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."

UN-anticipated

I strongly believe that the neo-cons deliberately have had a policy (since the war in former Yugoslavia) to discredit and undermine the UN because it would have been a possible source of world government, which obviously goes against purely selfish US interests - they've cast the UN as incompetent - I am surprised they didn't try to claim it was communist (and therefore obviuously the axis of evil of the old kind) but its clear to me that the US has been (as chomsky put it) the only real Rogue State since the fall of the other "super-power" - the fact is that most of the situations the UN once might have helped in (aforesaid balkans, somalia, darfur, sri lanka, peru, middle east) where they are the only potentially neutral agency, the lack of resource engineered by the US has meant the UN is not seen as much help - fact is that neither has the US been any help in any one of them - history will tell, but if we were to write about Good and Bad Empires, I don't think they'll be a phrase "Pax Americana" anywhere in the books
UNless
UNtil
UNambiguous

The Muddle East (again) & commentating

1. so there's this book about the excessive influence that the israeli lobby has in the US, just being touted around (e.g. guardian blurb) - the interesting thing is that
no-one ever really comes out and says the two important sides to the equation:-

i) any vaguely anti-zionist text is a great way to flush out all the zionist loons and so identify the people to ignore in the real debate - lightning rods are useful...

ii) the real debate for israelis is that withotu the 3billion a year in US aid, not only would their country be bankrupt, but they would probably all be dead and the country overrun with fairly hardcore islam - this would also not be v. nice for the palestiniains (most of whome historically are educated moderate) or some of the neighbours (lots of the lebanese and all the other groups in neighborouing states that don't subscribe to some of the extreme debate (Egypt, obviously not being arab, but also baatist syria, oddly).

On the other hand, one could imagine a 3rd party sponsor of peace if only !

2. meanwhile, also in recent press is the US handwringing about pulling troops out of Iraq - here's a mitigating thought aboute how the chaos that ensues could be excused as not a result of the US (&UK) intervention, but (at least eventually) would have happened when saddam died (say of old age) - the Sunni-Shia civil war (which is what is really going on) was just on the horizon one day - perhaps making it happen sooner rather than later is not necessarily a good thing, but is it a reason to continue to support a mess that has 3+ parties instead of just two (three party problems, like 3 body problems, being intractable)???

3. The guardian has a nice recent article on how politicized islam now a stable state that we have the US (and UK) to thank for.

scambled eggs (porridge): are they really worth the hassle?

yet again i find myself scraping clean an allegedly non-stick pan after cooking scrambled eggs to go on sunday breakfast toast, and i find myself asking:

where they really worth the bother?

answers on a blogsite near you now!

here's today's bizarre error message (from blogger:)

in KAIST today, tried updateing a blog entry and got the following two errors (the second one looks like it is from some local proxy though)

---

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please:

* Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
* Provide the following error code and additional information.

bX-9z85b6
Additional information
blogID: 19062127
host: www.blogger.com
postID: 608001519340849006
uri: /post-edit.do

This information will help us to track down your specific problem and fix it! We apologize for the inconvenience.

---

HTTP Status 400 - Invalid path /post-create was requested

type Status report

message Invalid path /post-create was requested
description The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect (Invalid path /post-create was requested).
Apache Tomcat/4.1.31

---

How useful:)

iraq cheney prediction thing

I finally got around to looking at Cheney's 94 interview about why not to go into iraq, and now there's nothing more to be said on the matter.

what's all this talk about peace, love and underwater

glastonbury was awash with wet, and rumours of wet (apologies to marley brothers:) but then it appears reading
aint a lot better and not bein wetter though
fuji
looks green without bein a drain

what's all this talk about global warming, i just want to set the world on fire:)

Comparing Iraq to Vietnam is like comparing Bush to King Minos

Obscure joke (King Minos ran the minoan empire who worshipped bulls! Bush&Bull - Bull is what Bush mostly talks) - anyhow, to cut to the chase:

So, the Wall Stret Journal and Financial Times battle it out to
see who can win the argument over Bush's typical confused
comparison of the "success that could have been vietnam" argument on why to stay
in iraq

WSJ and
FT and
more FT comment on Bush's recently fabulously insulting speech about how Vietnam informs Americans about what to do in Iraq (or what not to do:-)

Fascinating stuff all this albeit completely irrelevant to any possible
useful way of finding an effective way forward.
Reasoning by analogy has always been a very poor intellectual tool.
If one can relate iraq to vietnam, answer me these simple questions, by way of an
excercise in thinking about this mode of debate:

Who is the equivalent of China, or more generally, is there
an equivalence between the Sunni/Shia fight, and some internal
communist/capitalist debate?

(more close to home for me:-)
Who is the equivalent of France's role in Vietnam, in Iraq?
or
Who was the equivalent of Syria's role in Iraq, in Vietnam?

Why did the UK send troops to Iraq, but decline to support the US in
Vietnam?

Is 9/11 some sort of deep metaphor for the the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
the march of world socialism supposed to be a plugin for Islamic Jihad/Al Queda?

Frankly, this all looks like high school kids debates, and for me really doesn't
do any more than show what a skewed view of the world journalists and politicians
have, and how little interest ether have in solving things.

Most worryingly, it continues the US-centricism which is just going to piss off
more people in the region, as usual.

No it is clear to me that the nearest lesson in history to the US role in Iraq
is Ancient Rome's role in Carthage. Or maybe, the Bay of Pigs fiasco:-)

Saddam is Fidel. Viva la Revolucion!

Consused yet? no more than Geo. W. Bush, illiterati supremo!

paleochora is fractal

wheer i am right now, a small town in south west crete, is compressed in an interesting way - unpacking it is very amusing, and can, effectively take forever - i just found this pic of my oldest kid visiting here on the site
of a rather fine (*but surreally english run*) calypso restaurant!

floods of tears, veils of rain

all i can say is that its damn lucky no african americans live in tewksbury or oxford and that the country is not run be neo con texans

utopic vision and religiousity in world leaders

I just finished reading "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia" by
John Gray which is quite persuasive in its argument and evidence - one interesting thing about the illusion of progress is that initial conditions matter so much - witness guns, health care and education work very differently in different cultures - so a lot of socio-politico-"science" is about bogo-hypotheses that are supposed to explain how one progresses (how a market or a welfare system operates etc). In reality, we can see from the examples that actually cultural pre-determination might be far more important -

for example, guns: there are as many guns as adults in switzerland and crete, yet gun related crime is virtually un heard of - the UK has some of the toughest antigun law in the world, and yet gun related crime is on the increase - would Gun Law in the US have a beneficial effect or not? i dont pretend to know.

for example, health care -the UK has one of the largest state run/funded free healthcare systems in the world (actually eyesight and teeth and prescriptions are no longer free, but so long as you dont need drugs, aren't short sighted, and are a descendant of slave trade, you're fine:) - some liberal countries (Denmark) leave it up to local decisions whether to have private or state provison of health-care - the state underwrites insurance for the poor, but refuses to pay unreasonable prices - since there are a lot of poor, the state is the biggest customer and gets to have good control of both private and state provided health-care seems to work - what doesn't work is America but i dont see why. I dno t pretend to me Michael Moore (is he related to dickless brit sci fi writer?)

for example, education - private education in the UK is increasing in price at 12% per year in the last 5 years - despite competing against a state system that is improving, and universities that bias against private school kids - no i can;t explain it - its cultural -

the point about these (and I could say a lot more about each and how they operate in practice in many other cultures differently) is that there is no evidence of "progress" towards some improved (asymptotically platonic ideal) state - there's just a bunch of different systems which operate well or badly, and yet what determines which operate well or badly is outside the scope of any traditional "explanations" offered - its arbitrary - its pragmatic, dummy

UK-US special dysfunctional relationship

render unto bush that which is anti-american, but will he even notice that the brits help him? will he heck.

the "special relationship" that this portraits is one of a bully and his victim, where the victim keeps sadly going back for more as its the only kind of attention they get. why is it after countless evidence that most people in the US (government/population, you pick) don't even know where england is let alone who blair and brown were and are, that UK government persist in relying on a special relationship which is thin air?

There used to be some trade advantage, but there's precious little britain makes that the US would want. we have the old commonwealth and new euro partners - why do we care - let the US go sink, as far as I am concerned:) but is so sad and pathetic to be part of this abusive and degrading dependancy that seems to obsess people in whitehall. would we have had the bombs in london of 7/7 if we had taken more of a laidback approach to defending the US right to defend themslves without helping them to attack random innocent (in the sense of not being the perps of 9/11) other targets like iraq?

who knows, but the one-sidedness of the security forces "trade" reports above(we help them, they take our citizens to guantanamo, and don't actually help us catch our own bad guys) is surreal and begs for us to leave it and find a self house for abused nations - who knows, we might form a club there :)

pocomoco, neopomo, momo, and plain nono

so its becoem de rigeur to deconstruct the slightest post modern, semidiotic piece of media (scream, dr who, fake steve jobs, whatever) and reveal that it is, of course
un peu mot dit, or pomo for short - that aint nutthin to do with Dune, y'know, but everthin to do with fouccault (was ever there a name that sounded like a french person saying fuck off) and derrida (he who derides).

watching the really fabby jekyll on the telly recently, i was struck by how formulaic the pomo tendancies have now becoem - this is not to deride or f-off the very very fine writing of this work, but to point out that if something is now so much part of the wallpaper or tools-of-the-trade, it can't be very post-anthing anymore - its
current (cumo), and not very neo or meta, or uber at all. in the words of amy whinehausfrau, it aint gone to rehab, no-no.
"Look, Dr Jekyll, you can run, but you can't Hyde" :-)

Harry Potter - the End, or is it?

"know this, harry potter. I am your father"
"No you aren't - that's Darth Vader and he's Luke Skywalker's father"
"look out, behind you - a Dalek"
"no, voldemort, that's Dr Who, and you don't look much like david tennant"
"But harry, all i have left is these tears in the rain"
"nope, that's the replicant, batty in do androids dream"
"speak, friend, and enter"
"no, gandalf"
"look at me ma, i'm on top of the world"
"jimmy cagney, public enemy no. 1"
"look harry, after 500 years of peace, all hogwarts ever produced was the damn cuckoo clock"
"nope, harry lime, the third man"
"prepare to die"
"inigo montoya, the princess bride"
"I don't think I can do that harry"
"Hal, 2001"
"you know how to whistle, harry, you just put your lips together and.."
"lauren bacall, to have and to have not - hey, voldy, are you by any chance, uh, gay"
"I thought you'd never ask"
...exeunt off to the sunset (well, the club, heaven) pursued by sundry daemons and other long running Unix programmes.

Poles apart

So I'd heard about the polish arrival in dublin (estimates vary, but on the order of 250,000 apparently) but what was truly impressive today on going between DUblin Airport and TCD in the City Center is that the only language I heard on public transport was polish, and the first newstand I saw in O'Connell St was selling polish papers alongside the Irish Times - Europe works:)

Our friends eclectic

Aye, Dis Pie's Good
or , perhaps, I dispise good?

The Ants are my friend,
he's blown in his win

from earcorn to giant toke, treee!