[labyrinth 2] publish and be damned

There are different types of anger - annoyance, earthquake anger and then there is the type where there is little outward sign but inside there is a very deep, silent anger over some injustice or other.

This is the type I feel this evening and yet it is at odds with the mood in RL. Actually I've had two successes in the past two days and am right chuffed about that, as the pieces start to fall into place. So in terms of general mood, everything is hunky dory.

The problem is that I have seen three emails in that same time which show what can only be called the treachery of friends. The last post on the matter mentioned this. My friend said tonight and he's not one to mince words, that I am a "guppie being slowly encircled by sharks who are moving in for the kill".

Now I don't know if that is so but I know I am incensed by one particular email tonight which spoke of my "imagined version" of events at Blogpower. Sorry - I think you mean the chronological order of events as they occurred, don't you, which has nothing whatsoever to do with "interpretation"?

It goes on to ask why I, as admin, who called for someone's expulsion at BP for publishing a private email not his own, should now be publishing private emails myself. So let's look at this email from the previous post:

"In fact James carried on as if nothing had happened in one way, visiting us and commenting, as we did too ... it was all just so bizarre."

Now perhaps I'm completely wrong but it seems to me that posting this fragment, related directly to me, is a teensy weensy bit different from publishing a whole damned email of someone else's in a group mailing list. I was then accused of being dictatorial for insisting on his expulsion. Then I was accused of being wishy-washy. Now which one was it?

The best one of all was the question of why am I stirring all this up now. That's a real corker, that question. Let me answer it please. Have you seen, in the past two months or even earlier, any reference to this sort of subject matter on this blog? Has any reader on this blog seen a post like this current one from me, in this mood and using this strength of language? Does any reader think that my usual blog persona is that of an "angry-blogger" like, say, DK?

Of course not.

So why then would I suddenly burst out with all this, out of the blue so to speak? Wouldn't it be more intelligent to conclude that there might be the tiniest little bit of provocation behind it? Actually, what there was was a litany of untruths and distortions about events and the reasons behind them. Worse though were assumptions of guilt on my part and assumptions of innocence on the part of the one who was accused. It is the assumptions by "friends" which is the most galling.

As someone else emailed me this evening, a true friend: "People who do these things are not your friends."

So we come to the statement that I tried to ride into Blogpower as a great king [see that motif again] and take it over again. Makes a good story but it actually happened like this: I was approached about coming back to BP. After all, I'd made peace with everyone and we seemed to be back on an even keel. Yes, I replied, just as soon as that person who should have been thrown out is thrown out. The reply came back to me that that would be a very long time. Next there was a post on their mailing list that I had tried to dictate to them from outside BP who could and couldn't be a member.

[UPDATE October 11th: Blogpower have taken issue with the last sentence in the last paragraph here in particular. The "post" was a message put up by Matt Wardman at the time and others concurred. It gave the impression as I've just stated and Matt further commented along the lines of,"It's just James sh-- stirring again." I saw this message but not being in BP now, I can't say what would have happened to it. Of course it may have been removed by now.]

Sorry, there was just the one. Just one.

Someone else wrote to me about an hour ago [this thing's like an iceberg] that "you shouldn't worry about them as you have support you don't even realize in the blogosphere." To that, my friend has just answered: "You do at the moment but they're clearly doing their level best to undermine that."

"Should I have posted nothing?" I asked.

"You're damned if you do, you're dead if you don't."

Better to be damned. I'm guilty all right - of sweeping the injustice done on me under the carpet. Bizarre, eh? Well, I'm now sick to death of the assumptions, the distortions and the lies. It may be the end of nourishing obscurity as we know it, it may not. But one thing runs through the mind:

"Publish and be damned."

[tube quiz 1] did you know these

1 There is only one tube station name which does not have any letters of the word "mackerel" in it - which? SJW

2 There are only two tube stations which have all five vowels in them - which? MH, SE

3 ___________ has the shortest escalator on the system - 50 steps. CL

4 The shortest distance between tube stations is ____ to _____ on the Piccadilly line - 0.16 miles. LS, CG

5 The most popular route for tourists is _____ to _____ on the Piccadilly line. It is quicker to walk this distance than travel on the tube. LS, CG

6 The phrase "Mind the Gap" originated on the ________ line. N

7 The Jubilee line was originally going to be called the ________ line. F

8 ________ station on the Piccadilly line was the first to use kestrels and hawks to kill pigeons and stop them setting up homes in stations. N

9 The line covers the longest route - from West Ruislip to Epping you will travel 34 miles without changing. C

10 For non Brits - what is the name commonly given to the London Underground? T


Rsswean

St John's Wood, Mansion House and South Ealing, Chancery Lane, Leicester Square to Covent Garden, Leicester Square to Covent Garden, Northern, Fleet, Northfields, Central, the Tube

[odd one out] it'll make you cry

Who is the odd one out? None of them - they've all cried in public.

How do you feel about public figures crying in public? Women are always saying men should emote more but when they do, they are vilified. Should they cry? Should they not cry?

Another question - you might know who they are [above] and well done but where and when did they cry? Here is Roy crying:



If that was a little too much for you, here's a video to redress the balance:


Famous Cry Babies - The funniest videos clips are here

[the crisis] hang in there

The overwhelming lesson of history is that when the credit system collapses around a nation's ears, fear and gloom are the only things people can see. No one believes economists, as they disagree on how best to tackle the problem and the result is a run on the credit institutions.

Roosevelt gave his "the only thing we have to fear is fear" speech at such a time and the finance loves him for it in getting America off gold. What he did do though was inspire with confidence and in the end, that's all he had to do. Confidence that the government would not fall thereby backed the [now] fiat dollars and the people got through it but not until the leaders' luvverly war had devastated the world.

It's simple logic - either you maintain confidence in the government or the fiat system collapses completely and the results of that don't bear thinking about. Very difficult in our country to be confident in Gordo and yet Gordo himself doesn't back the fiat pound. If you have goods at home, if your home is yours and if you work on spending within your means, a near impossible thing today, then you will live a frugal lifestyle but survive.

It would help to have some spare cash, of course, to buy up some depressed assets whilst you were there.

[sydney substandard] well what's new

Melbourne skyline

So Paul Keating has attacked Sydney eateries? Well, what's new in that? If you want decent food, go to Melbourne, the restaurant capital of Australia.

[labyrinth] twists and turns of the unstraight

There are such bizarre things going on behind the scenes right now that it is like a bad B movie - you know, the one where someone comes out and says something is happening and most people say, "There, there, take your tablets, Jamesie," until he is eventually smothered in mire.

Just now, I had the misfortune to see an email, from July, which had been doctored. I know this because in the original, it was mainly about a particular blogger and a little over one paragraph about me but in the doctored version it is one paragraph about him and a diatribe about me.

[THIS FRAGMENT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST ON OCTOBER 10TH]

Right, I have to say there are a few of us on this case at the moment, some quite extraordinary things have come to light and it points very strongly to our emails being hacked, doctored and distributed as if they were original. Let alone the gross disloyalty of supposed friends, of which one we are fairly certain has the technical expertise to bring this off.

And this author calls my actions bizarre?

Certain people have felt complete freedom to slander me behind the scenes in the past months, whilst smiling on my blog but more particularly in the last week and one name keeps popping up, the common link, a non-visitor, always close to the action and a total innocent. Now that's no surprise but what on earth has come over the others?

The answer is partly in the word "appeasement".

Why would I continue to hobnob with someone who has poured dirt on me and put about the diametric opposite of the truth in most cases? Why would I hobnob with someone who chooses to select certain incidents and present them in such a way that he/she is a babe in arms but I look like a dangerously edgy character?

I think the motivation is fairly clear, wouldn't you say? Either that or they clearly don't have the antennae to see that I usually go back to friendly relations because:

1. I don't hold grudges, don't like feuds and prefer to forget something, once it is over;
2. I prefer to just blog and create things rather than spend my life on dirty slanging matches;
3. I ultimately have faith in human nature, to my detriment;
4. I see it as their problem, not mine.

I wonder if the appeasement theorists have ever heard the expression "olive branch"? No? The down side of this - and it has been commented on this blog by some friends I do consider loyal - is that by putting up with things and letting them continue, true friends depart, perplexed and a bit upset.

I know how true friends act, I know how true friends very much do not act. Trouble is, when a friend receives an email from another blogger whom he has always thought is a pukkha sahib and that sender has misinformed him by passing on some tidbit, he then goes back to my blog with new eyes, sees some perplexing comments by me out of context and starts to come to conclusions.

This is how character assassination works - a little bit here, a few skewed comments there, damning with faint praise and so on. It is never a frontal assault, such as I have been known to do. It's always behind the scenes , heavy with innuendo and half-completed sentences and the one who is the target carries on, oblivious to his every word being scrutinized for juicy morsels.

What's the purpose? Well, in most cases, perhaps they don't think that far along - everyone likes to ooh and ah and tut tut, after all. In one or two cases though, it is much more to an agenda. Watch what happens to me in Bloghounds in the next few days and you'll see what I mean. There are interesting things going down there.

That reminds me of the accusation doing the rounds that I really love - that my megalomaniacal reason for helping start Blogpower and then Bloghounds was to lord it over a group as a god. Does that sound like my rhetoric, by the way? And if it were so, why would I be forever stepping down, urging devolution, asking others to be admins? Seems strange behaviour for a megalomaniac.

In the end, one has two choices:

1. Seek out, identify and answer every allegation and misconstruction one by one, wasting time, wasting nerves and playing to someone else's agenda, hanging on to something already lost;
2. Identify areas of one's life which are giving grief and excise them, keeping the eyes focused on the main issues - true friendships, job and personal blog.

Last volley - everything I have written at Blogpower, Bloghounds and on this blog is true. Look over, scrutinize my better posts where I get my teeth into some issue, link by link by link and at the end I ask that if I have made any factual error, please correct me. Why should I be capable of that in posts and yet not in real life?

When I say I have evidence, then I do. When I have a reason for not using it, there is a reason., a sound reason. When I'm on a case, then there is a case. When I don't have enough for a final conclusion, I present it as an open-ended question. I'm my own worst enemy in later backtracking in the interests of peace and harmony. That is a stupid thing I do because it detracts from what had gone before. Someone once said I was a cow who gave good milk and then kicked the bucket over. Perhaps.

This blog will continue because even though this post concentrates on negatives, there are many, many other positives which are a bit unsung and there are so many issues to blog on. I wouldn't die for my blog, no way but it is certainly a nice outlet and point of communication.

So to hell with the detractors and let's see what tomorrow brings.

[inhumanity] to the defenceless

Liz's photo

I simply can't run the photo from Eurodog's site as it is so upsetting so I'll run a nice shot instead. One truly wonders what the term "human" signifies in the case of those "people" - it's truly sick. Please sign the petition there.

[bailout] explanation for the unitiated

Looking at the U.S., which is not a bad analogy for other parts of the world in terms of bailouts, where is the money coming from? One answer:

The IndyMac debacle is taking a large bite out of FDIC reserves, and if scores of other banks fail in the year ahead, the fund will be depleted. Taxpayers will have to step in.

... and:

To help pay for these bailouts, the government sells securities. And right now, there's plenty of demand because those securities are considered safe in the midst of all the turmoil.

... and:

Lest you think the Fed has run out of ammunition, the central bank, the WSJ reports, has roughly $400 billion left at its disposal and it has a few aces up its sleeves, including lowering interest rates.

... and:

The government hopes to someday sell the toxic securities it buys from the banks.

A certain amount is debt to other countries and though China looms large in this, it is not 50% of total debt, it's far less. China does not seem likely to refuse to fund more debt even though they might not be keen to:

If foreigners like the Chinese go on a buyers’ strike then - it was suggested - the US might resort to printing more money, and that would cause inflation - and a fall in the dollar and in the value of all those treasury bills held by China.

The key might be in the last quote - printing money. Here is a good guide for beginners, despite the look of it. It says that the government can either print money or change the balance sheet, selling securities to the private sector. It goes on:

The true structural cause of persistent high inflation is a fiscal deficit that is not eliminated with cuts in spending and/or increases in (non-seignorage) taxes.

Standard advice to overcome inflation includes selling shorter, which is what we are seeing - short term buybacks. Even at 0%, it is a safe haven for investors as long as the government guarantee of its fiat money is believed by the people.

In the end, this is the critical point. The government is owned by the Fed in real terms, which is owned by groups like Morgan who make a killing in times such as these, who then decide who is bailed out and who is not.

The moment you mention groups like Morgan, you are talking the world money houses and the real government and so we are back, legally as it turns out, dependent on their agenda. In other words, the people, in the end, are owned by the old money and subject to its whims for unrest, war and any other turmoil they care to finance.

This is the S and C syndrome [short and curlies]. It's a simple enough rule. If there is an almighty conflagration in the offing, it clearly needs funding and the old money needs to top up its coffers in order to finance it. Crash-depression-unrest-war ... the old formula every time.

[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].

[lawyers] make 'em all circuit judges

Here's the thing on lawyers which you won't remember that this blogger threatened to post.  It arose from an ongoing discussion over this way - hope you like it.

The first in the series was called "small government".  This is the second.

In a nutshell, we alter the whole paradigm in law.  All current lawyers either join the circuit of travelling magistrates [or indeed fixed ones] and all civil and criminal law is handled through them.  No need for solicitors, just clerks.  No need for juries or jury service, just magistrates.

All law works on precedent and on standard procedures developed and written up over the years, certainly in civil matters and there can easily be available blueprints on how to proceed. 

So it works this way.  

Two people are contracting to buy and sell a home.  The estate agent has the standard forms and explanatory notes on site and these are explained to the two parties and copies given.  However, there is a dispute over the exact boundary of the property and this needs resolution.

First step [gratis] is for the estate agent clerk who handles the legal side to sit down with the two parties and talk common sense.  It should resolve the majority of issues.  But let's say one party has dug his heels in and so they need to get a "travelling" arbiter in who, if almost all lawyers have joined this service, will be like well paid JPs.  His decision is final and is binding in law.  He is paid by the plaintiff, if he was the victor as the loser has lost out.  This reduces spurious dispute.

In criminal matters, the magistrate acts as just that.  There is provision for appeal to three magistrates sitting empanelled.

The thing is, the enormous sums saved by eliminating the legal gravy train go back into ordinary people's pockets but the lawyers themselves don't lose out.  They still earn a decent sum as magistrates and as it was in the case of good lawyers/bad lawyers, people can choose which ones to co-opt and which not to.

By changing the whole nature of adversarial law, all the sophistry, all the hanky-panky and all the rip-offs are swept away.

[hidden readers] where are you, who are you

You know what I'd really like to know?

There are known knowns, such as those who blogroll me and I them and we visit each other and all is roses.  There are those who blogroll me and I them and we never visit.

Then there are the ones this post is about - the fair souls who have blogrolled me and who visit at a distance [maybe via RSS] and because I don't know who they are, I never get a chance to reciprocate.

Step forward and tell me, if you would.

[most unpopular occupations] which

Which is the most unpopular occupation in your eyes at this present time? Some have said that, until recently, lawyers led this list but now politicians have overtaken them. Care to vote on this? Only one vote per ip address per day:

pollcode.com free polls

Which is the most unpopular occupation in your eyes?

Dentists Cold-call telemarketers Traffic wardens Little men on gates at events Politicians Lawyers Record labels Local councils Bureaucrats Other

Record labels must be right up there with the squeeze on Apple which might mean they will abandon their IStore in the near future:

"If word gets out that music publishers are trying to stick it to consumers, and Apple is fighting to keep prices down on their behalf, well, there's liable to be public backlash against the labels. If this thing follows the normal course, there would be calls for boycotts, protests and so on."

[drug of choice] what do you retreat to

When it's all too much for you, when you're thoroughly bored or overwrought, apart from praying to the Good Lord, what do you retreat to?

Up front, I admit that when it's all too much I grab a sheet of A4, a ruler, "B" grade pencil, eraser, calculator and set square and design myself another yacht. You can imagine how many I've designed over the years.

What's your retreat? Tea, coffee, beer, spirits, sex, acid, weed, what? Naturally you're not going to admit some of these.

Alternatively, let's say you were in a room alone and someone had put some XXXX in front of you and departed. You now have serious problems resisting it and if you were left to your own devices, you'd consume it all. What would that XXXX be for you?

Mine is chocolate.

How The Community Reinvestment Act Hosed Us Over

Originally posted at my blog, Buckeye Thoughts.

I write this just so people will know the truth. I could care less about who wins the election in November. You all know I'll be voting for Baldwin. So, here it is:



Watch that video, quickly! It has already been taken down once by YouTube. I don't share the views at the end that McCain will be the "candidate of change" here. Yes, it's true he did try to stop this from happening in '03 but that's a moot point. How is this relevant? Well, considering what the Senate is trying to do (after the House shot it down, wisely listening to their constituencies) and how both Presidential candidates are for this make it quite relevant. I'm just sick of hearing all my professors spouting lies about how the free market alone caused this. If we walk down this path, there will be no turning back!

Spain taught me a multitude of lessons that are, in my opinion, impossible to be learned through any other way than experience. One of them is, while we think we have it bad in this country on occasion, we don't. We are so much more blessed than any other nation in the entire world!

Don't let Congress or the President force this on us! If the Senate passes it, call your Representatives in the House and tell them NO! Feinstein supposedly was reported on Lou Dobbs Tonight as having received 85,000 calls urging her to vote against this. As they say, Let's get to work!

[generation next] return to the old values

Britain has a history of football hooliganism and To Sir With Love type scenarios; the U.S.A. has similar. It is tempting to put it down to some national characteristic or other but this report from Australia, of the former president of the AMA bashed with a baseball bat at an ATM, puts it in perspective:

When news such as this is reported, the immediate assumption is the thugs were young. The assumption was correct. Police are looking for a gang of six or more believed to be behind these attacks, all aged from their late teens to early twenties.

The United Kingdom has this week been shuddering at X-ray images of a 16-year-old with a knife lodged in his skull. That country's psychiatrists are studying the link between low levels of the stress hormone cortisol and delinquent behaviour.

Canada has recently introduced tougher sentencing and plans to name and shame young offenders, abandoning traditional anonymity. And in New Zealand a judge has warned of a "social catastrophe" developing from youth.

Adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg sees several reasons. He believes mass media, including video games, is increasingly violent and may twist those predisposed to violence towards the extreme. "We live in a secular and disconnected society," he said yesterday. "Kids need a moral compass, but they are living in a moral vacuum where Hollywood and the alcohol industry have more influence on them than anything else."

Three point starter plan:

1. The cornerstone is a return to the Judaeo-Christian moorings, which loosely held society and its interpersonal relations in check for decades, which Anon recently described, at this blog, as "all that junk". This is a one generation affair, depending on parents' and teachers' willingness to impart the compassionate and self-disciplinary aspects of it and also depending on other factors.

2. Downsizing everything from classroom sizes to government, in which technology is the key factor in enabling it, for example a return to the one room school, wired for the 21st century. Working far more from home, with sorties to the workplace in small discreet numbers, enabling and economically encouraging at least one parent to work from there.

3. The cutting off of the oxygen supply to the whole pornographic, violent, satanist world culture which has gripped youth today, by means of substituting exciting projects which would not be exciting to today's lost children but to the next generation, brought up more naively and in a more localized environment.

Many other things need doing but these three would start the ball rolling.

[brickbats and bouquets] for fellow bloggers

This is going to alienate some of my regular readers - sorry about the strong opinions:

Bloggers who don't allow comments are virtually saying that their wisdom is enough for the reader, that they don't invite the reader in to put a point of view because many blog comments are shallow [true]. However, what about the serious commenter who really wants to interact? Surely Comment Moderation takes care of that?

Bloggers who use word verification when they are in Blogger/Google don't need the cursed thing and it only puts readers off, having to go through that unpleasant procedure over and over. Admittedly, in other hosts, it is needed.

Bloggers who put "web page" in their profile near the email link are doubly blessed, in my book.

Bloggers who don't answer their commenters in at least half their posts or who answer most of the commenters but not all every time, pointedly leaving some out, should really think of the hurt they might be causing by this omission. Most of us have been guilty of that one.

Bloggers who provide beautiful navigation from their front page and back and all around are triply blessed.

Bloggers whose comment name is a link but when you click on the link, it goes nowhere, should be taken out and shot. [For those with no sense of humour, this is meant to be light-hearted].

Bloggers who link to other bloggers are the salt of the earth - theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[lowest common multiple] it's sort of clear

The lowest common multiple is found by multiplying all the factors which appear in either list:

So the LCM of 60 and 72 is 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 3 × 5 which is 360.

So far, so good. What about this?

900 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 5 x 5
270 = ___2 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 5

The coloured numbers are counted once only as they appear in both columns and don't need to be counted twice. Anything left over [the bold black numbers] are also included in the count.

So:

2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 5 x 5 = 2700 the LCM is 2700. OK?

Now try these: 63,28; 70,64; 147,45; 175, 120

Answers below

252, 2240, 4410, 4200

[luck] some just don't have it, some do

Robert Evans, a transient, was hit by a car [which didn't stop] on a Tuesday evening. He went to hospital, was released early in the morning, tried to cross a railway bridge and was hit by a train.

In 1987, Larry Reynolds was doing contracting work on a building scaffold when he was struck by lightning. In 2004, now aged 57, he was cleaning his shower when lightning struck him again.

25 children at a school in Falkirk in February this year were injured in a pile-up in a school corridor triggered when a first-year pupil stopped to pick up her shoe. Paramedics were called to the school to treat pupils for crush injuries, including ankle sprains, bruising and sore heads.

In March this year, the media called six accidents at the same time around Melbourne "freak" but they were probably referring to the concurrence more than the accidents themselves, which were ordinary.

Some people feel that freak accidents are misnamed and might not be as unexpected as first thought. For example:

According to a study entitled "Demographics of U.S. Lightning Casualties and Damages from 1959 - 1994," by Ronald L. Holle and Raúl E. López of the National Severe Storms Laboratory and E. Brian Curran of the National Weather Service, males account for 84% of lightning fatalities and 82% of injuries.

One snippet supporting this:

Major Summerford, who fought at Flanders, was knocked off his horse by a flash of lightning and paralysed from the waist down. He moved to Canada, and when he was fishing, he was struck again by lightning and his right side was paralysed. In 1930, he was again struck and this time completely paralysed. He died 2 years later.

Did the nature of his business cause this or did he induce this?

Why, for example, when I cross fields sometimes and then walk under street lamps, they go out and then come back on after I've passed by? Why, when I was in Sicily, did the boiler break? Why, back in the UK, did the boiler break two days ago and we won't have hot water until tomorrow? Why did the driving licence arrive from the DVLA and yet the documents didn't?

These things are sent to puzzle us.

[thought for the day] tuesday evening

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but never forget.

[Thomas Szasz, 1973]

You can forgive all right but be very, very wary, all the same.