| previously... |
|---|
|
|---|
Saturday, October 6
some good news: at least the region being thrust rudely into the gaze of the world has led to an outpouring of foreign aid for Afghanistan.
posted @ 7:58 PM -
Back to taking myself seriously. The state of Tuvalu, a small set of islands in the Pacific, has come to an agreement with New Zealand to relocate a proportion of its population each year, because the islands are being swallowed by rising seas and they fear the complete disappearance of their homeland.
This reminds me of science fiction scenarios of launching an ark into space because planet Earth is about to be destroyed; the only difference being the scale. I am trying to imagine the emotions that would be associated with the knowledge that the land I call home is likely to disappear in my lifetime, and I just can't, because it's so far outside my experience. Meanwhile even though I know that I am more environmentally conscious (and conscientious) than most people around me, I can't help but feel guilty about the fact that I have contributed to their demise every time I decided to drive somewhere rather than cycling (I don't own a car any more, partly because it was too easy to be lazy). Come to think of it, I am contributing right now by having a PC and a couple of lights on, and you are contributing by reading this rather than switching your monitor off. Maybe the disappearance of one state will help raise the rich world's consciousness that envornmental issues are not some abstract hippy issue about fluffy bunnies, but actually do affect people directly. Maybe, just maybe™ the sacrifice of only a small country with a small population will be enough to turn things around. Somehow I can't believe my own attempt at optimism.... posted @ 6:58 PM -
I'm just watching highlights of today's England game, which had the strange combination of being totally uninspiring but managing to assure World Cup qualification anyway, and I think I've just heard a candidate for quote of the month:
there's David Beckham in space I know he's very talented, but I didn't think he'd diversified his skills that far. As for football commentary, today has just proved how much of a noble art it is. posted @ 6:29 PM -
By the same author as the article I just referenced before: how do people get cool jobs like torturer, executioner and amputator?
Mummy, when I grow up I want to cut off peoples' hands. posted @ 6:25 PM -
Let me get one thing straight. There are strict limits to how much I am willing to sacrifice myself for any cause. Unlike the Peruvian man who cut off his penis to draw attention to his unemployment. Much to my surprise he actually now has a job. Would you recruit someone who did that?
posted @ 6:20 PM -
From a scientist who disturbs me to one who I agree with often. Philip Zimbardo (social psychologist, of Stanford Prison Experiment fame) has published an article about how we must never debase ourselves in desire for revenge, not only for abstract reasons but because the bloodthirstiness of governments ends up being reflected in bloodlust between citizens.
How We Become Like the Enemy posted @ 9:41 AM -
more onDawkins' pathological hatred of religion. Inflammatory approaches like Dawkins' don't exactly help people either to have a rational debate or to actually spread the word about what we believe in.
posted @ 9:34 AM -
Now here's a surprise. I look at the BNP website every now and again, because I think it's important to understand the people who would expel me, and found an article by their chairman about what he would like to do in the aftermath of September the 11th. Among all the expected bile, hatred and nonsense, there was one surprisingly liberaltouch - the bottom of the page supports ending sanctions against Iraq. This doesn't mark the sudden transformation of the BNP into a liberal, pluralist party, but it still made nicer reading than most of their site (including a lot of that article)....
posted @ 9:25 AM - |
Friday, October 5
There is a Jam Echelon Day scheduled in a couple of weeks. Echelon is a highly suspect project of several governments (basically all the countries that use English as a first language) to indiscriminately monitor all electronic communications that can be picked up. This includes [allegedly] scanning every email that travels transatlantically (and the web works in a perverse enough way that this could include emails you send to someone who reads them in the same building as you) for a list of key words. It is impossible to know exactly what Echelon does and how it works, because it is so shrouded in secrecy, but a recent burst of official information, particularly the EU report do make me believe it exists, is far-reaching in its technical abilities, and is totally unregulated. This is bad.
why should I care about Echelon? In essence I, like most people who don't wish to overthrow their government or commit mass murder, don't really have a great deal to hide. This certainly is a common argument from anyone who opposes the civil liberties lobby (have to be careful here - not many people actually oppose civil liberties per se - they tend to support things which conflict with civil liberties. A semantic difference perhaps, but an important one as regards peoples' self perceptions), and it is not entirely untrue. However, everyone also has a right to privacy; a right to being able to choose who they communicate with. This ranges from the trivial - an email from me to person X about what a great night I had with person Y is unlikely to interest Mr[s]. Shady Intelligence Person, but I still don't want anyone else reading it - to the serious - I am 90% sure that MI5 have a file on me, and I wish to keep that file as small as I can without censoring myself. My claim that MI5 have a file on me may seem paranoid, but it is based on reliable information that MI5 have a policy of gathering information on all Students' Union officers. If I'm right then they're wasting their time - not only am I no threat to anyone, but most Students' Unions are less subversive than the population at large - but if anything that makes the point even clearer - you may be under surveillance in spite of being no threat to anyone and having nothing serious to hide. isn't this a sacrifice of my privacy for the greater good? Frankly I am irritated that the money I pay in tax is being squandered on worthless schemes like Echelon when it could be spent on ____ (insert any of countless worthier causes here) or simply not creamed out of my wages in the first place. Any serious threat to national security would be perpetrated by people who have the lo-tech savvy to get around hi-tech surveillance schemes. Think about it. If I want to organise a revolution I won't email all my friends saying "let's meet up tomorrow to discuss our plans for a violent coup d'état". I would make up a pretext to get people to my house (easy enough - most sociable people have perfectly innocent gatherings at their houses every now and again) and then only discuss subversive things face to face. If I were suspected of being a menace to society (and if anything a properly kept MI5 file on me would demonstrate my innocuity) then my house could be bugged, and my demonic plot foiled, but that neither requires nor is facilitated by a blanket surveillance system. Even if you don't take my concerns about Echelon seriously it should be clear that there is no benefit to the system's existence at all. what can we do about it?
posted @ 6:42 PM -
shock horror! Eldan has something positive to say about recent action by HM Governnment! They have published the evidence that is said to justify action in Afghanistan. I'm not going to go as far as saying that this therefore justifies whatever they do, but it is certainly good news that they have published it. At least when people accuse the US of attacking Islam they have material they can use to respond with the argument that actually they are picking specific targets with some justification, which at least is better than lashing out without any information.
posted @ 2:28 PM -
Unbelievable. I know that in any crisis everyone tries their level best to link the events to their pet cause, but this is a case of opportunism taken to a ridiculous extreme. A report subtitled "That Fake Nike Swoosh May Be Helping to Fund Bin Laden's Network" tries to claim that we should crack down on copyright piracy because it is sometimes a source of terrorist funding.
Quite apart from the pathetic transparency of this attempt to relate two seperate issues, I think the argument is totally incoherent. On the one hand, terrorists will use any possible source to make money so it will never be possible to starve them off, and on the other do they not understand that it is precisely the unequal distribution of wealth (which is most sharply symbolised by overpriced brand name goods produced by underpaid labourers in sweatshops) that leads to the social problems that lead to envy and resentment of America? If terrorism will ever be defeated surely it's by removing peoples' motivation, not by stopping one of their many sources of funding. posted @ 1:34 PM -
I'm glad I live in Britain. For all my sneering about having to pre-book protests with the police, and the excessive number of combat-equipped police who turn up when this is done, at least people here are allowed to protest, and I am allowed to write pages like this.
In Algeria the Berbers are not even being allowed to protest. posted @ 1:10 PM -
Brilliant. Someone has devised an award for peopl more obsessive about more irrelevant things than me. This year's Ig Nobel Prize winners include the founder of the 'apostrophe protection society', in recognition of his unending battle to stop people from confusing word's with words'.
posted @ 12:29 PM -
what is normal? is normal good? or should we try to draw some benefit from shocking events and actually try to improve our normality?
It seems that whenever there is a crisis, the voices that urge people in a country to pull together would paper over all dissent, and a huge opportunity is lost. We run the risk of deafening all voices that would improve matters because people start to use things as an excuse to shout down the voices they find uncomfortable to hear. On a slight tangent I was particularly struck by a small incident on Wednesday. At the picket one of the organisers was speaking, and being highly critical of British foreign policy over centuries. The speaker happened to be Asian. A passer-by snidely suggested that the speaker doesn't have to stay here. After my initial rage subsided, a subtle irony occurred to me. I could well have been saying the same things as the speaker at that point, and for the simple reason that my skin is white the chances are that passer-by wouldn't have reacted the same way. The irony is that I am an immigrant, whereas the dark-skinned speaker was British born. Don't people ever learn? posted @ 9:29 AM - |
Thursday, October 4
Most amusing. Out of curiosity I tried this belief system selector, and it proclaimed me a Unitarian Universalist. The thing is the word that crops up all over their description of this group is "diverse", and in fact they seem so diverse that no-one could fail to fit it. The other ones that came up seemed to be systems which match my ethical ideas but not my epistemology at all (such as the Quakers)
posted @ 8:22 PM -
Crisis and grief-counseling centers across the nation are offering therapy groups for those who need to discuss their newfound inability to care about mass-market crapola
posted @ 6:26 PM -
Apparently the government are actually considering maintenance grants for students. I'm not holding my breath, but this might turn out nice in the end....
posted @ 8:53 AM -
One of the wonderful things about the web is it lets me read news from lots of different sources, and particularly from different sides of any conflict. Here is a nice cartoon of what happens to people who only get their news from one place.
posted @ 5:44 AM - |
Wednesday, October 3
no "us" or "them" - a more straightforward way of saying what the article I linked to about 10 minutes ago says
posted @ 7:53 PM -
The words of Rollo May, in a book called the Courage to Create, in 1975, but still relevant:
We are living at a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born. We cannot doubt this as we look about us to see the radical changes in sexual mores, in marriage styles, in family structures, in education, in religion, technology, and almost every other aspect of modern life. And behind it all is the threat of the atom bomb, which recedes into the distance but never disappears. To live with sensitivity in the age of limbo indeed requires courage. A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings--namely, to influence our evolution through our own awareness. We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future into a society more equitable and humane. Or shall we seize the courage necessary to preserve our sensitivity, awareness, and responsibility in the face of radical change? Shall we consciously participate, on however small the scale, in the forming of the new society? . . . We are called upon to do something new, to confront a no man's land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us. This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness. To live into the future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize. posted @ 7:14 PM -
The picket of the party conference today wasn't exactly a roaring success. I think we had a total of 20 people turn up, and we spoke to a journalist and several passers-by (some conference delegates and some interested locals), so it wasn't entirely a waste of time, but to have an impact we need more bodies and more voices. I'm not too worried about this though - term hasn't started yet, so a lot of students just aren't around. Shame the conference wasn't a couple of weeks later....
posted @ 11:41 AM -
Interesting how the need to clamp down on terrorists leads the government to consider absurdly draconian measures that will not achieve anything, but is no obstacle to a new Mox fabrication plant that will cause plutonium to be shipped worldwide, vastly increasing the potential for its interception by shady characters.
posted @ 11:11 AM - This picture was part of an Economist article, with the caption fanatics all round. I think it speaks volumes about the idea that a particular culture is the one that spawns fanatics. There really are fanatics all round....posted @ 10:56 AM - |
Tuesday, October 2
All this talk of Sufism (see previous post) reminds me that it's time for some Rumi. Today's reading is topical, because there is a picket for free education on Wednesday (technically today, but I will sleep for some time between now and then). I won't repeat my earlier rant about why this is important, but what I will say is that tuition fees for undergraduate degrees are the tip of the iceberg. The campaign is, quite rightly, about free access to good quality education at every level, from starting school to finishing a first degree or GNVQ or BTEC (the postgraduate funding situation is an entirely seperate issue, more to do with research funding than education as such). This is a very important part of freeing people from poverty, which is just as important as keeping people free from unjust laws.
Before then I have a breakfast meeting with some potential clients at bitt to try to launch the new courses that have been wrangled over for the past few months. I'd best get to bed.... posted @ 7:12 PM -
Not long ago I subscribed to a Sufism mailing list, because I still know far too little about this movement, and what I do know strikes me as interesting by virtue of its pluralism and its approach to the transcendental by wondering at the world, rather than simply personifying a god created in the believer's image. I had been following the group with detached interest, finding some of the messages struck a chord and some simply didn't, until someone posted a long 'Miracles of Islam' document. I don't have the actual one to had, but was along the lines of this "miraculous" pictures page, with some numerical "miracles" added on at the bottom. My first [unfairly prejudiced, for reasons I will explain below] response was along the lines of oh no, not another bunch of credulous fools.
I was being unfairly prejudiced in that response, because the fact of someone posting a document like that doesn't mean that they necessarily agree with its content, or consider it to be an answer to everything. I of all people should be aware of that - I often use this page to draw attention to sites I either disagree with or am ambivalent about. In this case, it seems the document was being thrown into the fray for discussion (an aside - if you find these sorts of "miracles" convincing proof of any particular belief system, take a look at this page about why "miracles" don't prove anything except about Gestalt Psychology) Anyway, in discussion on the mailing list (back to the point at last!) the following came up: Beyond the "obvious" patterns which might be easily "seen" as meaningful, everything in Nature is a manifestation of, and points toward the One -- if we could only see it....and remember. Hazrat Inayat Khan, in the Bowl of Saki reading coming up on October 5th, said "There is no greater scripture than Nature, for Nature is Life itself." Somewhere else he said "There is only one sacred text, the sacred text of Nature." I remain an Infidel, but this sort of thinking appeals to me. If by the "One" the Sufis are referring to the natural world as a whole, rather than some ineffable omnipotent Other, then sign me up. posted @ 6:51 PM - |
Monday, October 1
Most interesting. The latest news story I've seen suggests that the American action in Central Asia will take the form of targeted strikes against Taliban military targets, followed by bombing with leaflets and food.
I am always skeptical of reports like this, not least because it is in the military's interest to spread disinformation in order to keep the targets in the dark (alluded to in the article), but if this is true it's vastly better than just bombing the country to the Jurassic (what with it already being Stone Age). posted @ 9:40 AM -
the suffering in Afghanistan
hmmm.... 5,000 dead in the WTC.... 7.5 MILLION (yes that's right - almost the population of London) Afghans dependent on foreign aid for survival. Of course it doesn't justify the attack, but it warrants serious thought.... posted @ 9:14 AM -
Of course, I should have known better than to expect the US administration to show the slightest trace of liberalism. Just because they won't introduce compulsory national ID cards doesn't mean that they will shrink from using the current crisis as an excuse to introduce new legislation so draconian that it dwarfs the UK Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 in the extent of its paranoid legitimisation of Stalin-esque state surveillance. Details here:
CW360��- New law will treat hackers as terrorists posted @ 9:11 AM -
The US administration has announced that it will not even consider compulsory ID cards. Time for our lot to follow suit?
posted @ 9:00 AM -
I had written about this earlier, but it became somewhat overshadowed by world events:
There is a picket of the Labour Party Conference this Wednesday to support free education. In the week of September the 11th this did seem a tad irrelevant, but let's not fall for that. Just because more horrible things are happening than tuition fees does not imply that tuition fees are an unimportant issue. At present in Britain, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, there is a significant group of people who will not be able to go to University regardless of ability, because they simply can not afford it. This is because over the past 15 years or so there has been a steady erosion of financial support for students, which in recent years has culminated in total abolition of grants to students, meaning that the total cost of studying (consisting of fees and living costs) is so high that it constitutes a barrier to access for those students whose parents can't or won't support them financially. Added to this, many students have to spend so many hours during the term earning money that their education is seriously handicapped. This creates a social barrier because people born into poor backgrounds are denied their best possible chance to break out of the cycle of poverty. This is not just something I care about because I care about other people - it also has direct selfish consequences for the lucky people (like myself) who can sit in nice middle class houses and type things like this up in the time off from our nice middle class jobs, because the endless cycle of economic deprivation, social division and despair drives crime, and everybody's world would be improved if this cycle were easier to break out of, not just the people at the bottom of the pile. While I was ambivalent about yesterday's demonstration, and went along mainly as a photographer, I will be a vocal participant in this one as it is a clear issue which I strongly believe in. Click here for more information about Wednesday's picket Click here for more information about the Sussex Free Education campaign in general posted @ 6:55 AM - |
Sunday, September 30
OK - I've finished the photos of today's demonstration. I don't know if/when I'll get around to writing the account of events, but the summary in my previous post has the main information, and I'm very busy at the moment.
My news in brief:
I may write more about these things later, but seeing as I have broken out of my laziness rut I think doing the many things I have on my list is more important than talking about them. posted @ 6:15 PM -
photos of todays demonstration in Brighton
there is no explanation yet, but that will follow sooner or later, and the filenames should be fairly descriptive (as well as being in time order). quick summary: police expected 10,000 smelly anarchos hell-bent on blowing up the Brighton Centre (Labour Party conference venue for the coming week), and were on the radio trying to reassure the good people of Brighton about how they would keep us all safe using pepper spray (a Sussex Police first - aren't we lucky!). Somewhere between 1,000 (what the Sussex Police Press Officer told me) and 4,000 (BBC News estimate) peaceful protesters were herded by 700 (also what the Police Press Officer told me) police from at least 6 forces (Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Metropolitan & Dorset), many equipped with riot helmets and long batons, some also with shields, dogs and/or horses. Waste of taxpayers' money? posted @ 1:19 PM - |
|
| more... |
|---|
|
about me
publications my CV as PDF or PS photos my roots RSS |
| other people: |
|---|
|
blather
ftrain fluggart i know what i know i sing what i say i'll think about that tomorrow livejournal friends michael jennings nein09 serialdeviant turkish torque vja2.net |
| random person: |
| further reading: |
|---|
|
selected links
all my bookmarks |
| world news: |
|
Google news
economist.com alternet |
| general science: |
|
new scientist
scientific american the why files |
| new technology: |
|
economist tq
cnet wired news |
| arts: |
|
rumi
breen atlas photography |
| diversions: |
|
gagpipe
itsyourturn itsagoal tv guide uncontrol |
| and finally... |
|---|
|
write to me
donations accepted |