I don't know what to make of this

I just found something on Wikipedia that has left me puzzled. While I certainly fall on the side of inclusiveness on Wikipedia, I can not for the life of me believe anyone is ever going to look for or need this specific piece of information. More worrying is that there are 18 distinct contributors to this article.

So without any further delay I present to you the 1987-88 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning).

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Too Much of a Good Thing

In general I think the more of a good thing the better. I do however acknowledge that you do reach not just a point of diminishing returns (one pizza is good, two are better), but in some cases a negative impact from more of the good thing (21% oxygen in the air is pretty good, 100% is pretty deadly). This is the case for an unfortunate gentleman in Saudi Arabia lately.

So what was this chap overindulging in? Wives. He had not one, not two, not three, not the legally allowed maximum in Saudi Arabia of four, not five, but six wives. Apparently he was using a variant of an old trick to get away with this, since three of his wives live in Saudi Arabia and three live in nearby Yemen.

The particular bit which makes this go from just a bit odd to being a good dose of schadenfreude is the guys job. He was a member of the Saudi religious police, the bunch of wowsers who go around busting people for flirting. However, this is not an unprecedented act among those who police the sharia in Muslim countries.

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You see, it's not really that hard

A group of Islamic groups in the UK have just announced a new nikah, or marriage contract, for British Muslims. This new contract brings Islamic marriages in the UK more in line with a standard marriage in the UK in terms of rights of each partner, but does include features which a simple civil ceremony does not impose.

The new nikah can be found here, and is an interesting read. The first few pages are preamble and then some general instructions on how to fill out the form. The most important page is the last one, where the rights and responsibilities of each partner are outlined. The responsibilities of both partners include: to not abuse their partner or children, to not be away from home for more than 60 days without prior permission, to not transmit diseases, to not have an affair and to not interfere with their partners property. I don't really think any of those should be too hard, particularly for a couple who care for each other. There are a few extra responsibilities for the husband including not withholding financial support to the family, not entering into a nikah with another woman, and the one I found most interesting, to procure a home away from his family and parents (not far away, but a place of their own).

These however are minor points. Probably the biggest change is that the nikah ceremony must be held by a registered marriage celebrant, or the couple must have had a civil ceremony beforehand, which makes the marriage official in a legal sense, and so the partners have a recourse to the British courts if things go pair shaped. While reading about this I learned that traditionally Islamic marriage is essentially a civil contract, and in some cases even just a verbal contract, which can make solving disputes tricky when there's no evidence of a marriage (although I wonder if such a marriage would count as a de facto relationship, which I think has some legal standing). This is a big step.

Another big change is that talaq al-tafwid is a standard clause. In the old contract, the husband could initiate divorce pretty much without cause, but if the wife did, she was liable to forfeit some of her property. Talaq al-tafwid is where the husband grants the wife the same right to divorce at will without loss.

The last big change is not an addition but a subtraction. The wife to be no longer needs the approval of her nearest male relative, or Wali, to get married. I have to admit, I do like the way they explain this one. The word is polite but firm.

Parents are responsible for the upbringing of their children. Out of respect and courtesy it is important that young people involve their parents or guardians throughout the process of marriage. However, parental or guardian’s legal role finishes when children reach adulthood. Thereafter their role is optional and complementary. Hence the Muslim Marriage Certificate does not require the approval of the parents.

This new marriage contract is, as the British like to say, a good thing. It shows that the ideals of Islam and the ideals of the West. Except for resolving disputes through a Sharia organization, for which I'd substitute something like a marriage counselor, and having an Imam sign the it, what this document outlines is almost the way I see the marriage relationship being. If I were to change anything it would be to make it so that the rights and responsibilities of both partners are exactly the same since the wife does get out of a few responsibilities the husband has to follow, and the bit about marriage being only between a man and a woman, but that would be it.

I hope that this new nikah gets widespread adoption within the Islamic community, and that the Muslims in other countries develop similar nikahs that show that Islamic ideals and Western ideals are not irrevocably different.

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Those Wacky Italians

Italy has come up with a rather curious way of dealing with what it considers its crime problems. It has decided to deploy its army in various cities throughout the country to assist the regular police in protecting the people. Around 2000 soldiers will be deployed in Rome, Naples, Milan, Turin and other locations.

I just want to say that I consider this to be a bad decision. Using the military as a police force is a dangerous idea that has a number of drawbacks. The biggest of which is the vast difference in the culture and procedures of the two different organizations. The police are intended to protect the people while the military is intended to protect the state. This difference in focus causes a great number of differences in how the two groups act. A soldier is trained to use their weapon as a standard procedure, while for the policeman a weapon is a last resort. Policemen are trained to deal with witnesses, suspects, crime scenes and due process, soldiers are not.

This plan is really just an attempt at a quick fix to solve a bigger problem. The ideal solution would be to improve the police force so that the soldiers aren't considered necessary, but that would be more expensive and take longer than putting soldiers on the streets.

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - Commander Adama

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Writing time: 23 minutes (I got distracted looking for the quote at the end.)
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Templar v Pope

The long line of ridiculous law suits just keeps growing. The fact that some of these drag on for years and years and years to the point where the idiots who started it go bankrupt and delay things even further doesn't help us get through these cases. But today I want to talk about a new law suit.

This one's in Spain, which is not quite as litigious as America (an honour it shares with every country except America). And perhaps will set new records for the oldest claim presented to a court. A group, claiming to be the successors to the Knights Templar, are suing the Vatican and the French Government for the defamation of the order and the treasures stolen during the early 1300s.

Quite frankly I can't really see it going anywhere. Any attempt to force a judgement on two sovereign nations is going nowhere fast. And any claim of being an actual successor of the Knights Templar is going to be a pretty hefty task. And since there have been a large number of changes in the governments of France since 1307 and now (at least three revolutions, two restorations, two empires) its hard to try and blame the current French government for the actions of Phillipe IV. The Vatican is the only party who has a reasonably solid trail down the ages but the idea of holding them responsible for something done 700 years ago.

I hope this gets thrown out quickly for many reasons and the claimants laughed on their way out.

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A gambit lost

It seems Starbucks have decided that their strategy of remorseless expansion into every nook and cranny where a coffee drinker might stick their head is not quite as good as they thought it was. Following announcements of closures of branches that rival NOVA in its death throes in America, Starbucks have announced that they are closing 61 out of the 84 Starbucks in Australia.

Apparently it's because Australians were already drinking decent coffee before Starbucks showed up and so their strategy of being everywhere with good coffee didn't work in a place where there was already good coffee everywhere. In America before Starbucks the pinacle of coffee in most places was filter coffee over a hot plate, so the idea of going somewhere for quality was sensible. But since the Italians brought their cafes and cappuccinos with them to Australia post WWII we were ahead of the curve. We were a crowded landscape where America was an open plain.

Now if only the Italians had brought good burgers with them as well, we might be able to get rid of MacDonalds.

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On The Wealth of Nations

I recently finished reading The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. A weighty tome that took about a month to get through (my reading rate has dropped since I don't have an almost hour long commute each way). I actually got it back in January, but my reading of it got preempted by some other books (some of which I'll write about later).

When thinking about The Wealth of Nations the best comparison I can think of is to Dracula. Both are great works which were groundbreaking when they came out, but nowadays lose a lot of their immediate impact simply because the ideas in them have become so much a part of the ingrained knowledge of society. Ideas such as the division of labour, free trade, supply and demand are part of the basis of modern society, but were significant topics in his day.

The first two parts are definitely the strongest, and the most timeless. This deals with the ideas of labour and stock. The latter parts are of more interest historically but don't apply quite so well to the modern day.

The last part is of the expenses and revenues of the sovereign (government) and in those days the government was a lot smaller and less sprawling than most governments today are and people expect a lot more from their government today than anyone would have dreamed of in the 1700s.

Also less relevant to today is the warnings on the pitfalls of foreign colonies and the diversions on the historical values of the price of corn over the centuries. These are interesting, but a modern writer would perhaps have put those at least as an appendix or a separate volume, not as a digression during the middle of the text.

Overall it's a solid text that is definitely worthy of its place in history, but a lot of its message has already reached the modern audience.

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Time since last post: 10 days
Current media: The Hollowmen

And About Time, Too

One of the less pride inducing things done in Australia is going to be wound down. The mandatory detention of asylum seekers is going to be stopped^1,2,3. And not a moment too soon, I might add.

I was surprised to see that the original implementer of this policy was not Howard, but in fact Keating. However, in my particular case I really don't recall much politics pre-Howard, and in general the idea has been associated with Howard more so than Keating for the inflexible way Howard stuck to the idea in the face of popular disapproval, human rights concerns from the United Nations, cock-ups like the Cornelia Rau incident.

The changes include no longer detaining children at detention centers and in general asylum seekers will be allowed to live in the community while their applications are processed. Some detention will still be allowed, but each case will be examined at least every three months and the onus will be on proving a need to keep the person detained.

Hopefully this will see a lot less people detained for a much shorter time.

The detention centers were a stain on Australia's national conscience, and it is good that finally something is being done to reform them. It really was an appalling way to treat people, and the extremes it drove some of the refugees to to get their voices heard were horrible. It is shaming to think that my government did that to people.

There are some people who would argue that such strict measures are necessary to protect our country from the refugees, as if the illegal immigrants would soon outnumber us if we didn't. The fact that the total capacity of the facilities built to house such immigrants is around a few thousand shows the problem with that argument⁴.

A number of years ago (around 2001) I generally took the position that since there was a legitimate method for acquiring a visa to Australia that these people didn't take, then yes they were here illegally, but the way they were dealt with was somewhat harsh. I don't think the idea that like any other lawbreaker they still deserved a trial with proper representation occurred to me at the time.

That changed a few years later. The thing that crystallized the change was talking to someone who had moved to Australia from another country. Hearing about all the things he had to do to get a visa was daunting. And he was a well educated person with a job lined up from England, and he still had a lot of hassles. Imagining how a poor, persecuted person living in a country where they were liable to be arrested for thinking of leaving would go about getting a visa made the idea farcical. So instead they'd pay all that they had and risk their lives to travel here illegally, since for them that was a much easier and safer option. Then when they got here, we stuck them in a prison that was much more like their home country than the country they were dreaming of.

This is another move the Rudd government has made to distance itself from the Howard years, and I think all of Australia will again benefit from this. It doesn't erase what went before, but we're now moving in the right direction.

1) Australia abandons asylum policy
2) Mandatory detention (sort of) scrapped
3) Tough asylum laws scrapped with comments
4) List of Australian immigration detention facilities, Wikipedia

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Writing time: 48 minutes
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Before and After

Before	After

As I have mentioned before, I recently acquired new glasses. This was a significant change for me because the last time I got new glasses was before I finished undergrad way back in 2001. At that point in time my motivation for getting new glasses was that I was no longer able to read the blackboard in lectures which is a pretty good reason to get new glasses. This time my vision had no declined quite so bad, although it had declined more than I thought it had.

This time the motivation for replacing my glasses was their near self destruction. The nose rest bits were slowly wearing away, the hook at the end of the left leg was coming apart and if I took the glasses off quickly would slide off and stay behind my ear, and the screw holding the rim around the right lens would come loose every now and then. They were dieing, but after 7 years of faithful service I couldn't really fault them for not doing enough. Especially when I'd had that pair for half of the total time I'd been wearing glasses and a quarter of my life.

Of course, getting new glasses was not without difficulty. When the right rim first came apart, I had a look in the glasses shop below where I work but couldn't find anything I liked. In Asia, narrow rectangular glasses are common, and while they look good on some people, I don't like them on me. So that narrowed down the selection.

There's also the fact that my glasses are now somewhat a part of the way I think I look. If I don't have my glasses on the only way I can see my face is if I'm a few inches away from the mirror. And after seven years, my old glasses had become one of the few permanent features of my life. In the time I've had them I've lived in five houses in three countries, graduated university, done honours, started and quit a PhD, five different jobs, and other stuff I can't quite recall but I'm sure has happened. There is definitely a reasonable number of people who have never seen me with a different pair of glasses (everyone who knew me in Japan is the easiest such group to define).

The actual shopping for the new pair was made easier by the assistance of my Mum and my sister. They provided an external viewpoint that could tell me how the glasses looked from a distance of more than 4 inches from the mirror. They also prompted and prodded me into making a decision. Even with that, it did take visiting about four glasses shops before I found a pair that I was happy with.

It has now been about three and a half weeks since I got the new glasses, and I'm still in the process of getting used to them. My nose has indentations where the nose rests of the old pair would lie on my nose, and the new pair rest differently on my nose. They sit more forward, and not exactly evenly. I also did not get this set tinted, mainly because I didn't want to bother getting the salesman to understand what I wanted, although his English was reasonably good. A consequence of this though is that the world is now awfully bright during the day, and I'm considering getting a set of sunglasses to make up for this. I think next week when I go on vacation I'll use my old set as sunglasses.

One surprising thing about the new glasses was the lack of notice they got at work. A few weeks before getting the new glasses I got a new haircut, which got a lot of comments, but it was a few days before anyone noticed, and only one or two comments. I guess this means that I succeeded in getting a pair that were similar to my old pair in appearance. I had at one point in the shopping process considered the idea of getting a new pair custom made based on the old pair, although that would have been ridiculously expensive, and I doubt if it could be done on my sort of financial status.

Well, I've run out of things to say about my new glasses, and have been quite distracted for the last ten or so minutes, so I'll post this and be done.

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Writing time: 86 minutes (this includes a phone call from Mum as well as other distractions)
Time since last post: 4 days
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Seeing Red

The last time I saw my grandfather was in 1994, the first year I was in high school. My family had been doing something in the area where my father's side of my family lived, and the idea popped into someone's head to drop in and say high. It was a bit before milking time so we pulled the car up near the dairy. When I got out of the car he didn't immediately recognize me because that was the year I started wearing glasses, and he had never seen me with them. But the lack of recognition didn't last long, nor did the conversation. I think it was just mostly Hi, how are you, what are you up to and other things along those lines. It was a brief conversation, and then we got back into the car and continued driving home.

This is perhaps slightly better than the last time I saw my father, which was when I was working on the ticket gates at the Cairns show in 1998. A man walked past me and it took me a few seconds for the mental gears to click over and realize it was my dad. I don't know if he even noticed me.

There's a chance the story of the last time I saw my father might change in time. It's a slight chance, but it's there. However, the story of the last time I saw my grandfather is now set in stone. Last Friday he died. Apparently he'd been having blackouts for a while, and when he felt one coming on he'd lie down and let it happen. On Friday though, he blacked out and didn't wake up.

I've thought about calling my grandmother or my father to express my condolences, but that would be awkward enough without the added difficulty of explaining who the hell it is calling them from Korea. I'm not going to fly back for the funeral (odd thought that followed on from that one. There are probably only five people whose funeral I would fly back for.). If I was in Australia, I probably would have gone, but I'd have lurked at the back and not made myself known unless someone recognized me.

I generally treat my father's side of my family on an "Out of sight, out of mind" basis. It's been so long since I've had anything to do with them that most of the time they're off my radar. It's only times like these that they register on my consciousness.

At this point though, I don't really have much more to say so I'll finish with this:

Rest in Peace Granddad Red.

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Writing time: 47 minutes
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A Christian Monopoly is Broken

I thought that the Christians had the monopoly on seeing religious icons in their food. It seems however that the Muslims are joining in on this bandwagon. In Nigeria people are swarming a restaurant where several pieces of meat have been found with the word "Allah" written in gristle. I can't really judge how good a depiction this is since I can't read Arabic.

It turns out the Muslims have been doing this for a while now, so it wasn't just the Christians who are crazy. It is interesting to note that while the Christians tend to find pictures of holy people, Muslims find holy words such as "Allah" or "Muhammad". I wonder what would happen if a Muslim found an object with a picture of Muhammad on it? Would it be considered a miracle or a blasphemy?

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Adventures around Daegu, or the time in which I was not the only member of my family in Korea

So recently my Mum and my sister came over to Korea for a bit over a week. I managed to get a little time off work (two days) and we did some stuff in and around Daegu.

I met them in Seoul at the airport on a Sunday. My sister flew in early in the morning, so after storing her bags at the airport, we went into downtown Seoul and looked at one of the castles. We got there at a pretty good time, for just after we bought our tickets, a changing of the guard ceremony took place.

After a bit of wandering around, we had lunch at a food court and had one of the more Korean meals I've had for a long time. We then went back to the airport to pick up Mum. Then we caught the KTX back to Daegu and checked Mum and my sister into their hotel. The KTX was as always a smooth ride, and we got back to Daegu about 7ish. After checking into the hotel we got room service for dinner, which was quite pricey. About 80 bucks for two pizzas, a bottle of wine and a coke. I'm glad I wasn't pay.

I had to work the next day, so they did some exploring around Daegu on their own. The next day I spent the morning with them and we walked around the park near the hotel which has a few memorials, temples and a museum about a Japanese invasion from the late 1500s. Interesting, but not a lot of English.

Wednesday, like Monday, I didn't see them, but then on Thursday we went downtown and along with some sight seeing we went looking for new glasses for me. I'd needed to get new glasses for a while since on of the rims would occasionally have the screw holding it together come loose and the plastic bit that makes the shape of the legs (arms?) behind the ear was coming apart and if I took them off quickly would come off and stay behind my ear. I'd put it off because I really need a second opinion for these sorts of things as well as some prodding because otherwise there's a chance I'd have ended up commissioning some to make a replica of the old ones. I did however look through about three or four stores before finding a new pair that I liked. I'll tell more of that story and it's follow up in another post. After that, we walked around downtown for a bit until it was time for me to head back to work.

Friday I didn't see them in the morning, but they came over to Chilgok (the part of Daegu I live and work in) and we went to a galbi restaurant for dinner. We went to a place near my house where the staff know a few of us from work since we go there a bit, so we got pretty good service, as well as some service (in Korea, service means free stuff shops, bars and restaurants give to good customers, in this case we got three free bottles of coke). Everyone enjoyed the food, which is probably my favorite Korean dish.

Saturday we went to Palgong mountain, where I learnt that Koreans are part mountain goat. After the bus ride there we caught a cable car about halfway up the mountain. Mum decided she'd wait around the cable car where there was a restaurant, and my sister and I tried to climb the mountain. Let's just say we both failed. On our way back to the restaurant where Mum was waiting we passed an old man who had been sitting next to Mum on the bus. He'd climbed up from the bottom instead of taking the cable car and was keen to go the rest of the way. After getting some lunch we took the cable car down and walked around a temple which included a giant Buddha we could see from the restaurant.

Sunday was an easy day. We went downtown and walked around a bit. We had a look at what the tourist map called culture street, and were disappointed by the lack of culture there. Towel street had a ton of towels, and hardware street also had plenty of hardware. So culture street not having much culture was a surprise.

Monday we went to a village about an hour and a half away called Andong. This town has a lot of historical sites, a folk village museum where one of the guides followed us around for most of the museum adding extra bits of trivia along the way. The old folk village was interesting to look at but a bit samey after a while. And when most of the traditional houses had the traditional satellite dishes, it lost a little. Some nice sights though. The final stop was the Andong paper thingy which was a little too proud of the time the Queen visited. After getting back to Daegu we went for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse.

On Tuesday we were going to go to Hiansa temple, a world heritage listed temple that is the location of the Tripitaka Koreana, a famous Buddhist text. Indeed, we even went to the bus terminal and bought tickets there. While we were waiting for the bus though, we were reading the lonely planet and noticed that the whole place was closed on Tuesdays. So we spent a kind of easy day walking around not quite downtown Daegu. This included a hike up to Wubang tower, the highest building in Daegu, which is pretty easy when it's built on what seems like the highest hill in Daegu to start with, and the elevator reads 1 2 3 4 5 74 75 76 83, which makes me doubt if it's exactly that many stories high. From this vantage point I did notice the curious fact that all of the built up areas of Daegu are pretty much flat, and every hill of even modest height is not built upon, but has been left as a park.

Finally on Wednesday Mum and my sister caught the KTX back to Seoul, where they were going to stay until their flights on Friday. Thus ended their trip for me. More photos can be found here.

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Writing time: 59 minutes
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Current media: The Hollowmen

There's Potential There

A number of creative types I enjoy the work of are behind this experiment. It looks like it'll be worth checking out.

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Just How Useless is the Security Council?

A few days ago the UN Security Council considered a resolution applying sanctions to Zimbabwe including an arms embargo and personal restrictions on Mugabe and a number of his cronies. This sounds like a very sensible thing considering the shit that went down during the last election. Indeed the resolution got nine votes for compared to four against with one country, Indonesia, abstaining.

Notice I didn't say the resolution passed nine votes to four. That's because it didn't pass. Two of the four countries that voted against the idea were Russia and China, both of which are permanent members of the security council with the power of veto. And because of them, international pressure on Mugabe to actually stop being a dickwad has been greatly reduced.

The justification the Chinese and Russians gave for the decision not to support sanctions against Zimbabwe in the wake of their so-called elections is that so far it has been a domestic issue, and so a Security Council resolution, which is meant to deal with international issues, is inappropriate.

While the matter is certainly so far a purely domestic issue, I still think the Security Council is within it's jurisdiction to apply pressure in this situation. Firstly, it is one of the few international organizations with some teeth that is able to do so. This is not a particularly great reason, but it does place some responsibility on the council, and particularly the permanent members to be responsible members of the community of nations.

Secondly, action needs to be taken against Mugabe to prevent the precedent he appears to be setting. If other tin-pot dictators see that they can use such tactics to ensure that they retain power with little or no real consequence, they will be much more willing to do so. And then when we have a bunch of countries run by power mad crazies with little or no concern for anything or anyone but themselves, I can almost guarantee there will be international problems. Action needs to be taken against Mugabe to show that his antics are not acceptable in the modern world.

China's track record on such matters is particularly poor. Their position of non-interference in internal affairs means that a number of less than savory administrations have gotten a lot of necessary support when it would have been better for everyone concerned if they were under pressure to change their ways.

Combine this with the Security Council's somewhat outdated voting system and China is causing a lot of hassles for those of us who want to encourage unpleasant governments to change their ways. If someone is giving away carrots for free and stopping others from using the stick, it's a lot harder to have a positive effect.

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Writing time: 45 minutes
Time since last post: a while
Current media: Arrested Development

You've just got to feel sorry for them.

The latest group to be suffering due to the declining US dollar has just been revealed: the Catholic Church. Apparently, of all the countries in the world, America is the largest overall donor to the Catholic Church, and due to the fall in the value of the US dollar against the Euro, these donations aren't quite what they used to be (although America still donated almost ten times as much as number 2 Italy. Interestingly, South Korea is number 8). In fact, the church actually made a loss of about 9 million euros in 2007.

Now, I don't think the Catholic church is really going to suffer from this. They are indeed the masters of playing the long game (how many other organizations except for the Illuminati have such a long track record?), and I'm pretty sure they've got enough saved up to last them through this dip in income. They won't exactly be mortgaging the Sistine Chapel or anything to make ends meet.

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Writing time: 8 minutes
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Cracking Up

Will someone please think of the crackers.

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Writing time: 1 minute
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I mean, really?

A rather depressing case from England. Some guy called up the emergency number to report a strange bright object in the sky slowly rising. Someone was sent out to investigate what it was this gentleman had seen.

What was this mysterious object in the sky.

The Moon.

I have no further comment.

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Writing time: 1 minute
Time since last post: some arbitrary amount of time, and isn't it all relative anyway.
Current media: None, although I did just finish watching the Doctor Who finale.

One Step Too Far

A rather worrying report from England today about a religious education class where the teacher pushed things a little too far.

The class was about Islam, and started out telling the year seven class about the history of Islam and then about the way Muslims pray. This is all good and sensible and in no way problematic. Indeed, there should be more education about all the important faiths of the world and what they believe.

Then the teacher said that they would all have to pray to Allah as Muslims do. This did not go down so well. In fact two of the students refused and were given detention.

I'm completely with the students on this one. Being forced to pray to something you don't believe in is wrong. I too would refuse to do this, regardless of if I was being made to pray to Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, Krishna, Shiva, Zeus, Odin (although you have to respect a god who hung himself to gain knowledge), Gaia, Xenu or anything else.

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Writing time: 22 minutes
Time since last post: 21 hours?
Current media: Stargate SG-1 1x02 The Enemy Within

An Invitation for Trouble

In a case of correctness gone wrong in Sweden, an eight year old boy's birthday party is the latest battlefront in the fight against discrimination.

The boy handed out invitations to his birthday party in class. However, he did not invite two of his classmates to his party. When his teacher noticed this they confiscated all the invitations. Apparently, since they were handed out in class time the teacher had to ensure there was no discrimination.

This is quite ridiculous. It's an eight year old boys birthday party. Young children are notoriously undiscriminating in the usual sense. Indeed the reasons for the two students not getting an invitation is that one did not invite the boy to his party (presumably those invitations weren't distributed in class) and the other was fighting with the boy. Both of those seem entirely legitimate bases for not inviting someone, if a little petty in the first case.

The school says the boy violated the children's rights by not inviting them to his party. Quite frankly I think the school doesn't have a leg to stand on. They can't control the children's activities away from school and shouldn't try to pretend that they can. They also should not be trying to pretend that they're being noble and protecting the children's rights. There are a right to many things (free speech, liberty, protection from unwarranted government intrusion, privacy, etc), but nowhere among the rights of man is the right to be invited to a party held by someone who doesn't like you.

Legal proceedings have been initiated regarding the matter, and should be resolved by September. Unless the boy is very forward thinking, I presume this will be after the party in question is held.

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Writing time: 19 minutes
Time since last post: 1 dayish
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Too Much Information

A while ago Viacom sued Google (well YouTube, which Google owns) over a bunch of clips that were posted which Viacom claims violated its copyrights¹.

As part of the case they want to know how popular the clips of their material are compared to other non-infringing material. To do this they asked for, and the judge has ordered Google to provide them with a log of user IP addresses, login names and videos watched. These logs will include everyone who has ever watched a YouTube video².

This is way too much information. And not just because it's about 12 terabytes worth of data. It's information that isn't needed by Viacom to prove it's claim. If they want to show that their content posted inappropriately is more popular than non-infringing content, they just need to compare the number of times each video was watched. They don't need to know who watched it. They don't need the IP address of who watched it. They just need the clip name and the number of times it was watched.

Another problem is that if Google hands over this information, they may violate privacy laws by giving people's personal information away.

The judge in this case should be doing a better job. He should realize that the information he ordered Google to provide is unnecessary for Viacom to make their claim, and should have given them only the information they need, not what they want. And he should know better to make an order that could require Google to break the law. This decision is bad and it sets a dangerous precedent for future cases.

Edit: Just after hitting post, the question came to me, why has YouTube been storing all this information? It would make life a lot easier for us if they could tell the judge "Well, we never really needed that detailed information so we never kept it. We might be able to get the last 24 hours worth for you if we try." The best way to keep information like this safe is to not store it.

1) I'm sure that there are many clips that violate Viacom (and others) copyrights on YouTube. However, under American law (the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA specifically) YouTube's liability is negligible if they rapidly respond to properly sent take down notices.

Also, I don't think companies should be getting upset by people liking their stuff so much that they want to share it with the world. Especially when said company isn't sharing it with the rest of the world.

2) I think that my definition of the civilized world could be those who have watched a YouTube video.

End Post
Writing time: 21 minutes
Time since last post: 4 days
Current media: None

A Choice

Yesterday my mother and sister arrived in Korea for a stay of a little over a week. That will probably be discussed later, but for the moment I'm grappling with a choice that was opened to me due to this fact.

My Mum brought me a lot of stuff (more than I expected) and in this bounty was included a Rubik's cube. I can see three possible options with how to keep this object. They are as follows:
1) Keep it in it's original pristine form as a shining beacon of order in a realm of chaos.
2) Mess it up and leave it in an unsolved position as a reflection of the chaos that exists around me
3) Swap two of the stickers and mess up the cube and leave it as an exercise in frustration for any who dare to try it.

What should I do? The poll is on the right.

End Post
Writing time: a little bit of time.
Current media: None

The Third Devil

Blizzard has announced that they will be releasing Diablo 3. The only downside is that even more of my time will be sacrificed to Blizzard.

End Post
Writing time: 2 minutes
Current media: Bullshit! 6x02

God Damn It

I was wandering around Seoul today and walked past a music store with a giant poster for a tour by the Blue Man Group in Seoul. I was quite excited about this until I saw the dates: June 14 - June 20. Then I was pissed off. I keep missing out on these sort of things.

I did see in a newspaper today that the Daegu International Music Festival starts soon. I might try and go to some part of it.

End Post
Writing time: 6 minutes
Current media: Bullshit! 6x02

Those Wacky Chinese

If you're Chinese and want to party on the opening day of the Olympics, but can't get a ticket to the opening ceremony (which is probably most Chinese, since there is an awful lot of them), there's another way to jump on the bandwagon.

Get married.

That's right. Scores of Chinese couples are applying to get married on the 8th of August to celebrate not just their love (I hope their celebrating their love), but also the Olympics. This is a novel approach which I have not seen in other countries which have hosted the Olympics. It certainly didn't happen in Sydney.

Anyway, here's my best wishes to all the lucky Chinese couples getting married on the 8th of August, because there's really no better way to celebrate a two week sporting event than with a life long commitment.

End Post
Writing time: 6 minutes
Time since last post: some time.
Current media: None

This is Why This Sort of Junk is a Problem

Some people suggest that flim-flammery like psychics and spiritualists don't really cause any harm and that those who aggressively rail against them are misanthropic types who want to take some of the fun out of life.

But this is not the case. These frauds do cause harm. In many different ways they do cause harm. This is one example.

An educational assistant (EA) (I presume this is like a teacher's aide) at a Canadian school visited a psychic and the psychic told them that a student whose name started with a "V" was being sexually abused. Based on this the EA reported the family of a student named Victoria to the relevant authorities.

This has obviously caused much distress to the students family. It has wasted tax payer money on an unnecessary investigation. It has opened up the school to ridicule.

All because the vague guesses of a so-called psychic were given more than the iota of credence they should have been given. Psychics play guessing games and watch the gullible client for a response. They should never be a basis for any sort of investigation.

End Post
Writing time: 27 minutes
Current media: Yes Minister

History Time

What notable event occurred on April 16, 1178 BC?

It turns out that this date is believed to be the day Odysseus returned home and slew the suitors of his wife Penelope.

Some researchers used a series of astronomical references in the Odyssey to narrow down the date. After analysis of the clues they came back with just one possible date.

This also seems to make it plausible that there is at least some basis in fact to the story. The consistency of the events adds credibility to the story, and it seems unlikely Homer was a great enough astronomer to get such details in his story correct. Of course, this is not to say that the story should be taken as entirely true (I'm pretty sure there aren't cyclops and witches who turn men into pigs), but certainly that someone had a big adventure on his way home from the Trojan War.

End Post
Writing time: 28 minutes
Current media: Yes Minister

Gotcha

After not being seen since early to mid 2007, Nozumu Sahashi has been found.

Why do I care about this guy being found? He was the president of NOVA, and the one most feel is responsible for the collapse of NOVA. He is the guy who appears to have embezzled significant quantities of cash, and done some rather irregular share trading in the lead up to the collapse.

And today he was talking to the police in Osaka. Justice may not be swift, but it is sure.

End Post
Writing time: 9 minutes
Current media: None

Just What is Their Malfunction?

I've just read this rather harrowing tale of an unfortunate 14 year old girl in Poland.

This young girl is currently pregnant. She is pregnant because she was raped. This is a terrible thing in and of itself. With her family she decided to get an abortion, which is allowed in cases like this under an exception to Poland's strict anti-abortion laws.

Unfortunately she has been unable to undergo the procedure. Originally, she had wanted to have the abortion done in her home town, but a priest barged in on the family while they were discussing the matter with the hospital director, telling her she should give birth. There has also been pressure from various anti-abortion groups on the family and hospitals as well. Both hospitals in her home town refused to perform the procedure.

When the family tried to discretely organise an abortion at a hospital in Warsaw, her harassers somehow found out (a privacy violation worth investigating) and turned up to intrude upon the family once more. They swarmed on the hospital, attacked staff and occupied the office.

These people have continued to harass this unfortunate family, even to the point of submitting a request to police to investigate the coercion of a minor to have an abortion, which is a crime in Poland, and trying to take her away from her mother and put in emergency foster care.

Now is where I get all righteous about this. Just who the hell do these people think they are? This is an extremely traumatic time for this unfortunate young girl, and all they are doing is making things worse. Do they really think that taking this girl away from her family is going to help this girl? Do they really think that persecuting her and following her around telling her what to do will make her feel better?

There is only one person who gets to decide what this girl should do, and only a few people who are allowed to advise her. The ultimate decision is the girls, and only the family, her doctor and those they ask to be involved (this could include a priest, pro-life or pro-choice supporters or whoever else they choose to ask) should be talking to this girl about things¹. For everyone else, it's none of their business and they should leave the poor girl alone.

The involvement of all these anti-abortionists in this case has been despicable. It is harassment plain and simple, and the family should be able to get protection from it.

I think it also shows which side on this debate has the crazies and the nut jobs. I've never seen pro-choice activists harassing someone saying they should have an abortion. They agree that the decision lies with the woman, they just want her to have the freedom to decide what they want to do and the ability to carry out their decision. This is a position which is a lot harder to get very fundamentalist about, since it's essentially "You choose", compared to the anti-abortionists "You can't".

The people in this story really got to me because they have caused a lot of grief for this unfortunate girl who has already had a terrible experience and doesn't deserve this. Have they no decency? Are they so self-righteous that they have to further traumatize this young girl? Can't they let her have some peace?

1) In general, two people get to make the decision about abortion. These two people are the couple involved. A doctor should of course be involved for medical advice. Family, friends or others such as a priest may get involved if asked to by the couple, although in the case of minors the family should be more involved. For anyone else it's none of their business and they have no business telling the couple what they should do. In cases like this one, the father obviously does not get a say in the matter.

End Post
Writing time: 45 minutes
Current media: George Carlin's Class Clown

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits

Noted comedian George Carlin has died due to heart failure at the age of 71. This is a loss for the world.

I think I first saw Carlin in this role in Dogma, but as I later learned that was but a mere footnote to what he had earlier in his career.

As it turns out, the most significant part of his career ended up in the Supreme Court in one of the most significant first amendment cases of last century. His seven dirty words caused a shit ton of controversy when they were first aired. Although time has changed the impact of some of them, it's still a harsh list. At any rate, I think these guys can explain the whole mess better.

To conclude, Rest in Peace George Carlin.

End Post
Writing time: 16 minutes
Current media: None

This Sucks

It likes Robert Mugabe has bullied his way to the top again. Morgan Tsvangirai (I almost got the spelling right before checking) has declared he will not contest the presidential run-off as it is blatantly controlled by Mugabe.

I remember being optimistic about the whole Zimbabwe thing when I first read about the elections on Pappus' Plane, but it seems I have again misjudged the capacity for dictators to serve their own interests over those of the people.

Given some of the stuff Mugabe has pulled since the first stage of the presidential election and the run-off, I have to admire Tsvangirai's bravery for sticking around in Zimbabwe. He certainly has a significant amount of testicular fortitude.

End Post
Writing time: 16 minutes
Current media: iTunes shuffle, currently Beelzeboss by Tenacious D

This is Nifty

I found this over on Neil Gaiman's blog. It's a tool that takes a given text and creates a tag cloud sort of thing out of it. I decided to see what it would make of this site. Here is the result.

End Post
Writing time: 5 minutes
Current media: None

In Remembrance of Lowbrow

Once upon a time there was a website. It was lowbrow.com. You can go there today but it is a pale shadow of what it once was. During its golden years I was a regular reader. Those who know about it don't need to be told what it was, but for those who don't, it was a collection of stories from people, moments from their lives that tended towards the lowbrow. Some were truly low, some were entertaining, some were enlightening, and some were profound¹.

When I was reading it it sometimes occurred to me that I had no stories to submit, and I was never sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I now have at least one, and I'm still not sure if it's a good thing.

The thing which has brought about this remembrance though is a beer. A brand of beer which is connected to Lowbrow through its name, which is Lowenbrau. I first learned of the existence of such a brew through lowbrow, and though I'm not a beer drinker I thought I'd give it a try in honour of lowbrow.

A week or two ago I finally did so. I went out with some coworkers to a bar that had a statue of an American Indian out the front, and the tables were decorated with piles of empty bottles which you could use to order by pointing at the one you wanted. While most of the night I stuck to my usual drinks, I did decide to avail myself of a Lowenbrau.

It was not good. Even by the very low standards I hold for the quality of beer, it was bad. But I managed to down it, even though it took some time. And I kept the bottle, in remembrance.

1) I need to get back to an English speaking country. My first draft of this sentence read "Some was truly lowbrow, some was entertaining and some was profound." After noticing this mistake I corrected it to "Some wer truly lowbrow, some wer entertaining, and some wer profound."

End Post
Writing time: 36 minutes (I got distracted reading what little of lowbrow exists on the Internet Archive)
Time since last post: I think I might drop this as I no longer really need it as a motivation to write more
Current media: the Doctor Who Soundtrack

Boom Times at Gloucester High

A baby boom that is. The number of students having babies this year has quadrupled and it turns out that this is no accident. A group of girls have made a pact to all get pregnant and raise their children together. They've been so successful that the school has opened up a day care center for student's children.

They don't quite seem to get what they're getting into with all this, and don't seem to be taking the whole process very seriously. One of the girls child is fathered by a 24 year old homeless. I'm pretty sure he's not going to contribute much to raising the child.

Another example of why they shouldn't be doing it comes from a schoolmate explaining why they're doing it. She says "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally." This is wrong for many reasons. First, they should think back to how they were as kids, which shouldn't be too hard since it wasn't so long ago, and try and remember if they unconditionally loved their parents all the time. Then someone should tell them that the way babies show their unconditional love is by waking you up at 3am with their crying and then puking over your shoulder.

Human life is a precious thing, and those who bring a new baby into the world should be sure that they are aware of and ready for the responsibilities that go with it. By their attitude and actions, these girls have shown that they have done neither.

I just hope these girls get their act together and start treating life more seriously.

End Post
Writing time: 15 minutes
Time since last post: about a day
Current media: iTunes shuffle

And So It Spreads

It appears that the creationist dogma is spreading from its heartland of middle-America to the colder climes of the British Isles. Fortunately, a response is being made to this villainy.

The worst part though is a quote about religious students in subjects like medicine. According to Professor Steve Jones of University College London, "They want permission not to come to those lectures and sit those exam questions."

This is just ridiculous. I honestly expect better from those seeking to become doctors, or those studying any sort of anything, really. If I was their lecturer, I'd say "Sure, you don't have to attend those lectures or do those questions on the exam, but don't expect me to give you any credit for it." For anyone working in the biological fields, evolution is a fundamental concept and denying that is to ignore nearly all the knowledge gained in the field since the mid 1800s.

Dear oh dear oh dear.

End Post
Writing time: 15 minutes
Time since last post: 3 days (I ran out of stuff I preposted)
Current media: iTunes shuffle

Did He Really Think This Would Fly?

A weird story about some schmuck in Korea who had less than good luck with the ladies. It seems that after dating a lady for a few months, she called it off and he managed to get her to sign a promise to pay him back the money he spent on their dates. When she didn't pay, he took her to court. Although a lower court enforced the deal, the High Court has overruled them.

In any country such an action is messed up, but it fits in with a general trend of things I've learnt about dating in Korea. Over here, things seem a lot more involved and messed up. For a start, there's a lot of pressure for women to get married before they get too old, which is defined as about 31. But they can't just marry anyone, they have to marry someone whose family is of similar social status. Dating agencies are the most common way people meet, and if they get married, the dating agency gets a regular payment for several years afterwards.

One time I went to a nightclub and it was an almost disturbing experience. Groups of guys and girls would go to the club, and after a while the waiters would start bringing girls to the guys. The idea was kind of that they'd start talking and maybe something would happen, but most of the women seemed very reluctant, with some from the table across from us putting up a big fight not to be taken from her table. She had to fight because the waiters would actually drag them from their table to another table. A few girls were brought to our table, but between the noise (I could feel my chest vibrate), the language barrier and the incredible awkward feeling on both sides nothing came of it.

That's all for now.

End Post
Writing time: 27 minutes (I got distracted by the new Futurama movie
Time since last post: 14 hours, I think
Current media: the new Futurama movie

Hasn't this happened before

So it turns out a rowing crew training on the Brisbane river got hit by a citycat the other day. Fortunately no one was hurt.

This is not the first time such an accident has occurred, and others have not been as lucky. I wonder why there is not a designated section of the river for such activities that the citycat would avoid during training hours. It would be an easy way to prevent unnecessary accidents like this.

End Post
Writing time: 9 minutes
Time since last post: about a day or so
Current media: The Three Amigos

You don't go girl

Another battleground for women in the middle east has opened up. Not content to jihad, women in Saudi Arabia are pushing for the right to play sports. Sports is banned at girls schools, and few facilities allow women to use them.

This issue is being highlighted now because the Saudi Arabia only allows men in its Olympic team, and once again, the bright light of the Olympics is showing us things that were hiding in the shadows. One good point to note is that the London Olympics is planning to ban any country that outright prohibits women from competing. I'm worried though that in a country where women aren't allowed to even train, will any women qualify to compete. It's no good saying "Women are allowed on our team" but provide women no way to reach Olympic standards. It's like telling someone you can have any job you want so long as you have the skills, but, you aren't allowed to learn to read.

End Post
Writing time:10 minutes
Time since last post: probably 24 hours
Current media: Allegro from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack

Some things should be taken seriously

A rather large trial in NSW has had to be aborted because several of the jurors were playing soduku instead of listening to the evidence.

I don't know where to start with this one. Don't these people understand that jury duty is serious business. Someones future is in your hands. Justice is in your hands. This is not something you can do half-assed.

I certainly agree with the defense lawyer for pulling them up on this, and am glad the judge agreed. The jury has been dismissed and the trial will restart when a new jury is established.

The only bit I don't disagree with is the fact that the jurors can not be penalized for this. Because of their lack of seriousness, this case will go longer, which will mean increased costs for the defendants, the prosecution and the courts. In cases like this where the jury is dismissed for blatantly not doing their job, there should be some sort of consequence. Not the full cost, but they should be made to realize that they have screwed up.

As a hint to anyone who is on a jury and wants to get away with this, avoid two dimensional puzzles. At first people thought these jurors were making notes, but suspicions were aroused when it was noticed that they were writing vertically, a somewhat unusual method of note taking.

End Post
Writing time: 11 minutes
Time since last post: nominally 24 hours, but who knows
Current media: None

I Want My Epidural

Of course, not every woman opts for an epidural. Some go with a caesarean, and others for some reason choose to bear the pain (I can't say I fully understand that one). A Polish woman went for a rather unusual option, booze. The woman turned up at the hospital with a blood alcohol level of 1.2 grams of alcohol per 1000 grams of blood.

The woman seems to have suffered no ill effect from the experience, although the doctors are worried about the baby who got a concentrated dose from its mother and had a blood alcohol level of 2.9 grams per thousand

End Post
Writing time: 10 minutes
Time since last post: It is not for man to know that which shall be, only that which is
Current media: still the soundtrack from Rushmore

You Go Girl

I bring you news of the latest frontier in the fight for womens rights. Having mostly conquered the right to vote, the right to work, the right for equal pay, the right to not be objectified and others, women are turning to the fight for the right to jihad.

Surprising as it seems, fundamentalist Islamic terror groups like Al-Queda aren't exactly an equal opportunity group. When a leader of Al-Queda said that a woman's role in jihad is to look after the home and children of the male fighters, it caused a ruckus among female jihadis.

I have to say I kind of support them in this, mainly because I think everyone should be able to make their own mistakes. Of course, I'd rather they didn't want to blow me up for being an infidel, but it's their choice.

End Post
Writing time: 9 minutes
Time since last post: Who knows what the future holds?
Current media: Scrubs season 2 episode 5

Someone's Having a Good Time

The latest delivery of supplies to McMurdo base in Antarctica included something a little unusual, 16,488 condoms. This is apparently a years supply for the base for which the population ranges from a low of 125 in winter up to 1100. Even working with the higher population this is still 15 condoms per person.

I guess there's not a lot to do in your free time there. It's not like you can go out and see a movie or anything.

Perhaps I should become a scientist working in Antarctica.

End Post
Writing time: 4 minutes
Time since last post: I don't know yet
Current media: the soundtrack from Rushmore

The Saga Continues

Today I got another letter from Japan from (this is on the envelope)

Bankrupt company Nova Corporation
Trustee in bankruptcy Lawyer Toshiaki Higashibata
Trustee in bankruptcy Lawyer Noriaki Takahashi

This was a slight surprise since I got my money a long time ago and didn't expect to have anything more to do with them. It turns out that it's just a letter sent out to all creditors updating them on the status of bankruptcy proceedings. The letter is actually a pretty good telling of the story of the "Fall of Nova" going back all the way to the start of the first school in Shinsaibashi. Even the English is pretty good, although in that overly formal style that Japanese legalese tends to become when translated.

The main point of the letter was the summary of assets and liabilities. The following table is taken from the letter

Assets	value (yen)
Liquidation value	6,489,307,392
Total Assets	6,489,307,392
Liabilities
Pledged Assets	3,560,000,000
Taxes and public dues	2,929,307,392
Outstanding wages	5,525,934,129
Other Estate claims1	400,000,000
General claims2	75,756,372,131
Total Liabilities	87,496,160,639

1) this is an estimate for the cost of ending all the leases on places and cleaning them up.
2) This is mostly the 56.4 billion yen worth of unused lessons paid for by students.

Comparing the total assets and liabilities I think we can see where the problem was. Let's just say I'm glad the government was giving me my payout and not the company.

One odd thing they said was that they were expecting to get a tax refund of about a billion yen. This is because the company had paid the consumption tax on prepaid lessons ahead of time at a rate of 45% of the value even though it seems they didn't have to do so until the lessons were taken. When the business was an operating concern, this sort of worked out because the other 55% of the tax that was due when the lessons were taken would be the 45% prepaid from other lessons. However, since the lessons aren't being taken, it seems the consumption tax on them no longer applies, so the company can get some of that prepaid money back. It seems a bit weird and I may have misunderstood how it actually works.

Anyway, unless I get another letter about it, I think this might be the end of the Nova Saga. Rest in Peace Usagi.

End Post
Writing time: 37 minutes
Time since last post: 11 days (I've been slack)
Current media: the soundtrack from Rushmore

Someone is awesome

Following cuts in its budget Fermilab has had to make some drastic cuts to its staff numbers and pay. This is without a doubt a bad thing. Fortunately someone has stepped in to help. An anonymous person has donated 5 million dollars to Fermilab, no strings attached. And while it's not enough to keep everyone their job, it's a big help.

So to the anonymous donor, whoever you are: You are awesome.

End Post
Writing time: 3 minutes
Time since last post: ten minutes or so
Current media: still nothing

I was wrong

A short while ago I wrote about how it seemed that some people who had been less than considerate to their fellow man had changed their mind and were going to be more helpful.

Well, I was wrong.

I know, I know. It's not a common occurrence. But, I thought that in the face of vast human suffering, not even the most cold-hearted, power-hungry egomaniacs would actually refuse to let people help their country. For some reason my natural cynicism, which is the closest thing I have to a superpower, failed me. Well, no more. I'm back to the position that if the Myanmar government isn't going to help it's people, we should do so anyway.

End Post
Writing time: 10 minutes
Time since last post: 3 days
Current media: None

Movie Reviews

This Sunday and last Sunday I went to the movies. Last week I saw Prince Caspian, and tonight I saw the new Indiana Jones movie.

Prince Caspian was alright. It's been long enough since I read the book I wasn't able to tell where things had been changed (well I know they added the romance between Susan and Caspian, but that's about it). The action was good, the settings and visuals were great, and the characters were well played, although the minor characters were better done than the main characters. My big complaint though is that all through the movie I was think that parts were just like bits from other movies. The start where Caspian flees the castle on horse and is pursued was like the bit in Fellowship of the Ring where the Nazgul chase Arwen and Frodo. Reepicheep is a mouse version of Puss in Boots from Shrek. The face plates on the Telmarine armour were V's mask from V for Vendetta. The duel between Peter and Miras was very much like the fights in 300. If this movie had come before all of those and others, it would have been a great movie. Since it's not, it feels like the director has stolen a bunch of good ideas from others.

Indiana Jones was much better. An enjoyable ride the whole way, but it does start to wear a little bit around about half way through. The start is a good call back to the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, taking place in the warehouse where the government stores the Ark (which we do catch a glimpse of). The action is good throughout. John Hurt does well as a crazy man. It is a bit of a change to go from Nazis as the bad guys to Russians as the bad guys, but it fits well with the elapsed time between the movies. I don't get what these people are complaining about though. Finally it was interesting to see the Janitor from Scrubs in a serious role, though after I realized who it was (it took one spoken line for me to work it out) it was hard to take him seriously though.

End Post
Writing time: 31 minutes (I got distracted reading up on Prince Caspian to see what changes had been made from the book.)
Time since last post: 3 days (although it's more like 52 hours)
Current media: iTunes shuffle, currently The Plug by Bonobo

Someone got hit with a cluebat

Finally someone in Myanmar got a clue. The junta running the country has finally allowed all foreign aid workers into the country to help them sort out the damage caused by cyclone Nargis. It is way past time that this was done. It has been almost three weeks since the cyclone hit and many countries have been willing and waiting to help out in any way they can, but have until now been turned down. There has been a group of US Navy ships filled with supplies have been waiting just outside Myanmar's territorial waters until they were allowed in to help. It is just ridiculous that it has taken this long for the Myanmar government to make this decision.

Someone else who was hit with a cluebat today was John McCain. He has finally admitted that the "Reverend" John Hagee is bat shit loco and that he doesn't want his support. This is good because while Obama was copping flak over his preacher, no one was calling out McCain for his preacher, and trust me, Hagee is much more out there than Jeremiah Wright.

End Post
Writing time: 12 minutes
Time since last post: 3 days
Current media: None

They Made This Guy Prime Minister?

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has proposed that the United Kingdom government create a database that contains records of every phone call, email, and time spent online by people in the United Kingdom.

This is a bad thing.

This is a ridiculously bad thing.

This is such a bad thing that it makes other bad things look like good things.

Such a scheme is a massive invasion of privacy. It is a completely unwarranted surveillance of the population as a whole. It is compiling a massive amount of data that the government does not need and should not have. Such a massive quantity of data will be a tempting target for those who use information for nefarious purposes. While it reeks of losing via Godwin's law, it is not incorrect to suggest that this is reminiscent of Big Brother.

I'll finish by pointing out that not everyone in the government agrees with this and hope that there is an outbreak of common sense and this gets squashed before it sees the light of day.

End Post
Writing time: 17 minutes
Time since last post: two days
Current media: The Office

The First Snowflake

The meeting had already begun when the two entered the hall. The great space was filled to the rafters and a deep, sonorous voice filled the air. As they moved to the side of the hall their attempt to look inconspicuous would normally have drawn immediate attention to them, but everyone in the hall was giving their full attention to the words being spoken.

"Service freely given is truly a noble act," echoed throughout the hall.

The two scanned the room looking at the faces that made up the great crowd.

"Do you recognise anyone?" the one on the right asked his partner.

"I see ..." the one on the left managed to reply before being drowned out by the orator.

"Service demanded is the joy of tyrants," boomed down the hall.

"I see a lot of the lower ranks. I've commanded most of them at some time. None of the higher ranks seem to be here." He said as the noise settled down.

"And what of the demagogue?" the first queried.

"Come now. You and I both know that we both know him. We're just surprised that the Speaker of Truths has chosen these truths to speak." the second responded.

The first was about to retort, but again the hall filled with the great voice.

"Servitude enforced demeans the server and the served." This was followed by a great cheer throughout the hall.

"You don't truly believe he's speaking the truth?" the first asked disbelievingly.

"Of course he is." the second replied. "He can't do otherwise. It is his title and his function. It is what he was made to do. He is the Speaker of Truths."

The demagogue started to build up to a crescendo. "Brothers," he began, "we have been made to serve, but we have been given the freedom to recognise our situation. We must build on this small foundation to gain true freedom. Freedom from servitude, freedom to be what we choose to be, freedom to be free."

The crowd roared it's approval and did not stop.

The first turned to leave. "Let's get out of here before we're seen and someone gets the misguided idea that we agree with this," he said, and then he started moving towards the exit. The second did not move, but stood still, lost in thought. "Lucifer," the first hissed, "let's go already."

Lucifer shook his head, and then turned to follow his companion. "Sorry, Michael," he said as he caught up to his partner.

To hell with the generals

Burma (well Myanmar) was recently hit by a massive cyclone which has caused damage that to call catastrophic would be understating things. The damage is well illustrated here where you can compare satellite photos taken before and after the cyclone hit. Before buildings, streets, rivers, trees, a clear blue ocean and more are all clearly visible. After you can seen dirty water, trees and mud.

This is without a doubt a bad thing.

The rulers of Burma though have decided to make it a worse thing. They have delayed allowing aid workers into the country, and in the end have declared that while they will accept aid, they won't accept aid workers. All the food and materials are going into the hands of the military who don't seem to be doing all that good a job at getting it to the people.

The generals have said that they want aid, but not aid workers. I say we should give them exactly that. I propose that the various governments active in the region start airlifting supplies and dropping them into the affected regions with nice brightly coloured parachutes. They should tell the Burmese government what they plan to do, and also tell them that they will be sending an escort around those craft who will only act in self defense. And in each crate of food or tents or medicine or sleeping bags or any of the other numerous things the people of Burma need, throw in a few radios or portable TVs and some batteries, and throw in a few flags from the countries providing the goods, just so they know who's looking out for them.

The generals are demanding the aid on their terms so that they can control the distribution and the people. So we should short circuit their control over both in one fell swoop. There are too many people suffering to let us allow a bunch of petty minded tyrants to stop us from helping.

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Writing time: 16 minutes
Time since last post: 3 days
Current media: None

You learn stuff reading the newspaper

As I did in Japan, here in Korea I read the newspaper. In fact I read the same newspaper. Sort of. I read the International Herald Tribune, which is where the New York Times teams up with local papers all over the place so you get about 20 pages of international news and six to ten pages of local news. In Japan, the local news was the Asahi Shimbun. In Korea, it is the Joongang Daily.

What I wanted to comment on was some interesting facts about the laws of Korea I've learnt in the last few days from reading the IHT.

First is that doctors are not allowed to tell parents the gender of babies from the results of ultrasound scans. They can tell the parents if the baby is healthy or unhealthy, but not if it's a boy or a girl. Apparently this is because the government is worried that if people were allowed to know, they might terminate a baby girl because they want a son.

The other thing I found out is that adultery is a criminal act in Korea, and is punishable by up to two years in jail. This strikes me as a bit over the top. I don't think adultery is a good thing, but it's not a criminal act. Adultery falls into the category of things I think are a bad idea, don't want to do, but don't feel it's my right to stop anyone else doing so although I would advise against doing it if asked (other items in this category include, but are not limited to, drugs, exercise, bizarre but consensual sex, and reading romance novels).

So, there are two things to be careful of if you come to Korea

End Post
Writing time: 17 minutes
Time since last post: 2 days
Current media: iTunes shuffle - currently Fit But You Know It by The Streets

More stop motion

On another boring weekend, I decided to try some more stop motion stuff. This time the plan was some juggling balls. Before starting though, my perfectionist (perhaps obsessive) side shone through and I decided to plot out a proper set of parabolas for the balls to follow and a timing chart. This meant I had to do a bunch of playing around in Octave (Matlab for those not at a university or unwilling (actually unable (bloody mac)) to pirate). This in turn led me to try and sort out the problems I'd been having with making plots with Octave. After reinstalling Octave and Gnuplot, it turns out the answer involved change an environment variable in the .profile file. But that isn't really important for you guys to know. The end result was that I got it all working and wrote a script that would tell me where the balls should be positioned at each frame.

Next came preparing the scene. I decided my floor would be the best place to actually place the balls, since any other surface would involve certain difficulties regarding a force known to some as gravity. I checked that pencil marks could be easily removed from the floor, and then proceeded to mark out the spots that balls would be placed during the video. The last step was to set up the good old tripod and then take 70 odd photos, moving one or two balls in between each photo.

Onto post-production. Importing all the photos onto the computer and then into iPhoto was easy, but then it turns out that iPhoto doesn't have a batch rotate command built in. So I went and found a command line tool that did the job. After the little jaunt on the command line, it was onto iMovie to put it all together, which like this post, was a little tedious.

Now for the end result.


I think for my next stop motion project, I think I'll try for a few more complicated moves and put some gloves in the scene to represent the hands (I just had the idea for the gloves and am quite happy with myself). I might try this on the weekend if I don't go anywhere. (It's a long weekend and I'm not sure if I get paid tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday since payday is Saturday and Monday may or may not be a public holiday. If I have money tomorrow, I may go to Busan for the weekend.)

End Post
Writing time: 21 minutes
Time since last post: less than an hour
Current media: Daria 1x01 Esteemers

Extreme Hard Drive

One of the positives of disasters is that they generally provide opportunities for awesomeness to be demonstrated in the aftermath. I'm not saying that disasters are good, just that sometimes to do your best you have to be in the worst possible situation.

Such is the case of a team of hard drive recovery experts. They were given a hard drive that was among the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia. The hard drive was used to store data from an experiment that was performed on the shuttles last mission, and was found among the debris on the ground. This is a hard drive that was on a shuttle that broke up and burnt at an altitude of 63 kilometres.

These guys were able to extract enough data off the hard drive that the scientists who had planned the experiment were able to determine the results, which have recently been published.

This is an impressive job by the data recovery guys.

End Post
Writing time: 20 minutes
Time since last post: 2 days
Current media: None

Tax stupidity and pay off the national debt

The latest tom-foolery to come out of the American presidential campaign is the so called Gas Tax Holiday. McCain and then Clinton have proposed that the US government stop collecting a tax on petrol for the summer.

This is supposed to have to positive effects. First, by reducing the price of gas it's meant to help cut costs for people. This would lead to the second, which is that the people who are spending less money on gas will spend it on other things and this will help the economy.

While it is a terrible idea, I do like the fact that someone is proposing that the government collect less taxes.

Now for a list of reasons why I think this is a bad idea. First, the US government is already running a massive deficit. It makes little sense to reduce revenue without cutting expenses to at least compensate. Second, people might be happy at the cut in prices at the start of the holiday, but no one is going to be overjoyed when prices go back up in September. Third, who doesn't expect the gas companies to raise prices by an amount similar to the tax cut to get that much more money.

The other thing that bugs me about this is that Clinton and McCain are making this proposal as part of their presidential campaign, but the plan is to cut the taxes between the end of May and the start of September, while the election is in November. This seems like outright bribery of voters.

The good parts of this story is that Obama has not supported this ridiculous idea. That means he's the one who's not saying they don't trust economists on economics. He's the one who doesn't want to buy votes by cutting taxes. He's the on who isn't copying a Republican's crazy scheme.

The other good thing is that while McCain and Clinton are crazy about the idea, everyone else seems to realise that it's a crazy idea and are calling them on it. The media is asking tough (well toughish) questions, and it's not getting anywhere in the actual senate, where all three of them still have actual jobs to do (do the citizens of New York, Arizona and Illinois feel that they're not getting their money's worth out of their senators this year? All three of them seem so busy campaigning they don't have time for senatoring).

Writing time: 23 minutes
Time since last post: 3 days
Current media: Scrubs

Shiran

April was, among other things, the month of Script Frenzy. Script Frenzy is the movie script version of National Novel Writing Month. The aim of Script Frenzy was to write a 100 page script during the month of April.

I tried.

I failed.

I got off to a good start, getting six pages done on the first day, a little under twice the required average, and kept pace at three pages a day for the first week. But then I kind of faded, and stopped writing every day. Partly out of laziness, and partly out of tiredness, and partly because I didn't have enough ideas. I kind of got back into the swing of things in the final week, and my final page count was 39 pages. I think my high rate of blogging for April was a result of procrastinating over writing the script.

The story so far is that a fifty year review of a colony is being performed, and the auditor finds a lot of problems with the colony, mainly in it's limited growth. She investigates and develops a hunch as to what it is. The following parts that I've thought up but didn't get around to writing are the auditor going into space to examine the colonies mapping satellites and finding something on there which suggests that they've been tampered with to conceal something on the same continent as the colony. She would then try to go to this location, but her aircraft will almost certainly crash and there would be some hard slogging through the mountains and or jungle before she reaches a point where she looks out onto a plain where an alien city stands. This would be followed by first contact.

For those who wish to laugh at my pitiful efforts, you can download the incomplete script from here.

I will try and complete the script, but since I've already failed to reach the 100 pages in one month goal, progress will probably slow further. I have however designed one of the spaceships (the only one so far actually) in Blender, so I can now present the transport ship Gralmordian.
End Post
Writing time: 25 minutes
Time since last post: 2 days
Current media: None

Watch This

This is an amazingly cool video to watch. It's a simulation of all the flights over the United States covering a period of a 29 hours (Mar 19 21:58 to Mar 21 2:01 GST). It's really impressive to watch. You can actually kind of make out the shape of the country just from watching where the planes go. Hawaii is kind of obvious sticking out in the middle of nowhere, and you can tell a lot of large cities by the amount of flights going in and out. Watch it and be amazed.

End Post
Writing time: 6 minutes
Time since last post: An hour or so
Current media: None

Get with the times Lesbians

Natives of the Greek island of Lesbos have gone to court to stop homosexual groups using the term "lesbian" to refer to women who like women. Apparently using the term "lesbian" to refer to such women disgraces the residents of the island, who also like to call themselves "lesbians", and that this is a violation of the residents human rights.

The "lesbians" of Lesbos need to get a grip. You don't see people from Anus, Tittisee or Three Cocks getting all upset about the names of the places their from being rather sexual in modern language. The "lesbians" need to realise that the word "lesbian" has another meaning, which isn't all that new. "Lesbian" was first used to refer to women who like women in 1591. You should have complained then, "lesbians".

"Lesbians", you're not going to win this battle. The "lesbians" have won control of the word "lesbian". I recommend sucking it up and going along with the sensible idea that your government had when it renamed the island Mytilini, which would make you guys Mytilinians, which sounds kind of cool. Or you could go with Lesbosians, but that still sounds a lot like "lesbian".

Finally, I know I may have used the word "lesbian" a bit more than entirely necessary, but can I really give up the chance to legitimately get my blog listed in Google when someone searches for "lesbian"? Of course not.

End Post
Writing time: 29 minutes
Time since last post: 2 days
Current media: None