When You're a Stranger, People are Strange
There are two notable things about the post for which I was interviewed today. First, although it does involve the promised IT work, it consists mainly of answering the phone and checking timesheets. And second, it doesn't exist at the moment.
It seems the most effective way to create a new job is not to make the vacancy and then fill it, but rather to find someone to fill the role, and then tell head office that a new role urgently needs to be created, and by the way the ideal person to fill it has fortuitously appeared, as if by magic.
So, I've got the job, even though it's not the one I applied for, and it may or may not exist by the end of next week.
I have three more interviews coming up, two of which seem to operate on the same basis.
That was the first half of the morning. The second half was spent chatting with an unemployed security guard. Like most security guards, he's a great big hulk of a fellow with a beer belly, puggish features and a long black coat.
Unlike some security guards, he's camp as a row of tents and has a degree in linguistics. So we spent some happy hours discussing Madonna's failing career, glam rock, trashy movies...and the inadequacies of Krashen's "LAD" hypothesis in the light of a praxis based model of concept formation in infants.
There's other characters in the same room.
One woman of about forty is an ex-biker. She spent most of her life riding around Britain with biker groups, being fiercely independent and working casually in factories when she had to, before an injury suddenly put a stop to her whole lifestyle, leaving her with only expert knowledge of bike repair and no prospects.
One young fellow has decided with his girlfriend to leave Portsmouth. In itself unremarkable, but they've got no transport, no possessions and no money, so they're going to walk. They're going to keep walking and wherever they've got to after a week, that'll be their new home, because they've got no destination in mind either. It's an act of desperation, but I can't help admiring it.
There's a tiny woman who weighs 90 lbs. She takes care of six people with physical disabilities and psychiatric problems, and dates rough men three times her size.
There's a man who had a high-flying job in management until he stood up to the wrong board member and found himself sacked and seemingly blacklisted. He's going through the painful process of accepting that he doesn't have the automatic right to respect, and some people know better than him.
One very handsome young man is (a) nineteen (b) happily married with two children and (c) the most amazing flirt with everyone, male and female. He asked me to check whether his nipples were the same size, and presented them for inspection - so I examined them and the surrounding muscular area in quite a lot of tactile detail.
Would it have been going too far to lick them too? I certainly wanted to.
A tattooist/bricklayer/former basketball coach sat through two weeks of my off-colour jokes about gay sex before starting to wonder if I might be gay. He's now disturbed by the possibility that some of the other people he knows might not be straight.
Someone once said, "Normal is whatever everyone else is that you're not." I think I've met plenty of normal people - it's just that I can never remember anything about them ten seconds later.
The Book of Job (Chapter Three)
I do want a job. Well, no one actually wants a job, but what I want is (a) a steady income, (b) more money than I've got at the moment and (c) a way off this dratted course. And in effect that means a job.
On paper, I'm spending seven hours a day "actively and intensively looking for work". In practice, I'm spending half an hour a day emailing my CV to job agencies, another half eating reduced-to-clear pasta salad from the supermarket next door, and five catching up on reading in a room with twenty others who've developed the skill of spinning the thinnest of conversation to great length.
Had there been more than twelve vaguely suitable vacancies on Monday it might have taken longer to "actively and intensively look for work". I somehow doubt there'll be another twelve by Friday. I'm supposed to apply for at least fifty a week.
I'm reading the short stories of Franz Kafka. It seemed appropriate.
Yesterday, after another wasted day, I walked into the care home at the end of my street, told them I was looking for a work placement and gave reasons why it would benefit everyone if I worked there. After a few minutes of getting their brains around the notion, I was complimented on my "initiative and assertiveness", and an interview was arranged for next Tuesday.
I then walked into the co-op branch opposite and went through a similar routine with the deputy manager - arranging an interview in Wednesday.
When I got home there was a phone message waiting from an accountancy firm, offering me an interview on Monday. Of the thirty or so CV's I've emailed off, it's odd that the only response is in a field I have little knowledge of and no experience in. Maybe they're just really desperate for accountants.
Last Thursday I asked a member of staff why, seeing as CDG specialise in finding work placements, they don't offer any placements themselves - seeing as they're obviously understaffed. The response: it would contravene the data protection act.
Today I told them I'd found two possible placements for myself. After a full ten seconds of open mouthed astonishment, the woman I'd spoken to on Thursday asked me why I'd felt the need to do their job for them. I said it was because if I'd left their job to them it'd never get done, because they had proven themselves completely useless at finding anyone a placement.
She asked me whether I had any issues I'd like to discuss. I said that any company whose sole purpose was to find other companies that wanted free slave labour, but was unable to find any, wasn't just incompetent - it was absolutely bizarre. She objected strongly to my use of the word "slave".
Half an hour later she offered me an interview for a work placement. At CDG. I didn't ask whether it still contravened the data protection act.
So I suddenly have a choice:
* Do a very boring job I know nothing about, but get well paid for - assuming I get the job, which is far from certain.
* Be an unpaid shop girl.
* Care for people with multiple disabilities - which has no immediate financial reward but loads of career potential and kudos, though it's not certain they'll accept me.
* Do what I've been doing informally for a fortnight, namely helping lame ducks like me write CVs and letters. There's no pay and no job at the end of it, but it's doing what I enjoy with people I've found I like.
Plugged In
New USB keyboard, new USB mouse - and now the disk drive is failing. Gah!
A year ago, I thought four USB sockets was generous. Now, with plugin mouse, external keyboard, external hard drive, external CD burner and speakers, plus the option of a wireless dongle, eight would be useful.
Still, at GBP6 for a keyboard, GBP4 for a mouse, GBP40 for a 120GB hard disk and GBP10 for an external hard drive enclosure, there's simply no need to upgrade or renew hardware that's theoretically long past its obsolescence.
That, and the small matter that new computers are no more powerful than they were five years ago - except for the still largely unutilised duel-core system.
One of the problems the Strict Machines have - apart from a frequently ill singer, some lousy amplifiers, and a guitarist with temper tantrums that eclipse tsunamis - is that they've all got jobs. Specifically that two of them work long, unpredictable hours. So finding times when they're all free to practice and play gigs isn't easy.
However, Paul the guitarist has had a brainwave: When Fabio the drummer isn't available, replace him with a CD player! Which means getting good kind Kapitano to come up with real-ish sounding drum tracks, complete with fills and frills, for the fifty or so songs in the repertoire.
But don't worry they say, there's no great rush. Right now they only need tracks for fifteen songs finished for their gig in six days time. But can they be more-or-less done by Monday morning, please? Just so the band can practice with them.
The weather's been a bit weird recently - hot days that turn suddenly cold, moisture and wind, and two or three brief but intense thunderstorms per week. In the streets you can see people shivering in shorts or sweating in raincoats, dressed a few hours behind the weather's current mood.
I got given a dose of amphetamine recently - about one third of a teaspoonful, wrapped up in a cigarette paper and swallowed, known to the cognoscenti as a "bomb". After half an hour it kicked in and all sensations became...not exactly louder and brighter, but more detailed. The rain wasn't any wetter, but each drop was clearly visible.
We had the most amazing sex, of a sweetness I haven't known since I was twenty - except that when I was twenty I was much too nervous and ashamed to enjoy it. I found myself thinking, "The speed's given me the apparently traditional pounding headache and stomach cramps, so I really ought not to be enjoying this, but I can't stop burrowing my tongue into this fellow's ear canal because it feels so good. It's not even as though I especially like them."
After two hours we went for a walk, compared lives to see who was the most bored lately, and went back to our respective homes. Where I couldn't sleep for six hours because my head was buzzing. And then couldn't do anything but sleep for twelve hours. And still felt shattered afterwards.
So, not an experience I'd seek out again, but certainly worth trying.
Day four on the course - we were treated to a cringe-inducing "educational film" about how to behave at job interviews. In summary: be honest but only about nice things, be confident but submissive, tell the employer what they want to hear but surprise them, have a sense of humour but don't laugh, and never mention money. Well, I'm glad that's all sorted out.
Then for the rest of the day...absolutely nothing. Again. While pretending to scan the newspapers we exhausted two days ago for job vacancies we've already applied for.
Day five - more absolutely nothing, but without the newspapers. According to some inmates who've been through the scheme two or three times before, CDG are pretty useless at finding the work placements they promise, so it's not unusual to spend the entire thirteen weeks stuck in a room.
There are inmates there who've only done the most unskilled labour for forty years, can't read and have never used a computer. Not the kind to use terms like "soul destroying" - but they do, because it is.
Diary of Wasted Time
Today I was supposed to spend the morning receiving hot tips on the job market, and the afternoon being intensively interviewed to find the right kind of job for me. What happened instead was...absolutely nothing at all.
In the morning we sat in a hot classroom waiting for something to happen, and in the afternoon we sat in a different hot classroom waiting for something to happen. Apparently this is because one member of staff was away on a course, and none of the others had time to see to us.
I took the opportunity to read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense". It always pays to carry a book around in your bag.
By lunchtime, having absorbed Mr Paine's remarkably simple and cogent arguments against the monarchy, and having nothing else to do, I took a computerised test to find out what kind of careers I'm suited for. It said I should be an IT teacher, computer programmer, or...metallurgist.
I got so bored I even applied for a few jobs. CDG, the people running the course, have a vacancy for an "Area Support Tutor". I don't know what that is, but I've sent them the CV they helped me write a month ago. I wonder if they'll give me a reference?
Having replaced my laptop's hard drive, the keyboard is now dying. Seven of the keys just don't work, and integrated keyboards are generally neither fixable nor replaceable. I might get a USB keyboard, but the USB ports are getting unreliable too.
Some products are designed with built-in obsolescence. Others just fall apart. Much like government schemes.
Me Da Man!
Far too many things to do, all of them barely started.
First, I had to replace the hard disk of this here laptop. The hassle isn't replacing the disk - it's replacing all the data I didn't get around to backing up from it. Maybe 75% of it I did back up to CDR, but I don't know what is backed up to where, because the catalogue of backup CDs...is in the data I didn't back up. Yes, I know.
I've got a stepping machine and a radio in the garage, and a promise to myself to do at least half an hour's exercise on the former every day.
I'm also carrying around an unopened bar of chocolate to remind me to eat sensibly. Amazingly, the promise and the bar are working so far.
Looks like I've got another gig lined up. The Radical Art Group are putting together an exhibition on climate change, and putting on a fundraising evening to finance it.
I was the last of the five acts asked to perform. There's a blues-rock outfit, two emo/punk bands, a solo blues singer, and a DJ rounding off the evening. So I've got a month to come up with a twenty five minute set, half of it new material.
Ordinarily that wouldn't be difficult, but yesterday the latest pointless government scheme for dolebirds started, and takes up most of each day.
Day One: Nineteen long-term unemployed people in a stuffy room, filling out forms. The majority of the men - aged eighteen to fifty - want to work in the building trade or drive fork-lift trucks.
One is a landscape gardener/dustcart driver/bricklayer/security guard who can't afford anything paying less that 15K per year, just to pay off debts. He was quite successful in the 1980s, then lost out in the 1992 recession, and was left with wife, children, and a stack of loans that once seemed a breeze to deal with.
Another is a fitness freak who knows the building trade inside out but doesn't know one end of a computer from the other. There's a young woman who wants to marry her boyfriend as soon as she gets steady employment as a beauty therapist, and two in their late forties who dress and write like they were secretaries for thirty years.
And then there's me. But I never fit in.
It only seems like a month since I filled out exactly the same forms with similar people in an adjacent room of the same building - largely because it is only a month.
Day Two: Five people just didn't turn up - probably because they couldn't see the point of doing unpaid manual labour for firms who wouldn't offer them a job at the end of it.
The jobcentre call it an "Opportunity", the mysteriously funded charity who run the course call it a "Work Placement", and the rest of us call it a "Scam".
And on the third day - tomorrow - we get to put together our CVs, again.
Last Thursday the univerity's art department held its graduation show - where the various streams (photography, video, fine art etc) display the graduation pieces of this year's graduating student.
The show itself was quite impressive. After a decade or more of limp, derivative work from students,
The photography department has thankfully lost its fascination with Adobe Photoshop, and is rediscovering the potential of straightforward portraiture, landscape and still life. The students of Video Production (soon to be rechristened Creative Technologies) are going naturalistic too, with a series of low-key documentaries and high-octane soap operas.
Half the Fine Art-ists are still painting big confessional words on canvass, or cutting up Vogue magazine to comment on hypocritical attitudes to female sexuality blah blah blah.
Video (now rechristened "Creative Technologies") had the most and best wine, and I drank a pleasantly immoderate amount of it, spilling quite a lot over myself, coming on to a lot of male students, and on one occasion doing impromptu sociology with one of their mothers, dissecting the attitudes of working versus middle classes towards single parenthood in Britain.
Short version: The middle class are fascinated by it but refuse to admit it exists, and the working class regard it as a fact of life, unless they're social climbers.
I remember dozing off on a pavement after my friends left me behind to go to another party.
First, I had to replace the hard disk of this here laptop. The hassle isn't replacing the disk - it's replacing all the data I didn't get around to backing up from it. Maybe 75% of it I did back up to CDR, but I don't know what is backed up to where, because the catalogue of backup CDs...is in the data I didn't back up. Yes, I know.
I've got a stepping machine and a radio in the garage, and a promise to myself to do at least half an hour's exercise on the former every day.
I'm also carrying around an unopened bar of chocolate to remind me to eat sensibly. Amazingly, the promise and the bar are working so far.
Looks like I've got another gig lined up. The Radical Art Group are putting together an exhibition on climate change, and putting on a fundraising evening to finance it.
I was the last of the five acts asked to perform. There's a blues-rock outfit, two emo/punk bands, a solo blues singer, and a DJ rounding off the evening. So I've got a month to come up with a twenty five minute set, half of it new material.
Ordinarily that wouldn't be difficult, but yesterday the latest pointless government scheme for dolebirds started, and takes up most of each day.
Day One: Nineteen long-term unemployed people in a stuffy room, filling out forms. The majority of the men - aged eighteen to fifty - want to work in the building trade or drive fork-lift trucks.
One is a landscape gardener/dustcart driver/bricklayer/security guard who can't afford anything paying less that 15K per year, just to pay off debts. He was quite successful in the 1980s, then lost out in the 1992 recession, and was left with wife, children, and a stack of loans that once seemed a breeze to deal with.
Another is a fitness freak who knows the building trade inside out but doesn't know one end of a computer from the other. There's a young woman who wants to marry her boyfriend as soon as she gets steady employment as a beauty therapist, and two in their late forties who dress and write like they were secretaries for thirty years.
And then there's me. But I never fit in.
It only seems like a month since I filled out exactly the same forms with similar people in an adjacent room of the same building - largely because it is only a month.
Day Two: Five people just didn't turn up - probably because they couldn't see the point of doing unpaid manual labour for firms who wouldn't offer them a job at the end of it.
The jobcentre call it an "Opportunity", the mysteriously funded charity who run the course call it a "Work Placement", and the rest of us call it a "Scam".
And on the third day - tomorrow - we get to put together our CVs, again.
Last Thursday the univerity's art department held its graduation show - where the various streams (photography, video, fine art etc) display the graduation pieces of this year's graduating student.
The show itself was quite impressive. After a decade or more of limp, derivative work from students,
The photography department has thankfully lost its fascination with Adobe Photoshop, and is rediscovering the potential of straightforward portraiture, landscape and still life. The students of Video Production (soon to be rechristened Creative Technologies) are going naturalistic too, with a series of low-key documentaries and high-octane soap operas.
Half the Fine Art-ists are still painting big confessional words on canvass, or cutting up Vogue magazine to comment on hypocritical attitudes to female sexuality blah blah blah.
Video (now rechristened "Creative Technologies") had the most and best wine, and I drank a pleasantly immoderate amount of it, spilling quite a lot over myself, coming on to a lot of male students, and on one occasion doing impromptu sociology with one of their mothers, dissecting the attitudes of working versus middle classes towards single parenthood in Britain.
Short version: The middle class are fascinated by it but refuse to admit it exists, and the working class regard it as a fact of life, unless they're social climbers.
I remember dozing off on a pavement after my friends left me behind to go to another party.
...
My computer had died, and in a vaguely Frankenstein-like way, I'm rebuilding it to bring it back to life.
In the meantime, there will be a short delay. We apologise for the inconsequence.
In the meantime, there will be a short delay. We apologise for the inconsequence.
Who Da Man?
Apparently I got to know someone called Carlos about a year ago. We chatted - online or in person - and exchanged emails, and I even got to know him well enough to tell him my name.
I have absolutely no recollection of any of this. I didn't blog about it, and don't have any emails from him.
Now, Carlos wants to meet up (again?), at the weekend. He's sent me some texts to arrange it.
Did I have sex with this person? Did we discuss music, or politics? Did we meet online, through friends or by accident. or what?
There was a fellow called Carlos I met in about 2000. He was an electrical engineering student, a pretty good trance music producer, Greek and devastatingly good looking in that dark Mediterranean way. Straight and engaged, inevitably.
He'd found some of my early music on MP3.com (back when the site was still worth having), liked it and sent an appreciative email. We met once and talked philosophy and politics - then he just disappeared. It couldn't be him - I didn't have a mobile phone then.
There was someone last march, whose name I can't recall at all. An enthusiastic participant in amateur dramatics - he played the villain in "James and the Giant Peach" and couldn't see why anyone would want to stage a Beckett play. We had okay sex until I unexpectedly started to bleed from a shaving cut - which killed his enthusiasm rather quickly.
We might have exchanged numbers, but I can't imagine it's him.
There was an asian male nurse, but he called himself Jeff. There was a married guy on the Isle of Wight who really just wanted someone to talk to, but he was "Steve" (real name unknown). There was an architect who moved to Oxford with his (apparently wonderful) new boyfriend, but he actually was Steve.
There was someone who bore a suspicious resemblance to Peter Stringfellow - and I played an accidental role in breaking up his marriage. His harridan of a wife "found" the logs of his MSN chats with various men, presumably while dusting his computer, and grounded him.
He found ways meet men anyway, and she divorced him. he told me he'd only stayed with her for the sake of their son.
There was one man who more-or-less fits the description, who I quite liked for about half an hour on MSN Messenger, before he started getting bossy. It turned out he was a nouveau riche type with a luxury apartment and trouble keeping friends. We did arrange to meet in a cafe, but he stood me up.
This one seems...the least unlikely candidate.
And I have no desire at all to meet him.
Super Truther
After I die, I want to be reincarnated as a conspiracy theorist. That way, I could spend years burying myself in the minutiae of newspaper reports, eyewitness testimony, chemical tests, and obscure facts about weather balloons, ballistics and train timetables...without ever having to get involved in the real world.
How nice to be lost in a haze of suggestive recondrite contradictory factoids, and communicate only with people who share my obsessions, hermetic and hermitlike.
They say the twin towers collapsed vertically, just like in a controlled demolition of a towerblock. Except that in controlled demolitions, each part of the building is in simultaneous freefall, whereas when the towers collapsed the upper levels fell onto the lower, like vertical dominoes.
The steel frame of the tower might weaken enough to collapse if heated by enough jet fuel on fire. But there wasn't such a fire. Except some footage suggests there was. And in any case steel doesn't suddenly weaken when it reaches a certain temperature - it happens progressively.
The "third" tower was undamaged until it suddenly collapsed. Except it was actually badly damaged on the other side. Some witnesses said they saw a missile, and others a non-commercial plane hit the towers - though most didn't.
Why did the ambulance carrying Diana Spencer take forty five minutes to get to a hospital twelve minutes away? Unless it was actually thirty minutes and had a breakdown. Unless the breakdown was faked to give time to perform an abortion and (badly?) cover up evidence of pregnancy.
What happened to the mysterious white car, just how fast was Diana's car really travelling, was the driver drunk, was he that drunk, did the lights in the subway fail and was that deliberate?
According to Oliver Stone's movie "JFK", it would take a minimum of fourteen seconds to fire three shots from the bookstore where Oswald worked. The FBI put the figure more around seven seconds. So does this make a difference? And did the rifle have a defective sight or not? And was Oswald a good marksman or not? And is it possible to shoot through that much tree cover?
Was it Oswald shot Tippet, and if so how did he get to that crime scene in however many minutes it was, why did he double back and how did the police know where to find him? And if Jack Ruby was an agent why did he die in jail?
"9/11 Truthers", as they like to be known, are obviously right when they say the war on terror is just as big a fraud as the war on drugs, invading Iraq is about keeping oil in American industries and out of Chinese ones, and the threat from terrorists is at best exaggerated.
They're also right most of the time to disbelieve anything their government wants them to believe, and to hold the most cynical expectations of the CIA and military.
The details dug up by the best truthers are highly intriguing, and the arguments over the science fascinating. But it all boils down to one question: What kind of government agency would threaten the lives of its own colleagues and bosses, its political leaders, and its corporate associates for the sake of a giant propaganda stunt?
Is this scenario plausible?
The CIA, or some group within it, or some other government organisation, plans a wave of invasions of the middle east to secure oil supplies, and needs to manufacture some justification.
They decide that destroying the twin towers and blaming it on the middle east would do the job. They know that the towers are a major hub of the corporations which control the government and dictate the need to secure oil supplies in the first place. But what the hell, it'll look great on TV.
They also decide that destroying the white house would add to the justification. Who's in the white house they might not want to kill? No one much. Or let's be charitable and say they only decide to fake an attempt to do it.
And finally they decide on the best justification of all - an attack on the pentagon itself, hopefully killing many of their colleagues for maximum effect.
They sit back and ask themselves: would these events justify a war? And they answer yes.
Then they ask: is there some other way the war could be justified? It's late and they're tired, so they answer no.
Then: Aren't we going to kill a load of our co-workers, friends and superiors? They shrug and say "ce la vie".
And finally: What will the rest of the CIA (or whoever) do to us if/when they find out what we've done? They smile nervously and say "No one will ever find out. We're safe".
Not really.
For what it's worth, I think the British royal family could adapt to the ex-wife of the third in line to the throne having a muslim child - if indeed she was going to have one - without calling in the James Bond squad. Though others say I underestimate the racism of these people.
I think the CIA were quite capable of publicly killing their own nominal commander-in-chief for some reason that would seem trivial now. As were the mafia, and maybe the KGB or even a team whackjobs who met at the NRA and were amazingly lucky to get away with it.
I think Bob Marley did die of cancer, Tchaikovsky was not in a suicide pact, Rasputin wasn't gay, the Bilderberg group are a private club not a secret society, Robert Maxwell probably wasn't a MossAd agent, Jeff Rense is immensely gullible, David Icke is mentally ill...and floridation has no effect on either dental health or brain chemistry.
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Time
In a lot of short stories, and a lot of science fiction, the plot and characters are really just excuses to create the world where they happen. Often the political and cultural background is more interesting than what the characters do in the foreground - and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Anyway, here's a science fiction short story that's almost entirely background.
No one knew who had invented the time weapon, and no one could be certain which side started the war.
It was commonly believed that the weapon's invention, and its inventor, belonged to a timeline long since erased. Some thought they had evidence the war had its origins in a dispute over temporal colonisation rights with the enemy, which had been an ally at the time. Others stated confidently that the war had been religious in nature, though the religion itself had been since erased at source. A distinct minority favoured the notion that it was an unprovoked pre-emptive attack borne simply out of the fear of being attacked first.
The truth was that no one knew why the two empires were at war, and estimates of how long they had been fighting were necessarily vague, but all authorities agreed the other side must have attacked first.
A protective shield had been quickly developed after the first few inexpert attacks. The same technology behind the time weapon allowed an area to be defined which was immune to causality shift. The original plan had been to encase the entire continent in such an area, protecting the whole population from history change while the weapon removed the historical basis of the enemy.
Unfortunately there were two problems. First it appeared the enemy also had such a shield, and second, there was simply not enough energy to protect such a large area continuously.
The result was that the centre of the empire was protected by the shield, and the weapon was used to try to undo the damage done to the outlying regions. Thus the cities of the central area occupied a different timeline to the rest of the empire - indeed, occasionally the outlying regions occupied a history where there was no temporal war at all, or even no empire!
Communications between the centre and it's protectorates were therefore infrequent and confused. However, the centre could on no account afford to withdraw any part of its protection, simply because the centre was not self sufficient.
Supplies of food, raw materials and energy for the protective area had to come from outside the centre, and much planning and effort was spent in ensuring the history of the outlying regions was such that they could provide what was needed.
The enemy was presumably in a similar situation, and therefore many of the tactics adopted revolved around depriving the enemy of productive technology.
In effect, the temporal war had largely ceased to be a fight between two empires to erase each other's founding histories, and become an old fashioned war of attrition, each side trying to starve the other.
The invention of the time weapon had presumably been in an unprotected area, either an outlying region, or more likely the centre before the protective area had been established. Either way, knowledge of its construction was ferociously guarded, even in a timeline when it had never been invented.
It was therefore the holy grail of attack strategies to find some point in the enemy's history which they'd neglected to protect, which was pivotal in the chain of events leading to their acquisition of the weapon. So far though, all attempts to find it had been futile.
The enemy were thought to be a smaller political entity, seemingly occupying the same landmass, ending roughly three thousand years in the past. Historians asserted that it had originally been founded two thousand years before that, but had pushed back its founding date by at least a thousand years.
The empire's own plans for expansion included the stimulation of politically amenable states in the centuries leading up to it's founding, which would either retrogress the founding, or reduce opposition to initial expansion. Both outcomes would of course be desirable.
Recently, a bold proposal was put forward to create such states several millennia in the past, and even provide them with the means to invent their own time weapon. If successful, this would ensure that the enemy empire, when it comes into existence would find itself already contained on all sides by a pre-existing rival - namely the empire's own proxies.
At the last observation, the proposal was still controversial, but support was growing as the war continued with no victory in sight.
Anyway, here's a science fiction short story that's almost entirely background.
No one knew who had invented the time weapon, and no one could be certain which side started the war.
It was commonly believed that the weapon's invention, and its inventor, belonged to a timeline long since erased. Some thought they had evidence the war had its origins in a dispute over temporal colonisation rights with the enemy, which had been an ally at the time. Others stated confidently that the war had been religious in nature, though the religion itself had been since erased at source. A distinct minority favoured the notion that it was an unprovoked pre-emptive attack borne simply out of the fear of being attacked first.
The truth was that no one knew why the two empires were at war, and estimates of how long they had been fighting were necessarily vague, but all authorities agreed the other side must have attacked first.
A protective shield had been quickly developed after the first few inexpert attacks. The same technology behind the time weapon allowed an area to be defined which was immune to causality shift. The original plan had been to encase the entire continent in such an area, protecting the whole population from history change while the weapon removed the historical basis of the enemy.
Unfortunately there were two problems. First it appeared the enemy also had such a shield, and second, there was simply not enough energy to protect such a large area continuously.
The result was that the centre of the empire was protected by the shield, and the weapon was used to try to undo the damage done to the outlying regions. Thus the cities of the central area occupied a different timeline to the rest of the empire - indeed, occasionally the outlying regions occupied a history where there was no temporal war at all, or even no empire!
Communications between the centre and it's protectorates were therefore infrequent and confused. However, the centre could on no account afford to withdraw any part of its protection, simply because the centre was not self sufficient.
Supplies of food, raw materials and energy for the protective area had to come from outside the centre, and much planning and effort was spent in ensuring the history of the outlying regions was such that they could provide what was needed.
The enemy was presumably in a similar situation, and therefore many of the tactics adopted revolved around depriving the enemy of productive technology.
In effect, the temporal war had largely ceased to be a fight between two empires to erase each other's founding histories, and become an old fashioned war of attrition, each side trying to starve the other.
The invention of the time weapon had presumably been in an unprotected area, either an outlying region, or more likely the centre before the protective area had been established. Either way, knowledge of its construction was ferociously guarded, even in a timeline when it had never been invented.
It was therefore the holy grail of attack strategies to find some point in the enemy's history which they'd neglected to protect, which was pivotal in the chain of events leading to their acquisition of the weapon. So far though, all attempts to find it had been futile.
The enemy were thought to be a smaller political entity, seemingly occupying the same landmass, ending roughly three thousand years in the past. Historians asserted that it had originally been founded two thousand years before that, but had pushed back its founding date by at least a thousand years.
The empire's own plans for expansion included the stimulation of politically amenable states in the centuries leading up to it's founding, which would either retrogress the founding, or reduce opposition to initial expansion. Both outcomes would of course be desirable.
Recently, a bold proposal was put forward to create such states several millennia in the past, and even provide them with the means to invent their own time weapon. If successful, this would ensure that the enemy empire, when it comes into existence would find itself already contained on all sides by a pre-existing rival - namely the empire's own proxies.
At the last observation, the proposal was still controversial, but support was growing as the war continued with no victory in sight.
Labels:
Fiction
Helpful
I'm quite a helpful person. I'm also sometimes useful, which isn't quite the same thing.
Yesterday, Simon M called to say his computer had a virus which was making it unusable so could I sort out some security. I went around, thinking of the number of times I've been told a computer had a virus, only to find it had a corrupt registry, loose RAM chips or just a fragmented hard drive.
Judge then of my astonishment when it actually was a virus. A nasty and clever one too - it detected when I installed some cleanup software, and created a fake system emergency which made Windows shut down, forcing the user to either live with endless popups and a slow system, or reinstall the OS from scratch.
It beat me. All I could do was switch to the backup Windows installation I'd installed in a moment of foresight, and inoculate it with all the anti-virus and anti-spyware stuff I had.
After three hours I set off home, ready to catch up on all the sleep that hadn't happened the night before. But instead saw some comrades in a pub and felt morally compelled to join them.
Four hours later, pondering on how three people can individually have no money but can collectively buy each other too much beer, walking home and looking forward to an early night in bed, I got another call.
Roxanne C, who telephoned a few weeks ago to say her graduation film project was due in six hours so could I, erm, tell her how to do editing. Saying her brother Craig's final dissertation was due in fourteen hours and neither of them knew what to write so could I help.
Craig, who is young, slim, tall, dark and handsome, with the most gorgeous brown eyes. As well as irredeemably straight and about as organised as a hurricane in a scrapyard. About to fail a two year HND music course (roughly equal to two thirds of a degree), because although he's a very able multi-instrumentalist, he's not much good at writing about it.
Well, how could I say no? Seeing as I know pretty well why a trumpet sounds the way it does, but couldn't play one to save the world.
His dissertation concerns the integrability of non-western scales and playing techniques with western popular music. According to what he'd written, I was one of the experts he'd consulted. I remember the consultation - it took place while we were drunk in a pub, bellowing over a dreadful local band playing in a corner, about the role of prime numbers in traditional Indian sitar song structures.
It wasn't too difficult. All I had to do was tidy up a few sentences, write an extra thousand words, collate the bibliography and come up with a powerpoint presentation to summarise it all. With both of us drowsy and coming down with colds.
We even got a few hours sleep before the deadline, though not exactly simultaneously. It seems he can't sleep while I'm snoring, and I can't sleep while he's hitting me to make me stop. Apparently I have a very loud snore.
In the morning, we had three times the recommended dose of flu powder for breakfast, and thus invigorated I left to keep a brunch appointment with C, but he texted to cancel. He's got a stinking cold too. Get well soon, C.
So there we are. Another student helped up the academic ladder, another member of Roxanne's family who owes me a curry, and another reason why the world can't afford me to get a job.
Politique des Amis
First I bought a train ticket, then a pack of chewing gum. I fixed the wiring of my headphones with the gum, caught the train with the ticket, and set off to meet H.
One hour of techno mp3s and motion sickness later he met me exactly on time, which is just typical, and fifteen minutes later were were arguing about international politics.
Politically H has drifted somewhat to the right, which I suppose goes with getting a steady job and a mortgage - at age thirty nine after a life of academia and mindbroadening travel. Essentially he accepts the line that America is a non-imperial power acting mainly to prevent Arab imperialism by spreading democracy, its mistakes are due do George Bush being an insufficiently reined-in idiot, being in a war against muslims hasn't increased racism, and there really is a terrorist threat.
It's probably a good thing my disagreement on all these points was interrupted by a phone call from his mum.
I got to meet his friend Abo (I think), who is a computer technician, socialist, fan of artificial languages and speaker of Esperanto. Usually I have to explain such notions as DHCP, Cliffism and Lojban before talking about them - it was oddly disconcerting to chat with someone who knows more than I do about all the subjects people think I'm strange for knowing.
A bit like looking in a mirror - except that he's (a) French African and (b) possibly the gayest acting straight man I've ever met.
There was also Uve, H's German boyfriend. Who, unbelievably, had never heard of Doctor Who. so we spent half an hour trying to explain why a kid's adventure show about a timetravelling telephone box is (a) the longest running TV show in the world (b) a defining trope of British culture and (c) an essential part of being a gay man.
He thought the daleks looked like S&M dildos.
H and me spent most of the day applying multiple coats of green dulux to his bedroom wall. Yesterday I had one pair of jeans that didn't have paint stains - today I don't.
When the others had gone, we had a good long heart-to-heart about what it means to be happy with your life, why I'm not, and what I could do about it.
This is why I missed him - we could always argue about politics, and criticise each other's life choices, without it ever becoming personal. I may not like what he has to say about my situation, and in the end I may or may not agree with it, but I have to take it on board, because it's never meant either as insult of compliment.
I slept on a spare bed, and seeing as I'd contrived to be awake for the past 48 hours, snored like a log.
First thing I did back in Portsmouth - buy new a pair of headphones. In the shop there was a woman in front of me who couldn't see why she wasn't able to pay in US dollars. The argument went on for some minutes before she walked out in baffled disgust.
The staff all agreed that her behavior was just typical of American arrogance. When did this little cultural shift happen? When did shop assistants unselfconsciously criticise customers in front of other customers (namely, me)? And more than that, when did oafishness from ordinary American citizens become unsurprising, even expected?
I've met plenty of Americans - they've all been decent, interesting, intelligent folk, and I can't imagine my experience is unique. So when did this woman's behavior stop being regarded as bizarre and exceptional, and start being just the way those bloody yanks behave all the time?
On Monday evening, a forum on "Refugees and Globalisation". The speaker gave an intriguing central thesis, which I'd not considered in detail before.
We tend to regard forced migration as a byproduct of economic and social failures and crises. When economies collapse, wars flare up over shortages, or scapegoating turns to ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of people migrate simply to survive.
But what if the production of refugees isn't a result of the system's failures, but an integral part of the way the system works? We're not talking about some global conspiracy to destabilise infrastructures and flood the world with cheap labour as and when it's needed.
No, just as price fixing cartels are sometimes a product of successful competition rather than a failure of competition, just as the police have to become corrupt to do their jobs effectively, modern forced migration is both a result of globalised capitalism, and a sustainer of it.
Some people have "Eureka!" moments when a few seconds of insight show a pattern in apparent chaos. These forums give me "Doh!" moments, where what should have been obvious all along stands out in sharp relief.
Where Did All the Time Go?
I haven't seen H for about two years. How could it be that long? We went out almost every week for nine months, went for cycle rides and walks, saw a load of movies - and one rather painful stageplay. We drank innumerable pub beverages and disagreed about more subjects that I can count.
We also almost fell into being lovers once or twice - saved only by both being bruised from recent affairs, and both being a bit hopeless at the whole relationship thing anyway.
Now I've finally got around to getting back in contact, and with any luck we'll be spending Sunday together. I imagine there'll be a tour of his hometown, an update on his life...and probably some painting of his walls. But whatever, I've missed his company.
Normal for Portsmouth
Officially, I am supposed to visit the jobcentre every week, spending ten minutes with my "Jobsearch Advisor" (aka Dole Officer). This is a legal requirement for me to receive GPB57 per week.
In practice, appointments are set for every two weeks because there just aren't enough hours in the day to process every "jobseeker" every week. And meetings last more like three minutes.
Two months ago, a load of civil servants were made redundant nationwide, and in particular a full half of the staff in my local jobcentre were made, er, jobless. The official visit duration was cut from ten minutes to six, so the actual duration shrinks correspondingly.
Today's visit was to discuss the two week course they sent me on recently. In fact it was to tell me I have to go on another course, this one lasting thirteen weeks.
It's voluntary. I don't have to go. I am perfectly within my rights to say no. In the same way I'm within my rights to tell them I don't want their money so could they please stop paying me. With the same effect, in fact.
So, in four weeks (barring another administrative cockup), I move from "actively seeking work" to "intensively seeking work" with a company who, at some point in the three month run, will try to find me a work placement in a firm not more than ninety minutes train travel away,
That's a "work placement" not a "job placement". I don't get paid - instead I get "valuable experience", "reintegration into the working environment" and "a useful source of references". The firm presumably get someone who doesn't want to be there and does exactly as much work as his wages merit.
I've actually been on such a placement once before, at a crappy art gallery. They wanted me to set up an extensive website for them, catalogue twenty years worth of exhibitions, digitise their video collection, and repair their computers.
After three weeks I was asked to leave because I had an attitude problem - I'd told them their expensive video digitisation system would never function, and they'd paid three times the going rate for a room of obsolete computers that couldn't do what they wanted. Actually I was being diplomatic.
I later learned that most employees lasted about a month there - though I had one friend who walked out in disgust after five minutes. As I should have done.
That was 2001, and they've only just got a small website up.
Walking home through the shopping precinct, a middle aged woman asked me if I could spare money for a cup of tea - in exchange for a small purple flower. I gave her a coin and said she could give the flower to someone else...but she insisted on reading my palm.
She didn't actually read my palm - she put a stone on it and told me the lines said I was unhappy. The poor woman was obviously trying to do a cold reading and wasn't any good at it. So I helped her out, saying I was a journalist with girlfriend trouble. She told me I needed to learn to be happy with myself.
I had been wondering whether the whole routine was to distract me while a confederate picked my coat pockets. But no, there were no little movements to indicate a subtle hand. And in any case, any thief who wanted the used tissue paper in my left pocket or the fig biscuit in my right was welcome to them.
On the road just outside my house, a rather nice looking young man suddenly stopped his bicycle and swore loudly. "A cap from my tooth just fell out", he explained. He searched around on the road, found the cap...and put it back in his mouth.
Back home a letter was waiting for me. The gist was, "You emailed us your CV but you didn't get the job. However if you want to be on our non-paper database, please send us your paper CV".
We have a saying around here. "NFP" - Normal For Portsmouth. It means "slightly insane".
Spectacular
Eighteen months ago, the government spent GBP40 on getting me a pair of spectacles.
According the my "jobseekers agreement", I need to be ready and able to work. I can't work well without good vision, which means I need the specs, which I can't afford on my own, so they bought them for me, so I can get a job. Logical, yes?
Last month, someone trod on them, and they're beyond repair. So I need replacement specs. But I can't get them because I'm only allowed a new pair once every two years. This is to ensure I don't make a fortune by selling them to the hordes who share exactly my pattern of astigmatism, getting them replaced for free each time.
My eyesight is sufficiently bad that close work with screen text and the fiddlier hardware becomes...problematic. Rebuilding two computers last week took a lot longer than it should. So, with one hand officialdom propels me towards the workplace, and with the other it makes sure I can't work properly there.
This would be more ironic if there were any jobs around.
I've got myself a cheap off-the-shelf pair for reading, for use until December when I can get a repeat prescription. Anything more than two foot away, they blur into oblivion.
Think of a German-Jewish chemist circa 1920. That's how they make me look. Oy Vey, Mein Herr.
A very pleasant day out with C, trawling bookshops for the travelguides he collects, and trawling cafes for tea to drink while skimming them.
After buying four books and two magazines on travel in Eastern Europe, we ended up sitting on the grass, looking at birds. What? No no no. In a park with a great big birdcage in the centre, containing colourful parrots and cockatiels. And proletarian pigeons on top.
We bumped into someone I went to university with, many moons ago. Ralph E - one of those people who's a lovable disaster in almost every respect, but amazingly able in one or two.
When I first met him he had a broken leg from snowboarding. When we were all being shown how to use the university's email, his first (and only) message was to a department head, jokingly asking if she wanted his babies. He got banned from using email.
During the two years he lasted on the course, I don't think I saw him arrive on time once. Not that he did much arriving. It's possible there were times when he wasn't stoned - or maybe he was never stoned. There was no way to tell the difference.
Once, when he'd asked me to come and see him in the halls of residence but neglected to tell me the building or room number, I asked a caretaker on the off-chance he'd be able to find out. All the caretakers knew exactly where Ralph lived, and spoke of him with strained faces.
After being thrown off the course, he moved to Brighton, where he signed with a record company...who turned out to be a scam. He got on another course at the University of Brighton - and thrown off two years later.
So what was his amazing ability? He was a bloody brilliant jazz pianist. We recorded a semi-improvised track, which I probably still have somewhere. The keyboard was, of course, broken and stained, but his hands could just fly across it striking a rapid succession of complex chords.
Now, he's got a studio and records techno and experimental stuff. He's on MySpace and SoundClick as...CatGotWasted.
With any luck I'll be visiting H soon in his new home. He wants to know if I'm any good at painting walls. Hah!
Postman Kap
I've been commenting on blogs again, covering some of the subjects close to my cold, skeptical heart.
On agnosticism.
Has any one here ever, ever met an agnostic who went to church "just in case god exists"?
No, neither have I. Odd how some people who are quite happy to live as an atheist are scared to think as one.
On education
I can't speak for the US, but here in the UK, the emphasis is entirely on getting badly performing students up to a certain minimum level in "key skills" - numeracy, literacy and IT.
There is no encouragement for low and average achieving students to aim higher than "adequate". And none for high achievers to reach higher than they've already got.
You might call it a culture of mediocrity. Illiteracy is seen as a problem to be solved, rather than literacy seen as something to be maximised.
On freedom of expression.
Idiots have the right to free speech. They just don't have the right to automatic respect for what they say. They tend to confuse the two.
On alien encounters.
There is a vast amount of evidence for extraterrestrial visitation. There is also a vast amount for each and every religion, and a lot of mutually exclusive conspiracy theories. At the time of Galileo the church had whole libraries of evidence for terracentrism, and right now there are extensive websites citing arguments for creationism.
Yes, there’s a lot of evidence around for all these ideas. It’s just that none of it’s any good.
On, creationism. I decided not to post this one - there's not much point in talking to people who long ago decided not to listen.
Oh I see. If there is a creator than it must be the christian god, who never forgives people for using the intellects he gave them, and casts them into hell. So I force myself to not believe in creation, to avoid contemplating the prospect of hellfire.
And atheism is a theistic position.
Just a few small details. To accept a creator is not the same as to accept any god posited by any religion, let alone specifically the christian one.
The "pit of hell" notion is the result of a mistranslation in 2 Kings.
And atheism is theistic in the same way vegeratianism is a kind of meat eating.
And on, er, creationism again.
A student journalist wrote a very silly and confused article on creationism in schools, suggesting that it has a place in ethical debate - and besides that, it might be true because, like, scientists don't know everything.
I wrote a response to just one of her points.
"the theory of evolution is also not testable"
Of course it is. If Darwin's theory of "descent with modification by natural selection" is true, then some events are possible and others impossible. If you document the impossible events happening, you've disproved evolution.
You test a theory by trying to make it fail. You do that by searching for phenomena that it can't explain. If you fail to find any, the theory is provisionally "proven" - until you do.
If changes in species characteristics over generations are caused by something other than the mechanism proposed by Darwin, then the pattern of change would be different.
You might get reptiles growing fur, or horses developing wheels, or humans getting a third eye. Darwin's mechanism not only explains why reptiles can develop scales, it also explains why they can't develop fur - and why they can modify their scales into feathers.
No reptile has fur, there are no equines that run on wheels, and there's no sign of humans developing extra eyes.
Until something like that happens, Darwin's theory is safe.
Actually, there's a lot more to it than that. What I've given is a Popperian view of science, which has the advantage of being neat and simple, but the disadvantage of being oversimple.
She ought to know Popper's work already, as she quotes Kuhn, his protege and critic.
Imre Lakatos gave a much more refined version, whereby scientists deal with apparent disproofs - or "anomalies" - with a body of auxiliary hypotheses that temporarily shore up the theory they're investigating, until either the anomalies can be explained by the main theory...or the theory eventually collapses under the weight of so many unexplained anomalies.
But I wouldn't want to burden a journalist with such detail. They're generally not very bright people, and don't cope well with complexity.
What's on DV?
Mother's got a new DVD recorder. That's the short version. But I also wrote an ever so slightly longer version. Here it is.
Sometimes I think I live in a very strange family of obsessives. Well, in this post, judge for yourself, and at the same time, learn a little about the technology you probably use all the time.
If you want to build up your own collection of digital videos recorded from cable and television, you've got basically two options - MPEG2 and MPEG4.
These are two related file formats developed by, amazingly, the MPEG - Motion Picture Experts Group - and each has it's advantages and disadvantages.
There is, by the way, no MPEG3, to avoid confusion with the MP3 sound format, though there was (and is) the outdated MPEG1 format.
Now, MPEG2 is the kind of encoding for video and audio used on DVDs (where, for some reason, it's called VOB), and on the TiVo system. It's high quality, playable on all DVD machines, and nearly impossible to edit or change once recorded.
This means, if you've recorded an episode of a TV show with five minutes other stuff either end and three advert breaks, you're stuck with all the stuff you don't want. And seeing as a typical episode without ad breaks is fourty two minutes, that means about one half of what you've recorded is annoying junk that just takes up space on your DVD or hard disk.
MPEG4, on the other hand, can be edited. It also gives much smaller files for the same picture quality, and is much more configurable in terms of file size and quality of both picture and sound.
MPEG2 uses the MP2 sound format (or occasionally WAV). MPEG4 can use whatever sound format you like, though it's most usual to use MP3, which is a more advanced version of MP2.
If you download shows and movies from the net, they will almost certainly be in MPEG4 - probably the subtype called DivX.
Unfortunately, only a few DVD players can play MPEG4 files, though it's easy to set up your computer to do it.
DVD (MPEG2) recorders are now cheaply available, much as VCRs once were, and recordable DVDs are trivially cheap. There are a very few commercially available MPEG4 recorders around, but almost certainly you'll have to record them using a computer and burn the result to CDR or DVDR, and that computer may wind up being dedicated to doing just that.
So you have a choice. MPEG2 is easily recordable straight to DVD, and is playable on any DVD player, but is rather inflexible about file size, and there's (effectively) no way to cut out the stuff you don't want.
MPEG4 is very flexible, and you make a big saving on file size just by editing out the junk, but you probably can't play it on your DVD machine, and you have to go through the rigmarole or recording to computer and burning to disc.
Over the last half decade or so, me and mother have collected hundreds (something over one thousand) of DVDRs, each containing between three and six films, documentaries, concerts and TV show episodes, all in MPEG4.
Which means on the one hand, we have a vast choice of good stuff to watch when we want. And on the other hand, we spend far too much time editing, burning and cataloging the stuff.
For a few months I did the same thing with DAB radio. But it all just took up too much time.
So, in a bid to get our lives back, we've got a DVD recorder. Works just like an old fashioned VCR, with all the limitations and simplicity that implies.
So now mother can return to studying for her fourth (or is it fifth?) degree, this time in music theory. I can get around to my own music, and the writing and messing around with computers that's got squeezed out of the timetable. And we can just fast forward through the ad breaks.
Small Beer
I'm told I should stop drinking spirits in pubs, because (a) it's expensive, (b) they get me rather drunk, and (c) they're full of calories. So I should drunk beer or wine instead.
Pub wine is (a) expensive and (b) vinegar. Beer divides into an incomprehensible array of subtypes, according to whether it's light or dark, made with barley, wheat, rye or corn, fermented with wild or cultivated yeast, flavoured with hops or fruit, bubbled through with nitrogen or not, filtered or pasteurised or not, and a load of other considerations.
There's the overlapping categories of bitter, mild, stout, barleywine, saison, lambic and many more. There's also "Real Ales", which are unfiltered, unpasteurised, and the consistency of porridge.
However, half the beer in the world is larger, which combines the colour of cat urine with the social sophistication of cat urine and the flavour of cat urine.
So, last night I was persuaded to try a pint of Kronenberg beer. It was a bit like drinking pulverised stale bread. I managed half a glass. The handsome barman advised me against trying the Fosters beer, on account of it being exactly the same, only weaker.
So I tried Guinness with blackcurrant. I was surprised at it being quite pleasant, but after the first third of a glass it became the liquid equivalent of trying to eat six dry crackers in a row.
There is a theory that, if you don't want to drink too much in a pub, you should order something you don't like much. But there is another theory that the whole point of going into a public house is to drink too much, enjoy it, and tell the barman how handsome he is. Which I think I'll go back to doing.
Or try cider.
My telephone is my alarm clock. It wakes me up whenever someone needs my help in something computer related.
Today my morning call was from Stephen P, whose graduation film project was six hours from the final deadline, and had gone pear shaped.
The sound was all wrong, and the editing needed to be redone, and half the audio files wouldn't read, and he hadn't slept for two days, and his computer was a load of rubbish.
Between us we got it done ten minutes before the deadline. I think the university should pay me a retainer for the students I help pass courses.
C's going back to college - studying to be a holiday rep/tour guide. On the one hand, it's a great idea because he'll get to see all the wild and exotic places he loves. On the other, he'll have to drag around a coachload of boozy morons to do it.
No, I'm pleased for him.
In the evening there was a debate on the causes - and possible solutions - to climate change. There were four speakers, who laid out their positions.
Speaker 1: The apparently insane and destructive actions of governments and corporations makes sense if you understand the market system. Remove the market and you remove the actions.
Speaker 2: Ordinary people are to blame for being greedy. There needs to be a global change in the way people think, a rejection of consumerism and an embrace of dignified poverty.
Speaker 3: Environmentally aware people need to get involved in party politics, to pressure governments to rein in the corporations that control them.
Speaker 4: You can't trust any politician. The human race must return to living off the land in small villages.
There followed a somewhat unenlightening debate between various camps with half-formed ideas.
Someone said the solution was to drop out of all political activity, because all politics is corrupt. Another came out with the old chestnut about human nature being unchangably greedy - except when it wasn't. And there was much talk about somehow creating a spiritual awakening (whatever that means) in the human race.
My own small contribution ran like this:
You want to persuade humanity to wear a hairshirt to protect its future. There are roughly 6.6 billion humans on the planet, and lets say half of these are in such poverty that they can't make sacrifices.
Now lets say you conduct the most massively successful publicity campaign the world has ever seen, and persuade 10% of the target audience to reduce their carbon footprint by 10% each.
In this utopian scenario you've persuaded 33 million people to make fairly small sacrifices in their lives. Congratulations, you've reduced the global footprint by 1%. To make a difference you might need 80%.
There was also the small unmentioned issue that a group of 40ish had shrunk to around 20 because of internal power struggles, and these were the people trying to save the planet by telling poor people to make themselves poorer.
I had a long discussion with Speaker 4 afterwards. He said mankind needs to return to natural practices - mud huts are more natural than houses, eating apples is more natural than eating apple pies, and hand pulled ploughs are more natural than horse drawn ones. Though ploughs are unnatural anyway.
I spent 20 minutes trying to get him to define "natural" in this context. He couldn't. I suggested this might mean his ideas were flawed. He didn't see why.
Why are most good people mad?
Things to See, People to Do
Now that I'm no longer spending six hours a day snorting derision at powerpoint presentations, I've got time to do useful things...
...like building a computer out of spare parts for a friend. It's four times faster and twice as reliable as the old one. And refuses point blank to connect to the modem. After three telephonic consulations with NTL in India, they recommend...a new modem.
Someday soon I hope to have time to rebuild my own computer.
...like being stood up three times in as many days by a man who says "buy you a beer" to mean "complain about my girlfriend", and "catch up" to mean "give you a blowjob". Maybe I should be the one standing him up?
...like going to a public debate on Iraq and Islamophobia.
Special Branch made sure we all knew they were going to be there, just in case peace campaigners declared war on America The Great Satan. They weren't actually there of course.
The stewards tried to break up the meeting by quoting regulations. They left when someone told them what the regulations actually were.
The main speaker cancelled at the last moment - either because Special Branch called him too, or just because he generally does.
There was the inevitable "intervention" by an inept (though rather cute) rightwinger, who spoke in a stream of unconnected cliches - "What's the price of freedom?", "progress of democracy", "How many more 7/7s?" etc.
There was vague talk of a campaign of civil disobedience - which would require thousands of confident citizens unafraid to go to jail to make a point, whereas what we have is hundreds of people scared they'll go to jail anyway for no reason.
There was also talk of combatting police racism by getting more non-white officers in the force. This is a little like trying to tame hornets by releasing fruitflies into the swarm.
...like letting the internet know what I thought of the latest episode of Dr Who,
homeopathy,
Ann Coulter's eulogy on the late great Reverend Jerry Falwell,
and how to write bad popular science books.
...like getting back to writing.
...like building a computer out of spare parts for a friend. It's four times faster and twice as reliable as the old one. And refuses point blank to connect to the modem. After three telephonic consulations with NTL in India, they recommend...a new modem.
Someday soon I hope to have time to rebuild my own computer.
...like being stood up three times in as many days by a man who says "buy you a beer" to mean "complain about my girlfriend", and "catch up" to mean "give you a blowjob". Maybe I should be the one standing him up?
...like going to a public debate on Iraq and Islamophobia.
Special Branch made sure we all knew they were going to be there, just in case peace campaigners declared war on America The Great Satan. They weren't actually there of course.
The stewards tried to break up the meeting by quoting regulations. They left when someone told them what the regulations actually were.
The main speaker cancelled at the last moment - either because Special Branch called him too, or just because he generally does.
There was the inevitable "intervention" by an inept (though rather cute) rightwinger, who spoke in a stream of unconnected cliches - "What's the price of freedom?", "progress of democracy", "How many more 7/7s?" etc.
There was vague talk of a campaign of civil disobedience - which would require thousands of confident citizens unafraid to go to jail to make a point, whereas what we have is hundreds of people scared they'll go to jail anyway for no reason.
There was also talk of combatting police racism by getting more non-white officers in the force. This is a little like trying to tame hornets by releasing fruitflies into the swarm.
...like letting the internet know what I thought of the latest episode of Dr Who,
...pure runaround. Almost no plot, not much characterisation, just a series of arbitrary problems stacked on top of each other with the clock ticking.
...*I am not interested in people [on TV] being emotional at me*. I don't find it cathartic, clensing or spiritually truthful and I don't think it reveals anything useful about the human condition. And even if it does I don't want it on Saturday evening when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself in front of TV aimed at people 30 years younger than me.
homeopathy,
I suspect the thinking behind homeopathy originally looked something like this:
1) Arsenic (for instance) kills in large doses.
2) In smaller doses it doesn't kill, but induces illness. So the "bad" effect is lessened by dilution.
3) In smaller doses still, it can be a treatment for angina, and indeed impotence. So now the bad has flipped over into the good.
4) So therefore if you continue to dilute the doses, the good effects will be further magnified.
(3) is obviously an error, though an understandable one. (4) is a second, seperate error.
One issue is that there are actually two incompatible versions of homeopathy. One uses thinking like that above. The other, which I think derives from misunderstanding the first, and is in a distinct minority, is that the effect of the substance is not reversed but simply increased by dilution.
The first will use caffine as a sedative. The second will use a very small dose of a sedative...as a strong sedative. The second is the one "verified" by the Bienvenu's "Memory of Water" experiments.
However, I think the situation is even more complicated than that, because a lot of fans of homeopathy have such a vague understanding of its principles that they can flip-flop between the two different homeopathies.
Ann Coulter's eulogy on the late great Reverend Jerry Falwell,
Which is the simpler explanation? Are people like Coulter, Phelps and Robertson really exactly as deranged and hypocritical as they appear, or are they deep-cover agents putting themselves through hell to slowly undermine groups almost as demented as they're pretending to be?
I think Coulter started out as a genuine right-winger who occasionally said shocking things to get attention, and has drifted into being an automatic contrarian.
and how to write bad popular science books.
* Use exclamation marks at least three times on each page.
"...and that's a lot of nothing!"
"...black holes fulful all the requirements for being the location of hell!"
"...a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion times! Wow!"
* Use units that sound like they give you a feel of scale, but don't.
"...enough water to fill three hundred football stadiums."
"If the earth were the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree."
"A million years - that's ten thousand grandfather's lifetimes."
* Try to make scientists interesting by making their lives sensational.
"Alan Turing (who may or may not have committed suicide by swallowing cyanide because he couldn't live with being gay)..."
"Einstein fled Hitler's Germany as a Jew to the safety of tolerant America."
"Kurt Godel starved himself to death because he became paranoid that everyone was trying to poison him. However, several years before this..."
"The great mathematician Richard Montague, shortly before his violent death at the hands of a crazed prostitute..."
...like getting back to writing.
Murder Notes 2
A few more ideas for murder mysteries...
A man gives himself a series of alibis, by confessing to a priest that he meeting a woman for an adulterous affair at the time of each crime. He knows the priest has broken confessional secrecy before, and will do so again.
Three murders, all well reported in the press, all with the same MO. One suspect can be tied to the first and third, but has a cast iron alibi for the second. The second murder was by a copycat killer.
A spate of poisonings lands a series of people in hospital, where they die. The people are unconnected apart from two, who are members of the same family. The symptoms of all before reaching hospital are slightly different from each other. There are various toxins found in each bloodstream after death, but one is common to all.
The spate was partly a statistical fluke. The two family members were poisoned by the same person, who just wanted to hurry up his inheritance. The other poisonings were just a coincidental cluster of food poisonings, and the family killings would have been noticed immidiately if they hadn't been hidden by the cluster.
One of the doctors at the hospital is the real killer, administering the common poison to patients when they arrived in his ward. He chose patients with low life expectancy to hide what he was doing. His motive: he just enjoyed it.
It's been said that there are only four basic motives for murder - love, lust, loathing and lucre. But I think there are many others that don't fit into these categories.
What about shame? A mother kills a journalist who is writing a biography of her pop-star son, to prevent her finding out about the son's shameful secret - that at school he got a girl pregnant and forced her to have an abortion, after which she suicided.
The mother pieced together what had happened from clues about her son's behavior and what she'd heard about the girl. But the mother had worked it out wrong - she was protecting a secret that existed in her own imagination.
What about murder as a trial run for another murder - one that never takes place? Or is botched?
Murder as ceremony? As initiation into a sect? A secret society of super-powerful businessmen, and for someone to join they need to prove their ruthlessness and determination by killing a stranger.
Murder as experiment? Think of Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rope", where the maguffin is the protagonists comitting a murder as an intellectual exercise, just to see if they can do it.
A wants to kill B. B and C are sisters who resemble each other and often visit each other's homes. A writes a series of anonymous hate letters to C, pretending to be an unbalanced stalker, vacillating between love and hate for her.
A shoots B from a distance, making it appear the stalker has attempted to shoot C, but got the wrong sister.
There are plenty of mysteries where the killer covers their tracks by advancing and retarding clocks. How about one where they get caught because their own watch was slow?
"Strangers on a Train" was about two people who met once by chance and swapped murders. How about a group who are all members of a larger association - say 5 members of a sports club of 30 - who draw lots to each perform one murder for one of the others.
The trail of clues for each killing would lead back to the sports club, but the obvious suspect for each would have an alibi (such as being at the club at the time), and there are 29 others possible suspects.
For further obfuscation, one of the murders was of the wrong victim - mistaken identity.
The police will quickly cotten on to the link between a spate of murders and the sports club. But they might be confused by a staged failed murder of one of the group of five.
A man gives himself a series of alibis, by confessing to a priest that he meeting a woman for an adulterous affair at the time of each crime. He knows the priest has broken confessional secrecy before, and will do so again.
Three murders, all well reported in the press, all with the same MO. One suspect can be tied to the first and third, but has a cast iron alibi for the second. The second murder was by a copycat killer.
A spate of poisonings lands a series of people in hospital, where they die. The people are unconnected apart from two, who are members of the same family. The symptoms of all before reaching hospital are slightly different from each other. There are various toxins found in each bloodstream after death, but one is common to all.
The spate was partly a statistical fluke. The two family members were poisoned by the same person, who just wanted to hurry up his inheritance. The other poisonings were just a coincidental cluster of food poisonings, and the family killings would have been noticed immidiately if they hadn't been hidden by the cluster.
One of the doctors at the hospital is the real killer, administering the common poison to patients when they arrived in his ward. He chose patients with low life expectancy to hide what he was doing. His motive: he just enjoyed it.
It's been said that there are only four basic motives for murder - love, lust, loathing and lucre. But I think there are many others that don't fit into these categories.
What about shame? A mother kills a journalist who is writing a biography of her pop-star son, to prevent her finding out about the son's shameful secret - that at school he got a girl pregnant and forced her to have an abortion, after which she suicided.
The mother pieced together what had happened from clues about her son's behavior and what she'd heard about the girl. But the mother had worked it out wrong - she was protecting a secret that existed in her own imagination.
What about murder as a trial run for another murder - one that never takes place? Or is botched?
Murder as ceremony? As initiation into a sect? A secret society of super-powerful businessmen, and for someone to join they need to prove their ruthlessness and determination by killing a stranger.
Murder as experiment? Think of Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rope", where the maguffin is the protagonists comitting a murder as an intellectual exercise, just to see if they can do it.
A wants to kill B. B and C are sisters who resemble each other and often visit each other's homes. A writes a series of anonymous hate letters to C, pretending to be an unbalanced stalker, vacillating between love and hate for her.
A shoots B from a distance, making it appear the stalker has attempted to shoot C, but got the wrong sister.
There are plenty of mysteries where the killer covers their tracks by advancing and retarding clocks. How about one where they get caught because their own watch was slow?
"Strangers on a Train" was about two people who met once by chance and swapped murders. How about a group who are all members of a larger association - say 5 members of a sports club of 30 - who draw lots to each perform one murder for one of the others.
The trail of clues for each killing would lead back to the sports club, but the obvious suspect for each would have an alibi (such as being at the club at the time), and there are 29 others possible suspects.
For further obfuscation, one of the murders was of the wrong victim - mistaken identity.
The police will quickly cotten on to the link between a spate of murders and the sports club. But they might be confused by a staged failed murder of one of the group of five.
Labels:
Writing
Citizen Pain
Yesterday, I was gifted with not one but three powerpoint presentations in a row. Here is a summary of the wisdom they blessed me with:
(1) "Why Learning Is Important"
* "Learning takes effort."
* "Your brain is not a sponge."
* You've got to "Future proof yourself."
* "Have a go - what have you got to lose?"
(2) "The Importance of Teamwork."
* A business is a bit like a football team.
* We don't talk about bosses, middle managers and workers anymore. Instead we have:
Activators (who do what the bosses used to do - decide on a course of action and order everyone else to follow it)
Communicators (who do what middle managers used to do - keep everyone in line), and
Problem Solvers (who do what the workers used to do - the actual work).
* You've got to believe in the project.
* "There is no I in Team."
(3) "Personal Motivation" (or How not to get Depressed When Things are Shit)
* "Motivation is an emotion."
* "Negativity is an emotion."
* One reason to lose motivation is when "financial incentive is withdrawn".
* "Motivation comes from within."
* Some people are born with an "innately high level of motivation" - you have to become one of them.
* If you get depressed, it's your fault for not telling yourself enough comforting lies.
There was one high point though. When the presenter, speaking in a dull self hating monotone, said in a voice without a trace of humour "You've got to have a sense of humour, or you'll end up killing someone."
And today...another two powerpoint presentations! One on Heath and Safety, and one on Discrimination and Diversity.
To summarise the first: If you fall out a window marked "Do Not Open", it's your fault.
And the second: Don't talk about anything except work at the workplace, and keep at least two feet away from everyone.
The trouble with trying to regulate the offence given over issues like race is, there's no way to know how much offence will be taken in advance. Oh, and it's also impossible to define race.
The trouble with outlawing harassment is, you don't know what forms of contact will be interpreted as harassment by which people in what circumstances until after it's happened. Oh, and claiming harassment can be used to harass.
The trouble with embracing diversity while preaching equality is...you can't. You end up telling people they can be as diverse as they like, so long as they don't show it, and they're all equally valid because they're all equally anodyne.
I think the real issue though, is that the public are being threatened with fines and prison sentences to make them behave like any decent human being. As though they were children and the sin could be beaten out of them.
The government is trying to define what it means for people to get along with each other, as though getting along could be codified in an algorithm applicable to all occasions. The fact that the algorithm is unusably vague is inevitable, and that it's self contradictory shows why the whole project is misguided,
There's also the small issue that hate crimes are highly punished by a system which encourages them every day on television, but that's a different irony.
For what it's worth:
I won't make friends with you just because you're jewish, but I'll argue with anyone who bullys you for it, and with you if you bully someone else.
If you tell me an off-colour joke, I might respond with an even worse one.
And if you're happily heterosexual man I might flirt with you, and expect you to be grown up enough to understand how it's meant.
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