punkscience goes on holiday . . . .

Yes, I know you're going to have to find something else to do when you're bored of wanking over porn but I need a holiday. Back in 10 days. With a tan. Yeah.

DEFRA: UK has a "good record" on tackling climate change

Yes, it sounds like a bad joke, I know.

Fuckers.

tidal power takes off

Tidal stream turbines- with a far smaller ecological impact than the vast tidal lagoon projects- are being installed in the irish sea.

Nuclear generation is dumb

More evidence, to add to the exisiting mountain, that nuclear generation is a stoopid idea that will not help with sustainable development.

population or overpopulation??

One of the founders of Z magazine has penned this monologue. I am confused, impressed, sceptical and enthused at one and the same time. What a bizarre experience.

I'm gonna have to think about this one.


Thoughts:

If education, development and equality always accompany a falling birth rate, what about patriarchal societies such as Muslim fundamentalist ones or Chinese ones? Where are the falling birth rates there?

Indepedence and hypocrisy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I never encountered this gods-awful piece of shite -and I'm glad, because I nearly had a fucking aneurysm reading the Media Lens media alert over it. I really can't bring myself to read the actual piece- the title is more than enough!

The critique of mass media production by the Media Lens boys is their usual cutting stuff and should be a compulsory part of children's education so that they are aware of just how these corporate mouthpieces manipulate public perception and can go forth into the world equipped to deal with the corporations's propaganda trap (Jesus! Can you imagine the furore if the government tried to introduce that into the national curriculum! Its like a wet dream!).

I know I regularly link to articles from the Independent but I take everything I read at face value and there's a lot of crap in there that I ignore or don't bother to read because its irrelevant to modern society's problems as I see them.

Word.

social therapy

Johann was writing about Diana- about whom I couldn't give less of a shit, but this passage caught my attention.

"In her brilliant book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, the American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich shows that human beings have evolved a deep atavistic need for moments when we all come together and engage in shared rituals. She writes: "Rock art from around the world depicts stick figures dancing in lines and circles at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. According to some anthropologists, dance and ritual helped bond prehistoric people together in the large groups that were necessary for collective defense against marauding predators." This instinct never went away. Our culture is very good at some things: generating wealth, say, or providing sexual freedom. But we are very bad at meeting this need for what the great sociologist Emile Durkheim called "collective effervescence" - "the ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds". Instead we lived in sealed-off concrete boxes, and when we stand together, we look down and shuffle through our i-Pod playlists."

This is a clear advocation of dance music as a social therapy: The chance to meet and interact with strangers on neutral territory; the ability to bond with them on the dancefloor without having to give your name, where you livem what you do or a dozen other icebreakers to conversation; moreover, a place to feel part of the group and to express this through mutual appreciation of the spiritual experience of really, really filthy beats. Wicked!

Naomi Klein is a Goddess!

The text of her talk at Democracy Now! is available here. Its pretty profund shizz.

Peak Oil will bring economic turmoil to a neighbourhood near you by 2012

Climate change is, of course, not the only major challenge facing our civilisation these days. This one is likely to be felt a lot sooner, however. The imminence of the economic and social turmoil that will inevitably accompany this phenomenon is one of the reasons why I believe our government has already missed the boat when it comes to renewable generation. If a concerted development and investment program had been put into effect before the turn of the century we would already be seeing technological progress and a healthy export industry. As oil prices start to spike we would be in a comfortable position to initiate a smooth transfer to sustainable generation. This hasn't happened. Tony decided to invade Iraq instead. (I have a mad vision of him sitting at a table in No. 10 with the two options scribbled on bits of paper and pinned to a dartboard whilst he closes his eyes and prepares to throw a dart.)

Wow! Anthony DiMaggio kicks arse!

This dude has done an awesome job on unbalanced media coverage of various topics in the States from Hugo Chavez to Iraq.

I think Nick Cohen's a right twat but . . . .

. . . . this piece on CiF is really good. Nick is pro-war and, therefore, a moron. However you can't deny that his article is well-written and his point well argued without (wisely) any attempt to resort to his usual position of neocon cristo-fascist-cuddling, endarkenment-embracing Islamophobia.

He's still a fucking deluded moron though.

KILL ALL HIPPIES, or at least ban them from the climate camp at Heathrow

From this cover story in the Independent:

"At one end, Mayer Hillman, the 76-year-old climate-change campaigner, is saying to a crowd: "We are on a trajectory towards the extinction of life on earth. In the main, people have done this unwittingly, so it can be excused. But now we know what we are doing, and it cannot be excused.""

The "extinction of life on earth"- what utter, utter bollocks! If you really want to fuck a legitimate cause like the climate camp then all you have to do is let in a bunch of sandal-sporting, tree-hugging fuckwits like this and let their absurd polemic destroy any scientific credibility you might have. The fucking retards! This is the epitomy of counter-productive inclusivity. Handing the podium to unqualified, uninformed retards who simply want their chance in the spotlight to shout abusrd claims of apocalypse and judgement. Who the fuck are they going to have up their next? -Reg Vardy? -Ted Hagger? -A spokesperson from the insititute of "sacred ecology"?

Fucking, unscientific, woolly bastards!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHRGHGHGHGRHGRHGRHGRHGHHH!!!!!


Additional:

Another example of anti-science here. Apparently the construction of offshore wind farms will create a potentially devastating threat to whales and dolphins due to the noise of construction.

So, I agree that the construction phase might cause some disturbance to cetaceans but as for "the laying of cables and disturbances caused by service boats" creating a perpetual impact- what the fuck do you think is happening out in the Channel, and North and Irish seas at the moment? These are the busiest shipping waters in the world- whales are frequently hit by surface vessels and dolphins massacred in their thousands by fishing nets. How can you distinguish any extra effect from a very worthy construction project?

Wankers!


The complete detachment from reality of this article is revealed by the closing sentence:


"By 2020, offshore wind power is expected to account for 20 per cent of the UK's energy needs."


Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . . NO!


Actually, by 2020, the government has committed to generating 20% of its electricity (very, very different from energy) from renewable sources including offshore wind generation. I am going to give the editor shit.




Additional additional:
-To clarify my fury inthe opening section of this post I am actually ranting about this dirty hippy's gross overstatement of the threat posed by unsustainable development to life on this planet- we will never exterminate all life on this planet and once we have done our worst civilisation will undoubtedly, in the millenia to follow, surely rise again. The threat of human idiocy is specific to our current civilisation and nothing close to "the extinction of all life on earth".

sociopathy grows from a sick society

Decca Aitkinhead (cool name!) has a profound point to make on CiF about the proliferation of violent assaults by youths.


"The proper question to ask isn't how to stop children getting their hands on booze, but why so many feel the need to self-medicate themselves into states of violent psychosis."

"Happy people do not, as a rule, self-medicate with alcohol, or want to hurt innocent strangers when they have. They just don't - whatever the licensing laws may or may not allow. If your head is an essentially OK place to be, you won't suffer from a constant, ravening desire to get out of it."

"This kind of drinking shouldn't be mistaken for hedonism, but nihilism."

I can profoundly empathise with this position as I was in a similar state as a child. I wasn't violent- quite the opposite- I was often the target of violence but I was a deeply unhappy child and I used to self-medicate with alcohol at first and then stronger substances as I grew older. To an extent, I still do. But my anger arose from a very clearly perceived injustice: As a grammar school student I was continually forced to conform to victorian standards of discipline and ethics which rang false with my intuited humanist values of equality, secularism and freedom. My peers in my home town were rarely from the same shool, who's catchment area was far wider than local comprehensives and consequently I was outnumbered by "townies" as they were known at my establishment. The townies- understandably- treated me as a "toff", despite the fact that I was at the school on a scholarship, and I was a pariah to them. So, rejected by my school fellows for being a troublemaker and challenging authoritarianism and my local peers for being part of a perceived elite I had few friends and was even actively persecuted by some of the townies, leading to a sense of rejection and despair and a vicious circle of self-obsession and recrimination that was relieved through intoxication

This situation is far from that of the "youths" described in Decca's article but the underlying unhappiness is the link. The children of today cannot see the values that schools attempt to impose upon them anywhere else in society. Obedience to the law and the rejection of violence as a means to an end: Hmmmmmm, lets try and think of a recent example of government action which might reveal the hypocrisy of demanding that our children adhere to such principles. Moderation and responsibility: Media frenzies over celebrities engaging in affairs, public brawls, coke binges and pointless excess would instantly invalidate that one. Engaging with "the community" and a sense of civil duty: Reports of rampant capitalism, fat cats, city bonuses, corruption, and profiteering abound in every newspaper. Without any evidence that the values we attempt to impose upon them matter to much of the rest fo society it is little wonder that teenagers- who are quite smart enough to see the hypocrisy of this- resort to surly nihilism and sociopathy. And who can blame them? It is not as if there are only a few people like me out there with strong feelings on the injustice and stupidity of our current society but the same government gets voted back in every time and the opposition are even worse! Well done the youths, I say- drink and be merry and if anyone gets in your way fucking stab the cunt- life's not going to get any better so why worry about the future?

on progressive taxation

"The increasing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite isn't only a gross affront to social justice and any sense of equal worth in a single community. The evidence is clear that greater inequality fuels crime, corrodes democracy, divides our cities, prices people out of housing, skews the economy, is an engine of social apartheid, heightens ethnic tensions, is a barrier to opportunity and stifles social mobility"

Seumas Milne kicks arse!


So, there's a moral argument for this that is hard to argue against. Put simply, everyone is equal and we all deserve an equal return on our investments- in terms of the effort put in. This is the essence of the free market- you earn what you work for. However, "money breeds more money", as the old axiom goes: If you have money already it requires less effort to acquire more than if you had to earn the same amount without any wealth to start with. Therefore, if you possess a large amount of money, you should be taxed more on any income because your earning potential is greater due to your initial wealth.

I think that's how it goes.

This article, which I found whilst randomly looking for an appropriate quote to support the axiom mentioned above, is edifying.

In the Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society I found this. I like.

"Direct Taxation - Income Tax

EC710 Income Tax is the instrument by which all citizens who are able to are required to contribute a proportion of their labours to the running of public services. It is also, when combined with benefits payments, the primary way in which wealth can be redistributed in order to create a fairer society.

EC711 Personal tax-free allowances will be abolished, having effectively been replaced by the Citizen's Income (see EC730). Income Tax will be levied on all income above the Citizen's Income. Tax rates will be banded and will increase progressively so that those on higher incomes are paying higher marginal rates of tax. In particular, rates higher than 40% will be introduced for those on the highest incomes.

EC712 In order that people are not penalised by paying high rates of tax in one year, whilst their income dramatically drops in the next (either through personal choice or for reasons beyond their control) income will be averaged over five years and the tax calculated on the rolling average figure.)"

Labour's approach to the subject is, predictably, somewhat less ambitious:

"Brown recently refused to rule out raising the top rate of tax. "We're still a very long way from that politically," one cabinet minister said yesterday. "There are powerful forces against us." For which read the bulk of the media and the most influential people in the country, who would all have to pay more tax."

UK rail regulator damns government's blessing of fare increases

Newsflash! - The government wants to reduce its investment in our rail network and passengers to foot more of the bill!

Excessive pricing is what we have already- fuck knows what I'd call the new pricing policy . . . . . . . grossly excessive? Morbidly excessive? "It-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-for-the-fact-that-I-now-have-to-pay-twice-as-much-as-a-French-person-would excessive" ???

Eg:
Prices for midday, midweek tickets 2 1/2 months ahead:

Paris-Bordeaux (~400km): £16.93 (25 euros)
Bristol - Newcastle (~400km): £15

Prices for next day tickets:

Paris-Bordeaux (~400km): £51.94 (73e70)
Bristol - Newcastle (~400km): £89

Yes, that's nearly twice as much as the French for a next-day ticket. Time to start eating garlic and growing onions methinks!

Kyoto actually promotes deforestation

An FT article supports my position that failure to credit developing countries for not cutting down their existing forests makes them attractive targets. There are some details there but, essentially, its a matter of carbon credits for reforestation and the chance to bung some cash crops down on clear-cut land against no carbon credits for leaving your forests intact and missing out on any cash crops you could plant in their place.

Duh?

On Liberty

When I get round to it ( I am up to my neck in worm poo at the moment!) I am going to sit down and read this.

Johann tells us why we should support the Heathrow Protest

And doesn't he do a good job.

why America is wrong

Gabriel Kolko tell it like it is.

"In part, expensive equipment and incredibly inflated military budget is premised on the traditional assumption that owning complex weapons gives America power, which is determined by arms in hand rather than what happens in a nation's politics and society. In fact, the reverse is often the case, especially when enemies find the weaknesses in this sort of technology and exploit it – as they increasingly have done over the past decades. Then the cost of fighting wars becomes a liability – and America's technological military an immense weakness when the government has huge deficits or lacks funds to repair its aging public infrastructure – a fact that was highlighted when the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis earlier this month led to the striking revelation that 70,000 bridges in the U.S. are rated deficient. The Vietnam War should have resolved the issue of the relevance of technology to the America's military ambitions, but it did not. The real question is: why?"

Its nice when someone sums up your own feelings on a subject as concisely and eloquently as this. You see, I'm not anti-American, I'm actually concerned for the fate of America. The people of that country should not have to tolerate the situation they are currently in and there are individuals in the current administration who are criminally insane and need to be stopped for the good of America and the rest of the world.

"We are at point zero in the application of American power in the world: the U.S. cannot win its extremely expensive adventures nor will it abstain from policies which increasingly lead to disasters for the nations in which it intervenes and for itself as well."

(my bold)

a fine piece of Bush slagging

Have it, you filthy cristo-fascist cunt.

Britain, the cultural dead zone, looks to the continent for inspiration

How long have I been waiting for someone to start this off?

Too fucking long, for sure.

In Auckland there are free music festivals almost every weekend throughout Summer in the city's various parks. I think there are 2 in Plymouth this year.

reflections on democracy

. . . . "Recent reflection on democracy have yielded two valuable insights …. Modern pluralistic regimes have typically come into being not because of some preexisting wide consensus on "basic values," bur rather because various groups that had been at each others' throats for a prolonged period had to recognize their mutual inability to achieve dominance. Tolerance and acceptance of pluralism resulted eventually from a standoff between bitterly hostile opposing groups.

This historical point of departure of democracy does not bode particularly well for the stability of these regimes. The point is immediately obvious, but it becomes even more so when it is brought into contact with the theoretical claim that a democratic regime achieves legitimacy to the extent that its decisions result from full and open deliberation among its principal groups, bodies, and representatives. Deliberation is here conceived, as an opinion-forming process: the participants should not have fully or definitively formed opinions at the outset; they are expected to engage in meaningful discussion, which means that they should be ready to modify initially held opinions in the light of arguments of other participants and also as a result of new information which becomes available in the course of the debate. …

If this is what it takes for the democratic process to become self-sustaining and to acquire long-run stability and legitimacy, then the gulf that separates such a state from democratic-pluralistic regimes as they emerge historically from strife and civil war is uncomfortably and perilously wide. A people that only yesterday was engaged in fratricidal struggles is not likely to settle down overnight to those constructive give-and-take deliberations. Far more likely , there will initially be agreement to disagree, but without any attempt at melding the opposing points of view—that is indeed the nature of religious tolerance. Or, if there is discussion, it will be a typical "dialogue of the deaf"—a dialogue that will in fact long function as a prolongation of, and a substitute for, civil war. Even in the most "advanced" democracies, many debates are, to paraphrase Clausewitz, a "continuation of civil war with other means." Such debates, with each part on the lookout for arguments that kill, are only too familiar from democratic politics as usual.

There remains then a long and difficult road to be traveled from the traditional internecine, intransigent discourse to a more "democracy-friendly" kind of dialogue. …"

How aptly does this describe the situation inthe UK today? Even though outright warfare has been absent from ths land for hundreds of years we are still in the post-civil warfare state of pluralism. Due to the enormous burden of tradition and conservatism amongst our culture it has proved impossible to cast off many of the more absurdly unjust and antiquated customs such as the monarchy and absence of a constitution. This perpetuates and deepens the class divide and leaves one wondering why simple democratic reforms which are- even now- being stalled in the unelected house of lords, have taken so long to appear.

More here.

"Brown is more bulldog than poodle" - yeah, fucking right!

The depth of my scepticism cannot be described in the English language. Take a very, very, very deep hole and then climb to the bottom of it and dig for a thousand years with a pneumatic drill. Then you won't be any closer to the depths I refer to but you will certainly start to appreciate their magnitude. Brown is the pinnacle of weasellious cock and needs to be removed from power. Derek Wall and Sian Berry should double team him with their green ninja power.

this is very interesting

I have been occasionally browsing this blog and I recently went through the section where they discriminate between 'their' version of economics (Environmental Economics) and Ecological Economics. I reckon that the Ecological one is more relevant to today's problems, despite the problems they mention with Robert Costanza's papers. A site more positively positioned towards Ecological Economics is this one.

If you have time, and are interested in this subject, this paper describes the differences between the two disciplines very clearly.

Boris Johnson is a cock-weasel

Johann says he is, so there.

COntrast this with the Conservative party line, as presented by this moron.

Islamism or cristo-fascism, who is the bigger threat?

Well, according to these chaps its the latter. I couldn't agree more.

The Misanthropic Principle

I was thinking about the anthopic principle and this line of thought happened to cross with the definition of misanthropy I encountered the other day. Anyhoo, I googled this bastard product of idle contemplation out of curiosity and found nothing conclusive except a bizarrely amusing essay in the style of Douglas Adams, a page of letters on the abuse of the anthropic principle in New Scientist and some song lyrics by a punk rock outfit. I am a little disappointed, although also slightly wowed. It has the ring to it of those epic essays on the human condition such as Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" or Hardin's "Tragedy of The Commons". I am certainly arrogant enough to imagine that I have the depth of vision to pen an equally insightful piece and I think the title has been presented to me by my subconscious. I just wish I had timed it better because I am in the middle of a large-scale sampling experiment for my PhD and this is going to niggle at the back of my mind until I can find the time to do something about it. I also don't want to mess this opportunity up by throwing a half-hearted attempt up here and then being too lazy ever to return to improve upon it.

Oh, the burden of intellect!

author of CofE guidebook shoots his religion in the foot

In marked contrast to the cristo-fascists in the States who frequently foam at the mouth at the mere mention of JK Rowling's name, it seems that the Church of England has taken a more accepting position to the epic saga of one young Wizard's fight against the Dark Lord. Unfortunately, he shoots himself- and all sky-pixie botherers- neatly in the foot with one concise sentence.

"To say, as some have, that these books draw younger readers towards the occult seems to me both to malign JK Rowling and to vastly underestimate the ability of children and young people to separate the real from the imaginary."

Did anyone else spot his error?

the future of public transport

It wouldn't work in Plymouth 'cos of all the fuck off great big hills. But in flatter country this would transform our society for the better. I love it.

I was in The Hague last year for a conference and hired a bike for 5 days for about 35 euros (why does my keyboard have a dollar sign, but no euro?). It was awesome to cycle around the nice (flat) Dutch urban sprawl, through parks and along cycle lanes, in relative safety and comfort. I can't describe how much the experience contrasts with the ride to work I have to endure in Plymouth. Getting skimmed by buses, dodging holes in the road and sleep-walking edestrians and having my muscles abused by the monster hillage. Oh well, at least I get my 20 minutes aerobic exercise a day when I can be arsed. I haven't ridden in for a couple of weeks because my brakes and duralier need attention. Must get that sorted . . . . .

Max Hastings vs The MOD

Max won. By light years.

I agree with the chap in the comments who is quick to observe that Max fails to condemn the wasting of several £billions on the Trident replacement, not to mention the subversion of the NPT.

Johann Hari on our failed public education system

Johann has some insight into the intellect of two of the Big Brother House occupants. Now, far be it from me to even contemplate watching Big Brother, Johann obviously does and- unlike the vast majority of couch-vegetables out there- has used his time in front of the goggle box to analyse and assess the intellectual potential state of these two deprived urchins.

Appropriate quote for the subject matter:

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.

— Mark Twain

The cultural implications of this are detailed also, together with some of his usually warm slagging of Blair. The point he makes most strongly, however, comes across in the quote he inserts from the American author, Martha Gellhorn:

“People will often say, with pride: 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.'"

Brown helps restart the cold war

George has done his usual comprehensive job of shitting all over Brown's false rhetoric.