. But I don't think I'll be doing this again. Some experiences are for remembering rather than having.

"A low budget is almost always a release."
- Tilda Swinton

"If you want people to do wicked things, you need religion."
- Christopher Hitchens

Everybody Likes Like


How many of the things you do for pleasure...actually give you pleasure?

Holidays? Famously stressful. There's something about paying to be in unfamiliar surroundings that makes families want to kill each other.

Friends? Be honest - how many of your friends are annoying people you've got into the habit of tolerating, but you've forgotten why?

Sporting events? Ninety minutes of watching highly trained minor celebrities simulate violent sex with each other, with occasional minutes of excitement when they, erm, 'score'.

Sex (violent or otherwise)? There's something rather deflating about letting someone try to make you substitute for their fantasy, in the hope they can subsitute for yours.

TV? I've often caught myself checking the clock to see how long it'll be till the programme ends and I can do something else. Since when was mindless entertainment a timetabled chore?

Music? How often do you put on some favourite music, and after ten minutes realise you've been ignoring the music while reading your emails?

Chocolate? If the taste is so good, why are you so keen to swallow that piece and start on the next?

If you really do enjoy any of these things, then fine. But I've come to the conclusion that everyone should take a long hard look at their list of enjoyments every few years, and prune it down to things they do enjoy - as opposed to things they used to enjoy, or only tell themselves they enjoy, or think they ought to enjoy.

And when we've all done that, we can ask the next question.

How many of the things you do to gain approval...acutally get you approval?

"All I ask is that you be consistent with your bullshit."
- Chuck Sonnenberg

"Stop organising your life around people who don’t get the joke."
- Laurence O’Donnell

Words and Numbers 2


How many words with ten syllables does English have?

According to my wordlist (extracted from the digital version of the 1997 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) the answer is: None

But it's not a simple as that, because it lists "floccinaucinihilipilification" (the act of estimating something to be valueless) with seven vowels or vowel+glide pairs, and thus seven syllables. Except I make it eleven.

"Praetertransubstantiationalism" is a word from catholic theology that I learned in seminary. I still don't know exactly what it means, but I reckon it's also got eleven syllables. It's not in the SOED.

Everyone's favourite pointlessly long word - "Antidisestablishmentarianisn" - isn't in there either, but I think it's got twelve syllables. Likewise "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (a disease of the lungs) is absent but, by my reckoning, has sixteen.

I can sort-of pronounce "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (nineteen syllables), mainly because my father lived there in the first world war.

Some people stick extra schwa vowels into words to make them easier to pronounce. Others glide adjacent vowels together, or skip over entire syllables. The two longest common surnames in Britain are "Cholmondalay" and "Featherstonehaugh" - pronounced (and often respelled) "Chumley" and "Fanshaw".

So, still no dectasyllablical squipidalianisms, but the SOED lists eight words with nine syllables. See how many syllables you say them with:

Reticuloendothelial (9)
Arteriosclerosis (I make it 7, probably)
Extraterritoriality (9)
Immunoelectrophoresis (9)
Otorhinolaryngology (9)
Polytetrafluoroethylene (9)
Propionibacterium (8)
Stachybotryotoxicosis (9)

"Your enemies form you much more than your friends."
- John P Meier

"A is for Beginning"
- Paul Morley

Words and Numbers

English has 441 nouns that are pronounced the same in the plural as the singular. Most of them seem to be from the French, and I understand maybe a dozen of them. Here they are:

AbonnementAdageAffaire
AgacerieAlléeAllure
AmendeAndouilleAndouillette
Arc-BoutantArrière-PenséeArriviste
ArrondissementAssembléAssemblée
AubussonAumônièreAuteur
AuvergnatAvouéBagarre
BagneBahutBaignoire
BalancéBallonBallonné
BatterieBéguinBénitier
BerceuseBergèreBêtise
BevueBiberonBibliothèque
BidonBiftekBlagueur
BlancBlancbecBlanquette
BoîteBondieuserieBouchée
BoulevardierBouleversementBourgade
BriquetBriséBrouillon
Cache-PeigneCaféCafé
CafetièreCagotCagoulard
CahierCamaieuCarmagnole
CarrefourCauserieCauseuse
CeintureChaînéChaise
ChambranleChangementChanson
ChanteuseChasse-MaréeChassepot
ChateaubriandChatonChaussée
ChevaletChevelureCheville
ChiffonnierCivetClochard
CohueCombleComédie
CompotierComptoirConférencier
ConfrérieConsigneConte
ConvenanceCoureurCouvert
CrémaillèreCriseCroûte
CulotteCuréDalle
DanseurDanseuseDébat
DébouchéDécoupageDégringolade
DélassementDémêléDémenti
Demi-ViergeDéveloppéDiseuse
DotDrageoirÉbauche
ÉbénisteÉboulementÉchevin
ÉchevinÉclaircissementÉcrevisse
ÉléganteÉlèveÉloge
EmbarrasEmbusquéÉmeute
ÉmincéEnceinteEnchaînement
EncoignureEnfantillageEngouement
EngrenageEntremetÉpanchement
ÉpaulementÉpicerieÉquipe
ÉruditEscargotEsclandre
EsquisseEstacadeEstafette
EstaminetEstouffadeÉtalage
ÉtangÉtourderieÉtrenne
ExternatExtincteurFanchon
FauteuilFaux-BourdonFélibre
FéraFilletteFiltre
FineFlaconFlâneur
FlècheFontangeFourgon
FournitureFriandiseFriseur
FrondeurGalèreGarçon
GarconnièreGareGargouillade
GarigueGavrocheGilet
GirouetteGîteGlissé
GoûterGrognardGuérite
GuinguetteHausseHausse-Col
HommeHorizontaleIncroyable
InéditIntermèdeJabot
JaponaiserieJongleurJour
LacetLaisseLande
LangueLettreLivraison
LoupMadrierMagnanerie
MailMaillotMaire
MairieMaisonMaître
MaîtresseMajoratMamelière
ManchetteManoirMarigot
MarmitonMarotteMarouflage
MarsouinMascaretMâtin
MédaillonMessagerieMétairie
MétayerMiliceMilitaire
MillefeuilleMinaudièreMinot
MirotonMitrailleurMitrailleuse
MorgueMortierMotard
MouchardMouleNaïveté
NécessaireNefNégociant
NévéNoceurNon
NouilleNounouNouvelle
ObjetOeilladeOeuvre
OrageOuvertOuvreuse
PalmierPalourdeParapluie
ParatonnerreParfumerieParisienne
ParloirPartageParticule
PartiePartousePatronne
PaysagePaysannePelouse
PensionnairePensionnatPeulvan
PiedroitPignonPinard
Piou-PiouPiqueurPiqûre
PlacePlaidoyerPlaisanterie
PlanhPlatPlié
PlongeurPochoirPoêlée
PointPointePoissarde
PoitrinairePolicierPolisson
PolitiquePommePopote
PortefeuillePorteurPortière
Post-ChaisePotichePotin
PoudreusePoulePoupée
PourboirePourparlerPousse-Café
PrairePré-SaléPresbytère
PrimeurProcédéProcureur
ProjetProlongeProvocateur
PuyQuartierQuillon
QuincaillerieQuintonRaccourci
RafaleRaisonneurRapide
RastaRastaquouèreRaté
RatelierRavalementRazet
RéchaudRécitRéclame
RécolteRédacteurReflet
RégieRégisseurReglement
RelâcheRelanceReligieuse
RemaniementRemboîtageRemueur
RenseignementRenteRentier
RépliqueRepoussoirRésistant
RetiréRetraiteRéveillon
ReverdieRevirementRognon
RomanRôtisseurRouget
RoulementRoutierRoutinier
RoyaleSalaudSalmi
SalutSanglierSaucier
SaucissonSautSéjour
ServanteSévignéSignifiant
SignifiéSingerieSirop
SirventeSnobismeSociétaire
SoigneurSolfègeSommité
SottiseSottisierSoubise
SoubresautSoubresautSouffre-Douleur
SoupeSouperSoupirant
Sous-EntenduSouteneurSpectacle
StrapontinSuisseTabac
TabagieTabatièreTaille
TailleurTastevinTâtonnement
TendreTendresseTerrasse
ThéTianTirage
TommeTonnelleTonton
TourmenteTraiteurTranche
TricoteuseTripotTrouvaille
UrinoirVagueVeillée
VeilleuseVendangeVendeuse
VernissageVespasienneVie
ViguierVinVirage
ViveurVivierVoyant
VoyouVraisemblanceVulgarisateur

I can reveal this fascinating fact because I'm trying to write a bit of software to be a rhyming dictionary - with options for perfect rhymes, slant rhymes (rhymes which ignore the difference between similar pairs of consonants), vowel rhymes and more.

Actually, I've spent most of the last week trying to make scripts to tidy up the raw data of spelling and pronunciation. It's either that or spend a year doing it by hand.

In the meantime, there are 179 pronouns, including such rarities as 'Yez' (plural You), Whosoever, and Hern (Hers). And 261 prepositions, including Yond, Neath and Abune.

And 65,796 nouns, the last of which is Zythum - a kind of ancient Eqyptian wine made from fermented malt.

UPDATE: Thanks to the OED's not-entirely-consistent system of classification, I've found some more:

crudéclassédéraciné
gratinéjournalierlisse
afficheaperçuarrêt
assietteassignatattentat
battementcache-potcache-sexe
charcuteriechassécomte
comtessecongéconvive
couvre-piedcrèmecru
déclassédéjeunerdémarche
demi-mondainedéracinédévot
digestifdiguedormeuse
entrechatfarceurfaubourg
ferronnièreficellefiche
figurantfouettéfrisson
Généralgratingratiné
habituéilluminéjournalier
lavaretlisseloge
longueurlycéemandat
mascaronmélangemésalliance
mignardisemouchoirmuscadin
muséeniaiseriepalafitte
papeteriepari-mutuelparti
pastourellepesadepis
pissoirplafondpochade
pompierpont-levispotage
pot-et-fleurpouletrenversement
répétiteurrivièreruelle
sallesapinsuprême
têtevicomtevicomtesse
visite


"Everybody can write about everything and freedom of science consists precisely in people deliberately writing about things they have not studied."
- Frederich Engels

"It appears to me that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science."
- Charles Darwin

"Who is to even say something is a clue? It might simply be a fact seen in the light of suspicion."
- Roger Ebert

"Presence is sometimes as creative as ideas."
- David Thomson

"Utopias can’t co-exist with other ideas."
- Naomi Klein

"Public opinion is a mirage."
- Richard Seymour

Manwatching


I used to know a man who, every month or so, would drive 100 or more miles - over state borders - to have sex with men he met on the net. He was happily married, active in the local church, and decidedly...traditional in attitudes to adultery and family.

Now, according to him the real buzz in these encounters was when men told him things like, "Gee, that's a real big dick you've got" and "Wow, what a great cock". They'd suck each other for half an hour, then he'd drive back to the wife and kids, generally in a cloud of guilt and determination never to do that again.

He also liked to watch me masturbate on webcam, but always said he didn't have a cam of his own - so I couldn't return his appreciation. Oh, and it might have been the settings on his monitor, but he was under the impression that I wasn't a completely white guy - "Yeah, jerk that coloured cock for me".

Are you getting the impression of mixed motives here? Enjoys being desired, but he's the one doing the looking. Likes mexican and 'dark' men, but politically conservative. Crosses state lines as a way to compartmentalise his sexual lives, and likes to say homosexuality is wrong because it's sex outside marriage.

I'm not moralising about someone else's hypocrisy - rather I'm thinking about how the lies we tell change with the role of who we're telling them to, and how the lies change when the role of the listener changes.

There are the lies we tell our aquaintences to make us look good to them, lies we tell ourselves to make us look good to ourselves...and lies we tell our confessors to make us look good to god. Or 'society', which is the same thing.

In my role as extramarital fun I got one story. In my role as listener afterwards I got another - which depended on whether I was listening to post-orgasm guilt, pillar of the community, or internal monologue validated by a nonjudgemental audience.

I have to wonder whether he liked sex with men at all, or was one of those straight men who fetishise masculinity - as bodybuilders do. Or whether he'd found that the people who made him feel sexy and desirable just happened to be other men. Or whether the half hour encounters with elaborate distancing rituals were more about the idea of sex than the reality.

The number of men who sit for hours at their computers to arrange sex, and then find ways to avoid it, should show how common this last is.

All this was well over a decade ago, and if he ever told me his name I've forgotten it. I don't think I could tell you one definite thing about what his motives were, least of all whether he knew them himself.

"Those who can’t teach, criticise."
- Unknown

"Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things."
- Hippocrates