[overcrowding] chinese show the way

And we thought the Tube and the Met were bad. Here are the Chinese returning after their National Day weekend:

[debt problems] a novel solution

Mortgage finance company Fannie Mae says it's forgiving the mortgage debt of a 90-year-old Ohio woman, Addie Polk who shot herself in the chest as sheriff's deputies attempted to evict her. Polk has refinanced several times since taking out the loan in 1997. She remains hospitalized, but is expected to recover from chest wounds suffered last week.

Everything is wrong with this, isn't it? Her own refinancing, her age, the ease with which it happened, the pushing of society into this position by the banks, the reaction of Fannie Mae which would not write off her debt until, as they put it:

... the incident "certainly made our radar screen ...

Made our radar screen ... yes.

[ten commandments] of blogging

Clive Davis today on Blogging's Ten Commandments:

No 2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.

No 10. You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking.

[Chuckle]

[lazy town] having fun is what it's all about

Leaving aside the financial angst of the moment, leaving aside issues of last night, leaving aside any number of matters, I'd like to ask a question.

Do you see an element of madness creeping into not only public life but in the way people are interacting with each other of late?

There is an example on my mind right now. Indirectly, there is a connection I have with a family and there's a little kid who is into something called Lazy Town, a kid's show made in Iceland. It's a bit saccharine sweet for me but I quite like a character called Robbie Rotten who seems to get the best lines and sub plots.

I googled Julianna Rose Mauriello [the main character] and Magnús Scheving [producer and another main character] - it is an interesting tale in itself. What I was horrified by was that in google there were so many references to her being a lesbian and I wondered WTF? This is a kid's show and OK, the lead character has some special long term friendship off set, as every person I know has had and sickos on the web are turning it into something dirty with all sorts of innuendo.

The expression "get a life" goes through the brain over and over. What the hell is going on in society if that is the sort of thing which titillates people? It's b-o-r-i-n-g, you know. It's t-e-d-i-o-u-s. Can't we have anything good without someone trying to twist it round and place some bizarre interpretation on it? I don't know.

What I see in this show is an attempt by someone [Scheving] with an ideal of setting kids on a straight path of being kind [and eating sports candy]. Admittedly he is making a killing in the meantime and why not? Someone using his talents and his connections to put something about which is actually ... er ... clean and good.

Now watch the vipers come in and try to dirty it. Sorry, there is not one dirty thing I can see in any of this and the best of luck to them for what they are actually achieving. May there be more of it.

Having said all that, why is it that the The Bad seem to have all the best lines and be the most interesting characters [as well as having the best spaceships]? Why is it that The Good, apart from being handy to have around in a crisis, is ultimately seen as duller and less interesting to be with?

Similarly, why is it that people are far more afraid of the Dark Side in their stunning, shiny black costumes when the White Side is vastly more dangerous. Ultimately the former are losers. I tell you, I don't think it is the best plan to get on the worng side of G-d, mild-mannered and altrusitic though he may be. It's not unlike a papa who loves you. You're so into him being close to you that you can be forgiven for forgetting the awesome destructive capability.

Maybe some sanity needs to return to a world where it seems to be in short supply of late.

[misconstructions] server down and other goodies

The immediate blogosphere sometimes reminds me of the ocean surface - rough and dangerous but with far greater villains lurking below.

I'm quite frankly disappointed with being misconstrued, taken out of context and misquoted and the last example was in Bloghounds just now. As I'm obviously not going to give details, I'll use an analogy instead. It's as if I had written to someone, asking if he was aware that though he had applied for B, he hadn't applied for A and could he possibly do it?

The reply did not come to me but to another admin, saying that I had told the member he was not a member. No I hadn't. How on earth can that conclusion be derived from the other? By luck, I managed to see this and set the record straight.

My little RL worries are of no concern to anyone, naturally and yet they are real to me. But if I also have to correct misconstructions on each and every matter relating to myself, I'm going to be a nervous wreck, wasting time on things which are pointless.

At the same time, I'm attempting to keep another situation from imploding and preventing an old wound from opening up, again in the blogosphere. All of this rubbish is in the blogosphere - RL itself is not great, admittedly but step by step we have little victories. I came within a hair's breadth of a good job on Friday but the mood is still positive there.

The rule for me now in the sphere is "steady as she goes" but this is not helped by the things going on behind the scenes. Seriously, you'd think they would get a life. Instead of enjoying the blogging, it's currently a pain in the neck but I'm giving notice that I'm not being drummed out of blogging, not until I'm ready to go. Not this time round.

Two RL friends told me, on two different occasions, that people perceive me as weak because I "appease" those who spit on me. The people who do this, the spitting, if they are intelligent, should not mistake calmness and polite words in reply for acquiescence. Their time will come and it will be by their own petard.

By the way, to my stalker, those emails did disappear from the mailbox this evening but both Firefox and Safari are back in operation and thanks for asking. Blogger is playing up too but that's another question - I think that's so for everyone.

To end on a positive note, Bloghounds is now up to 29 members and a dog and things are on the drawing board. Tomorrow [oops - today] is upon us and I wish you the most pleasant day of rest possible.

Enjoy.

I plan to.

[dirigibles] if we can't have the canal boats ... well

As you all saw fit to squash my narrowboat proposition for a transport network, :), then how about dirigibles? Here's the situation on the commercial variety.

Anyway, I wasn't really thinking of the large, commercial variety nor even about these beauties but more about PMDs [personal mini dirigibles], designed to take two people.

Let's say you had to get to Kings Lynn for an interview or meeting. It's out to the back garden, turn on the heater, load the briefcase into the cupboard and away you go. No M25, no long queues, just a bit of bumping into thoughtless amateur pilots along the way.

What a restful way to go. And if you were worried about the cold, you'd be fully enclosed, wouldn't you? Here are its practical possibilities. Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty - are they possible and how to construct your baby. Here is another page on a personal dirigible.

I don't see the problem. Modern sailboats and ultra-lights already employ the desired materials for strength and lightness plus the propulsion mechanism. Helium appears to be out because of its $6.60 per litre cost, so you'd need around 1000 cubic metres for the hot air variety for two people.

Once you get to the city, tether and deflate in the park-and-ride-area then take the hover bus into town. Yep, the days of the Airdinghy are just around the corner. Anyone care to go into business with me?

[friends] how does one define these

You know, it's really rather interesting what came out of the comments section on the "hidden readers" post two days ago.

I went into that post believing that some readers who visit me "silently" may be miffed that I hadn't linked back to them. It was in no way an accusation - quite the opposite, as Ubermouth pointed out - I was concerned that I didn't know who was regularly visiting and I couldn't return the visit and she construed it correctly.

This was not explained well though in the post and it's not the first time that I've confused readers.

Into this came Welshcakes' aside that I've been known not to declare myself either and though that is not so in terms of intent, I began to see how this could have been viewed that way. I remember saying to Liz Hinds once [or maybe even twice] that she visits but her avatar doesn't show up. Tom Paine is another.

Now, in Tom's case, it is because he uses his Reader and now that mine is set up properly, I can see that that is a good way to do it. In Liz's case, I see that it was not her doing at all. There is something in the conjunction of personal computer idiosyncrasies and configurations, some which might have been put in place, many where someone simply answered "yes" on a dialogue box and many where the way the computer was set up had caused it.

When I was staying at Welshcakes' in Sicily, her computer did some very strange things and Mybloglog just would not configure itself properly. She went in then and it worked after that but I don't think she actually knew what had changed it. I'm sure Mybloglog know.

Perhaps they don't though and that brings home an important truism - that we are going to have to be damned careful with our accusations, beginning with me. It might well look like someone is doing something but it might, in fact, be a technical idiosyncrasy - enough of them occur on my computer, mainly due to my dabbling and imagining that I know what I'm doing. I'm currently learning PHP, by the way.

This then brings in the question of bona fides. Assuming the good intentions of all the people above, then is there any mischief going on in the sphere?

There sure is. I am fairly certain my emails, if not my computer itself is hacked and my evidence is an email I discovered two days ago, supposedly written by me and supposedly distributed between certain bloggers.

Blogpowerers will recall my opinion on doing that sort of thing - publishing [or distributing] private emails of others and it is one of the main reasons I'm not now there but until yesterday I was cynical about whether someone could actually intercept, hack and alter someone's emails. According to a computer whiz I met, it was easy to do and he proceeded to show me diagrams of how it was done.

The face paled.

Living in Russia, as I did, I'd always assumed I was being monitored and that's why there was never anything left on any computer which could be misconstrued or used - in fact the opposite. I told my friend over there that I welcomed such intrusion - better the knowledge than the suspicion and innuendo.

He mentioned that clearing history does not clear cache and I know that well but even so - that's not the end of the earth.

Finally we come down to bona fides and whether people who purport to be friends are really friends. It was in my Headmaster role years ago that my cynicism really took wing, as time and time again, smiling faces turned out to be treacherous ones. The best way to describe my attitude today is "circumspect". I wish I had a pound for the number of times people have emailed me that I shouldn't assume that such and such is my friend.

I'm puzzled by two things - why people would be two-faced in the first place and secondly, why people would want to combine against another person when their official position does not require it as part of the job specification. Hell, I have too much on the plate to worry the head about that sort of thing. On the other hand, it is true that, as BH honchos, we did email each other to discuss incoming members and I certainly put my point of view there. Still do.

I'd not like the blogosphere to become a hotbed of suspicion and innuendo, as it has so much to offer. I've seen first hand that there are wonderful bloggers who have become real friends and maybe that blinds me to their lesser sides but hell - who's perfect?

Lastly, as was continually being impressed upon me over these past few months - none of us are important enough for anyone to trouble themselves over us so paranoia over what someone is going to do is usually misplaced. The bureaucratic world and even the blogosphere are not necessarily evil - they're just indifferent.

UPDATE: Longrider has a great little piece about drive-by trolls which relates to this post here. Check his out if you haven't already done so.

[travellers] newts and 2.5 million pounds

The thing which caught my eye in walking past the kitchen bench today was the front page headline in the local rag: “Traveller Camp held up by Newts.”

It didn’t register at first and I thought it had to be something to do with Ken [rats with wings] Livingstone but at least it promised to be funny. When I mentioned the issue in conversation, the answer came back that it was to do with gypsies.

It said that the Council authority had been delayed and “that as part of their site investigations, a newt survey must be carried out first.” Reading on, the article said that “for the past six months, the Council has been paying to clean up and collect rubbish from a little known accepted encampment … an unauthorized site the Council is letting the Travellers use.”

Gypsies.

Slowly the story came out about the situation in Britain - how they squat on available land, often private or how they go to these sites, get evicted but the eviction doesn’t take effect for some days and they trash the site and the area before moving on.

I was amazed that the Council were even contemplating the £2.5 million super-site for the Travellers and yet I can see the thinking – make it desirable enough and they might stay there and leave other places alone. Also, as a person who has been going from place to place in the past few months, there is some sympathy for them.

“No, no,” I was told. “You had no choice – they prefer it.”

Well, I don’t know if “preferred” is the correct word but I’m in no position to argue. And another thing - being always moved on is pretty dire but if half the tales of their shocking behaviour are true, then I can see why people don’t want them anywhere near.

Wiki has this to say about them:

Travellers refer to themselves as "Pavees", whereas some English people often refer to them with the derogatory terms "Pikeys. Under the government's "Gypsy and Traveller Sites Grant", designated sites for Travellers' use are provided by the council, and funds are made available to local authorities for the construction of new sites and maintenance and extension of existing sites. However, Travellers also frequently make use of other, non-authorised sites, including public "common land" and private plots, including large fields.

One of the main bones of contention seems to be that they are issued with eviction notices but have some days to move on. During that time, they allegedly trash the site and the general area, which costs the local council a packet to clean up [£14 500 is one estimate by a local councillor]. They do sometimes buy land and then build on it, requesting retrospective planning permission, so the story goes.

In this difficult economic climate as well, spending £2.5 million on gypsies would be a little hard to justify to the local ratepayer, methinks. One Councillor said:

“Police have said that they would move them on if there was somewhere to put them but there is nowhere.”

Look at the National Geographic video on the Travellersgives a bit of an insight into these itinerant people. The authorities and the hostility of local residents are one thing but they have other issues as well:

The health threats to them in some ways reflect their traditional semi-nomadic way of life, with members of the community 10 times more likely to die in road accidents. These, at 22 per cent, represented the most common cause of death among males. Infants are 10 times more likely to die before reaching the age of two, while a third of travellers die before the age of 25. In addition, 80 per cent of travellers die before the age of 65.

On the other hand, travellers are less at risk of dying from heart attacks or strokes - though this is largely because so few of them reach the age when they are likely to die from such causes. Suicides are also more common than among the general population.

They are a dilemma. In a society where family, home ownership, job, and car are the aspirations of most, the fate of closed society which bucks conventions and does not abide by conventional behaviour, in majority terms, is always going to cause fierce resentment with that majority.

They’ve been the first victims of despotism before and in a militaristic state with a culture of criminalization of the ordinary citizen, who would raise a voice in protest if the gypsies were “spirited away”?

Once again I have no answers. They move onwards and onwards, never stopping until they move full circle and then they move on or are moved on again. Is there any end to it?

[allergy] or an epidemic

Just saw the weather `'brought to you by claratyne" downunder - I always thought that this was only available in Russia, where I used it due to what I thought was rhinitis.  I also used Semprex.

Now I'm wondering how widespread the usage is.  If the majority of people are taking it in every country, then it appears we might have a silent epidemic on our hands and the advert attached to the weather report makes sense.

[brown] the colour of a hoon

Defence Secretary Mr Browne is to leave the government after turning down two job offers from Mr Brown.  Former agriculture minister, and close Gordon Brown ally, Nick Brown returns as chief whip, to replace Mr Hoon.

Let me see - there's a Brown, Brown, Browne ... mmm ... and somehow they are all connected with a hoon*.

* Wiki says: 

The term "Hoon" was first used in Australia at the turn of the 20th century where it referred to a man living off immoral earnings (i.e. a pimp).  

Hmmm [adjusts pince nez glasses on nose and smiles].