Jews and Judaism

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I was thinking the other day about how I got burned in a few places for suggesting that zionism is implicitly racist (which is not the subject of this post).

So: If being Jewish is not just a religion, but a cultural orientation (i.e. you can convert to Judaism and become a Jew), or a nationality (i.e. you can- exclusively- become an Israeli by being a Jew), or an ethnic minority (you can be born one and reject all other aspects of Jewishness but still be considered, by some, to be Jewish). Then, if no other nation-state or ethnicity, or religion in the world promotes this trinity of human phenomena; why should the Jews?

In my eyes Judaism is a religion, to be scorned as I scorn all god-botherers, irrelevant of the details of their superstition. From Mohammed to Thor to Isis they are all denying reason. So why is there such a thing as 'atheist' Jews? This is, to me, an oxymoron. I would like someone to explain it to me. I might go to Little Green Soccer Balls and ask them.

Environmental Economics

So, I'm reading the seminal text on this subject by Turner, Pearce & Bateman. I was induced to buy this book as part of my minor undergraduate course in ocean science. I never got to grips with it and studiously avoided the questions on the subject in the exams but I was always drawn to the logic of the arguments of my lecturer- whose name escapes me at this moment.

"Questions concerning 'fair' distributions of resources can quickly become complicated and, in the environmental context, will involve fairness not just between individual people alive now but also between them and future generations yet to come. To take just one illustrative example, the exploitation of resources such as fossil fuels and minerals like iron ore and bauxite (non-renewables) today means less of a stock left for future generations. ( Other resources (renewables) like fisheries and forests may also be over-exploited and not given enough time to regenerate. Again the stocks of such assets for future generations will be reduced. The question can then be posed: "Is this fair?"

Is it 'right' that those of us alive now should essentially destroy assets ( and economic opportunities that they yield) gaining benefits in the process, while passing on the costs to people not yet alive, and who have had no say in the matter?"

why Palestinians should not recognize Israel's right to exist - again

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In response to this news item.

Yeah, check it.

BA announces daily flights to Newquay

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So if its going to take an hour to fly there and you have to check in a couple of hours before departure then why should BA be allowed to fly this route when the high speed rail link will get you there in only an hour more, for the same money and 1/5 of the carbon emissions?

It is the responsibility of the government to protect the many over the interests of the few. This should be prohibited.

Can any see Labour actually having the cojones to act? . . . . Nope, thought not.

Paris is lovely

Yeah, I spent the last 5 days in gay Paris with wiff for my birthday. Paris is very, very, very, very pretty (the French girls are pretty sexy too [oh- and BTW, the French boys get the Wiff seal of approval]).


All the vans in Paris are graffed up- its totally sweet. . .

Replacing Trident sucks big floppy donkey dicks

The subject of today's rant is fairly obvious. After that introductory article here is the leading article from today's Independent website, reproduced in Technicolor for your viewing pleasure:

The voters have good reason to feel let down

Published: 15 March 2007

Margaret Beckett may not have distinguished herself greatly as Foreign Secretary, but as a parliamentary performer in the cause of this third-term Labour government she has been second to none. She opened the debate on the renewal of Trident with confidence, professionalism and style. Her speech was, as her Conservative shadow, William Hague, noted, all the more powerful because of her record as an anti-nuclear campaigner in the past.

In the end, neither Mrs Beckett's persuasive qualities nor the last-minute concession offered by the Prime Minister did much to limit the damage. The vote saw the biggest Labour revolt since the Iraq war. Nor, as Sir Menzies Campbell pointed out for the Liberal Democrats, was the precedent for the Tories voting with the Government on a controversial subject of national interest very comforting.

We agree. The renewal of Trident, like the Iraq war four years ago, is an issue of paramount national significance that cried out for a thorough debate. Instead, a succession of mostly lacklustre speeches preceded a vote that the Government was never going to lose.

The voters, and taxpayers, have good reason to feel let down. Mr Blair's suggestion that a future Parliament may decide about contracts for the new submarines was neither here nor there. Mr Hague was correct when he said that the decision taken yesterday was the decision. Unfortunately, it went through on the nod, in the last months of Mr Blair's decade in office. Could it not have waited - or was the timing less about Trident than about Mr Blair's determination to leave Labour shorn of its unilateralist tendencies?

This newspaper is not unilateralist. We believe that Britain should have strong defences. Immediately after the end of the Cold War, we argued that it was too soon to make any irrevocable change in defence provision. Fifteen years on, the picture is clearer. Trident was conceived to counter the military threat from the Soviet Union. Both concept and purpose are now obsolete.

We sympathise with those who contend that some of the money earmarked for Trident - a cool £20bn or so - would be better spent on equipping our troops properly for the wars they are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this argument is short term. Our troops should be properly equipped regardless. The more compelling arguments against upgrading Trident relate to the future direction of British defence policy.

To renew Trident means to renew a commitment to an outdated policy. It means to tie ourselves for another 20, probably 40 years, to the existing alliance with the United States on the present terms, even though Iraq has raised all sorts of questions about its usefulness. It means to perpetuate the illusion that this nuclear deterrent is truly independent.

Nor can we ignore the international signals we send. The Government insists that, even as we acquire new submarines, we will press for a stronger nuclear non-proliferation regime; the two are, it maintains, completely compatible. We seriously doubt that Iran, North Korea and any other country that may harbour nuclear ambitions will find that equation so obvious.

The years before Trident becomes obsolete gave Britain time to review its defence priorities, its alliances and its interests for the world as it is, rather than as it was. It is regrettable that neither the Government nor David Cameron's new Conservatives could suggest anything more original than an expensive renewal of the current arrangements. Regrettable, too, that the Liberal Democrats, so staunch in opposing the Iraq war, asked for nothing more than more time to make up their minds. A unique chance for new thinking has been lost.

There's more on CiF, including this remarkable account of the Labour Party's infidelity to its roots. It includes the startling revelation that "Instead of entering into multilateral negotiations to fulfil our commitments to the NPT, as [Fred] Mulley (UK minister of state for foreign affairs and later Lord Mulley) had promised, the next Labour government in the mid-1970s, secretly modernised our Polaris nuclear WMD with Chevaline, without consulting or even telling, parliament."

Predictably, the Tories- in the form of Willy Hague, are spunking in their neatly ironed Y-fronts over their ability to dictate policy.

Liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. The loss of all three.

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I was reading through the CiF today and came across an article by the excellent George Monbiot about the manipulation of harassment law by corporations to obstruct legitimate protest by the public. After reading this article I decided to pursue further this theme of newly spawned obstacles to our freedom thrown up by Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara and his sociopathic Tory predecessors (who lacked even the excuse of the absurd "war on terror" to justify their tyrranical reign). Predictably I find no shortage of bile directed at the Cock-Weasel-In-Chief and others, indeed there seems to be so much of it that I am surprised the little turd has not been rightfully lynched by a mob of irate human rights campaigners (sigh). (Before you humanists navigate away from this page in disgust at my oxymoronic turn of phrase it was intended to be so- and not a serious comment).

nyway, here are some more for your delectation, particularly the first.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1759344,00.html

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1712998,00.html

http://www.magnacartaplus.org/civil-liberties/attacks.htm

http://www.trevor-mendham.com/civil-liberties/new-labour/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4271106.stm

single parents, benfits and employment

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There's lots of noise today in the press about how the large number of single parents out of work are going to have to make an effort to return to it or face losing their benefits. Some bloke called John Harris provides some elegant analysis of this proposal and also produces some wonderful insights into the UK governments' attempts to produce miracles on a shoestring. Put simply, the government yearns to mimic the successful social policies of the Scandinavian countries with the budget of the anaemic US system. Laughable, really, but no surprise.

Liberal Democrats showing some spunk

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So Ming Campbell seems to be the only political leader out there with the cojones to make use of the prodigious political gifts being donated to any opposition by the morally bankrupt Labour Party and the sociopaths of the Conservative Party. Although I am a member of the Green Party I cannot continue to delude myself that they are a political force to be reckoned with in the country. Maybe I will vote for the LDs at the next election. We will just have to see.

"There's more to foreign policy than shaking a big stick"

The article is targeted at the US but is equally applicable to the UK.

Cock-Weasel-In-Chief Blair: Take notice!

One of the links in the article leads to a fascinating publication on American exceptionalism.

An interesting aspect of this article is its relevance to Trident replacement- "lead by example", "multilateral action, not unilateral", "United Nations needs reform- not sabotage" and "foreign aid is money far better spent than an overweight defence budget".

technical support - old skool style

This really cracked me up. I used to work in a technical support call centre and there encountered people who couldn't comprehend the most simple concepts. I think that was the experience that finally convinced me that my society was in dire need of some sort of philosophical kick up the arse. The women who rang up to ask how to put batteries into her remote control was one of my most memorable, I got a disiplinary hearing after I got her to open her manual to the relevant page and then tried to get her to read it aloud to me.

Absolutely the best website in the world ever. EVER, I said!

I surfed this site all evening. My wiff had to keep asking me if I was alright cos of the funny noises I was making trying not to scream with laughter. Start with the entry on Scotland and see where you end up. I had to stop after I read the 47 (ish) laws of Robotics because wiff couldn't hear the TV.

markets slip further as Shrubbery pretend nothing is happening

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So this is somewhat disturbing. I'm no economist but the continued slump of UK markets is bad news to anyone with a mortgage. The overblown housing market is a bubble waiting to burst and a prime example of the failure of free markets. The lack of affordable housing in the UK is shameful. My wiff and I now gross 40k a year but we are still not even considering a mortgage because of all my debts from 6 years of university. I may be fucking clever and well paid on paper (still below the UK average) but I'm also fucking broke. This news is not good for me or anyone else.

Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq and the rest of the world

Some fascinating insights here from Prof Chomsky.

"That’s the immediate consequence of constant threats. Everyone knows that. That’s one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the U.S. threats, that it’s undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that’s presumably its purpose. Since it’s an obvious consequence you have to assume it’s the purpose. Just like in law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for intention. And here’s it so obvious you can’t seriously doubt it."

"The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn’t have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they don’t report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn’t exist, but they don’t like it when Khamenei right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I’m aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei’s more conciliatory positions in the Financial Times, but not here. And it’s repeated by Iranian diplomats but that’s no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. And that’s not a good story, so it’s either not mentioned or it’s hidden somewhere.

It’s very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they’re deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now they’re desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should’ve been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can’t control it and it’s almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can’t discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can’t get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

We’re supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would’ve liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can’t be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi’ite-dominated, at least if it’s minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn’t want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi’ite population, probably a majority.

YES! Murdoch is being investigated by OFCOM!

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After his purchase of a share in ITV and an avalanche of complaints about his domination of media outlets in the country the government are actually doing something in the interests of the populace! I can hardly believe it!

The virulently conservative Aussie must be seething.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAahHAHHAAHHAHahaHHahAhAHAHAHAHAhahahahaaaaaaa


Addition:

Johann Hari explains one of the reasons I hate Murdoch in detail here.

Example of an oxymoron: A war on Terror

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"Civilized societies, it is said, adhere to the generally accepted principles of international law, including the laws of war. By their very nature barbarians and ‘savages’ are deemed incapable of abiding by such laws. While terrorists might be capable, they are unwilling to do so. In this respect they are something akin to modern day ‘savages’; at least in terms of their problematic place in the international system and international law."

Adherence to the generally accepted principles of international law, including the laws of war, is exactly what Bush and- to a lesser extent- Blair have not done. Therbey lowering themselves to the level of despots and their respective 'civilisations' to tyrranies.

whole article

UK considers ballistic missile defence installation

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What costs billions of pounds and is completely useless against "rogue" states and terrorists? (Apart from Trident and its potential replacement, that is.)

Yes, its the US's ballistic missile defence system that has so far proved utterly useless at doing the job it was intended for. So far the system has only managed a meer handful of "successful" intercepts out of dozens of test launches against a drone target missile. The cost of the system has been $8bn so far and is looking to hit several tens if the Shrubbery keep puring money into it.

Question?
- How much would US and UK society be improved if the budget currently allocated to violating nuclear proliferation treaties, defending against the consequences of our grossly offensive foreign policies, subsidising our own arms industries and "faith"- (read "ignorance") -based initiatives was invested in social projects, renewable technologies, education and aid projects?

I know utopia is just a concept but compared to our current society I don't think its an exaggeration.

Naomi Klein rocks, the Shrubbery have been driving "enemy combattant" detainees insane

I relished every word of No Logo and am profoundly averse to the sell off of public space to the marketing leeches. This article shows another side to her insightful analysis as she lambasts the US torture techniques applied to these "enemy combattants" and their woeful position in international law limbo as guests of the Shrubbery's thugs.

calls for politicians' to detail how their religion influences their politics

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Johann Hari is the latest comentator to call for politicians' religious beliefs to be scrutinised whenever they influence their political details. I can't think of a more straightforward way to better democracy than to cease excluding religious beliefs from rational political debate. Johann makes some penetrating comments about how these nutters- who are meant to be representing the majority- occupy a platform from which to prosetylise their beliefs.

check out these beauts!

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Check out my pretties, aren't they beautiful?

a crabbing we will go!

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bright and early this morning, I'm off to collect the traps I put out at Bantham last night. Its a beautiful morning too!


I spent yesterday afternoon digging these beauties out of the mud at Torpoint too . . . .

This picture's crap- I'll get some better ones from work today.

Neocons of all nationalities continue to attempt to justify the Iraq genocide

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I am having a good old ding-dong with my arch-nemesies over at Little Green Soccer Balls. I am SDM (SonicDeathMonkey).

For some reason they won't let you post with the word "monkey" in your name. Some irrational fear of primates methinks, eg. other human beings. This is clearly evident from their utter lack of any human values.

Secular fundamentalism . . . ? Yeah, right.

I love Free Inquiry, I have read some of the most eloquent advocations of secular humanism in its pages. Even though I am an antitheist and a logical positivist I admire the tenets of secular humanism even if I do consider them to be a little wishy-washy and imprecise. (I suppose I'm a bit of a militant at heart).

why Palestinians should not recognize Israel's right to exist

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=10171

A couple of interesting points here.

1. That the Israelis demand that the Palestinians recognise their nation-state but make no such concession to the Palestinians.
2. (And I am aware that this is highly contentious but, with respect to the continuing domination of the Knesset by parties that promote exceptionalism for Jews I will include it here). That recognising Israel's "right" to exist condones the concept of a Jewish state and not just another secular nation i.e. an exceptionalist state where everyone but Jews are untermenschen.

comprehensive review of the arguments against replacing Trident

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Yeah, its all there. There's so much of this stuff out there at the moment from a variety of highly respected independent thinktanks that I really can't see this getting pushed through by Brown's new Labour government. Thank fuck.

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/programmes/uksecurity/ukdeterrent.htm
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?ucidparam=20051021155200
http://www.medact.org/article_wmd.php?articleID=387

Google "Trident replacement" for millions more.

massive holes in Bush's 'evidence' of Iranian complicity in Iraqi resistance

http://arabisto.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=352

Interesting site. I will read more.

Addition

Good analysis of the US's policy of accusing Iran of "supporting" terrorism.

"What is interesting about the framework for discussion of Iranian support for attacks on US troops in Iraq is the underlying assumption that it would be most heinous for Iran to involve itself with its next-door neighbor. The US, on the other hand, has every right to interfere, politically and militarily, in the affairs of the Mesopotamian country on the other side of the world. This declared right for the US to use violence to meet political ends (which, incidentally, meets the definition of terrorism) is never questioned in Washington or the corporate media, while the conjecture about Iranian involvement in Iraq rages on. An alternative framework for discussion is possible. It could be assumed that the same standards must apply to the US as to Iran. But that would be unthinkable. The US is instead absurdly portrayed as the defender of Iraq, struggling to keep other parties from destabilizing the country. Iraq is preposterously “the front line” in the “war on terrorism” as a result of waging a “war on terrorism” against Iraq."

central London green space to be 'flogged to highest bidder'

I was reading this story and was gripped by the profound insight of one of the closing pargraphs.

"Governments rotting from within often show it in trivial ways. They grow sloppy in their patronage. They spend money on their friends. They degrade the public realm in ways that are irretrievable by later generations. Cursed with a mayor blind to architectural quality, London has been doubly cursed by philistine ministers. It has had to accept trashy advertising covering black taxis and red buses and the use of roundabouts and Thames-side buildings for advertisements. These were all once banned as unsightly."


This alludes to one of the most sociopathic flaws of the current administration: The sale of communally owned space by bodies that are meant to act in the communities best interests.

Stupid units!!!

So I was going to try this assay to measure total lipid concentration that I've been wanting to have a go at for ages and tonight I thought I'd give it a Bash. So I rang wiff at 9pm and told her I'd be extra late and headed for the lab.

2 hours of playing with conc sulphuric and water baths later I found out that the standard curve I had meticulously serial diluted was 3 orders of magnitude under the desired concentration because the fucking wankstain (Frings et al, 1972) had quoted his concs in mg per decilitre!

What the fuck is a decilitre????

(Its a rhetorical question!)

But really, who uses a stupid unit like a decilitre!?!?!?!?

It really bugs the shit out of me when people can't use sensible fucking units.

Get this:

1000mg/dl = 10g/l

Why the fuck didn't the little twat quote his concs in fucking grams per litre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

(Scary goes to bed before his head explodes.)

Compare and contrast . . . .

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. . . . these two reports today from The Independent.

1st: Analysis of an OECD report that much of Europe is still lagging behind the US in terms of economic growth.

2nd: A response to yesterday's UNICEF report that the UK has the worst environment amongst 21 developed countries for children to live in. The authors of the article in The Independent categorically state that Britain's drive to emulate US economic success is to blame for the conditions in the UNICEF report.


I have long believed that chasing economic growth as the sole index of national success is an excuse to line the pockets of the wealthy by creating an environment where they can continue to prosper from the manipulation of the less well-off. It is no coincidence that the European states with the highest scores in a study on social justice and wellbeing are those with the least penchant for laissez-faire capitalism. When will an evidence-based approach to geovernment finally allow us to shuck off this absurd and sociopathic pursuit of economic growth? Any ten year old will tell you that infinite growth within a finite space is impossible.

Greenpeace rock!

Ok, so they might be overly preoccupied with hugging whales and saving trees but they have also stopped the Blair administration's attempts to commit our country to a new age of nuclear power stations without any significant public consultation in its tracks!

Don't get me wrong- I am not anti-nuclear power as I am minded to agree with Prof. James Lovelock's insistence that only nuclear generation- which is a very mature technology- can save us from the worst effects of climate change. However I am no expert on the economics and practicalities of renewable generation and cannot claim to support that or nuclear generation without a lot more reading. My impression is that nuclear may be flawed but has overwhelming advantage of being relatively carbon neutral. It would also have the benefit of loosening the noose of Russian bully-boy tactics over their stranglehold on gas supplies to Europe.

i am working, not posting

I am writing my transfer report and it is being a headache so I am not going to be keeping you peeps updated for a f ew days. All 45 people who have visited the site (or the one guy who has visited it 45 times) will just have to be patient.

I love the UN

"In fact, while the UN could certainly do with reform – which for most observers would begin with radical surgery of the human-resources department – it is easy to forget that the reason most of the world loves the organisation and the American right hates it is not necessarily because of what it “does,” but because of what it stands for, and the global order that has been crystallising around it.

The UN has evolved from a group of military victors into a truly global organisation, under whose auspices there have been tremendous steps forward towards forging a rule-based global society. While the organisation has provided the framework for those developments, it is the member-states with their adherence to the conventions and treaties that have made the difference.

Despite the worst conservative fears, and the naïve hopes of some internationalists, the UN is not, and never will be a world government. Indeed no one who has seen it in operation close up would want it to be. But it is a crucial part of a cooperative world."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-UN/reform_2836.jsp

Top Gear visits Alabama

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I can't believe what happened to the TG boys in Alabama. Imagine if you drove through Moss Side in cars daubed in similarly provocative material? ("Man love rules OK" is still appropriate and if you replaced Country&Western with 'Hip Hop' you'd get the same response but any political references would be lost so you'd have to resort to insulting prominent Manchester United footballers instead). I don't imagine you would get pelted with rocks or chased out of town. Head somewhere as rural as the place they were in and you'd just get laughed at. No wonder Bush behaves as if he is god.

Time to reign in the neo-cons

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When as conservative publication as The Economist makes a stand against Bush's apocalyptic aspirations, you know its time to take action. (I know this is a few weeks old but I've been sitting on it in my drafts box.)

Interestingly The Economist- unlike Jacques Chirac- considers a benuked Iran to be a threat. There are several opinions to be found on this matter but I find Chirac's the most rational. This position is backed up by the North Korean situation: If a despot as insane and callous about their own populace's welfare as Kim Jong Il won't start shooting off nukes for fear of reprisals then Iranians certainly won't. On the other hand, the chances of Israel or the US using nuclear weapons are far, far higher.

Another interesting point about the Economist article is their conviction regarding "Iran's apparent determination to build nuclear weapons". Now, I really dislike groundless speculation and I think that the press should not be repeating Bush's propaganda without any real evidence, which of course, there isn't. I believe that Iran has probably looked at the possibilities of 'going nuclear' but it would be pretty obvious to them that they are under intense scrutiny from foreign intelligence agencies and they wouldn't be able to conduct a serious secret weapons program for long. Instead I reckon they are bluffing in an attempt to utilise the spectacularly immoral deception of the Iraqi intelligence debacle to their own ends by using the ignorance and bigotry of the Neo-Cons to draw sympathy in the international forum. Canny and wise, no doubt as the neocons have blatantly fallen for it and are on a war footing. The Iranians have no weapons program. I am sure of it. They might have some documents that roughly describe how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium that can only be used to construct nuclear warheads but these are actually more likely to be US fabrications. Ultimately, if the US or Israel are stupid enough to rise to the Iranian bait and launch some pre-emptive strike then the Iranian cause will unite the- currently split- nation and most likely the rest of the middle east too in a concerted opposition to US imperialism. And rightly so.

Global Marshall Plan

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This sounded like a really good idea when I first read about it. There's a Wikipedia article on it which states Al Gore's 5 strategic goals "to save the global environment". Unfortunately I am vastly sceptical that the first of his goals is at all achievable before the global environment is permanently damaged. Yes, I'm back onto overpopulation again.

People discussing overpopulation generally make assume that if global population can be stabilised civilisation will follow suit and we will skip merrily into utopia. Before any discussion of the benefits of ending runaway population growth, and even depopulation (anyone care to point out the difference to society between a global population of 6 billion and one of 1 billion?) you must first address the likelihood of achieving such a goal, otherwise you are just wasting hot air. Compare this to a discussion on the best way to expend 3 wishes.

My points are:

• The global economy is driven by the cheap labour produced by high birth rates in developing countries
• Virtually all religion abhors the concept of antinatalism
• The same high birth rates that keep the economy functioning allow more repressive cultures to demographically assault more liberal ones via "the wombs of our women".

So in light of the negative population growth in many Western societies, the above-replacement birth rates in many Eastern communities and the failure of certain culture (I'm talking about Muslims here but the argument could be applied to Chinese or Russian expat communities) to integrate and adopt the secular democracy of their host societies, how are we to ensure the preservation of our enlightenment values?

The obvious answer would be to adopt an ethical foreign policy a la Robin Cook that might allow immigrants to respect the UK and Europe as a Nation. A brief review of the various policies of the past half-dozen governments of this country shows how unlikely this is. So, if a passive policy has no chance of success one must begin to consider active policies which might encourage immigrants to embrace the enlightenment ideals of our society in preference for their own misogynist, racist and religious values.

Unfortunately I cannot begin to imagine a way of doing this that does no betray the very philosophy it seeks to promote.

more on globalisation . . . .

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This is a very interestng article on how small developing countries should avoid competing drectly with larger, Westernised institutions and governments and, instead, engge in symbiotic relationships emphasising their natural territorial and cultural assets. It seems sensible to me that developing countries should spare themselves the social and environmental trauma of industrialisation, a la China / The Philippines / Nigeria, and move straight into the service- and knowledge- economies in which they might compete on a level footing with the West.

Ohmygod! Bush is actually building a new army in the Middle East!

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http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/persian_gulf_4332.jsp

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=67774

People, this is some scary shit. Bush seems committed to attempting to repeat his earlier crimes. The world cannot stand by and let this happen again. How can this Cristo-fascist moron still be dictating American military policy?! Do the yanks just not care about the security of the rest of the world?

"the naval forces now gathering in the region include two carrier battle-groups and two expeditionary strike groups, with the possibility of yet another carrier battle-group, centred on the USS Ronald Reagan, being barely ten days away"

This means there are 3 carriers, several guided missile boats and more than 4000 marines as well as an attack submarine in the Persian Gulf. With Iraq's civil war continuing to rage and Afghanistan becoming a harder and harder operation to remain positive about, just what is Bush expecting to achieve by opening a 3rd front against a virtually unassailable enemy? The only way that Israel or the US can seriously expect to damage Iran's nuclear program is through the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and if they cross that line then its goodnight to any chance of building world peace for a decade. Russia and China will not stand by and let Ameria bully their main oil supplier, and neither possess any better suited ideology for policing the world than the US.

Nick Cohen is a twat

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I might have mentioned this opinion of mine previously but I was so impressed by John Kampfner's measured critique of the twat's work that I wanted to draw attention to it. The man is a neo-con apologist (Cohen- not Kampfner) and needs to poked with sharp sticks until he recants his sociopathic beliefs. A comprehensive twat.

Which religion is worse, Christianity or Islam?

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TRICK QUESTION! They're both as bad as each other!

Alarming report from Johann Hari about Wahhabi Islam here.

Equally disturbing study of Cristo-fascism here.

And because I do not want to show bias towards any particular bunch of religious sociopaths here is an alarming study of Judaism's genocidal, expansionist drive- backed by the Shrub Administration- to create a Greater Israel.

The common theme throughout all of these movements is a warped interpretation of religion that justifies the inherent racism or exceptionalism of each movement. This is why people of declared religious beliefs should be prohibited from public office; they cannot be relied upon to treat all people equally. Although it is a human construct, religion is profoundly inhuman in nature.

Challenges of Sustainability

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New Scientist rocks onwards in the scientific world. Fascinating piece here on the above subject and the technical challenges that must be overcome in order to master our runaway energy budget. I am pleased to see someone leading the way in stating the obvious with regard to the fundamental changes needed in our society in order to perpetuate our way of life.

There is bound to be far more detail in the special edition of Science (vol 315, p 781) which the article is reviewing. Unfortunately Science is not included in my university's online subscriptions so I cannot digitise it to you, my adornig fans, for which I apologise on their shoddy behalf.

Britain's future lies with Europe

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I am decidedly pro-european and I like the tone of this article. Europe has the potential to challenge the American supremacy but only if the continent's countries cooperate together. I am a mixture of localist and internationalist with a little national pride here and there for good measure. It seems clear to me that the solution to the challenges to efficient government presented by national boundaries can be solved- as with most problems-not by an exclusive resort to the extremes of devolution or centralism but through a measured blend of the two. Certain politics are better handled at local level and others on far larger scales.

I hate the conceit and ignorance of jingoism, so prevalent in modern British society.

The use of ground attack aircraft in guerilla warfare is wildly counterproductive

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I was reading this article on CiF and recalling reading my father's memoirs about his experiences flying Harrier GR1s in the Falklands War. In particular I was considering the enormous gap in civilisation between deploying such multi-million killing pound technology against a well armed, trained and equipped foe such as the Argentinian junta and deploying such technology against guerilla fighters such as the majority of those targetted in Iraq. Although I cannot deny that there do exist well trained and equipped fighters in that country they are the minute minority and the overwhelming majority of targets are young men with little or no tactical warfare training, armed with small arms and nothing more. The deployment of the most advanced ground attack aircraft on the planet against such targets is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and, as the article describes, grossly counterproductive to the intended achievement of a peaceful solution to the conflict.

The most disturbing aspect of this article is the fact that the British forces in Afghanistan appear to have adopted similar tactics in their fight against the Pashtun-Taliban militias. Although I find it distressing to hear reports of American forces deploying military force to gross excesses, the reports of the RAF following suit is, frankly, shocking. I appear to have been labouring under the misapprehension that our forces were trained to fight with honour. Aparrently I have been mislead. When such regressive tactics are deployed it is little wonder that the resistance simply strengthen their resolve to continue the fight against these imperialist invaders with the super-advanced technology and their well equipped soldiers.

It can only be concluded that the people ordering the use of such tactics do not want to end the conflict, but are in fact bent upon aggravating and prolonging it.

This week I have been mostly reading . . . Chris Hedges

The man has a scary story to tell. I'm very aware of the danger of the Cristo-fascist movement, having attended a British grammar school I was exposed to some particularly fundamental nutbags with no respect for secular humanity of the enlightenment that had made their way of life possible. I have never met anyone who scared me more than some of the Jesus freaks who taught at my school. Their brutality and intolerance of any attempt to question their dogma was terrible to see. I saw pupils dragged from class rooms by their hair for yawning without covering their mouth.

The Online Journal picked up on the story and added some trimmings to it in their own inimitable style. I'm not so sure that their predictions of an imminent American totalitarian theocracy are that true. The Christian fuckwit squad in the US might be a deciding force in an election but the real extremists, such as those engaging in the horrendous child-abuse chronicled in the film Jesus Camp, are still a definite minority. I remain confident that their attempts to re-write the American Constitution will fail and that liberal, educated America will prevail over these apocalyptic-porn-merchants. If the Democrats win the next election, that is. Otherwise I'll start to get scared.

One interesting aspect of the rhetoric that frequents such anti-theocratic articles as these are the bald statements that secular humanism is allowing itself to be the framework within which the Cristo-fascist movement can grow. We are told that these people have no respect for the tenets of the enlightenment but are prepared to work the system until they achieve positions of authority from which they can start to impose their god-bothering philosophy upon others. This is far more worrying to me- read some of the quotes in Hedges' article and check over his description of George Bush's "ascendancy to the first regent". (!)

Eye On Iran

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Required reading for those who aren't keen on perpetuating the oxymoronic "war on terror":

• "For many people it is déjá vu: the present situation is reminiscent of the days leading to the Iraqi war, with exaggerated statements about Iran’s imminent danger, supported by orchestrated media campaigns preparing the public for sanctions culminating in an assault."

• "The prospect of a nuclear Iran causes acute concern not only in the United States and Israel, but also in Europe, the Middle East and most of the rest of the world. This report does not seek to quantify the likelihood of military action against Iran. It argues that the consequences of any possible future military action could be wholly counterproductive as well as highly dangerous. Diplomatic solutions to the Iranian nuclear issue must be pursued resolutely."

Robert Fisk rocks on in The Free World

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Oh yes he does.



I've been listening to 'Ohio' by Neil Young on repeat- good protest song.

LC-MS

I have results from the LC-MS!

POW!

Having spent much of last night with my newly revitalised HPLC system fractionating the different peaks in my crab urine I have now managed to put them to good use and have got preliminary IDs on a couple of the compounds. And . . . . one of them wasn't at all what I thought it was! There's a surprise for jah.

I had to whack 200ul at a time through my precious column but it worked out in the end and I've spent all day cleaning it with methanol to say sorry for subjecting it to such abuse. More data will be presented soon but for now you can see my pretty chromatogram.

Eye on the Middle East

Jonathan Steele has a few well-chosen words on the Shrubbery's (Bush administration, that is) intentions towards our Persian friends.
His point about the British and French nuclear arsenals is particularly poignant in light of Tony's unilateral push to spend billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction instead of advancing world peace or real solutions to climate change. I hate that little weasel.

More Guardian-stylee reporting (you know- that thing where you get presented with interesting facts and analysis) can be found here with a fascinating resume of the secret talks held between Israel and Syria that were- predictably- scuppered by the Shrubbery. Dick Cheney, in particular, seems to be the culprit here- there appear to be no depths to the man's inhumanity.

Merril Stevenson is also a bint

Her drivelling endorsement of globalisation is thoroughly one-sided and lacks any sort of objective analysis of its costs to the peasants being paid 80c a day by Nike in The Philippines. It also ignores the cost to future generations who will have to deal with the peasant's irate descendants who have fought their way out of poverty and into semi-industrialisation and can suddenly learn how to make use of such primitive tools as economics, politics and resource management to exact revenge upon their former repressors. Only a crass ignoramus of a Briton can go raving about the wonders of imperialism when our own nation's bloody history in the field is detailed down to the last child-slave, forced-concubine, razed village and stolen natural resource.

Worse still is her gushing enthusiasm for the state of the British Economy:

"Britain got its economic act together just as globalisation was accelerating, in the late 1980s. It has managed to catch and ride the current wave successfully, selling the world financial and business services where once it sold cotton textiles and machines."

I believe that a more accurate statement would be "selling brutal dictatorships advanced jet fighters, military trucks and stun batons to be used on defenceless civilians whilst paying the customer's representatives fat bribes for the privilege".

Please do not get me confused with some balaclava'd anti-globalisation thug smashing the window of a McDonalds. I am very aware that seedy capitalism is the dominant economic paradigm in the Western world and there is little chance to change this with 75% of the money inthe world in the hands of those who profit from such a situation. However democracy is still the dominant political paradigm and it has the power to bring such corrupt and nefarious dealings to account. See my links to voting reform, compulsory voting, Fair Trade and environmental economics. Only Tony stands in the way.

I find it frustrating to have to awake every day to a nation dominated by people who either aren't aware of their own potential to change the world, or- worse still- don't care.


Additional

This article in the Economist gets it right. Merril Stevenson actually links to it in her article as if, in associating herself with a well balanced and written article, her own waffle might somehow be better received. Flippin' scoggin.

Madeleine Bunting is a delusional bint

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AC Grayling just got another body blow in on a god-bothering apologist. This idiot claimed that Christianity had done wonders for science. AC Grayling disagreed profoundly.

I was distracted by his concluding broadside to the bint:

"It happens that we have the technology to make everyone "happy", as if this were by itself the great aim of things: put Prozac in the public water supply. One reason for not doing so is that norms of fulfilment and flourishing in human life rest on such richer possibilities now than when the sun went round the earth and you could be burned to death for not believing that it did."

And I recall the quality of life surveys you read about how people were happier 30 years ago than they were now. I am also brought back to a point I have frequently considered which is: "What is the goal of civilisation?"

Is it the happiness of its citizens?

Maybe it is the pursuit of knowledge.

I will ponder this awhile.


Addition:

An SSRI like Prozac is not a very good drug for "making everyone happy". I advocate ecstasy.

A beastly policy

I just read this article on our aslyum policy. Its written by a labour MP but wait! . . . . He is actually defending asylum seekers!

Alarming stuff I know in this day and age but the story he relates is shocking and appalling. I will be wasting my time tonight writing to Alison Seabeck MP with regard to this .

The name of Austin Mitchell is one I will be keeping an ear and an eye out for. I approve.


Additional

I would like to relate, briefly, a story told to me by a police officer I know that seems pertinent.

A local rang police from Plympton and told them that there were a bunch of African-looking types washing in a puddle across the road from his house. Surely enough when the police turned up they apprehended 3 illegal immigrants who were fresh out of the back of a lorry that had come off the ferry. Upon enquiring return to Charles Cross police station the officers contacted The Immigration and Nationality Directorate to ask what to do with them. The answer?

"Take their details, give them the phone number of this case officer and tell them they will have to be in court in London in a couple of weeks to have their case heard. Then let them go."

Do I have to point out the likelihood of these guys actually appearing at the court house to defend their case? Do I have to mention the humanitarian considerations for 3 people in a strange country, without a place to stay, without any local knowledge? It seems that policing the borders of our nation, nay our continent, is the only acceptable way of ensuring national integrity. If we prevent any old rabble from storming across our boundaries then we prevent any further illegitimate immigration. If they can't get into our country then they aren't legitimate asylum seekers! There is a process in place for determining the legitimacy of asylum applications but it is bogged down amidst the thousands of false applications. Offering asylum is a noble aspect of our civilisation that must not be threatened by the inability of the government to police our borders. The deportation of families such as the Bokharis does little to improve our battered reputation as a nation. If we are to regain the moral high ground and fight a war against brutality, corruption and religion then we need to preserve our humanitarianism.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows to be released on 21st July

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I cannot wait for this book. I have loved reading the whole series and I am anxious to find out how it is all wrapped up. I am having no truck with the talk of killing Harry off at the end of the series. I don't understand why anyone would want a fairy tale to have anything but a fairy tale ending. I am also worried about the million sof hcildren who have followed this story through to its conclusion only to be faced with the death of the main character. Call me a romantic fool, but I was of the impression that children would really appreciate a happy ending to which they could relate in this sordid little shit storm of a world we live in.

Long live Harry!

Chirac reveals his true opinion of a nuclear Iran

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So, I am not the only one to be thinking that a nuclear Iran would be little or no threat to the wider world. I am a convinced anti-proliferationist but the US responses to Iran's nuclear program are disproportionate, bullying and hypocritical. Iran has a right to engage in nuclear generation according to the NPT- which the US has torn up and stomped all over. If only they would start playing ball with the IAEA then the US would have no excuses to go raging about their Axis of Eeeeeeevil. 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, pride is a terrible excuse for drawing the ME into another war of aggression.

The Left and "Islamofascism"

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John Harris appears to be one of those people, much needed in this day and age, who is prepared to devote time and effort to comprehensively debunking the slanders of the pseudo-left and right wing hacks. I am continually appalled by the language and absurd accusations of supporting genocide or terrorism or wanting to impose Sharia Law that are thrown towards people who attempt rational analysis of politics. It seems as if few people these days make a living from actually addressing other people's points of argument but instead simply embark on ad hominem attacks and character assassination. This frequently erupts into further accusations of lefty, pinko, homo-loving, tree-hugging, Trot-commies or right wing, nazi, fascist, imperialist pig-dogs. I have no truck whatsoever with this left-right divide but insist that there is only one brand of politics which works for everyone (and it must work for everyone otherwise you are all of the names listed above). The solution embraces solutions from both sides of the political spectrum and which bridges divides between centralism and localism, libertarianism and authoritarianism, socialism and conservatism.

I find many commentators are so obsessed with defending their own position and attacking that o0f others that they don't spare any time to build a substantial position of their own to defend.

Quote For The Day

From Bas Kooijman's text, Dynamic Energy and Mass Budgets in Biological Systems:

"The problem that everything depends on everything else is a hard one in biology, as anything left out may prove to be essential in the end. If one includes as much as possible one loses an intellectual grasp of the problem. The art is to leave out as much as possible whilst maintaining the essence."

The Angry Brigade

I just found this bunch mentioned on Harry's Place and was curious. Checkit:

The SWISH Reports

Not sure if anyone actually reads this stuff but you lovely people really ought to- if only because its hysterical in places, despite the dark subject material. For British readers the 3rd one deals specifically with Tony.

The SWISH Report No. 1
The SWISH Report No. 2
The SWISH Report No. 3
The SWISH Report No. 4
The SWISH Report No. 5
The SWISH Report No. 6
The SWISH Report No. 7

For the attention of any US citizens

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This is a lovely piece of writing which briefly outlines the state of politics in your country. If you feel this is a just situation then why are you reading this Idiotarian Blog? If you- like me- think this is an absurd abuse of capitalism then you will most likely enjoy the article and mayber even vote for Kucinich yourself. Congratulations on voting for someone "to champion social justice, peace, human rights and all the rest of it".

The world will reward your wisdom.

ME Ceasefire About to Collapse Again

Islamic Jihad have gone and done it again. The ceasefire is over and now Israel can bask again in the warm glow of its supposed moral right to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide in the name of defence against terrorists.

Well done IJ. You complete fuckwits.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Iran vs USA - Who's Got The Worse President?

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Henry Porter rocks.

This shizzle is tha absolute truth:

"The West must realise that if a first strike takes place we have lost. Whatever is destroyed in Iran, the Iranians will come back and produce a bomb that they may feel more entitled to use. The clash of civilisations predicted by neocon academics for years will have moved a step closer to dominating the 21st century at the very moment when all civilisation needs to concentrate on the multiple threats presented by climate change."

Excellent Piece of Daily Mail Trashing

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This guy does not pull any punches in walloping the editor of the Daily Mail, one Paul Dacre, for six. Some good praise for the Beeb here too. Nice.

For the Attention of Anyone Who Doubts the Hostility of America's Intentions Toward Iran

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I am actually quite scared about where this will end up. Will China and Russia weigh in to support their favourite oil state? Will Israel actually be mad enough to deploy tactical nukes? Will the EU realise what those two spuds between its legs are for and call for restraint by the Bush war machine?

I don't know.

LCMS foolishness

Errrrrrrrmmmmm . . . I spent 2 days this week running samples on the LCMS without noticing that the autosampler wasn't plumbed into the LC flow. So now my LCQ guru, Clare, has had to spend 2 days cleaning my standards and samples out of it before it can be used again. I feel a bit bad for that. Tit.


On an even lower note I found an error in the fecking excel sheet that I was using to calculate the absorption efficiencies I've been working on for the last few months. It means that one of my- apparently perfect- data sets is actually a bunch of arse. Fortunately one of them still worked out nicely with a low S.D. and an appropriate value for the population I was studying.

Shit week, it was.

Blair's Painful British Legacy

http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/blair_vision_reality_4258.jsp

He's such a twat.



Addition

Another feather in Tony's cap tonight as The Independent reports that children are dying in Iraqi hospitals for lack of basic medical consumables such as vitamin supplements, surgical gloves and plastic oxygen masks. This constitutes a (nother) breach of the Geneva Conventions by the UK and comes to pass within a week of the announcement that oil companies are ready to sign 30 year contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil fields that will allow them to intially pocket up to 75% of any revenues until they have recouped their investment and then 20% henceforth - twice the industry average for such production-sharing agreements [PSAs]. Now I have no problem with providing incentives for industry to invest in Iraqi redevelopment but so far the Iraqi government's record in this area is pathetic, although still better than the Coalition Provisional Authority.

And they said it wasn't about oil. George and Tony must be so proud of everything that they've achieved.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2132467.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132574.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2165470.ece

Dick Cheney rejected 2003 Iranian olive branch

I'm always appalled to hear the "Axis of Evil" rhetoric that is periodically vomited from the White House in Iran's direction, but this is just simply obstructive. Instead of maintaing their usual polemic - re: "Iran is evil" - the White House had an opportunity to engage with the Iranian regime, to gain more access to their nuclear program, to receive cooperation and support on Iraq and- most importantly- to cut Iranian support for the militants of Hexbollah and Hamas who are such an obstacle to any attempt to forment peace in the middle east.

And the response from Dick Cheney himself:

"Go fuck yourselves."

Who can blame the Iranians for their isolationism when they are faced with this groundless lack of respect for diplomatic protocols and outright racism from figures in the White House who cannot surmount their own petty preudices.

If you were in the position of an Iranian diplomatic representative, would you be interested in following the dictat of international organisations whose policy is strong-armed by the very nation that spouts this offensive rot? This article really betrays the lack of interest in the Bush administration in engaging with potentially hostile regimes on a equal footing. Their attitude seems to be "you are all savages and heathens so we are going to dictate policy and if you don't like it we will tell everyone that you're evil". This sort of playground diplomacy is not only counterproductive, its dangerous!

The Meaning of Life

No . . . .not the Monty Python film. I mean the Big Question. 42 and all that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point

Overpopulation

I was pondering the implications of the recycling culture that is being propagated in the West. I'm of the opinion that- with the exception of hypertoxic and dangerous substances- if you have to recycle and you can't simply rely upon dumping your waste somewhere out of sight then your habitat is overpopulated. In utopia an optimum carrying capacity or our species wouldn't require the recycling effort being made today. Instead all of the utopian civilisation's resources could be directed towards research and development.

Not that I've got anything against recycling in our atopian society. Just an idea, you know.

Chrysler Climate Change Denial

I just caught this statement in this article on America's automotive industry.

Chrysler has pumped $1bn into alternative fuels over a decade. But Mark Chernoby, who oversees green projects, is evasive about his company's attitude to global warming.

"I don't know that we've taken a position on it," he says. "If you look at the scientific community, you can see there's still a lot of debate about it." (My italics and bolding)

It seems that every corporation that has yet to accept the conclusion of the Stern Report- that climate change is not an economic obstacle but an opportunity to be embraced- is trotting out this same tired bullshit.

Can I just state clearly here that THERE IS NO DEBATE AMONGST SCIENTISTS ABOUT WHETHER CLIMATE CHANGE IS A REAL THREAT OR NOT.

Chrysler's line can be translated as "we do not want to have to face up to reality so not only are we are going to brazenly LIE through our teeth, we are going to spend money to tell all our customers that this is the case and also on attacking the credibility of climate science". Its worrying how often this position is seen amongst major corporations (not just US ones either).

I'm starting to think that climate change denial should be a worse crime than holocaust denial. Arrest the fuckers repsonsible for such policy, force them to attend lectures on environmental science and don't release them until they can produce a comprehensive document detailing the evidence for climate change and the threat it poses to civilisation.

Ha!

We live in a police state

Brett at Harry's Place has posted something interesting. Its funny to hear people relating their experiences under this regime. I've got a few I could throw up here so I'll spin you the one that my friend related to me whilst driving home last night and a couple more personal experiences.

My friend's dad is, in her own words, "Jeremy Clarkson". He often rails against the injustice of speed cameras and she mentioned that he was currently driving illegally as he was contesting his latest penalty and therefore considered the consequent ban to be "suspended pending resolution". Anyhoo, apparently the penalty in question had arrived out of the blue after he thought he had got away with it some time previously- something about moving house or the wrong address on the ownership papers. This raised some confusion as to how the police had caught up with him and so he enquired where they had got his details from. The response was somewhat astonishing. Some months before he had stepped into a fight outside a pub in Yorkshire where he lives to prevent some chap taking an undeserved kicking and had done his duty by calling the police and making a statement. The details he had given allowed the police to chase him up for his parking ticket!

I can't imagine anything less absurd in this day and age where politicians and police superintendents go on record blaming the public's loss of any sense of civil duty as partly responsible for the breakdown of law and order and the proliferation of ASBOs. So when someone does their duty you might expect the authorities to turn a blind eye when the opportunity to chase the upstanding citizen for some minor infringement is presented. This is known as "discretion".

My second tale relates to a aprking ticket I apparently received recently. I say "apparently" because I received a letter some weeks after the date of the alleged incident stating that I had failed to pay the penalty within 28 days and consequently was now liable for the full £60 fine. I wrote back saying I had never received the ticket and couldn't remember the day in question but believed that I hadn't been parked where and when they said I had. Unfortunately this form failed to reach them (my own fault) within the 28 days they had given me- I hadn't stamped it when I put it in the internal mail at uni. I delivered it to the council offices by hand the day after the deadline and hoped for the best. Foolish in the extreme, I know. The result you might be able to guess- the fine raised to £90 and a threat to send the debt to county court. I feel that a little informed discretion might at least alleviate the burden of the fine by £30 or so even if it does not excuse me entirely (no doubt about that- apparently they have photographic evidence of my illegally parked van).

Finally I would like to relate the tale of my wife's visa. She is from Auckland and her grandmother was a UK citizen, thus entitling her to ancestral UK citizenship. She had also been married to me for a year or more when we returned to this country from our travels in 2004. She rang up the Nationality and Immigration Directorate to enquire about getting indefinite leave to remain ("permanent residency") and was told that if she was going to apply as my spouse then there was a 2 year grace period before she could do so in which she had to be resident on a spousal visa. "Fine," she answered "I'm also entitled to citizenship through ancestry and I've been living here on such visas for 7 years so I'd like to get residency through that route instead." The stooge on the end of the phone told her to ring another department and speak to another stooge, who asked her a few questions about her movements before informing her that she would be perfectly eligible for this route. So, Wiff gets the forms sent to her and she spends days filling in absurdly detailed questions before sending the form back with a cheque for the extortionate sum which is demanded with every application.

"Not so fast, sunshine." Says the NID stooge, who calls her a month later. (I'm hamming this up, I know. Its called dramatic license.) "You may have had those visas for 7 years but you've been out of the country for the last 8 months and that invalidates your eligibility for residency. You must have been resident here for 4 continuous years with no more than 6 months out of the country."

At this point I had to grab the phone from Wiff as she was becoming (rightly) abusive. Many rude words were said to thin air before she attempted contacting the NID again. Further phone calls confirmed this story and in the end she got another application form for a spousal visa and sent it off. Another month passed. Then Wiff came home one day in a rage. Apparently some goon had rung her up and told her that the debit card details she had supplied had been declined and that they were returning the form to her. She would like to point out that there was nothing wrong with the details she had written down and there was plenty of money in her account to cover the fee and so the only possible reason for the failure of the payment process is that the goon in question had not punched in the right card number.

After some soul searching Wiff determined to complete the task in hand and so she filled in a new form and rang up to check that everything was as it should be with her application. Imagine her frustration and outrage to discover that the cost of application had recently DOUBLED. To £335.
now my wife is perfectly entitled to UK citizenship through 2 separate pathways. She is (almost) a model citizen and pays her taxes and is generally an asset to the nation. She is certainly not a dole bludger or a burden upon our social support system. Any cursory inspection of her application would reveal this. So why the hassle, the expense and the ignomy assoicated with this process.

A follow up to this tale relates my experience of gaining a New Zealand work permit. I had a 6 month holiday visa and was living with the in laws in Auckland. We were looking for some casual work whilst travelling around and wanted to do it legitimately. If you are looking for such work it i by no means necessary to have a work permit- it is legally necessary but most manual labour jobs aren't picky about who they employ or how rigourously they check such things. The only downside is that you can still be "taxed" on your wages and this "tax" goes into the pocket of the guy organising your labour. So, there was an immigration office in the suburb a few miles down the road, one of several dotted around Auckland- no centralised bureaucracy here- and we toddled on down there one day with the forms that I'd picked up one day from the main office in town. This office was notoriously busy as it dealt with "special cases" and asylum applications too so the discovery of a branch in the suburbs was encouraging. We were not disappointed. 40 minutes from walking in the door I walked out again with my work visa in my passport. 30 minutes waiting in the comfortable, clean waiting room reading magazines and then a 10 minute face-to-face interview with an immigration official. She was polite. She was patient. She was a Kiwi and spoke perfect english- unlike several of the people Wiff had to talk to at the UK NID. This is a demonstration of the use of "discretion"- I was blatantly not an asylum seeker, any other form of immigrant (I had a plane ticket out of the country), a criminal or any other form of citizenship pirate. I had all the evidence required to support my application in hand and I was there in person, reasonably smartly dressed and polite and eloquent to boot. Why is it anathema in this country to give people the responsibility of making on-the-spot decisions about such matters? Why do you have to tick fifty boxes, pay a small fortune and wait a month to be told you are eligible for residency when its clear that you are anyway?

The point of my ramble is that, if other countries have no problem establishing efficient and functioning bureaucracies then why can't we? The same question can be applied to the NHS, the rail networks, the police and just about everything else in the UK. Its all been done better elsewhere (look at Scandinavia).

So why not here?

Bush and Blair Get Iraq's Oil After All

So the illegal invasion was never about oil . . . . . Yeah. Right. Pull the other one- its got a chain of dead Iraqs' severed ears hanging off it.

Why is Blair still prime minister again . . . . . ?

Oh yeah! -because the British population love seeing children's corpses on TV.

la la laaaaa la la laaaaaaaa - the HPLC is fixed!

A nice man from Speck & Burke Analytical spent the last couple of dasy reinstalling our crappy software after it decided to forget where the pump was and then forget who all the users were. Seems to be working- but slowly. I will try and run a crab urine sample and show you the results.

All appendages crossed for extra luck (this makes walking a challenge but I reckon I need it).

Long Live American Democracy!

The media, the public and even his own party are in open revolt against Bush's latest attempt to kill everyone on the planet.

This is a powerful piece of broadcasting.

Tobias Jones and how the atheists are out to get him!

Dudes! A killer beating is taking place over on the guardian forum- check it out.

This guy wrote this article about how atheism was "the new fundamentalism", smearing dawkins and Sam Harris et al with accusations of religious cleansing. The response is nothing, if not viscerally enraged!

Today I have been mostly . . . .

drawing this in powerpoint:


Because Bill Gates' software is shit I had to do a screen dump and then cut the image out of it to get a good enough reoslution shot to use.

Proud I am, oh yes!

As the title suggests its a schematic of the energy flows through an organism and the efficiency values required to model them. I rock!

Scope For Growth

Yaaaaaaaaaawwwwnnnnn!

Its late and I can't sleep because wiff gave me her cold and hence I am ridden with snot. So thought I'd lay down an update on the usual cutting edge science.

This is the first week back from the christmas hols and its been a gentle easing into things with the usual 10am starts and 10 cups of tea before anything gets done. The first thing I have to share is that my Scope For Growth [SFG] assay seems to have kicked arse! I set up the feeding rate assay with my ragworms in the week before christmas before going digging on a lovely, clear winters day at Bantham, the Mouth of the River Avon. We found appropriate numbers of wriggly things and carted them back to the lab where I set about making them as comfortable as possible (itsimportant to take care of your worms, otherwise they do not cooperate with later requests). Anyhoo, the worms were allowed to purge their gut contents overnight, as is necessary for SFG, before being weighed and fed the next day. I selected the 24 biggest ones in order to get better data as smaller worms means smaller appetites and smaller amounts of pooh which, in turn, means less accurate measurements, higher standard deviation and arse data. This is not desirable.

Come the following day I arrived and promptly stood one of the little fuckers which had decided to make a break for freedom and had managed to reach the wet lab floor (RIP worm #10- your life was not wasted). Despite this poor start the day went well as the worms had hearty appetites and had eaten considerable amounts of the fish food pellets that I had offered them. Having retrieved what was left of these pellets I set about drying and weighing them to determine the dry weight lost from each so that I could work uot how much each worm had eaten. I was going to collect their faecal matter and the string of mucus the little blighters trail everywhere but then I remembered reading about how the residence time of food in the gut means that you should collect material from the 24 hours following feeding if you wanted to calculate absorption efficiencies. This I decided to do but instead of cleaning the worms out and leaving them to depurate in clean water I thought I would strike a balance between these two approaches and simply collect what was there 48 hours after feeding. In hindsight this was a bit daft. If I had been switched on I would have collected the excreta then and then collected the excreta for the following 24 hours seperately. As it happened, the next day it was clear that some worms had been doing their coprophage ting and had consumed some of their excreta from the previous day. Not to be discouraged I dutifully collected what was left by passing syringes of water from each trough through preweighed glass fiber filter discs and then dried and weighed each one. These were then ashed, along with the pellet residues from the previous day so that the organic content could be calculated. In reality there was a 10 day period between the drying and the ashing that encompassed xmas and NYE but the first thing I did when I got back into the lab this Monday was turn on the oven to ash my worm pooh.

Finally, having wacked the numbers into excel, I could view the results of my labours and was chuffed to bits to find that I had 23 data points with a beautifully tight SD, although with one outlier, admittedly. Even more chuffing brilliant was the 1-way ANOVA I did between the Avon worms AEs and some AEs I'd measured before xmas in worms from Restronguet Creek- my polluted site. The difference was clear and marked and was significant to P=0.001, which is pretty goddamn significant, I can tell you!

So there you go. Another success story of cutting edge research. Keep reading for my next adventure titled "The Return to The Polluted Site- The Hunt for More Restronguet Worms".

State funding of political parties

Johann does the business. I like his writing.

Compulsory Voting

Not sure why this isn't UK policy. Then again I have no idea why Tony Blair is still in power or why the Green Party isn't.

"It is also argued that voting is a "civic duty", much like paying taxes, and that it is important for the continued functioning of the nation. People are required to pay taxes and sit on juries for the good of society; some feel that voting is another duty that all citizens should be required to perform."

Life isn't free. You can't simply live your life as best you can without engaging with those around you. If you are you are dehumanising yourself. Just as everyone has rights so they also have responsibilities. I have no problem with people not wanting to vote but I abhor a system that does not punish people who are too lazy to engage with their country's politics.

“ Everyone is a political person, don’t you understand that? You would have to be autistic or a hermit to be truly apolitical! People who say that are merely saying they support the status quo, which is a profoundly political stance.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

Icehenge

I feel like a bit of an idiot

Ok, time for me to apologise to all the zionists out there. I have been having a healthy debate over at Harry's Place about zionism and was arguing against it- believing that zionism was a movement that advocated the establishment of an exceptionalist Jewish state in "Greater Israel" i.e. all of Palestine. I was busy explaining to some very irate people that I had no problem with a secular, democratic Israel inside its 1967 borders when one of the long-suffering members (Venichka) pointed out that this was what zionism actually was anyway.

So to all those at Harry's Place who have been calling me an anti-semite, I am sorry. I apologise unreservedly and withdraw my criticism of zionism. I am not an antisemite- I am an antitheist so whilst I may scorn the religion of Judaism I do so in a general fashion as I do all religions and I have nothing against the cultural group known as Jews.

Anti-zionism

I am an antitheist in the Colin McGynn style because all religion is clearly bollocks (see here for convincing sociological evidence- I should hope not to have to provide any philosophical evidence to people reading this far). As a consequence I am inherently anti-zionist too. A comment column at Harry's Place had a post from a Jewish chap (look for Hamish Q Cumber 01-01-07, 10:04pm) that contained a list of the principles of contemporary zionism together with some excellent criticism. Of note was the fact that advocates of a Jewish state are automatically implying that people of other creeds and cultures are inferior to the Jewish occupants of such a state. I cannot differentiate this from Nazi Germany, the South African apartheid or any other such adhorrence where a particular social, cultural or religious group are singled out for exceptional treatment.