war

aside from the Edwin Starr song
("war: what is it good for? absolutely nothing")
and the Bob Markey song (based on the speech
by Haile Sallasie - "until the philosphy that holds one man
different from another, inferior, is finally, and utterly
discredited, everywhere there will be war"...etc etc)
I didnt realize that einstein and freud had ever collaborated
until i read this:

http://realhumannature.com/?page_id=26

english, as she is spoke

he sipped his aperitif, as the soiree wore on,
because it was the soigne thing to do
"my pensee du jour" he started
with faux naivitee,
"is that my metier manque
was definitely not les objets trouvees"

"dumpkopf" his hostess exclaimed
without a little schednfreude,
"dont blitz us with your sub-freudian
traumatic zeitgeist"

"nein, nein, mein libher herr"
he retorted, "lets have some chai, and improve our karma"

"you complete anorak", commented his older brother, mycroft.

smuggling up to the thought police authorities

so i've been traveling between england and france fairly frequently in the last 4 months and waiting for the point when some random customs person asks me why...in line with the old joke about the chap riding donkeys between mexico and the US for decades and cycling back each day, I will explain that my work involves
smuggling french words into england, and in exchange, english jokes into france

i hope there is no vat to pay (I can't see any value that I am adding:)

A true history of Pain and Chocolate, by Umberto Econot

this is true

I met a man from eurostar today who told me about the gentleman who travelled from
Quebec to Brussels to clinch a deal for the sale of surreal bicycles (one of the rare
quebcois products for which there exists a large belgian demand).

However, he flow into london, and then took the train, which is where things went
horribly wrong (or was it). Ce monsieur, this gentleman didnt notice that he took the
wrong platform (9 instead of 10) and the train was for paris, not bruxelles.
On arriving in said city, without putting on his glasses, he ran for a taxui,
and called out a hotel (Hotel de la Paix), and of course there was one in Paris too,
so the driver took him there. As luck would have it, when he arrived, and checkedin
there was a reservation in his name (his name, oh, Louus vuiton or something common enough)
so he still did't notice anythign amiss - of course, being quebecois, he didn't notice the difference in the french accent between France and Belgium either.

In the morning, he ordered another taxi, and went off to the customer, one
Lady O'France; of course, the taxi driver misheard him and took him to Radio france,
where there was a panel of surrealists and cyclists discussing the perfect breakfast.
Cyclists shouted "Chocalate", surrealists called out "Pain", the Quebecois, quietly
spread the chocolate into a croissant - a silence fell over the studio. THen applause
burst out.

He went home, not realising that he had created Pain au cholcat, but moaning ove the
weird way that belgians do business. It wasnt like this with Eddie Mercxx and
Magritte, in may father's day, he complained to his friends.

post jungian review of da vinci code

so the recursive matrioshka like nature of eve and jesus cannot be under contemplated, with birth after birth seen compressed over time as if, as if, a sequence of nested beings being unwrapped, or indeed, played out, like a turing machine, revisiting the same place on a coiled tape, with only slightly modified state - but the male nature of da vinci code must also be commented on what with fast cars and bald albino monks, there is something of the rat, something of the michael jackson, post willard, post billie jean, revealing in the end that god does play dice, but only with alannis morrisette

why did the mountaineer go to heaven?

everest climber has passed on presumably, to higher things :-)

patent blasphemy

so here's a mad idea: for most (abrahamic/of the book) religions in their purist (purest?) forms, it is a sin to try to compete with god - indeed, representations of humans are forbidden because "who are we to try to make something in our image so imperfectly, which god made in hers so perfectly"?

knowledge is similar - our knowledge is a pale shadow of the true, deeper knowledge.

so intellectual property (copyright, patent) is a form of idolatary, and therefore immoral and blasphemous under fundamental christian, judaic and islamic law

surely?

just as is usary...

the politics of privacy, the privacy of politics

one thing I think seems to have slipped by the britpopliticians in their mad rush to get all of our lives into government databases. we get all their lives too...

we know where you live, my brown, and the color of your cars, and your bank account details, and your tax return status, and... ... ...

surely you;d think that'd make them more afraid than us - after all,we know they have something to hide, whereas they can never be sure about us...

a fairytale of New York - PC Madeness

So PC (as in political correctness not Police Constable) Madness temporarily reigned at the Beeb when some bozo of a censor decided that various words in the glorous Pogue's xmas song, a fairytale of new york, had to be bleeped out as they (e.g. strumpet, fagott) were offensive - as one fan said "isn't this just about christmas food:)

the song is fabulous because it is so resonant - even the fact that it appears to be a love song between a couple of drunken homeless crusties, whereas the singer Kirsty MacColl couldnt ever have really be described as anything other than glamorous (alas she passed away in a bizarre scuba diving accident), and Shane McGowan[1] is alarmingly still alive even though he is a drunken crusty m just adds depth to the duet (Shane sings
"Well, I could have bin someone", and Kirsty retorts "well, so could anyone" - perfect punk ethos, and delicious in that they are both someone, but both "someone of the people"

so the Beeb moron who decided to ban the offensive bits in the lyrics (despite them being a little bit Olde Worlde archaic uage, and not even words in contemporary slang) was obviously not aware that, and how ironic is this (shades of that oirish standup routine about Alannis Morisette's crap "how ironic" ditty) - the band, the Pogue's full name is the Irish phrase "pogue mahone" which means "kiss my arse". Shane must be laughing all the way to the next pint of martini.

Kirsty (RIP) was once known as the Electric Land Lady (after Jimi Hendrix ELectric Ladyland:), but also, according to many, including Billy Bragg (who's beautiful song St Swithin's day she also sang beautiflly), was an angel....she sure was.....

[1]Shane's punk credentials don't seem to be dented by the fact that he went to a very posh school (this is not hearsay - i was at the same school at the same time, Westminster, and vaguely new Shane there; of course, I certainly have no punk credentials at all, despite playing in a band called Intensive Care Unit:) Perhaps this was coz I was let go from a band run by Matthew Seligman (very good bass player)...)gratuitous, Little Feat style extraneous parenthesis....()

I was kindly given a copy of the history book, Thunderstruck (signed by the author, erik larson, thank you kindly, sir!), by Rex Hughes at a luncheon to celebrate his recent doctorate. In this book is a marvellously rich, deeply researched history of the twin tales of the mild murderer, Crippen, and the seminal entrepreneur, Marconi, and how their lives (like many later) were entwined by long distance wireless communication!

but more to the point, there is a description of london in the late 19th and early 20th century - around that time, italian and french anarchists were highly active (see Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent (filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Saboteaur) - apparently, half the houses on Charlotte Street (near UCL, in London) were under surveillance by the New Scotland Yard and the Surete (interesting that the victorian and edwardian british let the french secrete service operate within london) - there was of course a famouse bomb at new scotland yard, amongst others

so today's hysteria by UK (and other) goverment agencies saying there's a "new threat from terrorism" and we must reduce rights so that terrorosts can be tracked and caught, is yet again shown to be completely bogus- there was always such a threat, and, of course, we need eternal vigilance, but that doesn't mean there's a change such that we need to relax habeus corpus or other (inalienable?) rights

oh, the way the marconi wireless telegraphy (sometimes beatifully known as "space telegraphy - prescient of Vint Cerf's Interplanetary Internet:), was used to warn american police of Crippen's imminent arrival on a boat, is eerily reminiscent of the way that cell phones were used to track the 2nd lot of london bombers to....italy, where Guilgemo Marconi came from...

are all novelists high functioning autistics?

was thinking about this - one thing that very intellectually smart but empathically challenged folks on the autism spectrum do, is apparently, to run simulations of what other people might be feeling...rather than actually experiencing empathy - isn't this what novelists do?

mohammed bear

so the teacher in sudan who entertained a classroom of kids with a nice
engaging game of "lets pick a name for the bear" is set free - and "pardoned".
(see, for example bbc report on this, amongst zillions of others).

frankly that is not good enough. frankly, the people that accused her are unbelievable hypocrites, and should be comdemned - the religious teachers who should have told the kids in the school that perhaps naming an inanimate doll after the prophet was inappropriate, they are the ones who are guilty - the teacher who was clearly very good at her job, and popular, was a victim of prejudice, and the appropriate thing would be for a trial under sharia law of those who levelled false accusations against her out of jealousy and bigotry - they clearly lacked understanding, let alone compassion. As has been made obvious by the (majority) sane part of the muslim community, this was an unjust case in the first place. So who will be tried for hiring the "rent a mob" people who cried out for her to be whipped? You know, I'm not a christian, so I'd be happy to throw the first stone. What is the punishment for lying in Islam? For threatening jihad/violence without justification? The sudanese religious leaders need to think very hard about just what they stand for, and how much the rest of the world will stand for them talking this sort of gibberish.

saint pancreas internationale - critique

so i've now arrived in st pancras international from paris 1ce and departed 1ce - and though the station is (imho) a marvel comic to behold, the arrantements are not as good as waterloo or gare du nord for travellers in 2 regards

1. where do i put my bike in st pancras, eh? this has already been protested about but it is a joke to have 22 bad ground level weedy bike loops for a really big station...

2. there's 1 cafe 1ce you go thru registeration/passport and it has 2 people serving AND they wont let you bring coffee in from outside (thats new!)

for a 7.30am train, this leads to a MASSIVE queue, which is ludicrous...where's the "retail experience" in that then, eh

so 11/10 for architecture, but 3/10 for green, human facing stuff...

coming from paris, where there is velib, this is a bit annoying - see
geo. coulouris report on the joys of the system, even during a metro strike....

hmm - so i take some of it back - in just a few days, they have put a BUNCH of bike racks in the eurostar car park - much better than the adjancent King's Cross ones, and the cafe situation seems a tad better - well done!! very fast improvement AND the train has been early (just over 2 hours and 5 minutes, TWICE!)....impressive - indeed, it has been late by 5-7 minutes twice, but due to delays on the french (shared track) side

Rashomon 2.0

so (and I am sure kurosawa though of this anyhow) one thing one could do in a Rashomon re-make in a post-modern era is to have the same person tell ALL the stories (after all the film is a fiction, and there is only reall the narrator and the audidence) but the story would change depending on the audience

this is a bit like human memory and behaviour - each time you "recall" something ,actually, you re-tell the story a slightly different way- but imagine its a story (memory) that matters a lot to you - you will certainly recall and retell it differently to your lover, mother, father, daughter, son, policeman, lawyer, doctor, judge, teacher ...etc etc

that would be a fun story to write (and maybe to read, a few times) a few times

shut the haburger joint or the smiley dame gets it

walkin round the louvre this weekend with my 10 yr old, we concocted this plan
to kidnap the Mona Lisa and hold it to ransome - the fee - france has to close
ALL the McDonalds branches, or we will cover La Jaconde with "special sauce"

no, really....oh, ok, not...

Fire and Rain and the Governator

If http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7057888.stm#map>this was a movie, then the governator would have built a Time Tunnel and conencted the waters of the mississippeee to the fires of california and put the poor of New Orleans and the Rich of Malibu out of their misery at one swell foop. But it isn't a movie, so Joni's friends will all be saved, while Sachmo's legacy was washed away when the levee broke (again). Maybe Zepplin could do a special gig and play that one extra loud? Maby Dick wil happen.

Gore Blimey with Science

Some people seem to criticise the Gore film and Peace Prize (and global warming arguments) because
of inaccuracy (sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental) - I think it is clear that if
someone makes up a completely false argument to reach a completely false conclusion,
then that would be pretty bad but I think theres a misunderstanding of the role both of
of science, and of the public understanding of science here.

No science is 100% accurate - anyone who claims so is a religious fanatic:)
Science (and its apparent progress) is a series of successive approximations
to more useful predictive rules about how the world will operate based on the past,
with a set of public instructions on how you can verify the rules yourself,
or see other people do so.

Occasionally, rules are even overthrown, although usually, they are "improved"m giving rise
to the unfortunate idea that they are converging on some sort of accurate model of the true
(or "platonic ideal") universe, although most scientists would make no such claim.

The errors in the Gore movie are well known and do not detract from the overall argument -
a recent court case in the UK about showing the movie in schools as part of education
was wo in favour of the movie, provided the discussion of the errors is part of the
presentation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm

THis is entirely a Good Thing, since the general argument, but also the fallability of scientists
is an important lesson. But more so: the fact that Nothing is ever 100% proven, but that a
statistical argument has to be made "on balance" is an even more important lesson. Systematic
as well as random errors are part of any science - indeed, in biology (as well as in Computer Science)
both systematic (mistaken assumptions, methodological errors) as well as random errors
(noise, stochastic variation in the environment - e.g. users:), are a fact of life,
so deal with it:)

Monkeying about with the Internet in Myanmar

So how an the Burmese Junta oppress people so much and even suppress the use of the net
pretty effectively, when similar uprisings (e.g. in former USSR to support Gorbachev during the abortive coup) worked so well using "underground" networks?


1. wasn't the top level design goal for IP was ever thus (attack proof/survivable)??

2. Yes, but what changed was it got embedded into infrastructures by incumbents
(dont care if its cisco, microsoft, isps, telcos, governments, organised religion, power, water, whatever)

3. Most people working in dtn and extreme (e.g. developing world) wireless have your
architecture and goals in mind...but we aren't there yet, sorry t say...

4. read "The 9 billion names of god", before you say that monks are part of the solution.

buddhist soldiers maybe...

Also, imho
the reason the grassroots net worked in russia during the attempted regain of cntrol by central forces resisting GLasnost and Perestroikia
was that RUsiians could not "organise a piss up in a brewery" so despite 70 years of the kremlin, the kgb and politburo had a completely useless idea of
things like telephones and other means of organised resistence

despite cold-warriors insistent ranting, this is not a feature of communism - it was is strong cultural feature of _russia_ - they've been like this under
Tsars, Mongols and post CIS - other communist/fascist regimes, or sorry, military dictatorships (China, and, alas, Burma, and, alas North Korea)
are well organised and can control modern technology to use it
as yet another means of oppression (oh, and lets not forget Saudi Arabia...)

interestingly enough, the US probably has quite a robust set of alterantives to the centralised control of internet/telephone (e.g. cb radio etc)
so if Bush goes completely mad and invokes special powers to stay on instead of letting Hilary return to the WH, maybe you'll see
decentralised armed resistence once again for the first time since you kicked "us" out (I use the term "us" loosely since back thenm my ancestors were
being disorganised in Russia, Poland, deepest Yorkshire and Scotland...
so didnt have much to do with British colonies, thank you very much).

Blair through Blur - an interesting companion piece

A weird experience reading Alex James' Bit of A Blur (his autobiographical
recounting of the rise and rise of Blur) and Alastair Campbell's Diaries: The Blair Years, back to back - a bit like a history teacher of mine who insisted on reading the Morte D'Arthur acccompanied by Sibelius 4th....complimenarity, eat your heart out!

for example, Alex is astounded at meeting famous (really famous) people like royals
and the Old Brigade/royalty of rock, and Blur are a bit downhearted when they go to tour america to support the release of an album the day kurt cobain blows himself away and Grunge comes to town - Campbell seems similarly besotted with Diana, and famous US Clinton type people, and is upset when the press dont report his beloved T.B.'s wonderful works in favour of some lurid tabloid tale. Oh, and both feature silly abbreviations of names (everyone in Blur-land is reduced to one syllabul, every one in Blair to Reggie Perrin's style dual-initials). Oh, and people namecheck awfully the whole time, and hang out in Camden (the awful Good Mixer - knackerish pub I used to avoid near Arlington House (doss house), or the Camden Brasserie (knackerish faux-french place which is always full of people trying to sit next to famous people).

One difference (and this may be key to Blur getting my vote over New Labour every time) - Alex expresses remorse at his bad behaviour but admits that a) it was fun and b) rock musicians are MEANT to behave this way - its their job. Hey, and Blair had the poor taste to invite Oasis to No. 10, not Damon:)

There are loads of other parallels, and i wont spoil either book by reciting them here, but suffice it to say that Blur didn't go on to invade Iraq, and Zlex dance music taste isn't bad...

advices and queries...

don't come much better than this from Geo. Fox, 1656:

"Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one."