[blogfocus saturday] life’s little problems

Each Blogfocus, I try to link the pieces with a theme but this evening’s have, quite simply, defeated me. And yet each one either explains or offers some sort of solution to one of life’s little problems. Take the opening rant by one of my favourite bloggers, for example, on the secret to a happy night out:

1

Your humble Snob is a man of the finer things in life - decent vino, Wagner, the two seater, fine cheroots from Cuba, white truffle risotto and Sky Plus. However, there is a side to me that enjoys the grubby side of life. I titter away like a schoolboy reading the Viz. I occasionally have a few too many vinos and end up in one of Edinburgh's lapdancing establishments. They are not quite the American model where you can have a decent steak whilst a lady gyrates away but they are ok for a half-sozzled advocate with a couple of notes in his wallet.

Quiz question: Do the opening three words remind you of anyone?

2

Bryan Appleyard’s mind is somewhere out in the cosmos and he’s found the answer – there is no answer. Pity Stephen Hawking took so long to get round to it – he could have just asked Bryan if he’d had a mind to:

Anyway, last night I was authoritatively informed that, as a result of studying the mathematics of Kurt Godel, Hawking no longer believes in the possibility of a final Theory of Everything. Godel proved the incompletability of any arithmetical system. I and many others could never understand how, if Godel was right - and nobody said he was wrong - any final theory was possible. Hawking and his followers used to pour scorn on such doubts. Now, it seems, he agrees.

3

As someone, sigh, who is having a running battle with a rogue server who likes to do things which get me blocked by people, this piece by Dizzy explains a lot:

All of these problem stems from one thing, and one thing only. The Windows security model. Pretty much by default under Windows XP everyone has full read, write and execute to the entire system by design. The result is that not particularly sophisticated websites can effectively execute code on client machine that is malicious… All roads lead to Microsoft when it comes to prevalence of malware that creates drone networks of compromised machines.

So what must we do – go to a Mac? Adopt Vista?

More of life’s problems here …

[weblog awards] the unfairness of it all

Let’s get the hard sell out of the way first. You know the 2006 Weblog Award Poll? We’re voting for best blogs and the two categories which affect us are the UK Blog and the Humour Blog. Here is the 2006 Weblog Award Poll Navigation Page. Don’t forget to “vote early and vote often”. Actually, you may vote once a day until December 15th.

Now, having said that, let me say this: the whole thing is a total w—k. Worthy candidates like Norm, Samizdata, Jon Swift and one or two others aside, this poll is flawed for these reasons:

1] top blogs are left off both in terms of content and in terms of traffic;
2] it’s completely swamped by the Americans, who have five times the population. And what about tiny New Zealand or Australia?

I mean, seriously, who’s going to compete with Malkin, a most overrated blogger or with Instapundit? As I say, it’s a w—k.

Which brings me to miniscule traffic. It annoys the hell out of me to see some big names promoting themselves shamelessly [not those on my blogroll], getting major traffic and they’re truly neither quality nor well laid out. Of course, they say people visit for the expertise, to read the pearls of wisdom but this seems a very MSM thing to say. Why are they emulating the MSM? Is that what they’re trying to get into?

Then you get some fine blogs where the guys [and gals] think out what they say, they’re also clearly knowledgeable in their field, they present well and more importantly, they invite debate rather than say: “Hey look, I’m the expert – here’s your daily dose.” What happens to them? Either they get invited onto Doughty and they’re never the same again or they’re invited onto Doughty and they stay the same unaffected scribes they always were or else they gradually die away.

I call for us to set up some sort of cooperative for the smaller blogs, some sort of struggling blogger solidarity group and we can draft a few rules. We need to:

1] adopt the motto: ‘do unto other blogs as you would have them do unto you’;
2] be broadminded and accept that others in the scheme are going to have views opposed to ours. So what?;
3] include at least ten posts in a week, no matter how small;
4] actively try to get round to each blogger on our own roll at least once in two days and comment at least three times in the week;
5] promote our blogfriends with either banners, buttons or the occasional link;
6] join in their little promo things e.g. normpoll, tomlist, voluntary-code-free-zone, chicken yoghurt’s book and so on;
7] comment on other’s comments on your own blog whenever you can;
8] link – if it’s in your power to blogroll someone who’s blogrolled you, try to do it. If you can link to a member in a post, do it.

If we, the little people, all do this, with even 100 participants we guarantee ourselves at least basic traffic, we can share ideas and improve our blogs. To this end, I’ve prepared an initial 150x95 banner above, which needs to be cut, pasted then uploaded on your sidebar. It links to an administrative blog where we’ll keep the data, manifesto and ideas sharing. If we want to change the location or go to wordpress or whatever, we just change the banner embedding.

On this blog, we can throw around ideas on how to run this thing better. For now, a start would be just to upload the banner to our sites and show that we've got a solidarity thing going here.

[haggis] hunting season declared open

Happy Birthday, Haggiso!

Beginning with some folklore: Some say the spider watched by Robert the Bruce was escaping from a haggis foraging for food, then setting the atmosphere: The temperature is plummeting, the frosts of winter nestle on the moors and the steam is rising from massed ranks of the haggis hunters, haggishunt.com then offers two nights of luxury at the world famous Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire [if you are picked out of the Grand Prize draw for snaring a Golden Haggis], bottles of Champagne Gobillard NV, Scotsman calendars and then you pass into immortality in The Scotsman's Digital Archive.

Now these Scotsman Calendars on offer – they simply confirm that these guys are serious - I mean – real Scotsman Calendars on offer? To win, all you have to do is browse haggiscam and see if you can spot the haggis. If you’re still not sure if it’s dangerous or not, check the Haggisclopedia.

Scotsman Calendar. A real one? For free! Still can’t believe my eyes. Poor old haggises – they’re in for a nasty shock.

[menage a trois] cyprus, turkey and the eu

Cyprus said on Friday it would get tough over Turkey's EU membership negotiations if its EU partners accepted a last-ditch offer from Ankara to avert partial suspension of talks. Sound complicated?

Basically, Turkey offered to open a major port to Cyprus to normalise trade with EU member states but there appeared to be conditions and that was something up with which Nicosia would not put.

Cyprus has already rejected the Turkish offer, saying it comes with conditions unacceptable to their side. The European Commission suggested slowing down Turkish accession talks by suspending 8 of 35 negotiation areas, or chapters. Cyprus wants any suspension twinned with a specific clause for review of Turkey's progress in opening its ports and airports to Cyprus. Turkey said it would also be prepared to open an airport to Cypriot commercial flights but expected the opening of a port and an airport in Turkish Cypriot northern Cyprus in return.

The EU admitted divided Cyprus as a member in 2004, represented only by Greek Cypriots. Ankara supports a breakaway Turkish Cypriot administration in the occupied north, where it keeps 30,000 troops.

Question - what can be done? Having been in Cyprus and spoken with local businesspeople, what comes through clearly is that they won't have a bar of the invading Turks. They'd fight to the death, if necessary. Having some Turks as clients over here, you can imagine their point of view, although they'd hardly fight to the death over it.

I see a similar situation in the UK with the Scots getting right up English nostrils and 'less than friendly attitudes' coming down from the north. Don't know the solution here either but it does seem that we're in a process of fragmentation and splitting into smaller and smaller ethnic units, opposed to their neighbours. Ossetia, for example.

Now you'll disagree, most like, but I see this as divide and rule. The globalists can't fight empires such as the British but they can pick off individual countries who are effectively ruled from Brussels. Therefore the divisions and grievances between England and its outer members are allowed full sway and even exacerbated.

Once Europe has total sway, then it's a small step to fit it into the North American and Greater Asian Federation structure and eventually, the millennia old process is completed - global government and you can guess who'll head that.

[manned moon base] how would you use your $104 billion

First the article:

NASA announced plans last Monday to send a four-man team to the moon in 2020 with hopes of establishing a permanently-manned base by 2024. Russia's state-owned RKK Energiya has proposed its own moon program, but so far hasn't garnered any support from the country's government. RKA now wishes to join NASA.

Spokesman Igor Panarin told AP: "We want the agreement to reflect Russia's status as a great space power," adding that Russia will contribute technology rather than money to the project. Panarin envisions a relationship much like the one RKA shares with the European Space Agency. Starting in 2008, RKA will launch commercial satellites from France's Kourou launch facility on the eastern coast of French Guyana, using Soyuz rockets, providing boost capability while the ESA maintains the facilities.

NASA remains coy about a figure for a permanent moon base's total cost, but it has said the first mission will likely top $104 billion. With those kinds of costs involved, Panarin's idea of using RKA's Soyuz rockets might be a better idea than developing new booster technology from scratch as is planned.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.federalspace.ru

Now the question: $104 billion! If you had your hands on that amount as a single purpose project[as a government, not as a private individual and maybe kindly donated by the 4th player], how would you deploy it? Would you fund:

1] a programme for eradicating poverty from your country once and for all through some training/employment scheme;

2] the massive build up of a nuclear military presence then go out and colonize, thereby preserving your national culture in perpetuity;

3] building – artificial lakes, monuments, huge complexes, shopping malls and some housing;

4] the space programme as stated because ‘man must’;

5] invest it?

Maybe some other project?

[sicily] not what you might imagine

Welshcakes Limoncello, the lady who posts pics of that most delicious region of the world, had this to say in reply to a comment of mine:

I thought Sicily was poor before I first came here in 1992, too. Of course, poverty exists and you see beggars occasionally, but not as often as you see them in the UK these days.

The reality is that Sicily is rich in natural resources and imports hardly anything, foodwise. One of the main differences from the UK is that few people have mortgages: nearly everyone has some land left to them by their family and they build on that. Most people I know - professionals, admittedly - have 2 or even 3 houses and that's quite hard for me to take in, given how most of us struggle in Britain to keep one.

When I first brought students over on an exchange visit, the first thing they remarked on was the amount of open countryside that you see, with no buildings in sight. Another difference is that, as all over Italy, everybody eats well, because they eat and use what is available.

I think the only way to get to grips with the many contrasts that make up Sicily is to come and experience it. Part of my purpose on this site is to try to show people that it is very different to how they might imagine it.