Microsoft's Surface Pro UK Release Schedule

Late 2012: Microsoft announces they are making the Surface with Windows 8 Professional.

February 2013: Microsoft release the Surface Pro in North America

April 2013: Microsoft release the Surface Pro in China

2020: Technology continues to advance at an geometric rate. There is still no word from Microsoft as to Surface Pro pricing for Europe.

2150: Due to resource pressures, Humanity polarises into two geopolitical behemoths; the United Atlantic Alliance, and the People's Democratic Federation.

3000: Humanity develop fast interstellar travel, begin colonising nearby systems. The two warring hyperpower blocs compete for resources. The Moon is destroyed. The larger fragments impact the Earth, causing continent-wide destruction and rendering entire hemispheres uninhabitable.

3100: The last humans leave the now dead Earth,

4000: As Humanity harvest the solar system for resources, devouring entire planets, the gravitational instability causes Sol to go supernova. Humanity harnesses all residual matter to fuel their technological advancement.

4500: The last human becomes post-physical. All humanity exists as pure energy beings in the virtual construct known as The Ark.

6000: The post-Human entity known as The Ark begins consuming matter to fuel its growth. It becomes more massive than any known body. Space/time itself begins to contract.

6100: The in-rushing galaxies begin to impact, generating a cloud of galactic fragments accelerating inwards at high fractions of c.

6101: In the last vestige of space/time before it collapses in on itself, and the very concept of space/time ceases to exist, Microsoft release the Surface Pro in the region of space/time formerly occupied by the geopolitical entity known as the United Kingdom

In summary, I'm not prepared to wait that long.

Schrodinger's Cat Experiment: Mark I

As cultured and educated people, you are no doubt aware of Schrodinger's Cat. What you are probably not aware of is the distressing truth behind this famous thought experiment and the resulting cover up that has lasted for nearly 80 years.

Knowing the specifics of the experiment, you may reasonably surmise that Erwin was no great lover of cats. On first inspection, it may not be entirely clear why this may be the case. However, I will, in this post, theorise as to the cause of this.

We flashback 80 years to the early 1930s, where we find Erwin Schrodinger jetting between Berlin, Oxford and Princeton, and corresponding with one Albert Einstein about quantum mechanics.

Schrodinger had a theory that needed testing, that at some level, matter can coexist in different states. He had yet to make the leap that it might only apply at the quantum level. Picture the scene; Erwin sits in his office, deep in thought, when his cat Cuddles¹ jumps onto his lap. It is there, scratching Cuddles idly between the ears, that he formulates the basis of that famous experiment.

Hang on, you're thinking to yourselves. Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment. It was never carried out for real. That may indeed be true, and I'm about to tell you why.

As we have already established your intellect and learning, I can assume that you are also familiar with Godwin's Law, which states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

RocketBootKid's Law, which I am hereafter bequeathing to Mankind, can be stated in similar terms, thusly; "Over time, the probability of a cat owner being randomly attacked by their cat for no rational or logical reason approaches 1".

Back to Schrodinger. He and his cat are in the box, while Schrodinger ponders how the Observer Effect may alter the results of his experiment. The cat, being a cat and therefore experiencing the multiverse on a plane of existence completely devoid of logic and reason, suddenly sinks five of its six ends into Schrodinger's tender underparts.

Flashforward a few months, and it is only his dedication to scientific rigor that finds Schrodinger still occupying the box, when the better parts of him, his tender and now swollen underparts in particular, are begging him to develop a less painful experimental paradigm.

At some point, Schrodinger had a final falling out of love with Cuddles. The specifics of this event are wasted to the pages of history, but the ramifications for Cuddles are dire. Schrodinger, in a late-night manic episode, arrives at the specifics of the device with which we are now familiar.

His housekeeper, who services were suddenly dispensed with, would later comment that she hadn't seen Cuddles around for a while. Perhaps fearing a visit from the RPSCA, Schrodinger was careful to categorise the fate of Cuddles as a "thought experiment" when he published his theory in "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik" in 1935.

In a museum somewhere, in a display case, is a box inside of which, most definitely, is a dead cat.

¹ Schrodinger may or may not have had a cat, which may or may not have been called Cuddles. I think he'd be satisfied if I said all of the above were possible.

The Ephemeral Nature of Knowledge

Okay, it's a pretentious title, but you're just to going to have to deal with it.

This post is at least partly to defend my (annoying?¹) tendency to never state anything in definitive terms. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that I find absolute, unilateral, or dictatorial statements inherently distasteful. I was going to say inhuman, but that's perhaps a bit strong. The reason that the overdeveloped thesaural region in my brain returned that word is that a defining characteristic of humans is our ability to work together, to establish a consensus, to collectively achieve more than the sum of our parts.

A unilateral statement - the product of a single human - is inherently exclusive and therefore destructive to the power of the collective².


The second is that the very nature of knowledge is fleeting, dynamic, you might even say ephemeral. In fact, someone already did. I remember very clearing taking Physics at school and being told in later years to forget what I had previously been taught. Not because what I had been taught was incorrect, but because it was too high-level, too abstract.

The same is true of all areas of expertise, physics perhaps more than most. There are levels of understanding that are perfectly sufficient for most, but which gloss over the finer, more detailed points that are vital for the development of that subject.

Another factor is that the depths of human knowledge are constantly being explored, only to find that it's actually a lot deeper than previously thought. Unless you're keeping abreast of all recent discoveries throughout the entire sphere of human knowledge, you're going to be at least slightly inaccurate every time you open your mouth.

It is therefore extremely difficult to make any definitive statement about anything, other than that which you know inside and out, without it being based on a incomplete understanding of that subject, and therefore not entirely accurate. Now, most people don't worry about this, and most of the time it really doesn't affect much at all.

To the extreme pedants among us, and to those who value community consensus over dictatorial pronouncements, it's an important distinction, and one that should be accepted.


¹ I assume it must be at least slightly annoying, but that's just a guess.
² I cannot use that word without the Borg or Communism coming to mind.

The Dilbert Stages of Professional Cynicism

Over the years, I have come to believe that there are three stages to one's professional career, and that those stages may be defined relative to ones opinion of the work of Scott Adams, specifically 'Dilbert'.

This theory is borne of my own experiences, but like most of the ideas on here, is unlikely to be terribly original, well thought through, or even succinctly put. In an effort reduce the word count a bit, I'll apply Ockham's Razor, shave some words off, and define the stages as follows; 

• You don't think Dilbert is funny
• You think Dilbert is hilarious
• You think Dilbert is based on your professional life.

Or, to put it another way;

• You don't get Dilbert
• You get Dilbert
• Dilbert gets you.

These three stages reflect the effect of corporate reality as it slowly eats away at the fresh-faced young employee, heretofore swaddled in the protective nirvana of educational utopia. They are the measure of how much of the child has been replaced by corporate robot, of how much idealism has been replaced by cynicism.
 
Someone I know is very keen that people aren't cynical and go into things with an open mind, with the attitude that things can be done.As I've said before, I consider myself to be both a realist and an idealist. I try to nurture the hope that all things are possible, but I'm not going to stay up all night waiting.

People are cynics for a reason. Cynics are not born; we are made, or rather corrupted. While we may be cast in our mother's womb, we are forged in the fires of industry, in the furnaces of commerce. It is in this inhospitable environment that the naif in all of us has, at some point, had our eyes forcibly opened a la Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

Lord Acton was only halfway there; Power may corrupt, but its lack is just as harmful, albeit in different ways. Absolute power may make you believe that you can do what you like, but the lack thereof makes you believe that nothing is possible and that, whatever you do, forces beyond your control serve to constrain you.

Eventually, you stop trying. Only the blindest optimist or greatest fool would continue in the face of a life's experience. Indeed, Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

To return to The Three Stages, the first two stages are merely precusors to the transition to Stage 3, a transition that represents a paradigm shift in the professional outlook of the person in question. A person who has made the transition from Stage 2 to Stage 3 has been "broken", a term that intentionally mirrors the process by which horses become rideable.

While horses are more useful once broken, broken employees are often less useful. While they are still useful and important members of the team, they are less likely to go the extra mile.

The point at which employees break is often quite tangible. Someone previously level-headed and conscientious will suddenly become outspoken in meetings, or their grin get slightly manic, or "Thursday Afternoon Effect"¹ behavior happens on other days of the week.

We all know the signs, and we all silently mourn the passing of their youth, and think "You're one of us now".

¹ The Thursday Afternoon Effect is the point on Day 11 of a 12-day week full of 10 hour days when everything, even quite sad things, become hilariously funny, and the slightest thing can send you off into wild paroxysms of maniacal laughter.

---

I am working on an update to the theory that posits a fourth stage, which may be exemplified by the phrase "You know what, fuck that, it doesn't have to be this way". Whether this is merely an acute remission in otherwise chronic decline, or the turning of the tide, is the subject of further study.

Balls.

Two years ago, the Scottish Government released Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, on grounds of ill health. He returned to Libya to a hero's welcome.

Following the revolt against the Gaddafi regime, al-Megrahi's family have been unable to give him the necessary cancer medication and have pleaded with the Scottish Government to provide it.

My first six responses to this request are, uncharacteristically I feel, "Fuck him".

That the family have the balls to request that the country that suffered most at his hands - after the US - prolong his life, after he ended so many, feels like a massive boot to Scotland's balls.

My seventh thought is that since we released him from prisoner on medical grounds, and continue to monitor him, we retain some duty of care. And since there were doubts around some of the evidence in his trial, it's possible he's just some terminal cancer sufferer who got fucked over, in more ways than one.

All that said, and while it grates against my usual moderate stance, I'm going with Response 1: "Fuck him and his balls".

Creating the Universe with Unix Commands

# In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
> su
Password: jehovah
> mkdir heaven earth

# And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
> mkdir light

# And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
> cp light Day
> mv light Night

# And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
> mkdir waters firmament waters
mkdir: cannot create directory 'waters': File exists

# And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
> mv firmament heaven

# And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth...
> mkdir earth

# .. and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good
> mv waters seas

# And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
> cd earth
> mkdir grass seed fruit_tree

# And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years
> cd ../firmament
gsh: cd: ../firmament: No such file or directory
> cd ../heaven
> mkdir lights

# And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also
> cd lights
> mkdir sun moon stars

# And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven
> cd ../waters
> mkdir creatures
> cd ../heaven
> mkdir fowl

# And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good
> cd ../waters/creatures
> mkdir whales

# And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth
> nice whales
nice: whales: Permission denied

# And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so
> cd ../../earth
> mkdir creatures
> cd creatures
> mkdir cattle

# And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth
> mkdir man
> groupadd mankind
> useradd man -G mankind -m /earth
> cd /earth
> chown -rf man:mankind *
> chmod -r 777 man:mankind *
> cd /heaven
> chown -rf man:mankind *
> chmod -r 777 man:mankind *
> cd /waters
> chown -rf man:mankind *
> chmod -r 777 man:mankind *

# So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them
> useradd woman -G mankind -m /earth

# And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth
> nice man
What manual page do you want?
> nice woman
nice: woman: Permission denied

The Great British Earthquake

The 2011 earthquake struck in the middle of a sultry English summer afternoon, its epicentre the borough of Tottenham in North London. Within hours, the resultant aftershocks had spread to many other areas of the city and, over the next few days, to other English cities.

This earthquake, however, was not geological; it was social. The trigger was the shooting by Police of Tottenham man Mark Duggan on Thursday, 4th August 2011. While the trigger was at the Police-Public Tension point of the fault, there are many asperities along the social faultline through British society.

The earthquake allowed the release of pressure that built up at all the other points of tension as well; Haves vs Have Nots, The Nanny State, the list goes on. However, while the main shock was around Police-Public Tension, the main cause of the ensuing aftershocks - rioting - appear to be centered around the fiscal gap between the Haves and the Have Nots, something that has been given media coverage in the US in light of their current financial crisis, but which has been largely ignored in the UK.

To quote / paraphrase Joe Friday in Dragnet: "There are those that have it, and those that want it. Those who have it, flaunt it, no matter how they got it. Those who want it can get it by attempting to better themselves in a supportive society cheering them on. Or they can take it the easy way..."

This is what we're seeing. The looters are taking things they feel they cannot get legally. They are effectively bootstrapping themselves financially towards the rest of society; the Haves. Leaving the facts that it's illegal and ruins lives aside for a moment, one could argue that looting is an ultimately stabilising factor in situations like this. As the looters become the Haves, they then become invested in stability and calm, so that they may benefit from their ill-gotten gains. If a non-uniform distribution of wealth is [a|the] cause, then a redistribution of wealth, legal or otherwise, is inherently stabilising.

Given a destabilising event, those with more to gain than to lose will seize the opportunity. People have to be invested in the success of society in order for that society to survive. To quote from the movies again, in this case Xander Cage from xXx, "if you're gonna ask someone to save the world, you'd better make sure they like it the way it is". The longer society fails to address the needs of everyone, then the greater the tensions and the greater the likelihood of seismic events like these.

But what are the causes of these tensions? As with most things that defy digestible media soundbites, they are legion and exceedingly complex. Let's concentrate of two areas; 1. Why did it start? and 2. Why did it expand?

Now, writing this as I do from my resolutely white, middle-class haven in the currently riot-free north of the British Isles, I do not pretend to be anything approaching an expert on the contributory factors, nor am I a psychologist. All this probably means I should keep my trap shut and my opinions to myself. But that's what this blog is: me keeping my opinions to myself, safe in the knowledge that no-one will read them but me.

So, the trigger to this situation appears to be tensions between Police and 'minority' sections of London's populace. Interviews with local people suggest that Police intrusion into their lives is constant and disrespectful, fostering a distinct 'us-and-them' attitude. In the defence of the Police, the fact that black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person is bourne of the amount of concealed weapons discovered in these searches.

Leaving the Police's attitude aside for another post, what is it that causes these people to carry concealed weapons? One option is that they believe that, generally speaking, society does not look after them, so they have to look after themselves. They band into gangs to gain a sense of belonging, importance and power that society, in it's current state, does not afford them.

The other option is that it gives them a sense of power, power that society for the most part denies them, whether that's the power to elect a representative that will represent them, or the power to determine the course of their own lives through education and employment. In the absence of this sense of empowerment within society, I can understand the attraction to step outside it.

So, the underlying "why" of the current situation is the same as it has always been. At every stage of human development and society, there have been elements of the population that are unable to make best use of the current nature of society, and so find themselves marginalised.

The exacerbating factor to all this is that our society has evolved faster than human nature. Underlying our more developed notions are those baser instincts geared towards self preservation. In our modern society, where people are living in ever larger groups and so would benefit from a more collective approach, these base instincts are anathema to the common good.

This selfish nature, allied with the ability - or lack thereof - to benefit from society, is what drives the wedge between the Haves and Have Nots.

And therein lies the answer to "Why did it expand?". Any breakdown in society allows those marginalised by that society their greatest opportunity for gain.

So, what may have started due to perceived Police brutality, and was hijacked by those looking for personal profit, will naturally peter out. What happens then will
determine when the next earthquake will strike.

---

David Cameron has said that the looters will "feel the full force of the law". This feels like an empty threat, for the following reasons;
1. given the number of looters and rioters, there is no way for The Law to catch and prosecute them all; the impunity of numbers.
2. if they do get them to court, proving that a. it was them and b. they did it maliciously, rather than simply getting swept up in the mob, will be next to impossible. Basically, all that will happen is that the courts will be clogged for years and very few sentences will be handed out.
3. it is difficult to threaten those who have nothing. The only thing you can remove is their liberty, and the jails are already full. Giving someone with nothing a fine that they can't pay achieves nothing other than to incentivise more misdeeds.

People Ruin Ideas, or Why We Can't Have Nice Things

The stated aim of The Palace is "to champion freedom and justice", blah, blah, something, something, dark side, etcetera. Where I get my personal kicks is trying to understand the Universe. It is both annoying and satisfying when you discover that someone has already encapsulated the truth of the point towards which you are struggling, in an infinitely more succinct and pithy statement than you.

To whit; Eleanor Roosevelt posited that "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."¹

I like this quote, not because it is or isn't true - who's to say? - but because it supports my world view, and there's nothing more conforting than having ones world view validated.

Taking the statement as read for a moment, it does nicely explain something that has resulted in several aborted posts over the years; people ruin ideas.

Exhibit A: Football

Now, the core nature, the idea of Association Football is delightfully simple. A competitive game, played fairly between two teams comprising individuals of enormous skill, is one of the finest spectacles humans have ever and will ever produce. It's simplicity and attraction are what make it the most played² and most watched sport on the planet.

Over the years, the idea has been corrupted by small minds. The greed of commercialism has infected almost every arena in which "the beautiful game" is played. The focus these days is on the people that inhabit football; the players, the managers, the agents, the leaders of the associations, even the fans. The core idea is lost in the melee of small minds shouting over each other.

Exhibit B: Politics

A well-flogged horse on these pages, Politics. Again, at it's core, Politics is a fantastic idea. Elect representatives, chosen from the people, to speak for the people, to work together for the greater good.

None of which sounds familiar, does it? As with football, we're obsessed with the politicians themselves, rather than that which is important; policies, the core ideas designed to improve life. Policies take a back seat to the bickering of the tiny minds who spend years to become politicians and who then spend their tenure arguing with each other.

The very word, whose root words clearly define it's meaning, has become it's own antonym. Again, small minds have so corrupted the original idea, it makes it so hard to see the gleam of the idea through the layers of small mindedness that encrust it.

Exhibit C: Celebrity

The very core of Eleanor's statement. Elevate certain people to the point where other people want to discuss them, not because of anything worthwhile - like an original idea, or even their participation in a noteworthy event - but purely because society has determined that these people are worthy of discussion.

Looking at the nature of celebrity through my Monocle of Cynicism, it is not hard to see that there is money to be made in cultivating small minds. Simon Cowell, for example, has become fabulously rich by feeding the small minds with (usually) even smaller minds to discuss; fodder for the millions of Huxley's Gammas that make up a large chunk of our population.

And finally, The Big One...

Exhibit D: Religion

At it's core, Religion has some fantastic ideas. Thou shalt not Kill. I can get behind that one 100%. Thou shalt not steal. Ditto.

Again, over the years, small minds have got the ideas out of the box and mussed them up with their grubby fingers. Religion, at a grassroots level, is probably still focussed around ideas, rather than events or people, Jesus / Mohammed / etc notwithstanding.

But over the centuries, the core ideas of Religion have been corrupted by small minds bent on furthering their own interests to the point that, to many, Religion has become a sickness, a force for evil rather than for good.


The prosecution rests.


Each of the cases cited above is a hostage situation. The original idea is held captive at the core of the towering eyesore that small minds have constructed about it over the years. The idea is rendered powerless, capable only of calling faintly through the cell bars. And only those who are not distracted by the din of smaller minds loudly discussing events and people take the time to listen.

There is nothing so rare, so valuable, and so fragile, as an idea. And Nothing so careless, so selfish, and so destructive, as people.

And that's why we can't have anything nice.


¹ It occurs that I am quoting a people here, thereby confirming my tiny mind and therefore the suspicions of my RocketBootMum and lots of baffled specialists over the years.
¹ "played by over 250 million players in over 200 countries, making it the world's most popular sport".

And don't say it's "fascinating"...

Aren't brains brilliant? As well as doing all the useful stuff like adding up and taking mental notes and making Thursday afternoons hilarious, it also quietly does lots of little backgrounds tasks that aren't immediately obvious to you.

For example, you could be driving around the town where you live, like you do every day of life and, for some reason, you end up taking a different route and, just like a Japanese car issues a baleful "bong" when you leave your lights on, your brain raises a little "You've never done that before." flag.

Now, quite why it keeps track of everywhere you've been and the route you took, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's some hunter-gatherer technique to identify places where we haven't killed / eaten everything yet. Who knows.

Another weirdness you can expose is to probe the ephemeral nature of meaning. That sounds very grandiose, but really all I mean is that you make a word stop meaning anything. Observe.

If you take a word out of it's context, isolate and repeat it, it very quickly rots into its phonetic constituents, losing all meaning in the process.

I watched a video on YouTube the other day which was a compilation of Spock saying "fascinating" over and over again. It very quickly stops being Spock repeating his favourite word and becomes Spock making the same slightly odd noise over and over again.

It's not fascinating. But it is ...... interesting.

EDIT: I have since learned that this phenomena is called Semantic Satiation. So now we know.

Al Your Qaeda Are Belong To US!

In 2001, war was beginning...

What happen? Someone set up us the bomb!

How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction

Take off every ZIG!

For great justice!

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Yawn.

Despite the hilarious "typo" on Faux News (stay classy, Fox), it was correctly reported elsewhere (literally, everywhere else) that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a raid on a compound in Abbottabad¹, Pakistan.

But will it matter? Has it, as someone on Twitter suggested, been worth the two wars, ten years and over a trillion dollars to kill one man? The spontaneous crowds outside the Whitehouse chanting "USA, USA" and singing "We are the champions" would suggest that action was not entirely without value.

Much as I would like to believe that it was worth it, I fear I will be disappointed. Were Al-Quaeda to assassinate Obama, would the US cease attacks on terrorist organisations, or adopt a less interventionist foreign policy? I think we know the answer.

It is doubtless cathartic to an injured US that the man named as their Most Wanted, the embodiment of their Terror, is no more. That bin Laden's death may not alter in any real way the level of global terrorism, or the perceived threat to the US, is secondary, at least for the moment.

Do we suppose that Al-Quaeda consists entirely of mangalores who will cease the fight against the imperialist agressors now that their organisation has been decapitated? If we assume that terror attacks on the US are as a result of US foreign policy, then the removal of a single man by the US in no way diminishes that threat. If anything, it will strengthen resolve in the caves of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The core texts of both Christianity and Islam have the principle of "an eye for an eye", and if the last decade has taught us anything, it's that the US and Al-Quaeda take the Word of God very seriously, especially when it can be shown to provide approval for the machinations of men. The cultures of both sides demand retribution, so this is but the latest battle in war with no end.

While this is a huge political victory - that may help propel Obama to a second term - and one that soothes old wounds, it remains to be seen if it affects Global Terror in any way.

¹ Anyone else hope there's a Costello-abad?

Alternative Vote isn't much of an alternative

So, apparently part of the May 5th 2011 elections is a referendum on the process by which General Elections are decided. This news laregly passed me by in the last few weeks, although I had seen references to "AV" but was not engaged enough to find out what it was.

Currently, British politics uses the "first past the post" electoral system, whereby the election is won "by the candidate(s) with the most votes. The winning candidate does not necessarily receive a majority of all votes cast"¹.

The proposed new system is called "Alternative Vote" (or "Instant Runoff voting", which immediately makes me think of drainage), whereby "voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their votes are initially allocated to their first choice candidate. If after this initial count no candidate has a majority of votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and votes for that candidate are redistributed according to the voters' second preferences. This process continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, upon which they are declared the winner".

Wikipedia goes on to state that "Instant runoff voting is used to elect members of the Australian House of Representatives, the President of Ireland, the national parliament of Papua New Guinea, and the Fijian House of Representatives. It is also used to elect hereditary peers to the British House of Lords".

Now, with all due respect to those august bodies, that the highest praise of the system is that it is used to elect the Fijian House of Representatives, does not fill me with hope.

Now, some cursory thought leads me to the conclusion that AV sounds better than FPTP (it's shorter, for a start), but we're still deciding how best to choose weevils here. Sorry, that's a movie reference joke; watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. In short, how excited should I be expected to get in deciding how to decide on which steaming pile of shit gets to run the country (into the ground)?

Don't get me wrong; I think it's very nice of them to let "The people" decide on how they choose their shit in future. But, when all the votes are counted, we're still pinning the winner's rosette on a pile of coiled, steaming, brown shit.

So, if you want to get me excited, let's not have a popularity contest to decide the prettiest arrangement of outdoor seating on the largest luxury liner of the age, and instead spend a little more time plugging the fucking hole below the waterline.

¹ For the first time ever, Wikipedia confused me here. I think because it's about politics and therefore is inherently nonsense.

The Problem with the World

I have just been on holiday for a couple of weeks, which has unfortunately necessitated my spending more time in proximity to The Great Unwashed than I usually prefer. I have no problem fighting for justice and righteousness on their behalf, I just don't want to have to be around them that much. Between choking down waves of nausea, I noticed something about people that has eluded me these last few years.

People are really not very good at being alive.

People's lives, comprising mainly the working week and the associated shenanigans of clothes buying and the purchasing of comestibles, has equipped them superbly for their Life, which entails performing the same tasks endlessly without any need to engage their brain. People are robots.

Take basic perambulation. The mechanics of walking, once mastered at an early age, pass into the realm of unconscious competence; the robots can walk without worrying about which actuator to contract next. Given this surfeit of computational bandwidth, once would logically assume that the robots would dedicate some of that blistering capacity to basic time / space calculations and collision avoidance. Alas, no.

Attempting to navigate a mall at any time other than midnight, at any speed swifter than snail, is a exercise in futility¹. The primary directive of the robots is to consume, a directive that drains all available clock cycles from their central processing units.

Now, here in the Palace, being proud swallowers of our own special Red Pill - it's more of a scarlety-crimson, really - are able to view this robotised civilisation from the outside. What concerns me is that I'm starting to see what all the "bad" guys in movies have been saying all these years.

Agent Smith was right; humans are a virus; specifically, a self-inhibiting virus, albeit not a very good one. We can take a perfectly functional system and converting it into a shambolic nonsense.

Introduce a single human into an otherwise balanced environment and within a week, there will be one-way systems, government bureaucracies and forms in triplicate, and the human will be sitting on a patch of bare earth, staring vacantly into space, completely unable to do anything, due to the lack of the correct permit.

¹ BoosterBoy and I have invented what we hope will become an Olympic demonstration sport, that of Mall Running. The name has yet to be finalised, but it amalgamates the essences of parkour, speed walking and a flagrant disregard for the young, elderly or infirm. The aim is to navigate a mall at maximum speed. We have developed special spectacles that filter out anything beige, therefore enabling the Mallrunner to utilise "spaces" that may otherwise not appear.

The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled

I spend a lot of time on reddit (big love, yo!) and there have been a lot of links recently to stories about the Transportation Security Administration and their security screening procedures which seem to involve either a) being irradiated by a backscatter radar imager, or b) submitting to a full-body physical search that stops short of rectal probing but apparently does occasionally stray into statutory rape.

If I was Johnny Terrorist, I would be looking for a proper job because I have won. One successful major operation on September 11th, a couple of minor abortive attempts and a decade of largely patient inaction, and my target - "The West" - is doing my job for me.

I doubt the terrorists have the resources to wreak the havoc they would like. They therefore have to think laterally. And, thinking laterally, the most elegant solution is to make "The West" use it's considerable resources to wreak havoc upon itself.

Terrorists have managed to cause an auto-immune response. Auto-immune conditions trick the immune system into believing that healthy cells are infected and attacking them.

The above was written making the assumption that the terrorists are the root cause of this infringement of our liberties and, while that may be true, one could argue that the response is somewhat disproportionate to the cause.

Governments now frequently use the threat - real or imagined - of terrorism as the club with which to beat the baby seal of freedom and liberty because you can make people do anything if they're scared enough. So while terrorism is doubtless a problem, it is also a very useful tool, if you were so inclined, to manipulate and control your populace¹.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

I disagree. A much greater trick is to convince you that the Devil is you. And the Devil may not be who you think he is.

¹ Looking at America's foreign policy through the lens of conspiracy theories about the ruling elite, it is not difficult to view America's approach to the rest of the world as merely providing a basis for making the elite even more so.

My Half of The First Conversation with Jesus

Hello?
...
Jesus who?
...
As in "The Son of God"-Jesus?
...
How did you get this number?
...
Sorry, I don't believe this is THE Jesus. I mean, I don't believe that you, or your Dad for that matter, even existed, so this is kinda weirding me out.
...
Are you sure you're not a telemarketer?
...
So you're not going to go "By the way, did you know you can get seven windows at 0% APR"?
...
OK, I'll go along with this. So, Jesus, what's up with you? Keeping busy?
...
Oh, so you do listen to peoples prayers, you just don't do anything about them? Yeah, we've got politicians who don't listen to us as well, and you how much we dislike politicians?
...
Yes, he's the illiterate monkey who runs the world¹.
...
I assume you mean Mafia taken-care-of as supposed to Salvation Army taken-care-of?
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Isn't that against the Commandment thingies?
...
So who did write them?
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I always thought that bit sounded fishy. So what do you want me to do about it?
...
You mean, be the Right Hand of God sort of thing?
...
OK, the Right Pinkie Finger of God, then?
...
OK, even assuming you are The Son of God, and even assuming I was willing to kill him, which is another one of Moses' made-up Commandments, and one of the ones that caught on, by the way, people who kill and then say God made them do it aren't held in high esteem down here.
...
OK, but I assume the order came from the Big Fella?
...
A personal favour? Riiiight, but I would need some sort of protection afterwards. Plus, we should talk recompense.
...
I don't want to receive my reward in Heaven. I'm still not convinced you're not some nutjob trying to get me do their dirty work for them. You know what, this is a stupid conversation. I'm hanging up. If you call me again, I'm calling the Police.
...
No, not Sting. The actual Police.
...
OK, if you're Him, do something right now to make me Believe.
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Yes, I know it's against your policy! Your brainless sheep down here are always banging on about Faith. I'm an Engineer! I need Proof! Faith gets people killed!
...
Really? How many people you think die each year because they get into arguments about who loves you most, hmmm? It's a lot. Doesn't that bother you? Do you think all those people who die would do anything different I they thought you were up there going "That's not what I meant at all"?
...
Really? For the Son of God, you haven't got any of his smarts. Forget Omnipresence and Omnipotence. The only things you two demonstrate the use of is Omnilaziness.
...
Are you in the huff now? Good. Go and have a long word with yourself, buck up your ideas, and if you want people do things properly, show them how its done and then, maybe, we can talk about your thing with Monkeyboy.
...
OK, bye bye now.
...

Who was that, dear?
Wrong number.

¹ This was originally written back when George W "Monkeyboy" Bush was President.

Run like you've got wind!

Emboldened by Seb's recent post, and by way of encouragement, I hereby submit an excerpt from my whatever-the-diminutive-is-of-magnum-opus. Unlike Blackadder's giant rollercoaster of a novel, mine is more of a small roundabout-type pamphlet. Enjoy?

---

“Run like you've got wind!"

Now, in these situations, when a phrase or joke hits you where you live (usually when you're in a Thursday afternoon place, mentally), you can usually relax as you convulse and snort milk down your nose while your eyes fill up. However, Tarsus did not have this luxury, being hotly pursued as he was. That he managed to locomote while all of the above occurred (apart from the milk bit) was more a testament to his visceral fear and loathing than to his coordination and determination.

Indeed, the convulsions were aiding his progress to some degree, although by some unknown process. They were also having some unpleasant side effects, odoriferously, as it were. In fact, their presence was in as much danger of being revealed by Tarsus’ trumps and burps as it was by his continued attempts to stifle that inner, moronic laugh that we all have but strive to take with us to the grave without its utterance ever having even once sullied our ears.

Presently they came to the forest and plunged inward without pause. Their rapid transit appeared to have caught the trees off their guard and they made it through the first few metres with little impediment. As he ran through the trees, Tarsus became aware that his body was moving with little conscious input from his brain. Look at me go! Watch out for that treeeeeooooo that was close! Their flight had tapped into an inner sliver of primordial, animal instinct in Tarsus’ mind, whose determination to endure was doing a fine job in ensuring that Tarsus, and hence his inner animal sliver, would prevail.

Pointy, on the other hand, did not appear to have such a sliver, nor have need of one. It appeared that the trees were getting out of his way. Leaving his body to do the running, Tarsus could see that Pointy had in his mouth a small whistle that was evidently blowing in concert with his breaths. Tarsus’ could not hear it, but the trees obviously could as they clapped their bows to their trunks as he approached. A few made pained attempts to foil his passage, but none came near.

Their pursuers, obviously confounded by their inability to best the combination of animal instinct and frantic whistling, release their own animals into the fray. Three hunting dogs were released and soon began gaining on the fleeing pair. Aided by the scent trail being left by Tarsus, they homed in with relentless ease.

This is one of those occasions, thought Tarsus, where, by some method, which is never fully explained, it would be useful to be rendered invisible. Or to suddenly find a hiding place so perfect as to allow instant concealment while simultaneously erasing any sign of ones presence. It would be useful, say, ooh, about now. He waited. The rendering invisible or perfect hiding place did not manifest itself. If only this was one of those convenient chases you read in books. Evasion opportunities are always more bountiful.

As his animal sliver continued to propel him forward, he chanced a look over his shoulder. He could not see much apart from a few trees aiming evil looks in his wake and a haze of dust and leaves that marked his passing. His inner sliver sensed the lack of immediate evisceration and suddenly and without due warning, relinquished command of Tarsus’ faculties.

It goes without saying that this is not the ideal command decision to encounter while looking over your shoulder, especially when involved in a serious, high speed and prospectively fatal pursuit situation. In the time it took for Tarsus to align his head to the path ahead and refocus his eyes, a tree appeared in his direction of travel. The effects of the animal sliver had not fully worn off and Tarsus was able to twist slightly to one side in order to avoid a potentially embarrassing running-into-a-stationary-tree event.

However, he suffered the possibly even more embarrassing running-into-a-tree-saw-it-at-the-last-moment-but-still-hit-it. It was, however, but a glancing blow. He was knocked off his feet but, and don’t ask how he managed it, Tarsus executed a forward roll, sprang to his feet and continued apace.

Pointy had witnessed this event because Tarsus had managed to gain ground on him, even encumbered by the lack of a tree-repelling whistle. He was about to offer a scathing yet congratulatory remark to Tarsus when, from a little too close for comfort behind them, there came a chilling howl.

They both looked behind them. Now clearly visible between the clawing boughs were three large hounds, black as night, with eyes glowing like coals in the fire. They bounded through the trees with powerful grace, without, it seemed, the need for whistle or sliver. The trees seemed as repulsed as Pointy and Tarsus were.

“What we need,” panted Tarsus between breaths “is a convenient hiding place or method of evasion that is never fully explained!”
“What?” shouted Pointy.
“Need Hide Knackered Soon Blisters Hounds Gaining Intestines Collar,“ replied Tarsus. “Too pretty to die horribly,” he added.
“With you on that one,” agreed Pointy, and promptly vanished.

For a few seconds Tarsus did not notice his colleague’s disappearance, the threat of imminent death occupying progressively increasing amounts of his thoughts. When it dawned on him that Pointy was not to be seen, he was overcome with grief. From deep within, Doggy once more rumbled into life. Tarsus stopped as quickly as his inappropriate footwear would allow, using a tree branch as a brake. The branch promptly snapped off, accompanied by distressed creaks from the dismembered tree. Tarsus ignored the complaints and, brandishing the bough, turned to face death like a man.

The lead hound was only a few meters away and was slowing down, a look of confusion in its ember eyes. As it drew close, Tarsus fetched it an almighty blow with the branch and the hound crumpled into a sharp black heap on the ground. The other hounds skidded to a stop nearby and looked around, the same look of confusion evident. The urge to kill still bright in his mind, Tarsus ran towards them, the bloodied branch held aloft. The two hounds spotted the onrushing weapon but barely had time to react to Tarsus’ piercing war-cry before the second hound lay bleeding and insensible on the needle-strewn floor of the forest. The remaining hound took one look at each of its defeated companions and, with a look of frantic desperation and despair, took off in the direction of the pursuing soldiers.

Tarsus, now firmly in the groove, was about to give chase when he heard Pointy calling to him from nearby.
“Tarsus, over here! Quickly!”
Tarsus made his way towards the sound of Pointy’s voice but could not locate his companion.

“Stop playing silly buggers! This really isn’t the time,” shouted Tarsus. Suddenly he felt a hand touch his arm and, without fully considering his actions, brought up the branch and swung round.
“Watch out; that nearly hit me, you moron!” came Pointy’s voice, from an indeterminable source in the vicinity.
“Where are you?” asked Tarsus.
“Beside you,” said Pointy in his ear.
“This is going to sound unusual, but I’m going to say it anyway. I can’t see you.”
“I can’t see you either. Unfortunate side-effect. Come on.” Tarsus felt Pointy take his hand. He briefly considered making a big song and dance about not being able to see him and how it wasn’t fair and how bad his day was and did he know what it was like but decided that it was not the time for such remonstrations.

“I am also a little concerned by my seeming inability to see myself. I have checked my eyes and they appear to be open and functioning normally. Now may be the time for soothing words before I have a psychotic episode,” said Tarsus in a level, if brittle, monotone.
“It’ll pass. Keep moving,” said Pointy.
“That is a relief,” said Tarsus sarcastically. “I don’t think we’re in a safe enough place to get into a philosophical discussion about how you can be sure you exist if you can’t see yourself. You may sense I am not entirely comfortable with being invisible,” he added.
“Deal with it. We have more pressing issues to worry about,” replied Pointy, his voice hard. Tarsus let it go.

Tarsus was beginning to get used to the idea of being led by the hand through a forest by a small, pointy, invisible man when said man began to appear.
“Hey, I can see you. Sort of. I can see a vague outline, shadowy. You look less pointy than normal,” he added.
The shadowy outline turned to Tarsus. “Yes, we’re both becoming visible. The effects are only temporary – about fifteen or so minutes.”
“Is it worth my asking you to fully explain this?” enquired Tarsus. “No.” said Pointy. “Right.” said, Tarsus, and left it at that.

WTF: Pronunciation Help

Growing up to be a Champion for Freedom and Justice is a long, hard road. Obviously, people look at me and they see the chiselled jaw, the icy stare, the muscular ease with which I dual-wield the swords of Truth and Beauty. What they don't see is the many years of training and schooling it has taken to become....well, the personification of an ideal, let's be honest.

One of the many weapons in my armoury is the concise and eloquent use of language. I'll admit, English Language was not my best subject. If I stumbled over the pronuncation of a particularly cumbersome word, I was "invited" to improve by running ten laps of the moat in full armour. But enough about my schooldays.

By "pronunciation help", I mean the text they put in dictionaries after the word so that you know how to pronounce the word properly. By way of an example, I give you "koʊpərˈnɪsiəm"^{1 2}.

So, to analyse. How do you pronounce "upside-down-omega"? How about "upside-down-e"? What about "small-capital-I"? To show how useless this is, here is the actual text from the Wikipedia entry for Copernicium:

Copernicium (pronounced /koʊpərˈnɪsiəm/ koe-pər-NIS-ee-əm, with the first C hard and the second soft)

So, immediately after the supposedly universally-understood pronunication runes, they've had to spell it out phonetically and follow that up with further instructions in plain language.

In order to use these runes, most normal people who aren't mystically imbued with the ability to parse runes would have to step through the word, syllable by syllable, using some glowing, arcane tome with metal hinges and pages made from thinly sliced first-born child and lex it back into a noise they can utter.

I've a good mind to write a book entirely in runes and watch it catastrophically NOT sell just to prove my point.

¹ The above is the pronunication guide for "Copernicium", the name for Element 112 (which previously regaled under the moniker "Ununbium").

² Turns out these runes are part of the International Phonic Alphabet

"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth"

I feel closer to Gordon Brown today than I ever have before. That we are still 20,000km apart is neither here nor there.

For the first time in a long time, I can actually identify with a politician. I've heard his actual opinion, what Gordon Brown: The Man really thinks, rather than what Gordon Brown: The Prime Minister is Meant To Say.

The sad thing about what has become "the turning point of the election" *yawn* is that he's right. Gillian Duffy is bigoted. And stupid. I mean, what kind of person doesn't know where Eastern Europeans come from? It's like Ronseal, love. It says so on the tin. She probably has never been wronged by one and is only outraged because the Daily Mail told her she should be.

I've complained before about how the election process is completely broken. Surely we're supposed to find out more about how our politicians are like us. So why does the election process present us with a small number of similarly grey men, all presenting what the media have decided is a prime ministerial facade?

Am I really meant to vote for one of three shades of grey, when the true colour of each man is either red, blue or yellow?

The Earth has been Walked

From the undergrowth comes the sounds of cursing, hacking, some hammering and the furious oiling of hinges. Presently, there is a great crack following by some gargantuan and sinister creaking. There follows the sound of furious coughing that gently recedes, until a final colossal slamming brings silence back into the world.

It's been [checks; strewth!] well over a year since The Boy and I were cruelly and suddenly abducted by Scientologist Alien Terrorists and taken in stasis to their evil lair deep within Olympus Mons on Mars. There we were experimented upon for many gruelling hours; forced to watch daytime and reality TV for days on end, to eat nothing but McDonalds and Mars bars (not the same thing, btw) until we managed to escape their clutches.

We managed to lash together a pair of Mars rovers to make a space raft and, holding our breath, set course for Earth. Tragically, BoosterBoy took a meteorite to the face not two days out and was lost. No doubt he will turn up sooner or later; he was largely synthetic and oddly durable considering how little I paid for him.

The Palace had fallen into some disrepair during our incarceration, somewhat disproportionate to the period of time involved. It has taken some time to oil all the hinges and hack away the greenery and thorns that were choking the place.

More troubling was the state of the Twin Swords (of Beauty and Truth). Here, I took a leaf from the Book of Conan and after beating them off some rocks for a bit, they are now back to the lustrous and shiny best.

There has been some time for quite a lot of Unrighteousness to build up. So, let's to work.

Politics: What is it For? Why is it Broken?

Part 1: What is Politics For?

Sounds like a straightforward question, but I don't think it is. Let's break it down.

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions, says Wikipedia, from Gk. politikos "of citizens or the state," from polites "citizen," from polis "city", or, paraphrasing presidential candidate Andre Marrou, poly many + tics blood-sucking parasites.

OK, so we can agree it's about groups of people, citizens of a city or country, making decisions. And politicians are, by derivation, people whose job it is to make decisions. The politicians are given this power by the electorate, who choose their politicians in the magical game of musical chairs that is an election.

The reason politicians exist is because if all 60m people in the country had to decide about every little item of running the country, nothing else would happen and we would all starve. So we choose the politician who, based on his campaign, we think stands for the same things we do and charge him with making these decisions for us.

When a decision needs made, the politician for a constituency votes for the course of action the majority of his constituents would have voted for. He doesn't need to check with them, as he has already been chosen based on his campaign, so he knows that his decision reflects the desires of those who elected him. Therefore, once all the politicians vote, the outcome is the one desired by the majority of people in the country.

Doesn't sounds familiar though, does it?

Part 2: Why is it Broken?

The reason it's broken is because politicians are utter bastards. Lying, deceitful, spineless, backstabbing, two-face bastards. That's the overriding reason. The sub-reasons are:

1) Politicians will say anthing to get elected,
2) Politicans will deny anything, even if it can be proven beyond doubt,
3) Politicans will ignore the wishes of their constituents and do what they want, or what they are told, or paid, to do,
4) I could go on,
5) And on and on,
6) But you get my drift,
7) They really are utter bastards, aren't they?

Despite their parents not being married, politicians are generally of human borne, or at least the byproduct of some sordid union twixt man and beast, which means they have mothers, which means they were probably raised well and received a good education. But somewhere along the line, something must go wrong in the brain. Something gives them the notion to become a politician.

It is probably a noble notion, a desire to better society and build a better world. They go to University and read Aristotle and Plato and the pure theory of politics. They join the local party and it is probably at this point that the apples turn bad.

Somewhere in the corridors of power between local party politics and the House of Commons, idealistic do-gooders go through some heinous process that strips all goodness from their souls and replaces it with something hewn from some jet black core of purest evil that glows and pulsates and turns Little Johnny from next door into Vlad, Minister of Impaling Babies¹.

It is true that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Which means that, in order for politics, in its true form, to flourish and function, we need to get rid of the politicians and decide for ourselves: cut out the middlemen.

As usual, solutions arrived at through the medium of Rant are half-baked and flawed at best, but we're going to go with it. We will use this process in The Palace and if BoosterBoy and I get one vote each, we shall decide the matter by me impaling BoosterBoy on something sharp and I will get my way. Oh, yes, as Vlad is my witness, I will get my way...

¹ Little Johnny: "Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be Minister for Impaling Babies."
Little Johnnies Human Foster Mother: "Well, you'll have to work hard in school. We can't all be Minister for Impaling Babies."