Wednesday, November 07, 2007

[backpacking] when you're too old

Outside Vienna State Opera [Wiki]

Interesting article about when you're too old to backpack any more:

*you start dreading the act of travelling.
*it's taking you longer and longer to get ready in the mornings.
*you become obsessed with making sure there's a decent place to go to the toilet.

*there are kids.

*you start to hate the pub scene.
*priorities change, especially comfort wise.
I was reflecting on this and the days of not only backpacking but car trips where we slept in the car by the roadside or in some little sideroad.

I only ever stayed in three hostels, the last in Finland and they were appalling – insecure, unfriendly management and you couldn't get in until 4 p.m.

One comment was interesting, mentioning that when the fellow guests are young and raucous and you want the light out at 11 and then proceed to snore them to death, it's time to give it away.

Now we're into this, the 'tourist destination' is equally as dire. Tenerife is a case in point where all the tourist hotels are grouped in a sort of ghetto in one area and if you don't hire a car, you only get to see hotels.

Either way, with this carbon footprint thing and iris scans, the incentive seems to have dropped away, in my case, to less than zero.

The backpacking thing is really a young persons thing [with some older exceptions] but methinks a law of natural attrition will cause most to fall away soon after 30.


The timetable at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof

[facebook] trapped members to become viral marketers

I wrote a piece on Facebook, then followed it up recently. The majority of the comments were negative towards this organization and now there's more:

The Facebook free ride is over as the social network now seeks to turn its 50-million-strong user base into an army of viral marketers.

It comes as the company is under intense pressure to cash in on the wealth of personal data it has collected, following a $US250 million ($268 million) investment from Microsoft, which valued the company at $US15 billion.

But time will tell whether Facebook has overstepped the line by revealing an ambitious plan to transform each user into a salesman for its advertisers.

Does this raise or lower Facebook in your eyes?

[racism] hastilow's resignation is all wrong

Rob, at Broadsheet Rag, says, about Hastilow's resignation:

Now I might disagree with certain parts of Hatilow’s article. Also mindless racism is sickening — I don’t believe his article falls into this category. But if you are going to debate an issue, varied opinions are required.

I'd go further. There are clearly sickening things like the BNP and Irving being given a platform by the Oxford Union to spew their ideas out but even here, why not?

I wouldn't have invited them and the Oxford Union top guns have rocks in their collective heads but to bow to pressure not to represent a point of view is just plain wrong.

It's wrong at anytime but especially when the lights are going out all over the "free" world and the next five years or so will see only the party line able to be supported openly.

Don't forget Courtney's article about this very principle:
My defense of free speech means that we should have the right to ridicule or hammer our opponents in open debate - indeed, this is the whole point. It now appears that the greatest threat to our right to free speech comes not from the misogynists of the BNP, or Holocaust deniers like the discredited historian David Irving, the fiercest critics of free speech come instead from those on the left.
Not sure that Left and Right are applicable tags any more - it's more Statist & Despotic versus Free and Democratic and no prizes for guessing where I am on this scale. It was Lenin who cynicaly observed: "Freedom is precious, so precious it needs to be rationed." That sums up the Statist's position:
We believe in freedom but only as long as someone doesn't ... a ... b ... c and so on.
Courtney again:
... it's about our liberty to be able to listen to a debate and all the arguments, whether they are dumb arguments or not, we need this liberty in order to judge for ourselves - it is this freedom that the left seem to fear the most ...
We not only need this freedom, we absolutely must fight for it, as our gallant and caring leadership slowly but inexorably and surreptitiously tightens the noose around our societal neck and every fresh piece of legislation is another blow to our hopes, as human beings, of enjoying the dignity of actually being human.

Finally, to come back to Hastilow himself - what was he doing if not representing the Black Country point of view? Isn't that precisely what he should have been doing? To say that Enoch Powell was right and that we'd see rivers of blood is precisely what we are going to see if the Deobandi have their way.

Hastilow wasn't even saying this. He was speaking of "uncontrolled" immigration. Well who could argue against that? Look at the Romi in Italy now, riding in on the backs of the ordinary Romanians. Why should the Italians put up with that? For what altruistic reason?

Introduce me to an individual Romi or Jamaican. Fine, we've met and he might become my friend. If I decide I don't like him, it could well be that I don't like that individual. Good and bad people in any grouping. Why is that racist? If she's female, does this become sexist? If she's gay, does that make me anti-gay now?

For goodness sake, pro-active groups get so tied up in their own rights and are so sensitive to the slightest criticism that all members of that group have to be blanket-accepted? Give me a break.

But wholesale immigration of one group or other cannot be good, especially if they bring with them a history of criminality and non-assimilation, non-integration. In other words, a ghetto mentality. That is completely wrong.

If there was a strong British sub-community over here where I am living, I'd not join it. I'd have friends from there as I do from among the native population but for what to cut oneself off from the locals? Why bother coming here if that's one's attitude?

There needs to be some rationale in this debate but first we must ensure that we can continue to actually have the debate in the first place.

UPDATE: Wolfie mentions the Heffer piece in the Telegraph - it should be read.

[ron paul] could he be the modern lazarus

The Boston Herald says:
Bay State experts are divided over whether the record cyberspace fund-raising that catapulted Ron Paul into the media spotlight will be enough to propel him into the ranks of mainstream Republican presidential candidates.

The 72-year-old grabbed headlines when a massive online movement raised a head-snapping $4.2 million in one day, more than any other Republican candidate ever.

“If you are on that third tier of candidates, attention is the biggest part of the game. He now has two months to try and transform this little bit of impetus into something more substantial, but my sense is that he won’t get the traction,” said Thomas Patterson, of Harvard’s JFK School of Government.
Ron Paul is the thinking person's candidate, a man of intelligence and principle and not backed by the CFR and other traitorous bodies.

He could only get in if the people themselves wanted someone representing their interests but seemingly the American people are still under the illusion that someone like the Lizard Queen, who sold out decades ago and is now reaping her reward, will represent them. The CFR do not have Ron Paul on their approved list.

Perhaps a miracle can occur and the only candidate truly representing America itself can secure both the nomination and the presidency.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

[tutanhigham selects] best of the phonetic dictionary

Shan't give links but type phonetic dictionary in the site search for all entries. Here are ten of my favourites:






6 Antelope................Absconding insect


8 Badinage................Memory, sex, teeth

11 Canteloupe...........Chaperoned

13 Carrion......................Continue

16 Condescending..........Greek Paratrooper

18.Divest........................Princess's garment

23 Felonious..................Monk

36 Ideal..........................You shuffle

63 Scintillate..................Nocturnal orgy

68 Surcingle...................Unmarried baronet

[blogfocus tuesday] mixed bag this evening


1.The lovely and talented Juliet has been touring this fair land and that's dangerous when you get near Eggs Tump – it could all pass right over our heads:
Alongside the church, which is now dedicated to St. Giles, is the picturesque 14th Century Prior's Hall, Little Malvern Court, which has been home to the Berington family for four centuries.

I didn't know any of that when I set out this afternoon, though I have visited Little Malvern Priory at least twice and have passed it countless times - it just seemed a bit pointless to put up a nice picture without any information, so now I know. :-)

Eggs Tump - what does that mean?

It may be too obvious for it to be a place identifiable by an egg shaped tump... I couldn't see one, anyway, but I liked the name. (Better, is Much Marcle, a bit further along - and where the notorious Fred West was born, and in which Letterbox Field he buried at least one of his victims, Anna Fall, his pregnant lover... )
2. Bob's a bit down, possibly due to the weather:
Something about the weather change seems to cause a slight ebb in my metabolism, which in turn affects my moods. It never reaches the depression stage, but it does cause an amazing case of apathy at times.
Add that to the pains of a bad back, edema, sleep apnea, and the normal BS of everyday life, and it can get to you at times.

Luckily I seem to be coming out of my slump, so thank you for visiting during this time.I haven't really been doing too much during this time, mainly getting things ready for winter out in the yard. I did go to a gun show Saturday, and that cheered me a bit, even though I couldn't afford some of the stuff I really liked.

Most of the weekend was classical music time; I seemed to be favoring Handel and Bach, with a bit of Vivaldi thrown in.
3. Ross Fountain is certainly a “key blogger”:
"Key workers" is the other buzz phrase that annoys me. First of all who decides which workers are "Key Workers"? From what I can tell the chosen few are exclusively public sector workers.

Apparently the private sector consists of work that is essentially trivial to the functioning of the country, so whilst Social Workers, Bus Drivers and Diversity Consultants are "Key Workers", those that work in the manufacturing or service sectors of the economy will have to damn well learn to commute.

Rather ironically the builders who are supposed to be erecting all this "Affordable Housing" aren't "Key Workers" whereas those employed at the council planning office creating obstacles to development are.
4. Chip's a brave man anywhere within proximity of the feisty Gabby but at least he's got his blog back [sort of]:
The crackle of small arms fire came from the direction of the allotment shed. I ducked. Gabby winced.

The trouble began when Gabby had uttered a few words of complaint about the quality of the cheap Chinese rockets she’d picked up in town. Compared to the Romanian fireworks that had arrived last week, the Red Star Dragon Super Burst Astro Rocket had been a rather tame addition to the night’s display. She’d decided to remedy the problem by tying four of the rockets together. The result had been as unpredictable as I’d predicted.

The bundle of rockets had begun to bounce around the garden, first taking out the chicken coop and eventually punching a hole through the side of the shed and igniting Gabby’s cache of .44 ammo.

The shed burned through the night, with the sound of the occasional bullet still making us hit the ground. At one point, a fire engine arrived but we managed to get them to leave us alone by claiming the shed was actually a bonfire, to which, by that time, it bore a great resemblance.

[housekeeping] blogrolls under construction

Please don't make anything of the total mess which is my blogrolls - the names are all over the place and in the wrong positions - plus there are new rolls with no names yet. Patience is entreated of you, dear reader, during this three day work in progress.

[eu to tighten internet] in the interests of safety, of course

This blog doesn't usually follow the blogosphere method of taking an MSM story and adding the blogger's opinion but in this case it's going to fall in line. And not one graphic to be seen!

The topic – the BBC article on new EU anti-terror proposals:
The European Commission is proposing anti-terrorism measures that include the collection of extensive flight data and tighter internet laws.
This is the Chinese method of the packaging of concepts – for example, grouping laziness, loose morals and loose tongues in one easy to remember catch-cry.

Why the internet?
Under the plan, all 27 EU members would make recruitment, training and provocation to terrorism illegal ... The plan gives special attention to the internet.

Setting up web sites that encourage violence or explain how to make bombs would become a criminal offence.
Laudable aim and where are the limits to what is deemed acceptable? They're still trying to push this one?
The plan also focuses on air passenger data, requiring EU states to collect 19 pieces of personal information about people flying to or from member states. The information would include a phone number, e-mail address and payment details, and would be kept on file for 13 years.
Phone number, e-mail address and payment details? How will this stop terrorism? I ask merely for information. And why 13 years? Why not 12 or 14? Is there any significance to the number 13?
The collection of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data would bring the EU in line with the US, which introduced a similar scheme following the 9/11 attacks.
Ah, the old “bringing into line with” line. Like increasing service facility charges “in line with common business practice”.

This is a total w—k, I'm afraid. The question is whether they think people will buy this insult to the intellect or whether they just don't care anymore.

[micro-control 5] time will confirm or deny

Alas, still not the collation some were hoping for but please give this post a chance, nonetheless, a post with absolutely no hyperlinks.

At what point does a fearless investigator become a weirdo?

Answer – when those he is investigating turn the tables on him with popular catch-cry mockery which, unfortunately, sticks in the common mind.

A case in point was in the 70s, when I was so young it's hard to credit and there was a certain urban warrior girl, elder sister of my best mate and she was right into the union of students, communism and so on.

In those early days we were in Australia and it was 1975, days of the November coup d'etat when Governor General Kerr assumed his royal prerogative and sacked an elected government. As it turned out, it was in line with the popular mood anyway because Malcolm Fraser subsequently won a landslide election.

However, I digress. This girl, Margaret by name, was right into it and the current war was between the Trots and the Stalinists for who was going to run Australia. I had a look at one of their pamphlets and it was a series of long diatribes employing all the catch-cries about imperialist dogs of war and the rest of it.

Repeatedly punctuated by the one hard fact that had actually come to light, they'd constructed an elaborate conspiracy, egged on by resident academics from the universities but their failing was that they'd consistently misread the average person who was basically apolitical and didn't want to be bullied and cajoled into joining “the cause”, much less spending hours in a street with a couple of hundred other chanting, placard waving militants.

Came the night following the midday of the coup and the streets were alive with a largely rudderless mass of angry people, not all young and I went along to have a look. There were some faces I recognized whom Margaret had brought to my friend's home once or twice and one of these now jumped up on a soapbox and started making a speech through a megaphone.

Then, shock, horror, he was pulled down from there and a different one got up and started haranguing the masses, a la Adolph and it soon became apparent that these people actually did believe a revolution was possible in Australia. We left early, the entertainment largely a fizzer, just as the recent 2007 pro-referendum rally was in London.

But I venture to say that there is a different kind of political animal, of which Unity is a fine example, who really does have his facts at the ready, though his interpretation is necessarily coloured by his leanings. DK describes him as having 'one of the finest analytical brains' and it's hard to argue with that.

I'd further venture to say that he has such wide appeal because he doesn't go outside the box and keeps a narrow political focus which goes no further. In other words, he argues within his facts.

Recently, I referred to the words of an 'escapee of the cabals' and included only the plausible part of what she'd said about our gallant leaders but I admit that that portion was only one small part of the whole. An astute reader noted that I'd 'only just scratched the surface' and it certainly looked that way to those who'd read the whole thing.

The thing is, there are some allegations which people are just not going to stomach. I don't mean I don't accept them as possible, certainly they're in line with what is already known but without hard proof, with only personal testimony, even seemingly bona fide testimony, it's hard to quote these things.

One of the easier ones to accept is Cheney's 'A Most Dangerous Game', as it is in line with his personality as observed by others. Cheney and mentor Rumsfeld are generalists, men of little talent but with a 'good ole boy' persuasive manner of speaking who get into positions of responsibility, then develop their ability after that.
"Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities," says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass."

"Dick always had this very calm way of talking," recalls his roommate at college, Jacob Plotkin, now a retired math professor at Michigan State University. "His thoughtful manner impressed people. He passed one psych course without attending class or studying, and he was proud of that. But there are some things you can't bluff, and Dick reached a point where you couldn't recover."
Rumsfeld's gung-ho final visit to the troops as their 'leader' was another case in point, at odds with the generals who came out and called him out for what he had – no military aptitude at all.

I know this type because, to a point, I am one. I write on anything and when I write a post on gold and silver, I'm using other people's expertise, such as Sackerson's and just collating it.

This sort of thing finds some support in T.D. Allman's The Curse of Dick Cheney, when he observes:
Appointed to another powerful position, Cheney promptly went about screwing it up. He pushed to turn many military duties over to private companies and began moving "defense intellectuals" with no military experience into key posts at the Pentagon.

Most notable among them was Paul Wolfowitz, who later masterminded much of the disastrous strategy that George W. Bush has pursued in Iraq.

In 1992, as undersecretary of defense, Wolfowitz turned out a forty-page report titled "Defense Planning Guidance," arguing that historic allies should be demoted to the status of U.S. satellites, and that the modernization of India and China should be treated as a threat, as should the democratization of Russia.

"We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role," the report declared. It was nothing less than a blueprint for worldwide domination, and Cheney loved it.

He maneuvered to have the president adopt it as doctrine, but the elder Bush, recognizing that the proposals were not only foolish but dangerous, immediately rejected them.
So when abused women come out and make unbelievable allegations about what these and the whole bunch of them got up to, either they're fantasizing and creating an elaborately detailed story from somewhere, possibly based on existing elements of fact ... or else they're telling the truth.

Problem is, this 'truth' is so far-fetched – trauma conditioning, military bases such as Point Magoo or UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in California, the CIA [always a good one as a villain], child prostitution rings, high governmental 'cocktail parties' where the cocaine flows and anything's on the menu – such things could only ever be accepted by those already unimpressed with these gallant leaders as human beings.

Slightly easier to accept in 2007 are the red, blue and yellow lists of wrong thinking people for either 'disappearing' or rounding up for 'retraining' through regional administrations at the point of the emergency powers being invoked [a la WW2].

I quote here, not from a political writer but from an allegedly abused woman who was privy to such talk in the late 60s:
What I understood was that they were planning a complete and utter economic collapse of the nations that would make the Depression of 1929 look like child's play and through that, bringing people financially to their knees, they would then come in and control them, and bring in whatever other measures they would want to in the guise of rescue - when it certainly wouldn't be that at all.
That's a little easier to accept for the general populace in the light of the financial uneasiness, Northern Rock and so on. Well, maybe it's still a year to early. However, you'd realize that if this quote had come to light in the boom times of the late 60s, before they turned sour, she would have been laughed out of town for saying it. Today the evidence is building.

I'm living in what was the SSSR, which until 1990 was well known [and nobody I know denies it] for the elimination of dissent, especially around the time of WW2. How do you think they actually went about that? The midnight car which came to collect you was known here as 'chornaya voron', black raven.

Brits and Yanks readily accept it could be so here. Why not in the west? Because everyone wishes to believe, wills it to be so, that the leaders are all for G-d, Queen or beloved President and country and couldn't possibly be Profumos, Lord Lucans, Lord Levys or Dick Cheneys.

Until now. Now it is slowly dawning on the good people in society that the writers writing all this, the Andrei Sakharovs, the Daniel Ellsbergs [who is a bit strange, admittedly] and some of the lesser known lights may not be so weird after all in their ideas and might just be investigators or victim/observers who blew the whistle on things which really, really were weird.

So people are starting to accept [and in Gordon Brown they have a fine example] that the leadership is less than pristine and not exactly looking out for the common folk.

The more forward thinking are starting to accept the internment camps of which Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are just the tip [you might like to investigate Nottinghamshire too] and a brave few are speculating that the common man is not immune from all this [look at the investigatory and detention powers in Britain alone – search for the RIP Act as a starter] and it is reasonably clear that the elected leadership is in fact putting measures in place to turn on the average citizens who won't shut up and stay out of matters which don't concern them.

This is an inversion and deception – an inversion of sovereignty and a deception through the MSM.

However, this is minor stuff compared to the real game plan which brings in the metaphysical. Why on earth do people pass over GHW Bush's references to 1000 points of light and his labelling of the gulf war on service certificates as his New World Order. I didn't invent this – he did. And the semi-religious tone of the language in a speech to the nation:

David С Whitney & Robin Vaughn Whitney, The American Presidents, 9th ed., Nelson Doubleday Inc, Guild America, NY, 2001, pp 433-459, wrote of GHW Bush at the Republican Convention, August, 1988:
He celebrated the nation's complexity with a captivating poetic image, calling it "a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky."
… but contrasted this appeal to the celestial elements with:
The campaign was criticized by many as being the most negative in recent memory with campaign commercials showing convicted murderers and sewer sludge.
His inaugural address included:
"A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree."
Contrast this pure ancient mystery religion terminology with the peace and harmony he brought through laser-guided weaponry, televised for all the world to enjoy and marvel at.

Why do the European authorities, late at night, not raid the house in the photo above and publish the names of all those inside at the time? Where is a European Elliot Ness now?

Why does the characterization of the old money families in films such as Brotherhood of the Wolf, as distinct from its hotch-potch story, not ring bells in people's minds as to what they really do in the darkness?

The first thesis in this post is that people cannot be presented with too much reality because the mind just closes up and turns savagely or mockingly on he who has presented the idea and that effectively kills debate.

The second thesis is that the 'ten second grab' mentality of the average punter kills serious investigation. When I questioned why serious allegations about CP were not being taken up by the blogosphere, one answered that if we took two weeks in full time collation of every link, every scrap of data and worked it into a rational, plausible whole and presented it for his esteemed perusal, he might just deign to take a look at it.

That, with all due respect, is not what this thing is about. I've been lucky enough to have been fed fragments over the past few weeks [and before that I was going it alone] but it takes huge amounts of time to work all that into plausible arguments to lay before the unbelieving sceptic and I have, quite frankly, neither the time nor the inclination to convince he who will not see.

It's all there – one just has to get off the butt and do a bit of ferreting. That's why this post has no links, no spoon feeding. One has to go out and look at it oneself, just as I had to. That would be far more effective anyway.

If I present a fait accompli, then the only thing left for you to do is to give the thumbs up or down like an emperor. If you discover all this for yourself, on the other hand, then no one can gainsay you.

But you have neither the time not the inclination, in most cases. There are more important things like what Gordon or Hillary said today.

Time will win out in this situation. Even as I delay presenting the post on the tightening of the screws in British society, so many other bloggers are writing about it and so much more is coming out anyway, day by day, that my post will be largely surplus to requirements by the time it's collated and presented.

We only have to wait for 2009-12 for the macro-picture to be revealed. All the other things like corruption, wastage, internment camps and really weird things will be lost in the information blackout for national security reasons – and the blogosphere wil be one of the first casualties.

That's why we must do all this now and though people sigh and click out, it can only be hoped that some vestige of what went on in the blogosphere will remain with people during the troubles.

The most rudimentary investigation shows the overall direction of where Europe and the U.S. are headed. The justification is terrorism. Most intelligent people know there is a terrorist threat and an Islamic incursion into Europe but don't know what to do.

I don't either. People who have been rebuffed in referenda and are terrified to put it to the people still bring in the new laws in Lisbon, riding over public opinion. And they're certain they're going to get away with it.

Probably ordained by the ancient scribes, in their eyes.

Notes
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Monday, November 05, 2007

[blogfocus monday] mixed blessings

1. Iain Dale is back blogging and I see it as a mixed blessing because now there is some sort of peace for both:
Eleanor was a rock in my life. I could tell her things I could tell no one else. She bailed me out on several occasions in my younger years when I was on my financial uppers. She gave me wise advice which was always appreciated. In short, she was the perfect Godmother. When I went too see her on Monday to say good-bye I admit I didn't want to go.

I was warned that she didn't look like the Eleanor we all knew and loved. I admit I was a coward, and just wanted to remember her as she always was - vibrant, laughing, funny, caring. I got to the door and didn't want to go into the room. My sister Tracey went in before me and as I was about to enter the room she gave me a look which said "you will be shocked by what you see". She was stronger than me.
2. The Vanishing American sees internet tools as a mixed blessing:
The Internet is a decidedly mixed blessing. People can (and do) track pseudonymous bloggers' identities down. However it is simply prudence and common sense not to post one's personal information, including full name, around the Internet promiscuously.

For those of us who blog, expressing politically incorrect and 'controversial' thoughts and ideas can expose us to some rather unpleasant consequences. And it may be justly argued that if you take a controversial stand, you must be willing to take the heat for it, and accept any difficulties you invite in swimming against the current.
3. Meeyauw remembers and that's a mixed blessing in itself:
I seldom post personal things but this will be the exception. I may even delete this post in the morning. I had a long nap today and dreamt a beautiful dream. I was in the home of someone unknown who was close to me. Other family was there. And in the door walked Neal, my late husband. He had not been dead after all. He had been lost. I could even feel him and smell him.

He looked exactly as he does in this photo [see site], taken only three years before he died. I took the photo on his Nikon non-digital camera as he taught me how to use it (the lessons never stuck).
The dream was so vivid and my grief began anew when I awoke and found it was not true.
4. David Farrer is doing what is commonly referred to as a number on me – a little James Higham mini-series. Though I'm flattered, it's a decidedly mixed blessing:
One of the greatest problems faced by Scotland is the comparatively high pay and pension benefits enjoyed by the 23% who do work in the state sector. Private companies (with higher than average UK transport costs) find it very difficult to offer the same packages as are available in a state sector that often has UK-wide wage agreements.

So the bright youngster chooses government employment and that is detrimental to economic growth. That's why I am perfectly happy to see Scotland's public sector expenditure slashed - quite apart from the fact that many of these jobs shouldn't exist at all.
5. Jack DM, through Cassandra's Politeia, writes of the mixed blessings of EU membership:
Since Romania entered the European Union on 1st January 2007 an estimated five hundred thousand Romanians crossed the Italian borders. That is five hundred thousand of the poorest, the most desperate, and the most determined to do whatever it takes to partake of Western prosperity.

Crime has exploded and shanty areas have sprung up like mushrooms in the Italian suburbs: the price for welcoming into the community a country that obviously isn't prepared to pay the same price.

[blogrolls] major changes at this site

I have made major changes to the rolls. This is still an ongoing work and names are still to be moved about so don't get out the shotgun yet.

Right Sidebar

This contains archives, MSM and reference links.

Left sidebar

This is the active column and uses colour codes for the various rolls according to a mix of many factors. It's not whether the blog is major, whether I like the blogger or even if the blog is good - it's for these reasons:

1. Interaction with me either through:

a. visiting here [seen through referrals, MyBlogLog and comments];
b. me visiting you;
c. testimonials;
d. guest posting;
e. e-mail correspondence;
f. invitations;
g. sense of community.

It's all of these together, not just two or three of them.

2. Running a comments section. Even if you're in a high roll for the above reasons, not running comments is a no-no with me, sorry and it would move you down.

3. Activity. For example, Notsaussure, if he were blogging, would be right up there but he's not - so he's not.

Known issues

The major problem with the new method is the 'silent reader', the one who doesn't show up in the referrals or any of the other indicators but still reads the blog somehow. An example is Tom Paine, who seemingly reads but doesn't 'visit' - it's beyond me.

Another factor is Blogpower. The whole roll is in the right sidebar, as is the Witanagemot but the bloggers in BP also appear in the left sidebar - all are there, according to their activity.

Lastly, it is a fluid list, changing daily in an upwards direction and weekly, on Sundays, in a downward.

It just seems fairer this way.

[mybloglog] yahoo takeover loses members

We've only just been discussing Facebook and now MyBlogLog is at it too. The takeover by Yahoo was a shock to me but as our Blogpower Mailing List is Yahoo, I didn't think too much of it. Then I read LFB_UK and am thinking seriously about MBL:
When I signed up to MBL, it was quick easy and needed no other information than an email account for verification and obviously a blog. It was nice easy and simple, rather like me who prefers to keep things in separate places and doesn't like to put all his eggs into one basket.

The ability to visit others sites and leave a tag saying you had been without actually leaving a comment, was ideal, it was great others bloggers knew I had been and had a link back to my site if they wished to follow it.


So my apologies to all those who still use the
MBL service, but its take over and insistence on having a Yahoo ID has irked me somewhat, and I am sorry I will no longer be a part of that community.

[fibonnachi] and the herd mentality

This post takes large chunks from an article by Carolyn Cohn, of Reuters, Friday, July 21, 2006, [with the sensationalism extracted] and adds from other sources:

Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa published a book in 1202 which calculated the reproductive cycles of pairs of rabbits and showed that they followed a pattern 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21 - a sequence where the sum of any two consecutive numbers equals the next highest number.

When the ratio of a number to the ones closest is taken over time, it tends to 1.618, which has now entered mythology as a magic or Golden Ratio. It is approximately:

1.6180339887

It enters the fields of music, sculpture, painting, book design and a host of other fields, including architecture. Therefore pyramid devotees will find it in the measurements there.

Even in my field of sailing, an approximation can be found. The usual height of the mast these days is 1.6 times the boat's length [my designs have two masts at 1:1]. Google
1.618 and it's interesting.

Accountant Ralph Nelson Elliott. the 1930s, developed his own theory based on Fibonacci numbers called Elliott wave analysis, which said the market followed a repetitive pattern, with each cycle made up of a five-wave rise followed by a three-wave fall.

Elizabeth Miller, of Redtower Research in Aberdeenshire, said the Dow Jones stock index collapse from the dot-com boom that peaked in 2000 followed a Fibonacci pattern.
"Fibonacci retracements work on pretty much everything, but they work particularly well with stock markets - it's natural mathematics."
61.8 is among the key price retracement targets for modern traders of currencies, stocks and commodities. The ratio is known as the "golden mean" for its universal applications. Another key retracement is 38.2 percent, which is 1 divided by 1.618 squared.

Midas Banned, on goldismoney, gives an example with HUI from March, 2003 then goes on to say:
To give credit where credit is due, this observation was first discussed in detail by W. D. Gann (1878-1955). Since the late great Gann had only a slide rule, not a calculator, he used the 5/8 level, which is .625, and almost exactly matches .618......."
Tom Pelc, chief technical strategist at RBS Financial Markets in London, finds Fibonacci patterns in recent moves in London's FTSE stock index.
"If you look at the FTSE's decline in May and June and its bounce since then, it's struggling right now at exactly the 61.8 percent retracement," he said in mid-July.
However, detractors, as you'd expect, scoff at this:

Use of Fibonacci can become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for stock markets where there is a crowd mentality and where everyone starts to watch out for the same levels.
"It's amazingly common to read sentences written by technical analysts involving Fibonacci ratios," said Roy Batchelor, professor of banking and finance at Cass Business School in the City.

"The evidence on this is contrary. People will show you a picture where it happened, not the 100 pictures where it did not happen -- but it's got entertainment value.

We suffer from the illusion of control, that things have to have an explanation - people hate randomness."

Sunday, November 04, 2007

[king tut] will 2007 be like 1972 and 1923

"Death will come to those who disturb the sleep of the Pharaoh" was written over the tomb.

You know, the unsensational version of the story here reads almost as well as the sensational. However, time for some coincidences:

* Lord Carnarvon consulted mediums who all said not to enter Tut's tomb.

* 47 days after entering the tomb Carnarvon died at Hotel Continental in Cairo. The cause of death was unknown but a mosquito had bitten him where Tut himself had a cheek mark.

* Carnarvon's dog in England became agitated and died at the same time.

* The lights went out in Cairo for several minutes.

* Arthur Maze, another of the archeologists, died shortly afterwards, at the same hotel, complaining of tiredness and went into coma, never to come out.

* Archibald Reid, the team's radiologist returned to England after complaining of exhaustion. He died shortly afterwards.

* George Gould, friend of Carnarvon then travelled to Egypt, visited the tomb, collapsed of fever and died.

* Carnarvon's personal secretary, Richard Bethell, died of heart failure four months later.

* Howard Carter seemingly died of natural causes.

* Lord Carnarvon's half-brother committed suicide. The medics claimed temporary insanity as the cause.

* Mohammed Ibrahim, Egypt's director of antiquities, died in 1966. He begged Egyptian authorities not to let some of the relics leave the country for an exhibition in Paris. A car ran him down and he died.

* Richard Adamson, the expedition security chief not present at the opening, was the last survivor. In 1969 he reiterated his rejection of the "curse theory".

* His wife died less than 24 hours later, his son survived an aircraft crash, but broke his back.

* Adamson gave an interview on British television where he restated his denial most vehemently.

* His taxi crashed later that evening on his way from the studio and Adamson was almost decapitated by a passing truck.

* He gave another interview: "Until now I refused to believe that my family's misfortunes had anything to do with the curse. But now I am not so sure".

* In 1972, Tut and Co were flown to London with a Royal Air Force plane. Gamal Mehrez, Ibrahim's successor in Cairo ridiculed "curse talk" and died before the plane took off.

* Flight Lieutenant Rick Laurie suffered a heart-attack in 1976 and died, after having complained of "horrible visions and nightmares".

* Flight engineer, Ken Parkinson lived through heart-attacks each year at the same time the flight had commenced, until his fatal attack in 1978.

* Flight Lieutenant Jim Webb lost everything he owned during a fire.

My keyboard's keys have just changed positions, i.e. symbols are under their wrong keys since I began typing this and the internet just switched itself off.

All coincidence, of course.

* Now, "85 years later to the day after the pharoah's tomb was discovered", archaeologists have not only removed the face mask but also the linen shroud around the body. They claim it's to "preserve the body".

Am I the only one to think that this shows the same lack of respect our gallant leaders are currently showing us? Perhaps I'm mistaken - what's respect for the dead when there's a lot of money to be made?

Is Tut in good hands or is he in the hands of those he shouldn't be? How would he feel about being on public display like this? Would you like to see your grandfather's dead body exhumed and put on display, unadorned?

Will you go to look upon Tut uncovered?

[weblog awards] help us stop neil clark

Please, please, please, fellow readers - give Steve and myself enough votes to head off Neil Clark! We're not asking to win - the luscious lovely Kickette has that wrapped up as the greatest UK Blog ever, over Iain [who's just suffered a personal loss] but Neil Clark - help us to stop him.

:)

[snow] sky's full but turning to water

Can't claim our situation is like the one in the pic yet.

It's been wet snowing today, the air full of it but turning to water the moment it hits the path. It's also not sticking to branches, as in the photo. It's a rarity for that to happen in this climate because it goes dry so quickly and the powder fails to stick.

It's a small difference between our snow scenes and the traditional European postcard image. A nice summary is on the NSIDC site.

The last decent Labour man?

John Mortimer's writing room

A guest post from the esteemed Tom Paine on a man who does it his way - John Mortimer:

How the British Establishment hates John Mortimer. Mortimer has consistently critiqued the Blair/Brown Axis’s assaults on our freedoms. He has defended the presumption of innocence, which his most beloved character never failed to proclaim as “the golden thread that runs through British jurisprudence.” Though it is at the very heart of our civilisation - it is now nothing but a profound irritation to the men of power.

Horace Rumpole may, like Sherlock Holmes, have walked the pages of books rather than Literature. Worse, he appeared first as a character in TV comedy. Like Holmes, however, he transcends his origins. He is that rarity, a character with a life of his own. We all know what Rumpole would say and how he would behave in any situation. Rumpole is no suave hero, but he stands alone in modern British culture as a character who believes in freedom under the rule of law, not the terrifying "social justice" so beloved of our sparrow-brained politicians. Mortimer created a character who will live as long as English is read and the principles of the Common Law are understood.

Mortimer will be remembered for breathing life into Horace, but also as a humane, kindly, liberal man. This is more than enough motivation for Christopher Hart to do the most amazing hatchet job in the Times, while purporting to review Valerie Groves’ biography of this flawed, but charming man.

As ever, glimpses are to be seen of the Cromwellism that (much though I personally revere the memory of "our chief of men") I have to acknowledge underlies much that is wrong in British thought. Mortimer’s “affairs of the loins, rather than the heart” might equally have been characterized as free-thinking rejection of bourgeois values, had he not strayed from the paths of Socialist righteousness. How did he stray? He drew the lines of the State’s power rather closer to the individual than you or I might like, but still short of jackboot range.

The quote the sub-editors selected to summarise the attack on this innocent is telling;
The worst aspects of human nature are laughed away and the dark side is consistently whitewashed
Give me friends who laugh away my failings and look to the good in me, rather than the bad. Spare me, I beg, from the puritan who sees only the bad in me, and relishes the excuse it gives to make me a prisoner “for my own good.” In despising Mortimer, the British left/liberal statists let slip how much they despise us all. We are just potential transgressors to them, guilty until proven innocent.

That is the thread that runs through their thought and it is far from golden.

[micro-control 4] some eu plans for england and beyond


The disintegration of privacy within the sphere of the EU comes next post. This post just restates many things already known vis a vis England and might disappoint, in that it presents not a lot new.

So, first up, we're all agreed, aren't we, that the EU has England broken into nine administrative divisions, as seen on the map above? The only question is, post-Lisbon, when precisely this starts.

These nine regions, along with the Scottish and Welsh regions, have already entered the educational field both at senior level and junior as the current situation.

Further information is available here, here, here, and here, just to post a few. [Some government site links might not now work as they have been progressively deleted.]

Each region is a discreet adminstrative area with its own assembly already in situ, ready to activate. This much is easily accessible from government docs on the web. Winston Leonard commented, on October 15th, at my site:
You have to remember that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will disappear under the EU Constitution, with Brussels dealing with Foreign affairs, policy, and overseas embassies. In all probability, the Senior official concerned will be the one relocating to Brussels in 2010.
Same rule would apply to International Development, another area that will lose out to Brussels. So who will relocate? Malloch-Brown, or Milliband, or both?
The move to regionalization needs to be pretty well completed by post 2009 and it can be better observed in local issues, rather than at the national level, for example, on roads:
The new plan will be to let local governments price or otherwise regulate their bits of the road network as they see fit. So far the main example of this is the London congestion charge, which is enforced by using controversial Automatic Numberplate Recognition (ANPR) technology to track vehicle movements.

Predictably, in the wake of recent clownish "carbomb" attempts, the government has granted terror police routine access to the London tracking system. This has confirmed the widely-held view that no matter the initial purpose of any vehicle-tracking technology, it will swiftly become an automated surveillance tool.
Naturally, once the populace is aware of what is happening, there will be a great deal of unrest - the blogosphere transferred to the general community but this has been factored in. An example is Lisbon itself:
Poland also wants to make sure that the charter of fundamental rights, which guarantees the right to strike among other measures, cannot apply in domestic courts. This is an opt-out already secured by the UK. Some in Brussels have questioned its legality but David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, termed it “silicon-sealed”.

The aim is to have the reform treaty ratified by all 27 member states ahead of elections to the European parliament in 2009.
To enforce both it's "entity" as a continental bloc and to snuff out local dissent, the Merkel initiated pan-EU militsia is already in training. And translated from the original here:
It will be the opening day of the command of Central European Gendarmerie (Eurogendfor), intranazionale new force established by the European Union in order to carry out "police missions in operations of crisis."
They'll naturally need some operational theatre of war for training so:
The EU is to examine the possibility of deploying a 3,000-strong force to Chad to contain spill-over from the Darfur conflict in neighbouring Sudan, foreign ministers agreed on Monday.
All of which is fine, of course, if the EU is a philanthropic and trustworthy body which looks after the best interests of its citizens. If that's the case, then the administrative infrastructure being rushed into place, with Common Purpose leadership, is in the best interests of all.

The litmus test, it seems to me, is whether you can believe the word of the EU. Ellee Seymour throws some light on that here, referring to Mandelson’s reneging on ACP trade agreements in favour of regional agreements.

Do read the whole piece to get some sort of idea how you feel about EU transparency and honesty.

Those whio have not already sighed and clicked out might be interested in one take on what the eventual plan entails. I don't mean the EU-ization of what was once Britain but the overall plan.

This is as good an article as any but the heading summary below does not do justice to the full explanation given at the site. Again, do read the whole thing. The process goes something like this:
1st Signpost: The Registration of Populations

2nd Signpost: The Creation of a Global Identification System

3rd Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Movement

4th Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Electronic Communications and Financial Transactions

5th Signpost: The Convergence of National and International Databases

6th Signpost: The Spread of the "Risk Assessment" Model

7th Signpost: Security-Force Integration and the Loss of Sovereign Checks and Balances

8th Signpost: The Corporate Security Complex

9th Signpost: The Erosion of Democratic Values

10th Signpost: Rendition, Torture, Death
Do you think this has gone off the deep end? Well, let me go further. The type of incompetence revealed by Dizzie in the losing of 15 000 personal records by courier I simply do not accept as accidental. Please see part 2 of this series.

Notes
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

[racism] we need to be careful about its definition

That promised article is coming but first, more controversy [H/T Witagamenot] on immigration:
Cameron was irritated by the behaviour of Hastilow, who will contest the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis, which the Tories must win if they are to regain power, after he mounted a strong defence of his article. 'It is in line with Conservative policy,' he told The Observer. 'Uncontrolled immigration will do this country great damage. In the last 10 years we have had more or less uncontrolled immigration.'

But Hastilow won strong support from his local Tory association. 'Most certainly, yes,' said Mary Docker, chairman of the Halesowen and Rowley Regis association, when asked by The Observer if she would stand by Hastilow. 'He is a down-to-earth man who talks to people and doesn't talk at them. He is representative of the views of many Black Country people.'
My view is quite simple, you might say oversimplistic but I'd disagree:
If the racial, religious or national grouping has a history of non-assimilation into the local culture, then prospective immigrants need one-by-one scrutiny and interview as to their absorption into alien sub-communities within the larger nation.

This should also apply to those who have already got through the net.

If the grouping has a history of assimilation [e.g. a Canadian settling in Britain], then they get fast tracked but are subject to the usual police checks, vocational suitability etc.
Just seems common sense to me.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

[facebook part 2] run for your lives

I recently wrote a piece on Facebook, commenting on their delisting of bloggers who don’t use their real names. It now looks more insidious than first thought.

I said that I was thinking of unsubscribing and Ian Grey said one can’t – only de-activate but can re-activate at any time. Let me put that again:
When you sign up to Facebook, they have you in and you can not unsubscribe! You can unsubscribe from applications, discussion groups etc., you can unsubscribe from e-mail notifications but you can’t unsubscribe from Facebook itself – there is no mechanism.
This immediately gave me the shivers because it looks no different to those webpages where, the moment you enter, they lock you in and give you no navigation out until you’ve been through a series of other intrusive pages.

I want out and I want out now! I looked around to see what the web said:
Facebook, America’s number two social network behind MySpace, launched a redesign and two new features early this morning, allowing a user’s activities on the site to be tracked.

My guess is that if they’d allowed Facebook users to turn this feature off, most of them would have done so.

What’s odd is that most of Facebook’s recent additions have been extremely smart.
And ...
Facebook is commonly referred to as Stalkerbook, due to its many features that allows you to track people in your network, especially when you are friends with those people.

On September 5, 2006 Facebook altered the default logged-in screen to be the "News Feed," a new feature that lists every action that every Facebook friend of yours makes on Facebook.
And finally, Ian Parker:
Just remember who funded the building of Facebook and why it is there.

It was funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and is there to collect information about you and build a profile on you.

Thats why they dont like pseudonyms.
Their site for those with concerns is here and when there, look down near the bottom of the page and see the group mentioned.

I’m outta here … or I would be if there were a mechanism to do so, which there isn’t.

[oh so wild] the importance of being english

These Weblog Awards, [there's a little banner top left for those who'd care to cast their vote], have had one unexpected spin-off.

Whereas some men have had their potency called into question and some their intelligence, hitherto I’ve only had my height called into question … oh, and my receding hair … well, yes … also my sanity at times … but I digress.

It appears that now, as a result of these double-edged awards, my origins have also been called into question. Wounded to the heart.

An esteemed rambler, uber-blogger, mother of note and lady of spotless virtue has asked the simple question: “Are you a UK blog, James?”

How to answer that, avoiding a simple yes or no?

Is Croydonian a UK blogger? He seems to blog on everything from France to Sweden. Is Tuscan Tony a UK blogger? Is Tom Paine, of questionable Facebook status, who blogs on the England he holds dear but doesn’t actually live there?

To rephrase the question – what constitutes a UK blogger? That he is permanently resident in the UK? If so, where does that leave Tim Worstall or Welshcakes Limoncello? Or Praguetory for that matter?

Or is it that he blogs on specifically UK matters, to the exclusion of all others? Where does that leave Bryan Appleyard or Ian Appleby? Where does that leave the girlbloggers like Liz Hinds and Wife in the North, [whom I understand is in the south right now], who blog on home related matters [and a bit of Rugby]?

Perhaps my crime is to pay too much heed to the Americans and to be too au fait with their affairs, barring football and baseball, which immediately label me non-American. Perhaps my premiership winning Aussie football team raises suspicion, as does my clear familiarity with matters Vancouver.

Is Colin Campbell an Aussie? Is JMB a Canadian or an Aussie? And what on earth is Lady MacLeod?

Or my French language posts, concerning Sarko, Segie and undergarments – do they put me out of contention as a sturdy oak and does this also put out L’Ombre?

What is, in fact, a UK blogger?

The Witanagemot seem to have come to terms with my Englishness, the Cross of St George group, of which I am involved, labelling me “an English Expat”, an epithet I am comfortable with.

Is it that I fail to appreciate the minutiae of daily life in the UK and can’t recite the lists of current pollies? After all, these awards aren’t for “political bloggers” – they’re for “bloggers”.

Further - these are supposedly prestigious stateside-based awards, centred in Florida and under scrutiny by the State Dept and other interested groups. Those top ten UK blogs were the top ten in American eyes. In UK eyes, I’m way down at N124.

Is it that I'm not over there currently, as I'd wish to be, clubbing, swapping asides in the idiom? I do touch on matters UK most days but not party politics – more Common Purpose and other nefarious nasties which the average Brit knows little of as yet.

To come clean at the death, my ancestral home is in the West Riding, snuggled up against Ilkley Moor, baht ‘at. You’d never pick it from either my writing, my accent or my dialect; [now I've lost all the Londoners with whom I lived for three years].

Your ladyship, this is all the explanation I fear I can give. I pray that it should suffice and that your smile shall once again alight on my fevered brow.

Friday, November 02, 2007

[2007 weblog awards] voting now open

Click on pic to vote.

The awards are now open and you can vote once in 24 hours. Should you wish to vote for my little blog or indeed, for another, click on the pic above.

[cartels] free trade or restraint of trade

In the wake of the largest fine in Australian corporate history handed out to packaging giant Visy, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graham Samuel said cartels were "a cancer on the Australian economy" and an "insidious attack on consumers" and said criminal penalties should be imposed on those found guilty.
History has been punctuated by attempts to control them such as the 1890 Sherman Act:
The Sherman Act provides: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal".[2]

The Act also provides: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"
But it could be equally argued that the legislation is restraint of trade in itself. And at what point do mergers and takeovers become illegal? The whole thrust of business is to combine and strengthen and though asset strippers are a scourge, resulting in cries to ban the practice:
In an interview with the BBC, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said he shared the concerns of Britain’s general trade union GMB which voiced fears over a growing number of venture capitalists investing in UK firms only to strip them. "We want policies that make sure the objective of investment by private equity fund, for example, is to rescue them, to maintain as many jobs as possible, not to asset strip them," he said. This is ironic as Labour has been the recipient of donations from equity specialists that have been criticised by unions for their approach to certain businesses.
What happens when the government, e.g. the NHS, gets into the practice?
The government has been accused of orchestrating a £345m sell-off of former hospitals in one year in an attempt to balance the NHS budget. The value of the sales is 14 times the previous year's total.
Tough call, this one because should their be constraint on capitalism? This is not covered by the Free Trade/Fair Trade argument. Even if one argues for Free Trade, are we referring to cross border tarrif reduction and if so, what would be the effects?

The Congressional Budget Office says:
… the arguments for and against FTAs extend beyond their net economic effects on the United States to considerations of foreign policy and tactics for achieving multilateral free trade …
and:
Critics worry, however, that the pursuit of free-trade agreements could divert the world from multilateral negotiations and lead to the development of rival trading blocs centered on the United States, the European Union (EU), and Japan. Indeed, the EU has negotiated a number of FTAs in recent years.
In a world of outsourcing, how can legislation from national assemblies have any jurisdiction over those of outsourced countries? There seems to me to be very much a move towards blocs and this has political ramifications, especially regarding the EU.

How could the Sherman Act operate in the context of more globalized trade? And what relevance does a corporate affairs fine have on a major operator - surely it's window dressing?

Example of the thrust against the survival of small businesses was my screenprinting business. It was in a healthy state, orders were coming in and it looked rosy until some I was asked to tender for an indoor sports centre's team shirts.

My little firm could only do the job at near cost and still a large international printing firm undercut it by half by not only mass printing but supplying the shirts as well from one branch of their operation.

Diddums, you might say - that's just business and it certainly put me out except with customers who weren't aware they could approach this company to get their shirts for half the price. That was one of the key reasons I dropped it - it was unsustainable.

Should the small to medium businessman have any protection and if so - isn't this restraint of trade? Isn't this propping up unprofitable enterprises, as with CAP?

Still pondering on this one.