Mistletoe and Wine...

... are two things that will once again have zero involvement in my Christmas celebrations.

Between Christmas and New Year I might try to do some 'best of 2007' type posts, or some kind of 'looking forward to 2008' type posts, but in case I don't, I thought I'd say something now.

Thanks to everyone who has posted on and everyone who has read this blog over the five months or so that it has been running. Hopefully we will continue to have varied and exciting content being produced into next year, along with an ever increasing number of contributors.

I've started tracking some data about people accessing the site, so hopefully after a few months I'll be able to come up with some trends and averages and whatnot. I can safely say that the vast majority of the traffic to the site comes from the UK (and probably from people who are actually posting stuff too), but there have been visitors from North America and mainland Europe too. So hopefully we will see more external (ie. not authors) and more international visitors too.

In either case, Merry Christmas to all, and I hope everyone enjoys some aspect of the holiday season.

:P

Superhero circle.

Ok, last post for today, I promise.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been playing a 'The Superest' style game after the quiz, and I felt that the (vaguely Christmas themed...) one we came up with last night was good enough to exhibit on here. So...


You should be able to zoom in on those to read them, but (for completeness, and because of our slightly dodgy handwriting...):

Santa "The Pimp" Claus: Ruling the world with his army of ho ho ho's

beaten by

The Christmas Crabs: Taking the safe out of unsafe-sex.

beaten by

The Festive Falcon: (image of dropping the crab on a rock).

beaten by

Old "Poacher" Scrooge: Wings it with his Lee-Enfield, then drains all its Christmas spirit

beaten by

The Ghosts of Gun-Victims Past: Bringing down the NRA one high-school massacre at a time.

beaten by

The Holy Hitman: Striking the dead back to whence they came.

beaten by

The "Altar Boy" Angler: No priest can resist the deep-sea innocence it promises.

beaten by

The Therapist: Always dredging up things from the deep.

beaten by

The Psycho Whore: She's insane, but she's also cheap.

which, with beautiful symmetry, could be beaten by Pimp Santa.

...now Lorraine has gone...

Just a couple of links:

Nick Clegg answers 'no' to 'do you believe in God?'. - I would have said this might have dealt his chances of becoming Prime Minister a blow, if he hadn't already ruined them by being leader of the Lib Dems. Glad to see a non-religious party leader, though - possibly the first one this country has had (can anyone confirm or deny that?). In any case, there was no indication whether his religious views would have any effect on his policies, and in reality it's just good to see that outright belief is not required to achieve (potential, if not likely) political power.

Anyone else find the overuse of quotation marks on the BBC website annoying? In the title of that article, 'does not believe in God' is in quotes for, as far as I can see, no good reason. It is not a direct quote, so why has the BBC decided to highlight it like this?

Radio 1 backs down over Pogues censorship - Reminded me of Bambi's post from earlier this month. My general anti-censorship attitude makes me glad of the eventual outcome, although I was confused by the quote from Andy Parfitt: "In the context of this song, I do not feel that there is any negative intent behind the use of the words". This seems odd, because, as far as I can tell, the words are absolutely being used with negative intent within the context of the song. I certainly can't imaging that Kirsty MacColl's character is referring to Shane MacGowan as a bundle of sticks when she calls him a 'faggot'. She is using an insulting and negative term, and the real question is whether people listening to the song are able to distinguish between terms used in a song-based argument by fictional alcoholics and words that are reasonable to use in a public context. I would like to think that this is the case, but who knows.

Lastly, I have finally got around to getting some glasses (technically a Christmas present from my parents), so my driving and cinema-watching experiences should hopefully now improve markedly, although I am hugely self-conscious about wearing them. :s

Hello

Telf said I should say hello, so hi y'all

I'm James, more commonly known as Jimmeh

(did anyone else think that sounded a bit like "Life of Brian" - "Brian that is called Brian"?)

40bn

So it looks like Putin's worth 40bn (seen in this morning's guardian). Not bad for government work, as they say.

When i read things like this about people I always wonder, why don't you just retire. Surely there's some figure where you think 'that's probably enough for me'. If I had 40bn, I'd be off on my island with large comfy home cinema and spend my days cruising around, playing games and watching films.

But i guess the fact I would do this is probably why I'll never make 40bn, and the fact Putin will keep busy till he dies is the reason he is.

Filmography

As promised this morning, these are the films I saw at the cinema in 2007 in approximately the order I saw them. I used this list to construct them, and the final set seems strangely small, so it's possible I have missed some out. Let me know if you spot any and I'll add them in.

The films are all listed as having had their UK cinema release in 2007, but two of them I technically saw on DVD. I tried to keep the comment under 25 words for each one, and think I pulled it off pretty well:

Rocky Balboa
I probably missed something through not having seen the other films, but this never felt exciting or interesting. 4/10

Blood Diamond
Leo is great and apart from a couple of silly action scenes, the whole thing hangs together well. 9/10

Hot Fuzz
Good but not great. Some funny moments, but loses something by having an accomplished protagonist. 6/10

The Illusionist
Entertaining story: more down-to-earth than the Prestige, but without the darkness of that film. 7/10

300
Brilliant comic-book epic. Allow yourself along for the ride and it's exhilarating stuff. 9/10

Blades Of Glory
Sub-par Ferrell vehicle. Some good jokes, but I just didn't care about any of the characters. 4/10

Shooter
Wahlberg is great, and the first hour is slick and exciting. Then Danny Glover comes along. 3/10

This Is England
Dark and gritty - Stephen Graham is brilliant and its an interesting take on the issues involved. 8/10

Spider-Man 3
Disappointingly unfocused. Doesn't know whether it's trying to be slapstick or dark.
4/10

Transformers
Great visuals, but I just don't care about wise-cracking robots falling over. 4/10

Conversations With Other Women
Funny and touching. Very original presentation pulled off well. A nice package that doesn't stretch itself. 8/10

Magicians
Distressingly unfunny. They can do so much better and it hurts to see them fail. 3/10

Zodiac
Great moody and oppressive thriller. Lags towards the end, but just about keeps us interested. 8/10

Pirates Of The Caribbean 3: At World's End
Depp is great. Most of the rest is forgettable. Too much random mythology pulled out of nowhere. 5/10

Shrek The Third
Terrible in comparison to its forebears. Has some funny moments, but no focus. 4/10

Die Hard 4.0
Enjoyable in a brain-switched-off kind of way. Less about the personalities and more about the effects, which is a pity. 5/10

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Meh. 5/10

The Simpsons Movie
Very funny. Expansive storyline and the return of Hank Scorpio (in all but name). 8/10

The Bourne Ultimatum
Fantastically taut thriller. Great set-pieces and manages to stay the right side of believeable. Just. 9/10

Knocked Up
Funny, and at least tries to do more than just feed the audience one liners. 7/10

Atonement
Great acting and a very moving story thoroughly well told. 9/10

Run, Fat Boy, Run
Sappy and stupid. Has one funny scene, and spends the rest of the time firmly on the rom-com-rails. 3/10

Michael Clayton
Great thriller. George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson are excellent and the script manages to guide us easily through a complex story. 9/10

Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor)
Exciting and strange. Made me want to read the books. 7/10

The Counterfeiters
Slow, but with a great script. Makes you question whether you could do the right thing. 8/10

Rendition
Dark story with twists that come together really well. Makes you question whether you could do the right thing. 8/10

Lions For Lambs
Slow moving but rewarding. Glossy rather than passionate. Makes you question whether there even is a right thing to do. 8/10

American Gangster
Interesting biopic with great action scenes. Ending feels rushed, but lead performances are great. 8/10

Rescue Dawn
Let down by poor special effects and cringeworthy ending, but the whole middle section is brilliantly done. 7/10

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Very slow, but builds tension brilliantly. Affleck almost outshines Pitt, and the attention to detail sells it. 9/10

We Own The Night
Good in patches, but loses its way. There's a dark, interesting film there somewhere, but it's not on the screen. 6/10

I am Legend
Not an awful premise, but neither psychological nor horrifying, and hence not really interesting or exciting. 6/10

And, for completeness, the ones I wanted to see but never got around to:
Apocalypto, The Last King Of Scotland, The Pursuit of Happyness, Smokin' Aces, Babel, The Good Shepherd, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Number 23, Amazing Grace, Sunshine, Alpha Dog,
Fracture, Fast Food Nation, 28 Weeks Later, Ocean's Thirteen, Seraphim Falls, Breach, 3:10 To Yuma, Shoot 'Em Up, The Brave One, Control, The Kingdom, Stardust, Eastern Promises, Sicko, The Lookout, Bug, Into The Wild, The Darjeeling Limited, Sleuth, The Golden Compass, The Killing of John Lennon, Youth Without Youth.

And one that failed to come out altogether:
Grindhouse
(But that's a rant for another day...)

Next year's big thing(s)

Just a quick post to link to this awesome list of upcoming films. I'd heard of most of the major releases, but a large number of the ones I hadn't heard of sound very exciting. At some point I want to try and do a round up of quick one-line reviews of 2007 films, assuming I can remember a large enough list of the ones I've seen to make it worthwhile. Anyway, enjoy the link.

Traditionally festive

There's a lot of stuff about traditions that annoys me. Not in a huge, stressed-out, ranty way, but just in a way that needles me occasionally, and this time of year has a lot of traditions wrapped around it.

A colleague of mine at work told me last year that him and his wife don't give each other Christmas presents or birthday presents, and even asked people not to give them wedding presents when they got married. Instead, they try to give each other surprise presents throughout the year. There is no pressure to try and think of something for someone else as a particular date approaches, but when that perfect idea comes along, there's no need to store it away for months and hope that it's still relevant later in the year.

Clearly this kind of approach would be difficult to integrate into society (I'm not sure it would work as an explanation as to why you failed to bring a present to a friend's wedding), but as a guiding principle, it seems to me to be much more practical and interesting than the current social norm. In general, I don't mind the whole present-giving side of Christmas (and, indeed, birthdays), since the next best thing to people giving each other presents spontaneously (you know, out of kindness) is to force them to do it through social blackmail. However, I do find the whole process of wrapping and presenting gifts to be thoroughly annoying.

For children, I can accept, it probably increases the excitement on the day to have a huge pile of mysteries to sift through, each with a cryptic label on to be deciphered, but in other situations, as we grow older, I find the whole business to be bizarre and annoying. I see no reason why it helps anyone for me to spend time and money wrapping up presents five minutes before they're going to be opened. If it is the desire to keep the item a mystery, then I'm quite happy to hide it beforehand, and do a little introduction for it, or present it in a bag or pretty much anything that doesn't cause me to spend ever increasing amounts on gaudy paper that will be torn up and never be used again. If it comes down to building excitement about a present, though I feel like that's the wrong way to go with the whole thing. If the present is a good one, something the person will appreciate and cherish, then no decorative packaging is needed, and if it is not something the person particularly wants, then hiding it away in a promising looking package is just a recipe for disappointment. Ultimately, I would much rather a friend quietly gave me something that they had spotted and thought I would appreciate than sit in a circle with any number of distant family members, unwrapping socks and library books and whatever DVD was being particularly well marketed at the time.

Cards get me in a similar way - I have nothing against them in principal, as long as the person sending them has thought about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Nothing seems more bizarre to me than a huge number of people sending identical cards to everyone in their phone book with their names at the bottom and the recipient's at the top. Maybe there will be a variation in the picture or the pre-printed message inside, but there's no real thought or care put into it. If you really do want to communicate with someone, then send them a letter or call them and arrange to meet up, and if you don't really want to communicate with them, then don't send anything. It seems as though Christmas card lists are like the social networking 'friends lists' of the pre-internet age. It doesn't matter that you haven't spoken to these people for 7 years and that you never have any contact with them other than through the annual charity-shop card; they need to be on your list and you on theirs, almost as a surreptitious ego-boosting exercise, as though your presence on people's card lists is required evidence that you are not an outcast.

I think most of the above translates pretty well on to birthday cards too - I see no real point in giving someone a birthday card unless you have something interesting to say in it. I have received (and given) a large number of cards over the years that have simply been the recipient's name, my name and a short generic greeting. Looking back on them, I don't begrudge the people who gave me these cards, and I don't regret giving out my own, but ultimately, it is as though those cards hadn't been given. I don't remember them (except in a general sense) and I haven't kept them, so there really is nothing to say that they ever existed. What I do have is a (by no means exhaustive) collection of letters and cards that I kept because I felt that real effort had been put into them, and I would look back on them in the future as something valuable. And in general, this has been the case. I wish I had kept more, but the ones that I have kept have given me a lot of happiness when I re-read them.

I feel I should clarify a little bit - I don't think that people are idiots for sending cards out, and I know people feel pride and happiness when they see a wall full of cards wishing them a happy birthday or Christmas. But I am suggesting that I think there are more meaningful things you can send to people you care about, and that perhaps you shouldn't be sending cards to people you don't care about. Not because they don't deserve that happiness, but because in reality, your card is at best a momentary distraction and at worst a dishonest message.

I compared Christmas card lists to social networking friend lists above, and in some ways there are parallels with birthday cards. If someone I know on facebook has a birthday, I feel odd just posting 'Happy Birthday' on their wall. If it is someone I count as a friend, then that feels too little, and I'll try and post something longer, or write them a message or give them a text or a ring and try and start a conversation. If I don't really know them that well (an old friend from school, or a mutual acquaintance) then I will tend not to send anything. Not because I don't hope they have a happy birthday (that, presumably, should be a given), but because I don't have anything more interesting to say, and it feels weird to simply present this public appearance of a closeness that is clearly not there.

Facebook communication (and social network communication in general) is a whole other post for a whole other time, however, so I think I'll leave it there, as I've rambled on for far too long already. There are other tradition-type things that annoy me, though, so tune in next week to hear me complain about decorations, Christmas dinner and Jesus.

:P

Linky update

I've been kinda busy for a couple of days, so haven't posted anything. Which is not to say I haven't wanted to - leaving the new boy out on his own like we have is kinda cruel, but he's doing a fine job so far.

I thought, in lieu of a longer, more rambling, more interesting, post, I'd briefly put down the highlights of the last week or so of my del.icio.us links:

This is funny, and nicely context-free.

This is very sad news, though taken very well by him.

This is pretty interesting, and should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.

This is some awesome-stylish art.

This is a great web-security article. Pretty long, though.

I want to do an article about user generated content at some point, and start doing some movie reviews. But not now. For now, I must go to the quiz. Wish me luck.

Miscellaneous Bloggery

Just a quick note about a couple of blog-related changes. Firstly, over on the right hand side there, I've added some new links to my 'blogroll'. I've also gone through and tagged all my posts so far, so let me know if you reckon I've missed or mis-applied any tags. If nothing else it's useful for me to keep track of what I have and haven't written stuff about recently. And right at the bottom there's an RSS feed of my del.icio.us links, so the number of plain 'links' posts I make should decrease, and they'll appear there instead.

Lastly, but not leastly, I'm going to start asking more people to join the blog as writers. Since adding two new people a month or so ago resulted in zero more posts, I figure a more drastic increase in writing staff is needed. There is the slight worry that since there is no theme to the blog, people will be confused and reticent about what to write, but I'm hopeful that people will feel free to just post whatever comes to mind.

So I'll probably be asking a few more people over the next couple of weeks, and if you aren't able to post yet, let me know and I'll consider adding you. I think my only restriction is going to be that I know you, other than that, I'm pretty happy for anyone to start writing stuffs.

And if you're a writer on this blog and haven't written anything, get off your arse and write something.

Expletive deleted

In response to Bambi's post (a phrase I feared I would not be writing again), I have a couple of points to add. First, I would like to thank him for introducing me to the word tmesis, which I feel would be an excellent addition to anyone's vocabulary despite the fact that I have no idea how to pronounce it and no clue as to how I would ever use it.

On the issue of using the word 'gay', my feeling has always been that, as with anything I could say, it should be the intention and the context that define someone's reaction, not just the words involved. I agree with Bambi that the meaning of the word 'gay' has changed pretty much within our lifetime, since I can certainly remember it being used as a sexual insult in primary school, and I think it is interesting that it has come to mean something undesirable.

It is as though successive years of children kept using it as an insult (having picked it up from older generations) while the society around them moved to somewhere where simply calling someone a homosexual was no longer actually insulting. Hence the word used as a negative term almost seems to mean 'I feel about this the same way as people once felt about homosexuality'. Or, given modern styles of communication, 'I'm pretending to feel about this the same way as people once felt about homosexuality in order to be funny'. I am neither an etymologist nor an expert on gay issues, so take the above analysis with all the necessary pinches of salt.

On the more general topic of offensive words, I don't like the fact that certain words are seen as unusable, since I think it gives them a power that they should not have. I make a point of trying not to restrict what I say with people, because I think that talking freely is a good sign of trust, and that a society that accepts words as simply words and looks to make judgements on context and meaning is a more open and a better society.

Having said that, I clearly obey a large number of social norms. For example I might feel uncomfortable using the word 'damn' in front of a friend's parents, but not my own. I try and avoid using the word 'shit' in front of my parents, but not my workmates. I tend to avoid the word 'fuck' with workmates, but not with friends I meet socially, and I save the word 'cunt' for friends I feel I know well or very well. I don't believe I have ever used the word 'nigger' out loud.

Make of that what you will.

This post is gay

This post may be a little rambling, as I have no idea where I'm going to go with it seeing as it's fairly English geeky in nature, concerning my fascination with words and what they do. And it starts with Facebook. Stay with me.

I started a group a while ago called "I Still Use Slang From The 1990s". As part of this group I've built up a list of '90s slang terms and their meanings, adding many that are suggested by the members of the group. However, I found myself faultering when one member suggested the word "gaylord" as a '90s insult. I was torn. On the one hand, "gaylord" comes from a blatant homophobic etymology. On the other, I knew the person suggesting it almost certainly had absolutely no sexual meaning in the word. I logically also considered the inclusion of "gay" as a slang term, but with much the same problem. So I did what I almost always do when I want to find out more about something: I looked on Wikipedia.

And here's what Wikipedia had to say. This I found incredibly intriguing, as not only does it give what I think of as the "playground" usage of the word a technical name ("pejorative non-sexualised"), but it cites a fairly recent example from the media of where the use of "gay" in this sense was called into question and the usage was defended. Not defended by any old fly-by-night organisation either - defended by the BBC no less.

I was gripped at this point. I felt like I was witnessing etymology as it happened. Very few words in my lifetime have undergone such a radical addition to their accepted meanings (and, as The Times article states at the end, a meaning almost the opposite to that which the word had originally). However, with Wikipedia being a less-than-credible source for information, and one news article seeming fairly flimsy, I turned to the big kahuna: the Oxford English Dictionary. And here's what I found:

"gay, adj., adv., and n. slang (chiefly U.S.). Foolish, stupid, socially inappropriate or disapproved of; ‘lame’."

It's in the OED. A draft addition admittedly, but one with several examples and that is actually being considered, which taking into account how many words are rejected from the OED is a fairly substantial backing for the pejorative non-sexual meaning.

So, how do I feel about all this. Moving past my English graduate geekiness about watching words transform, I don't really have a huge problem with this becoming an accepted meaning of "gay". I try to refrain from using it as I think there are better words to use, but then I do that with a large amount of words. Also, there are people who, when talking to them, I would avoid using the word "gay" like that as I know they wouldn't like it being used. Again, there is a large collection of other words that I do that with too.

But in terms of the actual meaning, I have no problem at all. For a start, it's a slang term that is clearly in common use, and that's how meanings and words are created and always have been - by being used. In terms of looking at it with historical examples, there's an obvious candidate word: "fuck".

Again, good old Wikipedia gives a decent grounding on this word's background. And, like "gay", it's in the OED. "Fuck" is a very old word, most likely coming from Anglo-Saxon, and has a fascinating history that would take hours to do justice to. But like many words now considered offensive, "fuck" began as merely a word to describe something - in this case, the act of having sex. Over the centuries it was regarded as more offensive, until receiving taboo status that was lifted only relatively recently. But "fuck" began with only one meaning as a verb. It's now arguably one of the most versatile slang words in English. It can be a verb and a noun, an adjective and an adverb - it can even be used in tmesis to add emphasis to a polysyllabic word ("abso-fucking-lutely"). "Fuck" is a word that originally did not offend, gained offensive meaning, and has developed in its various meanings.

So why should "gay" be any different? Yes, I'm sure it will offend some people, but there are a great many of those words around already. Who are we to state that "gay" can't join them? If we stopped everything that offended someone, the world would be incredibly bland. I'd like to know how "gay" is used in a hundred years, or even less. Its transformation is something I find extremely interesting.

And if you're wondering, "gaylord" and "gay" both made it into the Facebook group word list, albeit with disclaimers.

Christmas Xmas is coming.

The BBC had an article on Tuesday about MP Mark Pritchard calling for a parliamentary debate on the subject of 'Christianophobia'. The transcript of the debate can be found here, for anyone who enjoys an evening spent reading Hansard. Andy also produced a post on the dilution of Christmas. When I see two articles talking about similar things, I do like to connect them on here, so thought I should at least comment.

Mark Pritchard cites a number of examples of Christianophobia in modern society: the difficulty in finding religious cards and advent calenders and the creeping disappearance of Nativity plays from schools. He wonders why these things are disappearing from our society when he has "never met a single Muslim, Jew, Sikh or Buddhist, or person of any other faith, who has told me that they object to Christians celebrating Christmas". He then describes the idea that anyone might be offended by "Christians celebrating Christmas" as a "false, secular-driven proposition".

I think that I would put the change more down to the changing make up of our society. As we become a more multicultural nation, as more and more people grow up as non-Christian citizens of this country, the socially anchored Christian traditions begin to look more and more out of place. Should a school get children to take part in a Nativity play because it reflects the traditions of the country, or should they be free to do something that the children will be able to relate to more easily. Should greeting cards companies and manufacturers of other seasonal cardboard merchandise be condemned for selling cards that appeal to the widest range of potential consumers? Religious Christmas cards are still available, but, as with many other specialist goods, you may have to go to a more specialist supplier. Luckily, with the internet, such a search can take less than a second.

The point is that it is not a secular plot to stop Christians from celebrating Christmas, it is the reaction of the market (in the case of cards and calendars) and society (in the case of nativity plays) to the changes brought about by multiculturalism.

Mark Pritchard is also concerned about the disparate levels of government funding and attention given to minority religious festivals. He says "The Department for Transport has admitted sending staff to minority religious events, but did not “officially” participate in Christmas celebrations. At the Foreign Office [...] Muslim and Chinese religious events are marked with VIP receptions. I have no objection to that, or to the Home Office celebrating Muslim and Hindu festivals, but why is Easter completely ignored?". I fear that any government involvement in Christmas or Easter would be lost in the huge tidal wave of commercial attention both holidays get from the private sector. Ultimately, the government is giving a boost to minority festivals on the understanding that Christmas and Easter don't need extra funding or support to get their message out. If you are the biggest kid in the class, it's only natural for people to assume that you can stand up for yourself.

He goes on to say: "Today, many people from the Christian tradition feel that any religious allegiance is permissible as long as it is not the Christian tradition, and that everything is tolerated except a Christian world view". This seems like a pretty bizarre claim. In a country where the monarchy, the prime minister, most of the cabinet and 70% of the population ostensibly hold your world view, it is a little rich to come out and claim that your beliefs are not being tolerated.

He ties all of his points together by appealing to the government not to let the Christian heritage that has built and shaped this country be lost, and I would agree that we should not lose sight of where this country has come from. However, it is also vital that we do not try and stifle the changes that are happening in society because they conflict with tradition. We have a strong Christian tradition that has done much good for this country, and that continues to do so. What we should not do is allow the rose-tinted view of that heritage to prevent us from doing the best thing for the future of our nation and our society.

So, how do I feel about Christmas? I have no problem using the word to describe the day, the time of year or the holiday. I have no problem with other people wishing me a happy Christmas and I have no problem with all of the religious overtones of a lot of what goes on. I participate in the religious side of the holiday for as much as I need to in order to see my friends and family, in order to enjoy the time of year with the people I love, and in order to best fill the time I have off from work.

Ultimately, my participation in Christmas and Easter is driven almost entirely by social tradition. We have four public holidays split across the two events, and so I base my seasonal time-off around them, as everyone did when we were at school. If the religious aspect of the celebration was moved to a different date, I wouldn't change when I celebrated or what I did, but if the bank holidays changed, I may alter the way I spent this time of year.

I am happy for people to celebrate Jesus' birth as long as they are happy for me to celebrate being allowed a lie in for a couple of weeks.

This actually took me ages to write, which was surprising as it's the kind of thing I find usually comes pretty easily. I'm not entirely happy with the way I structured it and don't think I included everything I wanted to, but I think I've exhausted my creativity for today, so I'll have to leave it there.

Could do better.

When I get too cocky about actually being able to design web pages, I like to look at lists like this, which remind me just how awful I am at the actual design side of it.

PowerPointless

This is a multi-purpose post. Firstly, it's to get me back into posting here. Secondly, it's to make amends with Telf for not posting here for a while (apologies once again dude). Thirdly, it's so I can share something that made me laugh a lot.

I've already shown this to quite a few people, but I wanted to put it up here too. It struck a chord with me when I first saw it as a significant proportion of PowerPoint-based lectures I've had during my PGCE so far have been reminiscent of this style. I just think that if you're actually saying things like "I realise the text is far too small for people to read" about your slides, you need to rethink how you're putting together your lectures. Anyway, here we go.



I do have a couple of "real" posts I've been meaning to make for a little while now, but it's far too late to do either of them now, so hopefully this entry will get the ball rolling again for me and I'll post a bit more frequently.

I think I'm alone now...

It's frustrating that the point of this blog is being so ironically compromised. When I was writing a blog on my own, it was difficult to motivate myself to post on a semi-regular basis, and I was glad that I felt more motivated about posting here when there was more than just my own content going up. However, no one other than me has posted since the end of October, and despite forcing myself to write some fairly extended pieces (and pieces that I'm on the whole pretty happy with), I can feel myself slipping back into my old habits and looking at the 'create post' page as a duty rather than a creative outlet.

I understand that people are busy, and this is not a rant against my fellow posters here (yet), just an update on how I feel things are going.

On a more flash-based, and less angsty note, many many addictive games (with leaderboards and secrets and awards and all that other jazz that is much more fun than actual work).

Oh. Hell. Yeah.

by their own petard.

When the guys from Penny Arcade announced that they were taking time off from reviewing games in order to create one, game publishers of the world began to sharpen their knives for the sweetest revenge of all.

However, with their game not out yet, we have a vaguely similar, if a zero-budget, pixelated and sardonic one in Art of Theft.

With the game coming from the keyboard of 'Yahtzee', he of the Zero Punctuation reviews, it was only a matter of time before a parody review appeared. It doesn't have his Yahtzee's accent going for it, but matches him for wit and humour, as well as doing a good job actually reviewing the game.

True Lies

I think my politics sensor is broken.

In almost every situation where I read an article or opinion about politics (in the sense of actual government, rather than political theory), I mentally side with the government. One reason for this could be that when I was growing up, I regularly had the message "Labour good, Conservatives bad" drilled into me. Not because my parents (mostly my mum) were trying to brainwash me, but because they were passing on what they believed. I remember in particular going to meet David Mellor at a prize giving at my primary school, and being told to spit on his feet by my mum. I didn't, incidentally, but being exposed to very one sided political debate for most of my childhood left a clear mark on me.

Hence whenever I hear a piece of political commentary that paints the Conservatives in a good light and Labour in a bad one, my brain throws up an error - "Wait, this can't be true, Labour are the good guys". I generally have to consciously overrule this part of my brain in order to try and think impartially about politics, which is annoying. I have no problem in general arguing left wing points, because I feel on much more solid ground with abstract ideas, but when the issue of the present government comes up, my brain starts to get into too many arguments with itself for me to make consistent arguments.

Another possible reason for my government-leaning tenancies would just be that I don't like the way the media tends to tear over-enthusiastically into people doing a very difficult job. I don't like the fact that the business of running the country has become one of trying to avoid too much bad press, rather than actually, well, governing. So it might be that my brain is naturally sympathetic towards those in power, rather than the Labour party in particular.

I have nothing to compare this with, since my interest in, and exposure to, politics probably started when staying up to watch the election coverage in 1997. In this sense, then, I would be interested to see the Conservatives come into power (my stomach actually tightened while writing that), if only so that I could work out whether my natural bias is with Labour or with the party in power.

Going back to my previous point about the business of spin and media relations getting in the way of governing, I find it pretty ludicrous that there are people calling for the Chancellor to step down over an issue that he can have had no control over. People pointed to the example of Paul Gray taking responsibility and stepping down as head of HMRC as being the right attitude, and implied that the chancellor and even the Prime Minister should follow suit.

It firstly seems ludicrous that the failure to follow government procedures by a junior official should be in any way the responsibility of two of the highest ranked public servants in the country. As you go up the government ladder, the general responsibility for the actions of those below you increases, but the responsibility for any individual failing surely decreases. The fact that Paul Gray decided to step down should surely be the end of the issue. There is no need for either Darling or Brown to take responsibility, because Gray has already done so.

However, the media know that they will have a bigger impact and generate more public interest by, for want of a better term, shit-stirring. Maybe people don't believe whatever the media tells them day to day, but they probably absorb some of it, and when the media is constantly banging on about government spin, hypocrisy, cover-ups and resignations, it can be very difficult to pick out those situations in which the terms are appropriate from those in which there is no real scandal, but which would get no public attention if reported in context.

The problem forms a vicious cycle, because officials are so desperate to avoid even the smallest situation being blown out of proportion (causing the inevitable resignation calls), that they are willing to stretch the truth, leave out facts and even outright lie to the media. When these lies eventually come out (as they almost always do), this then fuels the media's obsession that all politicians are slimy, corrupt, lying bastards, that there is no reason to trust anything that they say, and that the other lot would be much better.

The trouble is that no government will be able to look good for any extended period of time because at the first sign of a mistake (you know, the kind made by humans), the media start to wave their P45s and shout for an election.

I don't necessarily think that it would work, but I would like to see a government, a party, or even a politician make a sincere effort to avoid spin. Yes, there are going to be situations where for reasons of security or dignity, there are things you can't reveal, but I think that the majority of government should be transparent, and able to be examined as such.

Rather than having the ridiculous situation of two parties arguing over who thought of a policy idea first, they should be celebrating the fact that they both want to implement the same idea. Since when did getting one over on the other side of the house with a witty comeback in a debate take the place of doing your best for the electorate?

The fact that Members of Parliament have to be forced to vote with the government because they don't agree with the law being passed is surely ignoring the whole point of having a representative democracy. "Oh, I was going to represent the views of my constituents in this vote, but then my party leader said I couldn't". Whither democracy then?

Equally, if you don't want the public (and/or the media) to know why you are financing something, investigating something or pushing for legislation then you are doing something wrong as a government. Either you are not representing the views of the electorate, or you haven't explained your position well enough.

And this is where it becomes a two-way thing, because in order for a government that actually didn't spin anything to work, the media would also have to avoid spinning. Rather than looking at a statement from the press office and thinking 'what are they trying to hide?', the media could take the chance to explain both sides of the argument to the public and letting the government getting on with actually making the decision.

Clearly a media that simply repeats what the government says is the mark of a less-than-free press, but I would argue that we have swung too far the other way, and that our dictatorial press is making for a less-than-free government.

The only way you are going to get rid of the culture of lies that apparently is destroying our political system is to have an electable politician that actually tells the truth without spin, and with the current media, I'm not sure that's possible.

As usual, that was pretty rambling, and probably inaccurate. For a much better insight into politics and the media (you know, from someone who actually knows what they're talking about) try this blog (listed over there on the right along with a ton of other good ones). In particular the post about lying to reporters that inspired whatever this was.

245 votes

From Sickipedia:
Also, and to stay with the image theme: Thanks to the xkcd store I now have a shiny new olde-style online community map on my wall.
This makes me smile every time I look up from my screen. :D

Links of a 2.0 nature.

I have been intending to write something long, rambling and uninteresting about gay marriage on here for a while, but Jabberwock has put down pretty much exactly what I would have said, so you may as well read that.

Also, looking back at this particularly embarrassing post, I realised that I missed a great opportunity to plug 'awkward things I say to girls', which is linked over there on the right, but hasn't been mentioned explicitly on here before. It's a great series of stories about situations this guy has got into while talking to girls. I can definately relate to his description of his mental processes and stumbling attempts at humour, and his writing style is brilliant and regularly very beautiful. As well as being hilarious. It's not updated very often any more, but read through the archives - it's well worth it.

Since I've been posting a fair number of link-based posts on here, I thought I'd try out del.icio.us, a social bookmarking program that, again, I had been intending to start using for ages. I'll put anything that requires comment on here, but I'll probably link a lot of stuff on there that'll never make it onto here, too, at least until I can work out how to automatically feed my updates through.

And, as if in some kind of web 2.0 frenzy, I have also finally got a flickr account. I had previously resisted this because the photos that I took tended to be more of the mates-getting-pissed variety than the artistic variety. With my early Christmas present (from me to me) of a new and slightly less amateur camera, though, I've decided to at least try and do something a bit different photography-wise. I'm no expert, but hopefully I'll improve, so check out my account every so often to see what I've added.

Any artistic merit those photos have comes pretty much entirely from the intelligent stuff the camera is doing with focus, exposure etc, btw...

My say

From the BBC's Have Your Say section on controlling binge drinking, particularly in young people:

"Why the hell should I be punished by extortionate price hikes due to some peoples lack of control?!

The report states teenagers/children drinking - hello? Isn't it against the law for them to do this?

When the little darlings end up in hospital to have their stomachs pumped/injuries attended to then arrest their parents.

It's nothing short of neglect. Do not try and justify their disgusting behaviour by saying you can't control them 24/7. Yes you can, that is your job as a parent!!"

Contrast with this story also on the BBC. Clearly not exactly the worlds most thorough investigation of a story, but I think that it shows the flaw in the blanket statement from Have Your Say. The parents are going to be the ones least able to control the behaviour of their children once they get into their teens. Hopefully they've passed on the proper lessons at an early age, but once a child starts to rebel, there's really very little a parent can do. If there are childen out there drinking, and there are, they are going to be more of an influence on their peers than their peers' parents can ever hope to be at that age.

The vast majority of the commenters were outraged by the government proposing a tax hike on alcohol, and rolled out all the old 'nanny state' arguments. When it was pointed out the the organisation that produced this report was not a government body, but a seperate group of health organisations, the response was that it was typical that this government was 'hiding behind' lobby groups.

"There ought to be a tax on busybody organisations that continuously poke their noses into other people's business."

While I don't necessarily agree that a tax rise would be the best solutions (clearly there are more complex factors at work than just cheap booze), but the organisation that has come up with these statistics is not saying that drinking alcohol is wrong or should be banned, but is putting forward a suggestion that could reduce alcohol deaths. Maybe I'm being naive, and maybe these organisations are looking to snare a big chunk of government money as a result of this survey, but I would certainly not describe any of the organisations involved as 'poking their noses into other people's business'. As charities, research groups and political pressure groups, the role of these organisations in our politics is job is to produce data and present it to both the government and the public, and that is what they have done. The fact that a 10% tax increase was one of several suggestions wasn't really picked up, because the word tax was mentioned, so everyone wheels out their penny-pinching-Gordon-Brown pens straight away. It's this kind of knee jerk reaction to (ultimately fairly dry) stories that I hate, blowing them out of proportion and picking out the elements that will get the biggest response, but it's the kind of thing that seems to happen more and more in both journalism and public opinion.

The final thing that both annoyed me and came up a number of times in the comments, features in the middle of this post:

"Putting 10%, as I've heard proposed by some groups, on the price of Alcohol is absolutely ridiculous. Do you really think putting that sort of measley [sic] amount on the price of a drink will put off people who want to drink. All the extra taxes will achieve is to give the government more money to squander on beaurocracy [sic] and useless 'studies' and irritate the majority of responsible drinkers whilst doing nothing to put off hardened drinkers."

The comment itself is not necessarily unreasonable; I agree that a higher tax will probably not have the effect that the study groups hope, and that young people who can get enough money together to afford (probably supermarket) alcohol at the moment will be unlikely to be put off by a small increase in that cost. However, I don't like the tone of the message - treating the studies and suggestions with scorn, while not even suggesting at any kind of alternative solution.

It also annoys me that the poster says that all the taxes will do is 'give the government money to squander on bureaucracy'. Maybe he is speaking in exaggerated tones for effect, but I think that his point is still unhelpful. I agree that the level of bureaucracy in government could probably be reduced, but I also believe that the government appreciates this. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to try and keep track of the vast budgets that the government has to deal with, and I don't like the implication of a blasé government throwing tax money around without a care for the effect on the poor workers from whom the money has been cruelly taken.

Again, I'm straying into naive woolly liberal territory again, but I genuinely don't think that the people in and working for the government are just in it for the quick gain. I don't like the way that modern politics forces people to play games rather than govern (but that's another story for another time), and I think that the people who work hard to get elected and into positions of responsibility do it because they want to make a positive difference to the country. This is why it frustrates and annoys me when I see black-and-white, one-sided, over-simplified analyses of the government as a money grabbing behemoth that doesn't care about the man on the street. The government may be a huge entity, but it is made up of individuals that all want to do their best for Britain as a country, whichever party they belong to.

Penultimately, a particularly helpful view of the Labour party from one comment:

"Labour Party Commandments

You must:

• Work hard to support the idle, MPs, criminals and government employees pensions.
• Accept higher taxes and bills without complaint
• Accept that we're watching your every move
• Use the bus/train to travel to work
• Not smoke or drink
• Not drive/fly
• Eat only organic food
• Accept that the law is on the side of the criminal
• Accept that your are second class citizens in what was your country
• Remember we know best what's good for you"

Does the person who wrote that really believe that that is what the Labour government are trying to do? Presumably not. But why try and understand what someone is trying to do when you can just stand to one side and ridicule them.

Apologies for the any of the above that was rambling, poorly thought out, or just naive liberal bilge, but I think most of it at least vaguely represents my points of view on the topics involved, so I'm not going to attempt to rewrite any more of it at this hour.

And finally, quite a sweet story about a cat.

V

Clearly I should have posted this yesterday, but I didn't realise until today: My first ever post on my first ever blog was made on the 12th of November 2002, making yesterday my 5th blog-versary. Or something.

There have been large gaps (my total post-count is only about 265 according to Blogger), and I have at one time or another posted on at least 5 seperate blogs.

While this record identifies me as an inconsistent and unreliable blogger, I feel a certain amount of pride that I'm still posting after 5 years, and raise a glass to the next five.

Copse

Browsing through the BBC website today, I came across this list of forms that the police have to fill in during an investigation. I've read a fair amount of the archives on coppersblog over the last couple of months, and this is the one main thing that the writers there complain about too.

The thing that strikes me most about the list of paperwork is not the volume of it (though that is clearly a factor), but the number of different mediums in which data is stored. Some information is kept in handwritten logs, some is on numbered forms, some is entered into a national database and some of it is on a local computer system, not to mention the storage of copies of video evidence, photos and audio tapes from interviews. That's a huge amount of information that may need to be recalled at any time, and which will all be stored in different formats and different places.

The problem is that none of this information-gathering is easily disposed of. If any of it was obviously redundant, then it could be removed, but it seems from the descriptions that all of the steps in the chain are recording reasonable information, either to help lead towards a conviction, or to cover the police in case of a mistreatment lawsuit brought by the arrested party. If we assume that there is no redundant information being collected (something which may not be true, but on which I can't really comment), then the only way to reduce the amount of time spent on paperwork is to reduce the amount of time filling in the existing paperwork, and minimising the occasions on which the paperwork has to be filled in.

On the former point, there must be some way of streamlining the existing systems for logging crimes and criminals into a single computerised structure. Even the time saved by having the system automatically timestamp and number everything would surely be useful. In addition, there would be time and resources saved by the reduction in paper forms. Further expansion into a national database (or at least remote access to regional databases) would be possible, to allow co-ordination between separate forces.

All of this is clearly a massive job, but looking at the BBC link above, it was the first thing that came to mind, probably at least partly because my current job involves writing software to do almost exactly this for the NHS, and I could all too easily see how much it could help in the police service.

The second point above, on minimising occasions on which this mass of information needs to be collected is another major theme that comes out of the procedural posts on coppersblog - that there is a huge amount of time lost recording and investigating crimes that are not going anywhere. Front line officers are given no room to judge for themselves what to investigate and what to leave. Clearly the police should not be ignoring crimes, but if the officer knows from experience that there is no chance of a conviction, or even a charge, shouldn't he be within his right to say so. And then to get on with investigating a case that may have a useful outcome. Is it not analogous to allowing your doctor to tell you the best course of action. If your GP says "It's nothing to worry about, leave it for a couple of days and it'll clear up", would you respond "No, give me pills, now." or "No. Refer me to a hospital. Now."? Sadly, maybe this kind of response to medical advice is becoming more common nowadays, but I would suggest that allowing the police to exercise their professional judgement in the same way as doctors is vital to avoid the justice system being clogged up with family arguments, kids fighting, and pub brawls.

As a personal example, when I was 13 or so, I was beaten up in an alley while coming home from school by a guy much older than me. When the police came round to interview me that evening, I told them as much as I could, and gave them a description of my attacker, and they said "It's really pretty unlikely that anything is going to come of this". I never heard anything else from them, and to me, that's fine. I would hate to think that they had to spend any longer than it would take to give me a crime number and record a brief description of my case on it, since, clearly, there was no way they were going to catch the guy. Even if they somehow came across him, it would be my word against his, and there would be no chance of a conviction.

I was going to talk more about government targets here, but I'll have to save that for a later post, as it's getting late and I'm starting to ramble a bit. Either way, if you consider the worst aspects of targets and paperwork, then think how far we've come from these principles, particularly the last one.

Nice try.

Great article on Ted Nelson and Xanadu, neither of which (whom?) I had ever heard of before. Via Coding Horror.

Lexical levity

I found this via this whilst trying to find what this book was called, having heard about it in several places, including HIGNFY and this podcast, which I was recommended to try in this post.

Incidentally, trying to find that book via Google is very difficult if you don't actually know any specific details such as title or author, as any description of it is too wordy to be useful. I finally found it by searching for example words that were given in the podcast.

Doodling

Awesome doodle games:

http://www.tinkerx.com/index.php/2006/02/08/my-team-your-team-crayons-at-dusk/

http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2005/09/16/doodle/index.php

Leading to:

http://thesuperest.com/ (recommended in person by Russ).


The whole doodle-for-the-sake-of-doodle, with no real winner, reminds me of Blank White Cards.

Three Links

- A heartwarming post from coppersblog

- A more depressing one from battleground. (there may need to be a health advisory on that one for anyone interested in going into teaching).

- A frankly quite distressing graph. From nhsblogdoc.

Two Links

Just a couple of links this time. I have two or three things I want to do big-ish posts on, but finding time when I am rested enough to think clearly, but not so rested that I have slipped into a catatonic Team-Fortress-2-playing coma is difficult.

The 13 most awful American fears
- I don't check Something Awful nearly as much as I should. And neither do you.

Demotivational posters
- These have been ripped off a lot (to good effect, sometimes) but as far as I can tell, despair.com did the originals.

"Additional generic cop comment, Brian!"

I couldn't think of a blog entry title, so I resorted to a quotable mainstay. Understood? Good.

I recently started using the StumbleUpon add-on for Mozilla Firefox, and it's really quite handy when you want to be entertained by the internet with little to no effort of your own (shameful, but truthful). You tell it things that you're interested in hearing about and then click the "Stumble!" button and it shows you a website. If you like the website you can tell it so, and if you don't like it you can let it know that too, thereby refining the types of website it shows you. I recommend trying it out.

This page is one of the ones I've liked the most so far. Very clever and very funny. The Thought For The Day is also particularly profound:

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic".

Entries of more substance and less rip-offery shall be made in the near future.

Via

My DVD writer has an irritating habit of failing to actually write DVDs. If I decide I want to listen to some music, watch a video, play a game, or even access a media-heavy website, my writer has a tendency to both soak up enough memory that these activities are no longer entertaining and also crash Windows. So, while I'm burning DVDs, I generally end up browsing around various blogs. Today, I started at Coding Horror, recommended to me by a friend of mine*.

While there, I particularly enjoyed this article on blogging, which led me to this article on the same site, which led me to more articles elsewhere. Thank goodness for tabbed browsing. I now have between ten and twenty tabs open, all of which I intend to read. However, these tabs are spawning new ones as fast as I close them. That, after all, is what blogs are meant to do, link me to other relevant material that the writer thinks may be interesting or helpful. And there's no shortage of blog entries talking about blogging out there. The problem of how to deal with this content-virus, constantly tempting me onwards with more and more lists and analyses and constantly multiplying until I have so many tabs open I don't even know which way is back, is my problem.

The real reason I decided to write about this is that it is not entirely clear to me what the etiquette about linking to other sub-linked stories is. Clearly I should provide a link to the blog that led me to an interesting article, partly because the context of my finding a link is interesting, and partly because the linking article might have salient points of its own to make.

But then, what if I'm linking to an article that I have reached through seven or eight step journeys. What if I want to link to sever articles in that day's particular link-tree. What if I don't want to have to type out the address of every interesting page I went through. What if I want to encourage the reader to follow the different paths that I have followed, but don't want to list ten or fifteen urls which are already connected anyway.

What, I think, would be interesting, would be a way of presenting your link tree on a page, beside (or as part of) the link itself. Clearly if you have several links to different, unconnected pages, there would be several link trees, but instead of having to put 'via' next to each link and then reel off a list of other pages that the reader might want to visit, you could provide them with your link tree. I don't want to worry about the construction of this tree particularly at this moment, but it could be done by entering addresses manually into some sort of GUI, or by setting up an 'auto-track' mode, that tracks your movements and then lets you pick a section of this journey to display with the link.

What makes this idea more interesting to me is that if you reached an interesting link tree on someone else's blog, there is no need to worry about building your own to mimic his. Instead, you simply include his tree on your article. Another node is added automatically to represent his article at the top of the tree, and the rest of the tree already exists. Clearly you can trim and prune if you want to, to remove anything that appears irrelevant, but a reader of your article can immediately see that you have been to this other person's blog, and through them, on to other places. Writers who draw together interesting articles are automatically credited by the people who link to them in the future, and people can see at a glance the extent of an article's research and scope.

My interest in this idea is purely whimsical. I have no idea (but would be interested to hear) if there are huge practical or philosophical problems with the idea, or if there is a technology that allows you to do this. Equally, if there is not, I have no huge desire to push for it. It is simply something that occurred to me whenever I wrote the word 'via' after a link.


* a friend, in fact, registered as a writer on this blog. A writer in name only. Apparently.

"To express one's thoughts / in seventeen syllables / is very diffic"

A bit of linkage to some of my own work. A task I had to do for the creative writing part of my PGCE course was to create a series of haikus about something that has a definite sequence. Being an English geek, I chose to do mine about Shakespeare's Hamlet, attempting to summarise each of the five acts of the play as a haiku. I have to say, I'm very pleased with what I've managed to create. I've uploaded it to my FanFiction page (which, incidentally, I haven't touched for a couple of years until now) and have had a couple of positive reviews already which is always good to see. Here's a direct link to the actual piece. I'll post more links to any creative writing I do here, either stuff from my course that I like or enjoyed, or when I get the chance to do any of my own accord.

By the way, the title of this blog entry is a haiku, called "Haiku", by John Cooper Clarke. I think it's ace.

They flash upon that inward eye

This is a complementary entry to my previous entry. Firstly, after reading back what I wrote last night, the post makes me seem a lot more depressed than I actually was. I said I was "melancholy", which was in hindsight too strong a word to use, but in my defense I was incredibly tired when I wrote the last entry. More accurate a word would probably be "deflated". In all honesty, I don't know the word for how I felt. When I read about the death of the second person, I was shocked. And a couple of seconds later I recalled vividly my meeting with the two people who were close to the first person who died. My emotions entered my stomach which then turned into the drum of a washing machine. It was all so mixed up that a particularly emotional state of shock is probably the best way I can describe it, but as I read that back it doesn't sound very accurate.

Moving on. I also didn't mention that both people died a recently, but not very recently. I don't know how long ago the first person died, but the second person died around a month ago. I just happened to hear about them both on the same day. And that was what took me aback about how I felt. I had heard about two people dying and I was feeling like this? But I hear about people dying on the news all the time, and I don't feel like this every day. If I had a point in the last post, it was something to do with that. Obviously one of the people I had known some time ago, but the other person I had never met. I had never met the two people who had know that person until yesterday. And yet I was affected by it. It just surprised me. I wasn't depressed last night, I'm not now, but I was definitely feeling something I didn't expect. Emotions are strange. Human beings are even stranger.

I doubt this entry has cleared much up. But I read back last night's entry and it seemed alarmingly dour, so I just wanted to clear that up if nothing else. And I'll try to make sure whatever I post about next is a little more upbeat, in tone at least.

In vacant or in pensive mood

I should be going to bed, but I wanted to write something here, however briefly, to attempt to capture some of my feelings at the current moment. Today I have experienced death on two occasions.

The first occasion happened to me this morning. I didn't know the person who died and had never met them. I interacted with two people who were close to the person who died. The person died in a way that, from what I was briefly told, in a way that was not pleasant and was self-inflicted.

The second occasion happened about fifteen minutes ago. I did know this person, although I had not seen him for years. Any direct interaction I had with this person was scarce (although as I type this I have just remembered a specific shared experience between us that stands out in my mind). That said, there was a period in my life when this person was regularly around me and I knew who they were. This person also had interaction with people with whom I am friends, and I have no doubt that they were fairly close to him and were shocked to hear of his passing. I don't know how this person died.

I don't really have a point, other than neither of these people were people that I really knew - in one case not at all, in the other not well - but hearing about their deaths affected me a lot more than I would have expected. I feel somewhat subdued, almost melancholy, after hearing about them. These two experiences together just brought home to me in a way that has never happened before how curious a thing death can be. Probably the most incomprehensible thing life has to offer.

I think this may be why I'm single.

That is, I think this may be one of the huge number of reasons that I am single.

Picture the scene: I'm walking home from work, happily minding my own business, when I receive a text from Attractive Single Girl (ASG). The text reads:

'Hey. Have you seen [film]? x.'

Where [film] is a current release, and not just the word film encased by square brackets. What follows is my internal monologue, as I remember it:

"Oh, cool, a text from [ASG]. Ah, a film. I would like to go see a film with her. Hm. I wonder if she wants to go on a date. No. Don't think like that. That's just setting yourself up to be disappointed. Assume she doesn't want to go on a date. No, don't assume anything. Hm, I've already seen that film. Damn. I wonder if I should suggest an alternative. Hmm. That seems a bit presumptive. Hm. I wonder what the difference between 'assume' and 'presume' is. I dunno. Gah! Don't think about that. Think about [ASG]. She may not actually want to go see a film with me, but be organising a general cinema trip, in which case suggesting an alternative would seem a bit weird. Maybe I should say no and ask whether she's seen it. No, that's stupid too. She's not carrying out a survey, she must be intending to go and see it. Gah! I'm overthinking it, aren't I. Even if she isn't organising a general trip, she may just want to go and see the film with me as a friend. Why should I assume she wants to go out on a date? Hmm. I can't think of a way of saying no and suggesting an alternative without knowing whether she wants to go on a date, just go and see a film as friends, or invite me to a group viewing of a film. I also can't think of a constructive response that would cover more than two of those possibilities, leaving the option that I'll be sending an inappropriately presumptive reply, and making me look like an idiot... Damn... Well I have to send something, I can't just ignore it. Maybe if I just keep it simple she'll ask a follow up question and I can take it from there. Sending anything more complex now is just too risky. Ok. Just answer the question. Have I seen it? Yes. Well that's silly. I can't just say 'yes'. I need to send a full sentence at least. Hmm. I could ask how her day was, but that's a bit of a non-sequitur after her question. Maybe I should say something about the film. Hm..."

... ... ...

"There. That's a good text length. Ok. Review. Is there a situation in which this could be taken the wrong way? No, looks pretty clean. Ok, good. Send. Awesome. Job done."

So that's what I ended up sending:

'Yes I have'. Followed by a short review of the film in question. Gah!

Looking back, I can think of many better ways I could have answered the text, but in the heat of the moment, my mind just did not perform well. I've written this post, partly as a way of showing the bizarre and embarrassing way that my mind works, and partly as a comparison. If this is what is going on in my head when I'm replying to a text message from an ASG, what the hell is going on when I'm talking face to face? What actually happens is that my brain tries to process too many possibilities, overthinks to a point several factors higher than my mind can handle and then shuts down. With embarrassing results.

Sorry for the angsty post, I don't really want to do too many of the teenage 'omg i'm nevvar guna get a gurlfrend. zomg the world hatez me. :'(' posts, but I thought that I could pull this one off and still make it externally interesting. I hope that I succeeded. If not, then I won't broach the subject again.

Locked up

All the way back at the end of August I wrote this post. In some senses this is a follow up.

I was having a discussion about politics with a couple of friends in Nando's this evening, when the guy at the next table decided to join in. He was nice enough, and there with his wife, so we were quite happy to chat to him, even if he'd had enough to drink that he didn't make a huge amount of sense. Anyway, he told a story about his childhood that I thought was quite interesting:

He said that when he was eleven, he'd seen some older kids steal a car and go for a joy ride. He and a friend of his had taken a screwdriver and tried to do the same. They got the car started, but had no idea what to do to actually drive it, and were caught by a policeman, who arrested them. They went to court and were sent to borstal for two months. He described crying for most of his time there, and showed us a tattoo on his hand that some of the older boys had given him (against his will, he implied). He said it was a 'reminder not to fuck up', and said from then on he'd never done anything else that would get him into trouble.

The implication of this story was clearly that he believed a spell in a youth correction facility would help to teach modern teenagers/youths some respect for authority, and help them get back on the right track. He also suggested a mandatory five year stretch in the army for anyone who doesn't have a job or apprenticeship to go into when they leave education. I think the latter suggestion is a bad idea, because a huge influx of bored, angry young men who have been forced into the army against their will seems like a recipe for disaster. Ultimately, if they're not going to form an effective part of the armed services (which they won't if they don't want to), it's no different from keeping them in a highly regimented part-time prison for five years.

His point about the youth detention or borstal system is, I think, also misguided, though clearly driven by the constructive effect it had on his life. I really wanted to ask him some follow up questions about his story, but he was switching topics quite quickly, and it was difficult to get a word in. I'd have been interested to know what his parents thought, firstly about him going to borstal, and secondly about him being tattooed while there. I can just imagine the media circus today about a young child who was forcibly tatooed by other inmates in a young offenders institution. I certainly imagine that there would be lawyers involved.

It's quite possible that for some of the 'problem' youths currently growing up in council estates (and, I'm sure, more affluent areas), a stint of hard dicipline with a threat of more would have an effect, possibly for the better. In general, though, it seems to me that treating kids like criminals would not help them to become productive members of society. A kid with a tattoo reminding him of a terrible experience that he doesn't want to repeat is going to behave out of fear, not because he understands why behaving well is desirable. Perhaps it is wooly liberal thinking, but it seems to me that someone who understands why not stealing a car, why not taking drugs, why not acting in an aggressive and confrontational manner, is desirable by thinking about the sociological consequences of these actions is going to be able to apply those rules to other aspects of life more readily and more accurately than someone who unhappily obeys the rules they are given by people in authority because they don't want to be punished.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe some people would not be able to grasp the reasoning behind laws and social responsibility, or maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe some people are too far gone down their own path to be shown the way back, and maybe some people were never going to be able to follow the path society wants them to in the first place. Whatever the reality of it, it makes me happy that we live in a society when political discussions can break out randomly between strangers in the middle of a restaurant, even if not regularly.

If you consider silhouettes to be NSFW, then NSFW.

I don't really believe that this is to do with left or right side brain activity, it seems to depend more on when you start looking at the animation. Interesting nonetheless. After a few minutes I could get it to reliably change direction at will.

Also good to see Bambi posting again. I was starting to worry that I'd had a schizophrenic episode, registered lots of imaginary Blogger accounts and forgotten about it.

An Inconvenient Profession?

Apologies for my lack of input to this blog lately. I have recently started a teacher training course, and the work and preparation for that has taken up a large amount of my time. There have been one or two things I've wanted to write entries on though, so hopefully I'll be able to get them up here over the weekend.

One thing I wanted to comment on is this story.

I was going to write something about this when I first read about the issue, but as it turns out it may work out better now that a follow-up story has been written.

For starters, I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, but I would like to see it to form my own opinion on it. I also didn't really think of the story with respect to how important the film was in telling schoolchildren about climate change and protecting the environment. What I see is yet another distrust of teachers, the authority they have potentially and that they are rarely allowed to use.

Stewart Dimmock didn't want the film to be shown in school because it contains "partisan political views" and "sentimental mush". If that is indeed the case, and if I was going to use that film as a teaching tool, those are two of the main things I'd try to get pupils to draw out of it. Not to just take it as 100% truth, but to interrogate the film they're watching. If the politics and sentiment are that overt then I'm sure many GCSE level pupils, maybe even those at the top end of Key Stage 3, would be able to work that out, perhaps with a little prompting to question.

To me, Mr. Dimmock is doing one of two things:

1. Not wanting teachers to teach children these kinds of skills, instead getting them to simply take everything they are exposed to at face value.
2. Not trusting teachers to be able to teach these kinds of skills, therefore calling for the removal of texts he deems unable to be taught in English schools.

Either way, he seems like the kind of ignorant person I'm likely to meet more often than I'd like throughout my potential career.

Bible Fight!

Less painful than the real deal (those things are heavy, man) but still Bible Fight!

The loading times are pretty excessive and the controls sometimes annoyingly unresponsive, but a fun distraction for a few minutes.

Also, I downloaded the demo of Peggle (see a couple of posts back) and yes, addictive. Like to the point of "I need to go out and buy more heroin, but I really just want to play this next level. Just one more. My dealer will totally still be there in 10 minutes." Lucky the demo's only 15 levels or so. I think I can resist buying the real thing. I think...

Webcomic Links

A list from FullyRamblomatic (the guy who creates the reviews in the previous post) of his favourite webcomics. And a link to a blog that ridicules poor webcomics.

It Lives!

I keep trying to set aside some time to write something interesting and well argued, but keep failing, so as an apology, I'm going to give you a ton more links.

I've been reading Charlie Brooker's writing for a fairly long time now (I started reading PC Zone just as he was finishing writing for it), including his columns in the Guardian and a couple of his books. His humour is prurient, irreverent and pretty abstract. It's kinda hit and miss too, but generally moves between topics quickly enough that it stays funny.

I was worried about whether it would translate to the screen, and so didn't see the first series of Screen Wipe - his BBC4 show where he provides kind of a commentary on current news in the television industry, kind of an analysis of recent programmes, and kind of a slightly surreal sketch show. Having seen the start of the fourth season, however, I really want to go back and re-watch the previous ones. The vast majority of the show is brilliantly observed criticism of the tv industry and reviews of shows. Brooker is refreshingly honest, and embodies everything modern 'family' television attempts to hide in presenters. He's quick to get to the point, cynically dismissive about anything that he feels doesn't matter and quite willing to attack people personally when he feels that they deserve it. Some of the best moments come from the fact that it is very aware that it is a TV program commenting on TV programs, and the self-referential lines and in jokes are really entertaining.

The occasional miss is generally in a sketch that goes on too long, or a personal insult against someone undeserving, and Brooker's delivery sometimes appears as though he's simply reading from a script, but in general Screen Wipe is fanstastically witty, honest and uncompromising. I keep wanting to call the show original, but really it's not original, it's a show commenting on the TV industry. Surely that can't be an original idea. It feels original because the quick delivery and all too rare bordering-on-the-rude-honesty that is constantly on display is something that I don't think I've ever really seen in the sanitised modern television industry. Anyway, well worth a look.

I was reminded of Brooker's presentational style (and hence encouraged to write a long, rambling post) by a link on KTR* to this review of Peggle. Which led me to these other reviews by the same guy, which led to me laughing a lot. He has the same fast, no nonsense, semi-obscene delivery that Brooker has (although with fewer references to pushing pine cones up people's arses, a staple of Brooker's Guardian column), with the same witty and uncompromising put downs for anything that doesn't make the grade. Which in turn reminds me of RiffTrax. I've never listened to one, but it's a great idea (spawned from MST3000) and one that I may investigate at some point in the future...

One of my friends told me recently that they had trouple reading a previous link from KTR* because it required too much knowledge of gamer history/culture/slang. I hope this isn't the case (because if it is, I apparantly have no way of telling the difference between an article that does and an article that doesn't), as I hope that the reviews above aren't inaccessible to non gamers, as they really are very funny indeed.

Also I'll try and post more often. Even just links. There's nothing more depressing than seeing days and days with nothing written on a blog the express purpose of which was to try and encourage regular content.

* I realise that I'm a horrible link-whore and anyone who reads KTR and Jabberwock (listed helpfully on the sidebar over there) could pre-empt 90% of my posts. But I like to think I provide some small level of commentary too. Or at least aggregation. Or at least text.