Andrew Hickey

Liberal Democrat acting leader Vince Cable is boycotting the state visit to Britain of Saudi King Abdullah. 

Mr Cable says he will not attend any of the planned ceremonial events - as would be normal for the leader of one of the main opposition parties. 

Mr Cable told the BBC's Today programme that by any assessment of Saudi Arabia, "the human rights record is appalling". 

He also cited the regime's arms deal with the British firm BAE and the row over alleged corruption surrounding it. 

Mr Cable added: "I think it's quite wrong that as a country we should give the leader of Saudi Arabia this honour."

Boyd describes a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon:

This was middle America's worst nightmare: white teenage girls screaming ecstatically at Chuck Berry.

 Boyd noticed a familiar figure looking on:

 I blurted out "That's John Lee Hooker." The girls around me started yelling, "John Lee? John Lee? Where? Where?" I pointed towards the wings. They started chanting, "We want John Lee, we want John Lee" and were quickly joined by half the hall - hundreds of kids. 

Boyd goes on: 

In that moment, I decided I would live in England and produce music for this audience. America seemed a desert in comparison. These weren't the privileged elite, they were just kids, Animals fans. And they knew who John Lee Hooker was! 

No white person in America in 1964 - with the exception of me and my friends, of course - knew who John Lee Hooker was.

"My preoccupation as a very young early teenager was a music form that I might have missed. ... If I had missed it, I would never have sung," he says. "If I hadn't heard the Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Little Richard music, I wouldn't have been drawn to music. Most of the music we (in England) were surrounded by was slush, without any commitment. ... I was born again and saved and reincarnated by American music." 

Dave Pegg, long-time bassist for British folk-rock group Fairport Convention, well remembers Plant's youthful musical passion. Monday mornings often found Pegg, Plant and other teens — including future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, and future Traffic members Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi — waiting for Birmingham record shop The Diskery to open so they could buy the latest records. 

"Robert and Jim Capaldi were kind of walking histories about blues and obscure soul albums," says Pegg.

The federal government struck a blow for religious liberty this month in a Clarksburg, West Virginia courtroom. The case is fascinating and hilarious, and the winning argument has the paradoxical benefit of upholding a man’s right to a religious claim that the court’s ruling proves to be factually ludicrous.

The case also neatly disproves the absurd “Christian persecution” narrative promoted by perpetually aggrieved privileged hegemons and the hucksters who rile them up, like for example Fox News TV-talker Todd Starnes.

Matt Harvey has the story for the local paper, the Exponent Telegram, “Jury rules for worker in religious discrimination suit against Consol Energy” (via Christian Nightmares):

A federal jury Thursday [Jan. 15] ruled in favor of a general laborer at the Consol Energy/Consolidation Coal Co.’s Mannington mining operations who said he was forced to retire because of his religious beliefs.

The jury returned $150,000 in compensatory damages for Beverly R. Butcher Jr. …

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sued Consol Energy on behalf of Butcher. The federal agency’s filing asserted Butcher, an evangelical Christian, was told he must submit to biometric hand scanning for time and attendance tracking, even though that is against his religious beliefs. …

The jury found that Butcher “had a sincere religious belief that conflicted with an employment requirement” and that Butcher informed his employer of that belief.

The jury also found that Consol Energy failed to provide a reasonable accommodation for Butcher’s beliefs and that it wouldn’t have been an “undue hardship” to do so.

“To make the environment OK, how much of our stuff can we keep?”
“Well, we’re facing a catastrophe in the long run. Greenhouse emissions aren’t being reduced at a significant rate, we’re still cutting down vast swathes of rainforests, species are going extinct at a quicker rate than when the dinosaurs disappeared-”
“-yeah, but what I’m asking is, to make that OK, how much of our stuff will we have to chuck out?”
“…s-stuff?”
“Yeah, the good stuff! The stuff that does the damage. Cars, fridges, things made of plastic. Stuff you can just chuck on the ground when you’re finished with it! You know, fantastic stuff! Vodka, guns, squirty cheese! If we keep most of the stuff, will things still be all right?”
“No.”
“Definitely?”
“Yes.”

- Mitchell and Webb

To begin, we note a few things:

1. The Green Party doesn’t seem to handle the media very well.
2. The Green Party has quite a few odd policies.
3. The Green Party has shifted its positioning somewhat from being “the party you vote for if you’re a bit more environmentally conscious” to “the left-wing vote if you feel Labour/the Lib Dems have tacked too close to the Thatcherite consensus.”

Now, one might very easily attack Natalie Bennett for, e.g. her comments as recorded in The Economist, or her reportedly disastrous interview on The Sunday Politics (which I haven’t watched but am told is Bad). It’s probably quite fun, go right ahead, pile on. It’s also probably quite fun to dig through the Green party policy list and find all the weird and stupid things enumerated therein. There’s a lot there, and some of it is bizarre. I’ve seen much justifiable criticism levelled at large numbers of their ideas – which are, apparently, an upshot of the party structure.

All of which is to say – look, to the conventional politics-watcher, I know how these folks appear. A UKIP of the left in more ways than one, maybe. Less bigoted, but a party promising the moon on a stick that will, in the unlikely event that they get anywhere near power, be crushed by, well, the realities of being anywhere near power. After all, look what happened to the Lib Dems – and they were far closer to the centrist positions of the other parties when the coalition was formed.

However

I remember someone’s complaint about the Greens is that with them it’s “hair-shirts or nothing”. This is a fair observation, but one that I posit might have come about because it is, in fact, correct. Every time the IPCC or whoever puts out a paper saying guys, here is precisely how screwed we are now, if we carry on like this things will definitely get worse and successive governments and, largely, populaces, all shrug and say we’ll take the iPads, thanks (see the Mitchell and Webb sketch quoted at the beginning). Not to get alarmist here, but I’m pretty sure that unless nuclear fusion, the perpetually-50-years-off-dream, gets sorted out really damn quickly, then we’re all going to be neck-deep in seawater come 2070¹.

This is the problem, I think, with the conventional political reading. They oppose air travel! But Britain’s a major transit hub! They’re going to tax all the companies out of the country! etc etc etc. You can carry on in this vein for a while. Eventually, though, if you stop to take seriously the idea that, well, maybe we are headed for environmental catastrophe, this sort of thing might make a bit more sense. If we maybe assumed that this is not wholly posturing, and that at least some of the Greens – maybe not the ones who’ve been drawn in by its new position as the alternative left party, but certainly the ones who have been more active in forming party policy over the years – properly buy in to the whole planet-is-heading-for-catastrophe thing, it might explicate some of their actions and positions somewhat. If you believe this stuff, on a deeper level than just the surface knowledge of it that most of us – myself very much included – have of it, maybe worrying about the growth of the economy is subordinate to the ultimate survival of the world.

“Aw, that sucks! I don’t think I want to live if we can’t keep the stuff.”
“You’re thinking about this in the wrong way. It’s a question of taking responsibility-“
“It’s a question of working out how much great stuff we can keep without actually killing ourselves or making the whole place so uncomfortable that the great stuff doesn’t make up for it anymore. And that would have to be pretty bloody uncomfortable, let me tell you.”
“We have to-“
“-I mean, I’ve got Sky Plus. I’ve just got a new DVD player, how many species is that making extinct, and are they ones that I give a toss about?”
“We have to remember that we’re only one animal out of many billions-“
“-no, I want you to tell it to me in cars and fridges. Are you saying we have to get rid of cars or we’re dead? Because that is the same as saying ‘we’re dead’.”

Ultimately, the real danger is not that the Greens are, on the small scale, wrong, but that they are, on the large scale, right.

The Pitch: This Black Mirror episode is told through the story of four friends, all of them eager modern types who are regular users of social media, obviously. One of them discovers a mysterious and anonymous account that is sending messages to celebrities, revealing supposed secrets and telling them to ‘repent for their sins’. Surprise turns to shock when it’s revealed that the secrets are all true and celebrities all over the world start confessing their secrets. Soon, more and more of these accounts appear, all revealing deeply held, personal and private things that no one but the accused could have known about. Suddenly, it’s not just celebrities being accused but politicians and business leaders as more accounts spring up, each using the same format and all talking about sin. Finally, the accounts turn to the rest of the population, and everyone finds their sins exposed for the whole world. Before long, it’s realised that the Second Coming has occurred, and God has returned to judge everyone through the internet.

The final shot is a room deep within a CIA facility, as a man smiles to himself while typing code into a computer. We see it running the accounts and then a flash of code reveals it to be the Global Online Database.

The Cast:
John (Friend capable of delivering infodumps as dialogue): Ben Whishaw
Alice (Friend good at showing other people what she’s found online): Faye Marsay
Tamara (Friend good at asking questions that move the plot along): Jenna Coleman
Brian (Friend who’s American, to help us sell it there): Aaron Paul
Newsreader: Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Newsreader who didn’t want to appear, but don’t tell Krishnan that he wasn’t our first choice: Jon Snow
Scarily intense fire and brimstone priest interviewed on TV: Donald Sumpter
Very liberal priest who becomes more fundamentalist with each TV appearance: Russell Tovey
Ambiguously smiling CIA person: Rob Lowe

Likelihood of dominating Twitter trending topics while on: Very high
Likelihood of people finding the ending a shocking twist, not a dodgy cop out: Worryingly high
Likelihood of someone implying you’re thick and didn’t understand the subtlety because you didn’t like it: Very high

I posted this back on 3/10/05. I have nothing to add to it at this time…

My friend/employer Jack Kirby co-created Captain America and did more stories of the character than anyone else did. From time to time, articles pop up that attempt to define Captain America's position on some real issue of the day…or someone claims that their view on some controversial topic is the view Captain America would hold. And hey, there's a meaningful endorsement: "I have a comic book superhero on my side!"

I don't always know how Jack would have felt about certain issues, and just because he said something to me in 1971 about, say, capital punishment doesn't mean he would have felt that way about it in 2005. I try to be real careful not to put my words and thoughts into his mouth but I feel pretty secure in saying that Jack's response would have been that Captain America was a fictional character; that though he may have embodied a certain kind of patriotism, at least in Jack's stories, trying to extrapolate how the hero would have felt about 9/11 or abortion or nuclear test bans or anything of the sort is grasping at something that simply does not and cannot exist.

Certain things get established about a character — their name, their origin, specific adventures — and these are generally kept consistent as the property is handed from writer to writer, though even this is not always the case. Other aspects are even more prone to variance as different creators take charge of the strip for what may be short or long periods and infuse it with their worldview. Jack rarely looked at what others did with characters he'd started but when he did, it was very rare that he recognized his children. He saw them saying and doing things that he would never have had them say or do…and Jack didn't necessarily think this made the other writer wrong. It was kind of like, "That's his interpretation of the Hulk, not mine." Each reader is free to accept either version or neither or parts of this one and that one.

So when someone asks what Captain America would have felt about some topic, the first question is, "Which Captain America?" If the character's been written by fifty writers, that makes fifty Captain Americas, more or less…some closely in sync with some others, some not. And even a given run of issues by one creator or team is not without its conflicts. When Jack was plotting and pencilling the comic and Stan Lee was scripting it, Stan would sometimes write dialogue that did not reflect what Jack had in mind. The two men occasionally had arguments so vehement that Jack's wife made him promise to refrain. As she told me, "For a long time, whenever he was about to take the train into town and go to Marvel, I told him, 'Remember…don't talk politics with Stan.' Neither one was about to change the other's mind, and Jack would just come home exasperated." (One of Stan's associates made the comment that he was stuck in the middle, vis-a-vis his two main collaborators. He was too liberal for Steve Ditko and too conservative for Kirby.)

Jack's own politics were, like most Jewish men of his age who didn't own a big company, pretty much Liberal Democrat. He didn't like Richard Nixon and he really didn't like the rumblings in the early seventies of what would later be called "The Religious Right." At the same time, he thought Captain America represented a greater good than the advancement of Jack Kirby's worldview.

During the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, Jack was outraged when Ollie North appeared before Congress and it wasn't just because North lied repeatedly or tried to justify illegal actions. Jack thought it was disgraceful that North wore his military uniform while testifying. The uniform, Jack said, belonged to every man and woman who had every worn it (including former Private First Class Jack Kirby) and North had no right to exploit it the way he did. I always thought that comment explained something about the way Kirby saw Captain America. Cap, obviously, should stand for the flag and the republic for which it stands but — like the flag — for all Americans, not merely those who wish to take the nation in some exclusionary direction.

In much the same way, one of the many things Nixon had done that offended Jack was an attempt many decried, on the part of that administration, to usurp the American flag as a symbol of support for Richard Nixon.Jack's 1976-1977 stories of Captain America — the ones where he had near-complete control — show very little evidence of his own political beliefs of the time. He felt strongly about many things happening in the world at that time, especially various battles and hostage situations relating to Israel, but he chose to keep his hero above those frays and to deal more in the abstract. Captain America made his greatest statement by wearing the flag with pride and by triumphing over all forms of adversity.

To Jack, it was the great thing about the American spirit: That it was born of gutsy determination and, as with any good superhero, compassion for all. Some of the storylines he talked about but never had the chance to put into print would have reinforced the idea that Captain America was greater than any one man…including those who created his adventures.

(Sidenote: This is in response to a conversation that’s taking place amongst people I know IRL, and if I can somehow figure out a way to communicate this message to the people that really need to hear it, I may remove this post from the blog for anonymity reasons)

You don’t know what it’s like to have to choose between spending time with friends, or in a community which purports to include you, and not putting yourself through huge levels of anxiety at best and a meltdown at worst.

You don’t know what it’s like to look forward to it anyway, because it’s all you’ve got, and sometimes it hasn’t been too bad; you don’t know what it’s like for “I probably won’t freak out too much, and if I do there might be a way around it” to be the very definition of “looking forward to it”.

You don’t know what it’s like to put on your favourite clothes and your favourite music and everyone else’s favourite neurotypical-passing brave face and persuade yourself that you will have fun tonight, only for it to go as badly as, deep down, you knew it would all along.

You don’t know what it’s like to feel out of sorts for days and to blame yourself for it because you knew you couldn’t handle it and you should have stayed at home. Again.

You don’t know what it’s like to have had a recent meltdown on a loud, crowded, chaotic, drunken night out, to remember how that felt, and to not want to just relax and try again next time.

You don’t know what it’s like to feel isolated and lonely even when you’re literally living amongst the biggest social circle you’ve ever had, and more than likely the biggest social circle you will ever have, in a city with seemingly infinite opportunities, because all they ever want to do is that one kind of socialising mentioned above.

You don’t know what it’s like to suddenly do a U-turn and start blaming yourself not only for going, but also for not going.

You don’t know what it’s like for people who care about you to think “Please don’t feel pressured, it’s okay if you don’t want to come” is enough; it doesn’t occur to them to find alternatives that don’t need to come with a warning. You don’t know what it’s like for them to think “You don’t have to drink” is enough; it doesn’t occur to them that if everyone else’s night is revolving around the idea of getting drunk, you’re maybe going to feel a little bit left out. You don’t know what it’s like for people to think not literally forcing you to do things you don’t want to means that they deserve an ally cookie.

You don’t know what it’s like to feel selfish for even thinking about this issue, for not just going with the majority and accepting you can’t always have your own way and compromising, even just in your own head, when all your life all you’ve ever done is fucking compromise.

You don’t know what it’s like to be feel like you’re judgmental and anti-fun, because you’ve heard people talk badly about others who stay quiet on the sidelines and don’t drink and don’t get involved much, and maybe they’re tolerating it from you because they know you’re autistic, but even so, that’s all that you are. Tolerated.

You don’t know what it’s like for people to assume you just don’t want social interaction, because you’re autistic.

You don’t know what it’s like for people to assume you’re just bad at social interaction, even though you’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve left an overloading event only to sit and talk for hours with your best friend back in halls, and the number of times you’ve arranged lunch or coffee or cinema or so many other things with individuals or smaller groups.

You don’t know what it’s like to have the problem framed as just a fact of autistic life, a sad tragedy that cannot be resolved, because nobody stops to wonder if they’re part of the problem, however small. You don’t know what it’s like to be told, in whatever way, “you can’t just change society” by countless people who, themselves, constitute “society” – to paraphrase a friend, we are disabled by you.

You don’t know what it’s like to be told how complicated you’re told it is to do one thing, yet how easy it apparently is to sort out pre-drinks, a bar, a club, have a few back-up clubs in mind in case you don’t get into the first one, and the nightbus route home, all with increasing alcohol levels as they progress through the night – impressive if you ask me, especially given the rate at which other suggestions are dismissed because nobody can be bothered to organise them.

You don’t know what it’s like to be told to just arrange it all yourself and to actually do so, only for it all to fall apart later that day in favour of Drinks In Someone’s Room, Part Infinity, when you know that’s going to involve more people in one small space than you can manage, and to have people reassure you that it’s all going to be totally okay because you can just bring Diet Coke. You don’t know what it’s like when the Diet Coke doesn’t miraculously level out your sensory input, or how frustrating it is when, inevitably, it ends badly.

You don’t know what it’s like to, after all that, resign yourself to taking the path of least resistance and play along with the “autistic person can’t control their emotions and doesn’t have empathy and threw a tantrum and now they’re really sorry” trope, and try in future try to be more calm and tactful when raising the issue, which of course usually means “don’t raise it at all”.

You don’t know what it’s like for people to refuse to hear this unless you have positive solutions, when this exclusionary system of socialising has become so unquestioned, so normal, that nobody can conceive of anything else.

You don’t know what it’s like to be the inconvenience.

You don’t know what it’s like to be the afterthought.

You don’t know what it’s like.

You don’t.

So don’t fucking tell me that I have to accept it.

I have been really enjoying literarystarbucks.tumblr.com, which publishes complicated jokes about what famous authors and fictional characters order at Starbucks. I like it so much I wish I knew more great literature, so I could get more of the jokes.

Since the creators seem to be restricting themselves to the literary world, I hope they won’t mind if I fail to resist the temptation to steal their technique for my own field of interest. Disclaimer: two of these are widely-known philosophy jokes and not original to me.

Parmenides goes up to the counter. “Same as always?” asks the barista. Parmenides nods.

Pythagoras goes up to the counter and orders a caffe Americano. “Mmmmm,” he says, tasting it. “How do you guys make such good coffee?” “It’s made from the freshest beans,” the barista answers. Pythagoras screams and runs out of the store.

Thales goes up to the counter, says he’s trying to break his caffeine habit, and orders a decaf. The barista hands it to him. He takes a sip and spits it out. “Yuck!” he says. “What is this, water?”

Gottfried Leibniz goes up to the counter and orders a muffin. The barista says he’s lucky since there is only one muffin left. Isaac Newton shoves his way up to the counter, saying Leibniz cut in line and he was first. Leibniz insists that he was first. The two of them come to blows.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel goes up to the counter and gives a tremendously long custom order in German, specifying exactly how much of each sort of syrup he wants, various espresso shots, cream in exactly the right pattern, and a bunch of toppings, all added in a specific order at a specific temperature. The barista can’t follow him, so just gives up and hands him a small plain coffee. He walks away. The people behind him in line are very impressed with his apparent expertise, and they all order the same thing Hegel got. The barista gives each of them a small plain coffee, and they all remark on how delicious it tastes and what a remarkable coffee connoisseur that Hegel is. “The Hegel” becomes a new Starbucks special and is wildly popular for the next seventy years.

Socrates goes up to the counter. “What would you like?” asks the barista. “What would you recommend?” asks Socrates. “I would go with the pumpkin spice latte,” says the barista. “Why?” asks Socrates. “It’s seasonal,” she answers. “But why exactly is a seasonal drink better than a non-seasonal drink?” “Well,” said the barista, “I guess it helps to connect you to the rhythm of the changing seasons.” “But do you do other things to connect yourself to that rhythm?” asked Socrates. “Like wear seasonal clothing? Or read seasonal books? If not, how come it’s only drinks that are seasonal?” “I’m not sure,” says the barista. “Think about it,” says Socrates, and leaves without getting anything.

Rene Descartes goes up to the counter. “I’ll have a scone,” he says. “Would you like juice with that?” asks the barista. “I think not,” says Descartes, and he ceases to exist.

Jean-Paul Sartre goes up to the counter. “What do you want?” asks the barista. Sartre thinks for a long while. “What do? I want?” he asks, and wanders off with a dazed look on his face.

William of Occam goes up to the counter. He orders a coffee.

Adam Smith goes up to the counter. “I’ll have a muffin,” he says. “Sorry,” says the barista, “but those two are fighting over the last muffin.” She points to Leibniz and Newton, who are still beating each other up. “I’ll pay $2 more than the sticker price, and you can keep the extra,” says Smith. The barista hands him the muffin.

John Buridan goes up to the counter and stares at the menu indecisively.

Ludwig Wittgenstein goes up to the counter. “I’ll have a small toffee mocha,” he says. “We don’t have small,” says the barista. “Then what sizes do you have?” “Just tall, grande, and venti.” “Then doesn’t that make ‘tall’ a ‘small’?” “We call it tall,” says the barista. Wittgenstein pounds his fist on the counter. “Tall has no meaning separate from the way it is used! You are just playing meaningless language games!” He storms out in a huff.

St. Anselm goes up to the counter and considers the greatest coffee of which it is possible to conceive. Since existence is more perfect than nonexistence, the coffee must exist. He brings it back to his table and drinks it.

Ayn Rand goes up to the counter. “What do you want?” asks the barista. “Exactly the relevant question. As a rational human being, it is my desires that are paramount. Since as a reasoning animal I have the power to choose, and since I am not bound by any demand to subordinate my desires to that of an outside party who wishes to use force or guilt to make me sacrifice my values to their values or to the values of some purely hypothetical collective, it is what I want that is imperative in this transaction. However, since I am dealing with you, and you are also a rational human being, under capitalism we have an opportunity to mutually satisfy our values in a way that leaves both of us richer and more fully human. You participate in the project of affirming my values by providing me with the coffee I want, and by paying you I am not only incentivizing you for the transaction, but giving you a chance to excel as a human being in the field of producing coffee. You do not produce the coffee because I am demanding it, or because I will use force against you if you do not, but because it most thoroughly represents your own values, particularly the value of creation. You would not make this coffee for me if it did not serve you in some way, and therefore by satisfying my desires you also reaffirm yourself. Insofar as you make inferior coffee, I will reject it and you will go bankrupt, but insofar as your coffee is truly excellent, a reflection of the excellence in your own soul and your achievement as a rationalist being, it will attract more people to your store, you will gain wealth, and you will be able to use that wealth further in pursuit of excellence as you, rather than some bureaucracy or collective, understand it. That is what it truly means to be a superior human.” “Okay, but what do you want?” asks the barista. “Really I just wanted to give that speech,” Rand says, and leaves.

Voltaire goes up to the counter and orders an espresso. He takes it and goes to his seat. The barista politely reminds him he has not yet paid. Voltaire stays seated, saying “I believe in freedom of espresso.”

Thomas Malthus goes up to the counter and orders a muffin. The barista tells him somebody just took the last one. Malthus grumbles that the Starbucks is getting too crowded and there’s never enough food for everybody.

Immanuel Kant goes up to the counter at exactly 8:14 AM. The barista has just finished making his iced cinnamon dolce latte, and hands it to him. He sips it for eight minutes and thirty seconds, then walks out the door.

Bertrand Russell goes up to the counter and orders the Hegel. He takes one sip, then exclaims “This just tastes like plain coffee! Why is everyone making such a big deal over it?”

Pierre Proudhon goes up to the counter and orders a Tazo Green Tea with toffee nut syrup, two espresso shots, and pumpkin spice mixed in. The barista warns him that this will taste terrible. “Pfah!” scoffs Proudhon. “Proper tea is theft!”

Sigmund Freud goes up to the counter. “I’ll have ass sex, presto,” he says. “What?!” asks the barista. “I said I’ll have iced espresso.” “Oh,” said the barista. “For a moment I misheard you.” “Yeah,” Freud tells her. “I fucked my mother. People say that.” “WHAT?!” asks the barista. “I said, all of the time other people say that.”

Jeremy Bentham goes up to the counter, holding a $50 bill. “What’s the cheapest drink you have?” he asks. “That would be our decaf roast, for only $1.99,” says the barista. “Good,” says Bentham and hands her the $50. “I’ll buy those for the next twenty-five people who show up.”

Patricia Churchland walks up to the counter and orders a latte. She sits down at a table and sips it. “Are you enjoying your beverage?” the barista asks. “No,” says Churchland.

Friedrich Nietzsche goes up to the counter. “I’ll have a scone,” he says. “Would you like juice with that?” asks the barista. “No, I hate juice,” says Nietzsche. The barista misinterprets him as saying “I hate Jews”, so she kills all the Jews in Europe.

So I’m back on the social networks already, because I’m a weak-minded fool. One of the discussions that I managed to embroil myself in this morning was the big old British train nationalisation barney. I’m not (in this, at least) such a blinkered ideologue as to think that a nationalised rail service would solve all, probably most, or possibly even any of the rail network’s problems. There’s a range of tolerances when it comes to rail networks – some are “good”, some are “bad” – but most are indifferent – annoying when they fail, unnoticed when they’re properly functional. Britain falls into the last category – possibly leaning a little far towards the dysfunctional end, depending on how much weight you give to stuff like this, or, indeed, your own lived experience.

It also happens that our train services are mostly privatised (there are complicating factors to do with Network Rail but I’m not going to get into that now). I don’t think there’s that much that would change if the railways were nationalised. I don’t think everything would start magically running on time, or that some of the staff would stop being rude or patronising because of national pride or whatever.

Shall I say that again, maybe? “While I’m generally opposed to privatisation of public services on principle, I’m not trying to claim renationalisation of the franchises would be a magic panacea for the country’s rail transport ills”. Just so we’re clear.

However

It must be noted that – here’s the important bit, folks – after subsidies are taken into account, there was only one private rail operator, West Coast, that delivered a net contribution to the public purse in 2013¹. All the rest were subsidised to such a degree that the net effect was their taking money from the government to operate the franchises, while paying millions in dividends to shareholders². West Coast’s net contribution was £5m, by the way, whereas the currently publicly-run East Coast was able to return £16m³.

Now, call me a communist, but something about this doesn’t quite add up. I’m not suggesting the government initiates some kind of big eminent domain train-grab, but that when the privatising firms pack it in (as was the case with East Coast) or when the franchises lapse, we transfer their ownership back to public hands⁴. There is definitely something to be said for not completely disregarding things that in most ways generally work, but in this case it seems as though it might be possible for renationalisation to allow them to work the same – with potential for them to be better, even! At very least, maybe we can take from the East Coast line the lesson that, if the trains are going to be a bit rubbish, they can become a bit rubbish while also not needlessly paying a middleman millions of pounds for the trouble. If the railway travel experience is always going to be mostly agreeable but with occasional slaps in the face, I’d really they rather not pick my pocket⁵ while they’re giving me a backhander.

Or, y’know, whatever.

civil rights: first generation fights it, second generation accepts it, third generation chafes at the suggestion it was ever even an issue

— David Malki ! (@malki) January 20, 2015

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win, then their children claim it was their idea all along.

— David Malki ! (@malki) January 20, 2015

I kinda liked this last phrase so I mocked up a design for Teespring! I mainly want to get one for myself.

HERE IT IS:

The shirts are available for 5 days only. I also made a bumper sticker version:

The stickers are available through StickerMule, a store that also sells my other stickers by the each if you ever want just a single one of them.

Do people ever say that? “By the each”? Sounds weird to me but I swear I’ve heard people say it. Now, it’s always sounded weird even when they said it, but I’m pretty sure they were grown-ups, so who knows??

Wondermark Valentine cards are still available too!

1. Look! Look! It’s Emma Barnes’ awesome cover for Book Two of The Devices, The Locksley Exploit.

Isn’t it lovely? I love the way it echoes the design of The Pendragon Protocol‘s cover. Also the way it uses the strapline. And how green it is. Mmm.

Here’s that draft blurb in full:

It’s 2015, and Camelot and Sherwood are at war.

The Circle, the UK paramilitary agency whose Knights carry the devices of the members of King Arthur’s Round Table, is hunting the Green Chapel, eco-activists allied to Robin Hood’s Merry Men. For the Knights, this quest is personal as well as political: the Chapel’s leader, Jory Taylor, is himself an errant Knight – and he has stolen the Holy Grail from the British Museum.

But this war is fought with modern weapons, and nowhere – from the Circle’s Thameside fortress to a Bristol squat, from the oldest pub in England to a music festival in Cheshire – will remain untouched.

Before long, the enmity between its greatest heroes will tear Britain apart.

2. The equally exciting news is that The Locksley Exploit is getting an early ebook release: it should be available on Monday 2 March 2015, with the paperback edition to follow on Monday 1 June.  I’ll be posting links when they’re available.

3. In honour of all this, this website has been thoroughly updated, with a revised page for The Locksley Exploit itself, a whole stack more Character pages (including extracts from the text of the book) and an updated Heraldry page featuring more shields. With luck a trailer for the book will follow shortly, to match the one for The Pendragon Protocol.

Many will have noticed the phenomenon of the “male TERF”, that is a man, typically regarded as a left wing progressive, declaring himself a feminist ally, or perhaps even a male feminist, where the feminism he signs up to is the transphobic, whorephobic, anti porn kind.

In response to a furore over comments made by Rupert Read, a Green Party member who seeks to be MP for Cambridge, on Twitter and on his blog, a friend commented to me that the existence of male TERFs made the world “a truly strange place”. I have to say that I disagree. I think it’s entirely a natural place to be.

Mr Read, reassuringly for the trans people, sex workers and avid pornography consumers of Cambridge will likely be fighting UKIP for 4th place come May, but that’s not really the point…

Despite declaring themselves “radical”, the feminists who sign up to the transphobic, whorephobic, anti porn kind of feminism are basically reactionaries. There are few things more conservative than the view that trans people are dirty perverts who shouldn’t be indulged in our supposed delusion, that sex workers are wanton harlots who are certainly to be discouraged, and that masturbation is some kind of social ill that needs eradicating.

These are non-threatening ideologies which do not trouble the patriarchy one iota. Any man holding these views would likely be entirely safe and uncontroversial in espousing them in the surroundings of a conservative 19th century gentlemen’s club.

“Male TERFism” thus gives the “male feminist” the best of both worlds: they get to have the ideological seal of approval which comes from knowing you’re an “ally to women”, even if the women in question also happen to be the worst kind of reactionary bigot hypocrites, while signing up for an ideology which requires them to do nothing that would even draw the ire of the Daily Mail on a bad day.

The only surprising thing about male TERFs is that lots more reactionary men who still want a bit of left wing approval haven’t cottoned onto the wheeze.

Back in October, I covered some of the madness of one of Labour’s ‘we are the One True Party and none shall stand in our way’ true believers, and as a blog written by someone outside the Labour Party could never change his mind, he’s doubling down on it.

The proposition this time is that the surefire way for Labour to win the election is to proclaim that they will govern as a single party, or they won’t be in government at all. Apparently the political equivalent of a child’s tantrum and declaring you don’t want to play with anyone at all will be the secret weapon that makes everyone vote Labour. Quite why Luke Akehurst thinks that a party getting just over 30% in the polls wouldn’t get laughed out of the room for suggesting that, he doesn’t explain (and if we had an even vaguely sensible electoral system the idea would be so bizarre as to be inconceivable).

Yet again, though, it’s someone imagining that what’s happening in our politics is just a temporary blip and things will get back to normal as soon as those naughty voters stop messing about and give their votes to the two big parties, just like they’re supposed to. In this view, no one is voting SNP, Green, Lib Dem, UKIP or whoever else because they agree with their policies, it’s just because they need to be showing Labour and the Tories that they need to recommit to Full Socialism Now/Blairism/Proper One Nation Toryism/Red Blooded Hyper-Thatcherism (delete as applicable) and then they’ll return to the fold. In this view, Labour is the One True Party for voters who are vaguely on the left (where ‘left’ equals ‘not Tory’) but by occasionally being stupidly pluralist it has let voters forget that. If it now forcefully reminds people that it is the One True Party (accept no imitations), they will all be instantly struck by the truth of this statement and happily vote Labour again.

(The mirror of this argument is also used on the right with the same expected result – everyone who is not Labour seeing the error of their ways and voting Tory again, like they’re supposed to. This shared image of themselves is why many people can look from Tory to Labour and back again without noticing much difference.)

One day soon, it’s going to sink in to some people that the old politics has likely gone forever and won’t be coming back no matter how hard they might wish for it. Until then, there’ll be lots of laughs to be gained from watching them insist that the One True Party is so powerful, even reality must bend to its will.

There’s a certain inevitability in the fact that the day after the Greens break through 10% in a poll, a ‘look at all these wacky Green policies’ article appears in the Telegraph. Those of us with long memories will remember similar articles appearing on a regular basis over the years, right back to 1989 when they normally featured some reference to David Icke as Prime Minister. (At that point, the height of Icke’s weirdness was having played for Coventry City and being one of the Greens’ five Principal Speakers – the wearing turquoise and seeing alien lizards everywhere were still in his future)

However, it seems to me that this sort of coverage misses the main issue and reveals the media’s expectation as to how political parties should work. The general picture painted of political parties is that they’re monolithic entities in which all members will agree with the party line at all times. When a party’s policy on something changes, it’s usually presented as the product of some nebulous process going on behind closed doors (‘party sources tell me they’re thrashing out the details of their new policy…’) that all party members will be expected to adopt when its decided by those same nebulous processes.

In short, most journalists appear to have got their ideas of how parties work from Stalin. Policy comes from above, all members must agree and factions or dissent are intrinsically bad. And in true Stalinist style, any facts that disagree with this narrative should be ignored. This is why coverage of party conferences is happy to depict them as a never-ending range of set piece speeches and photo opportunities, with party members as just a backdrop for the Important People to speak at.

In this view, the only policy-related thing members have to concern themselves with is memorising what the party line is that day, and they definitely should be kept well away from making it. This is why they have such a problem in covering democratic parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, where policy actually comes from members, and especially so with the Greens who properly collate all the policies of the party and put it on their website. (While the Lib Dems are good at encouraging people to make policy, the party’s not so good at actually displaying that policy in an easily-found way)

The problem is that this giant block of policy isn’t seen by the media for what it is – a body of ideas that’s been built up over many years, through many debates and votes of the members – but through their existing idea of how parties work. Thus, they assume that these Green policies have been worked up by policy wonks through the usual processes and aren’t something that’s come from the bottom up. The question that should be asked, but never is, is where are the similar detailed policies from the other parties? Sure, there are various issues and policies on their website, but those are normally limited to whatever’s salient at the time, and all can be easily dispatched to the memory hole the moment someone in the leadership decides it needs to be changed.

People may agree or not with the Green policies, but they should be congratulated for putting them out in the open and sticking to them, not hiding them away or not even bothering to come up with them.

One year ago, I wrote Ten Things I Want To Stop Seeing On The Internet In 2014.

And now it’s 2015, and I think things are getting better. Take doge. I swear to God that the last time I saw the word doge, it was referring to an honest-to-God Venetian noble. And the price of dogecoin is down an order of magnitude from its peak last February. The War on Doges is starting to seem winnable.

I can’t take any credit for this. It has been a concerted effort on the part of millions of people who saw doge memes on Facebook, let their fingers briefly drift towards the “share” button, and then pulled themselves back from the precipice, restrained by their better nature.

But in the hopes that this is the first success of many, I would like to share some things I want to stop seeing on the Internet in 2015:

1. Abuse Of Poe’s Law

Poe’s Law is the belief that some religious fundamentalists are so stupid that it’s impossible to distinguish them from a parody.

This is all nice and well in the abstract, but when applied to a particular case, where a particular atheist has fallen for a parody site, it tends to be an unfortunate stand-in for “Some atheists are so ignorant that it’s impossible for them to distinguish religious people from a parody of religious people.” Listen:

A: “The Pope just said that everyone who isn’t creationist should be put in jail! What an outrage!”

B: “Uh, you do know that’s on The Onion, right?”

A: “Oh, well, haha, Poe’s Law, just goes to show how dumb those religious people are.”

Problem is, Poe’s Law isn’t limited to religion any more. Now it’s politics, culture, science, and anywhere else where one side thinks their opponents are so stupid it’s literally impossible to parody them (ie everywhere on both sides). You spread the dumbest and most obviously fake rumors to smear your opponents. And then when you’re caught, instead of admitting you were fooled, you claim Poe’s Law and smear your opponents even more.

On the other hand, once you’re willing to admit this dynamic exists, it can make for some pretty interesting guessing games and unintentional Intellectual Turing Tests – see the Poe’s Law In Action subreddit for some examples.

2. People Getting Destroyed By Other People

Whenever I write a persuasive piece, I get to see my fans share it on Twitter like this:

I didn’t destroy anybody. I disagreed with them.

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who has to deal with this. Newsweek writes about how Jon Stewart Is A Violent Sociopath Who Must Be Stopped in reponse to increasing claims that Stewart “destroys”, “demolishes”, “disembowels”, and “makes ground beef” out of whoever he’s arguing against on his show.

This bothers me the same way that “debunked” bothers me. Both sides are going to insist that their own research “debunks” the other, and so make it impossible to have a conversation based on the premise that there’s still room for disagreement. The flip side of my fans believing that I’ve destroyed whoever is that when that person writes a response, their fans are going to believe they’ve destroyed me.

At least no one can eviscerate me, since Jon Stewart has already eviscerated the entire blogosphere.

3. Demonstrating That People Are Stupid By Having Them Use The Word “Muh”

No straw man is ever concerned about immigrants stealing his job. He’s always concerned about immigrants stealing “muh jarb”, or possibly “muh jawb”, which sounds like some form of obscure Islamic garment.

This has lately taken a disturbing turn in the form of straw feminists worrying about “muh sojiny”. I strongly believe that every women has a right to her sojiny and no man should be able to take it from her, but I still can’t help wishing that people would lay off the cheap shots for a while.

4. Wikipedia-Shaming

Did you know it is 2015 and people will still criticize you for getting facts off of Wikipedia?

I’m not even talking about controversial conclusions, like “on balance, the research about gun control shows…”. I’m talking about simple facts.

A: “China is bigger than the United States”

B: “Where’d you hear that one, Wikipedia?”

A: “…yes?”

B: “You expect me to believe something you literally just took off a Wikipedia article?”

Yes. Yes I do. I could go find the CIA World Factbook or whatever, but it will say the same thing as Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is pretty much always right. When you challenge Wikipedia on basic facts, all you do is force people to use inconvenient sources to back up the things Wikipedia says, costing people time for no reason and making them hate you. There may have been a time when Wikipedia was famously inaccurate. Or maybe there wasn’t. I don’t know. Wikipedia doesn’t have an article on it, so it would take time and energy to find out. The point is, now it’s 2015, and the matter has been settled.

How accurate is Wikipedia?:

Several studies have been done to assess the reliability of Wikipedia. An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia’s scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of “serious errors”. The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica, and later Nature replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica?’?s main objections. Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology, toxicology, oncology, pharmaceuticals, and psychiatry comparing Wikipedia to professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia’s depth and coverage were of a high standard.

I know this because I got it from Wikipedia’s Reliability Of Wikipedia article. Go ahead, challenge me, I dare you.

5. Articles That Start Off With An Image Taking Up The Entire Screen

This is what I’m talking about. I click on the link expecting an article on gas pipeline deals, and there is exactly zero article on the first screenfull of page I come to. That’s fine, you know, the only reason I even clicked was to see a huge, high-resolution picture of Vladimir Putin’s head. Information is totally optional. Screw you. This is why if I want to learn about Russian-Chinese gas deals, I’ll just look them up on Wikipedia.

I feel the same way about those Web 2.0 sites where the landing page is just an image of a smiling group of people engaged in a nondescript activity, and then way up in the corner is a tiny button that says “Discover” (it’s always “discover”) which leads to actual information. Likewise this site, which probably made its designer feel very smug about their clean minimalist style, but where you can’t get a single word of information without watching a video.

6. Ads That Disappear Very Slowly

You get an ad. It appears at the bottom of the screen. You look at it, decide you’re not interested, click the little X. It disappears. But not right away. It crawls. It saunters. After what seems to be a long and arduous journey, during which it had to ford several rivers and stop off at Fort Laramie for supplies, it finally makes it to the bottom of the screen and fades away.

I try hard to understand other people’s perspectives. I know that companies need to have ads to make money. I know that they have an incentive to make those ads as disruptive and obnoxious as possible to make you look at them. I even understand why some ads have the little x kind of hidden, so you can’t find it without some poking around, which forces you to view the ad for a little while longer. I understand all those things.

But I don’t understand why the ad has to take so long to disappear. It’s obviously not just incompetence. They specifically have to add an extra little sliding-down animation to the ad to make it take so long. They put in more work to make it more annoying for no benefit. Do you really think that while I’m waiting for the ad to disappear, I’m thinking “You know, I thought I didn’t need to meet hot desperate singles in my area, which is why I clicked the X to make it go away, but that sliding-down-the-screen animation is so cool that I’m going to reload the page a couple of times, wait for the ad to come back, and then click it”?

7. Overuse Of Demonstratives In Clickbait

I understand that demonstratives (“this”, “that”, “yon”) are supposed to give you a bit of mystery, make you want to click on the article to see what’s happening. “This Celebrity Just Came Out As Gay” makes you wonder which one it is. “Rare Disease Spreads To These Three US States” makes you check if yours is one of them. Fine. I would personally prefer “Rare Disease Spreads To Three States” or even “Which Three States Did A Rare Disease Spread To? Click Here To Find Out”, but whatever.

However. On Vox recently, Obama Just Hit These North Koreans With Sanctions. What, exactly, are we supposed to get out of this? “Oh! I wonder if it’s Yu Kwang Ho! Surely they wouldn’t get Yu Kwang Ho! Better click to find out!”

8. Any Use Of The Word “Entitled”

Okay, I’ve already written on what I think of people calling nerds “entitled”. But it goes beyond that.

Number 8 in last year’s Least Favorite Things was “arguments about which generation is better”. Well, now those have progressed to arguments over which generation is most entitled. Hard Work? No Thanks! Meet Entitled-To-It-All Generation Y. Millenials are Selfish and Entitled and Helicopter Parents Are To Blame. But The Most Entitled Generation Isn’t Millennials, It’s Baby Boomers. And coming in from left field, maybe The Greatest Generation Was The Most Entitled. There are even entire books about this

Men feel entitled to women. Women feel entitled to men. Blacks feel entitled. Whites feel entitled. The Entitlement Mentality of Liberals coexists with Entitled Conservative White Male Putzes, possibly because Conservatives Feel ‘Entitled’ To Scorn ‘Entitlement’ (whatever).

Anyone can call their out-group entitled. The easiest way is – well, poor people are entitled because they demand hand-outs without working for them. Rich people are entitled because they think they deserve 100% of what they have and refuse to acknowledge or change the inequalities in the system that benefit them. One side or the other of that dichotomy is likely to map onto whatever group you want to insult.

“Entitled” is a Fully General Insult that can apply to anyone, and it really hurts. That makes it irresistable to the wrong kind of people, and it’s why I hope I start seeing less of it. Alternately, people could start giving their enemies the Psychological Entitlement Scale, which is so hilariously obvious with what it’s doing that I find it astounding that it apparently still manages to successfully detect some entitled people. The Titanic? Really?

9. People Being Post-Things

I recently heard someone describe themselves as “post-Zionist”, then go on to give what sounded like pretty standard criticism of Zionism. I don’t want to get too heavily into this particular example, because I understand post-Zionism is complex and every time I write something about Israel I get Israeli commenters saying I’ve gotten it wrong and other Israeli commenters saying no they’ve gotten it wrong and still other Israeli commenters saying we’ve all got it wrong. What was that saying about “two Jews, three opinions” again?

But what bothers me about post-Zionism is that it seems to carry this kind of smug “Oh, you guys are still Zionist? Don’t you know Zionism is, like, totally five years ago? Nowadays all the cool people have moved on to more exciting things,” which I don’t think really adds to the argument. Zionism versus anti-Zionism suggests a picture of two sides with two different opinions – which seems to match the reality pretty well. Zionism versus post-Zionism suggests one side just hasn’t gotten the message yet.

I feel the same way about post-rationalism. Yes, maybe you’ve seen through rationalism in some profound way and transcended it. Or maybe you just don’t get it. This is exactly the point under debate, and naming yourselves “post-rationalists” seems like an attempt to short-circuit it, not to mention leaving everyone else confused. And maybe you could give yourself a name that actually reflected your beliefs (“Kind Of New-Age-y People Who Are Better At Math Than Usual For That Demographic And Will Angrily Deny Being New-Age-y If Asked Directly”?) and we wouldn’t have to have a new “but what is post-rationalism?!?!” conversation every month.

Post-modernism can stay, though. At this point it’s less of a name than a warning label.

10. Disputes Over Whether Humans Evolved From Monkeys

I don’t mean creationism. I mean disputes among people who accept evolution, over whether it was monkeys in particular that humans evolved from.

It tends to go something like this.

A: “Humans evolved from monkeys”.

B: “No they didn’t! They evolved from chimps! Chimps are an ape, not a monkey!”

C: “Humans didn’t evolve from chimps! They evolved from a most recent common ancestor whose descendants include both humans and chimps!”

Everything about this conversation is not-even-wrong.

First, humans clearly evolved from monkeys in the same sense humans evolved from single-celled organisms. No one’s saying it had to be the most recent step.

Second, apes are ambiguously a type of monkey. Think square versus rectangle. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares and “rectangle” is usually used to indicate rectangles that are not squares but can technically refer to squares as well. Here’s a primatologist saying that Apes Are Monkeys – Deal With It.

Third, the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees may (or may not) have been a chimpanzee. This is Richard Wrangham’s thesis, and he calls it pan prior, placing it firmly within the chimpanzee genus.

These last two issues are especially annoying because they’re kind of meaningless category disputes. Yet for some reason the Internet seems to be obsessed with the lurking fear that someone, somewhere, might be saying that people evolved from monkeys or chimps.

Seriously. Get a life, Internet.

…is that he clearly, transparently doesn’t care about the Star Wars universe.

Oh, I’m sure he has a great deal of affection for the films, and loved the process of creating them, and all that nonsense¹ (even if in later years, it’s an enjoyment not shared by the viewers). But the extended universe? Canon, all that nonsense? The kind of things that nerds² get obsessed over? It matters to him not a jot. This can be seen in behind the scenes footage (things like that “gungas” line that Red Letter Media used a lot) and more recently, in a quote from this Screen Rant article:

“I haven’t seen anything; I mean I saw the trailer, it looks great, it looks interesting. But as I’ve said before: one thing I regret about Star Wars is that I never got to see it, you know? I never got to be blown away by the big ship coming over the thing, or anything. But this time I’m going to be, because I have no idea what they’re doing.”

“…the big ship coming over the thing”? I guess he means the Devastator³ from the beginning of Episode IV, but it really doesn’t matter, it’s entertainment enough as it is.

Pope Francis is, once again, making waves with his off-the-cuff remarks on airplanes. During a press conference on a flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, Francis spoke about the right to free speech and free expression.

First, let’s look at the part that didn’t create controversy. French reporter Sebastian Maillard asked this question: “Yesterday at mass you spoke about religious freedom as a fundamental human right. But in the respect for the different religions, up to what point can one go in freedom of expression? That too is a fundamental human right.”

Here’s the beginning of Francis’ reply:

I believe that both are fundamental human rights, religious liberty and liberty of expression. One cannot — but let’s think — you are French? Let’s go to Paris, let’s speak clearly. One cannot hide a truth: everyone has the right to practice one’s religion, one’s own religion without giving offense. Freely. That’s how we do it, we want everyone to do that. Second: One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God. To us, that which happens now, it stuns us. But let’s think about our own history: how many wars of religion have we had? You may think of the night of St. Bartholomew; how can this be understood? We too were sinners in this. But one cannot kill in the name of God. This is an aberration. To kill in the name of God is an aberration. I believe that this is the principal point in terms of religious liberty. One has freedom in this, but without imposing or killing in the name of religion.

As for freedom of expression: each one not only has the freedom, the right but also the obligation to say what one thinks to help the common good. The obligation! Let’s think, if a member of parliament or a senator doesn’t say what he thinks is the right path then he does not collaborate for the common good. Not only these, but many others too. We have the obligation to say openly, to have this liberty, but without giving offense, because it is true, one cannot react violently.

The context of the pope’s trip informs his answer here. He’s just spent several days in Sri Lanka — a nation torn by civil war and inter-religious violence. He addressed that conflict and the desperate need for interfaith tolerance and respect earlier in the press conference, and that discussion seems to have shaped Maillard’s question here, too.

I think that context also shapes the next bit of Francis’ reply, which is the bit that has drawn criticism:

We have the obligation to say openly, to have this liberty, but without giving offense, because it is true, one cannot react violently. But if Dr. Gasbarri [the papal trip organizer who was standing beside him], a great friend, says a bad word against my mother, then a punch awaits him. But it’s normal, it’s normal. One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith. … And so many people who speak badly about other religions, or religions [in general], they make fun of, let’s say toy with [make into toys] other people’s religions, these people provoke and there can occur what would happen to Dr. Gasbarri if he said something against my mother. That is, there is a limit. Every religion has dignity; every religion that respects life, human life, the human person. And I cannot make fun of it. This is a limit and I have taken this sense of limit to say that in freedom of expression there are limits, like that in regard to my mom.

Gerard O’Connell, writing for America, summarizes this by saying: “The pope affirmed the right to freedom of expression” but “made it very clear that freedom of expression had certain limits, and a person is not entitled to offend, ridicule, mock, or treat the religion — any religion — as a toy that can be played with.”

If that’s what Francis intended to say, then I agree with the critics who are now condemning him for suggesting “certain limits” on the freedom of expression. But I’m not certain that is quite what he was trying to say.

I don’t speak Italian, and so it’s difficult to be parsing these comments second-hand, in their English translation, but let’s focus on the main troubling bit here: “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.”

That’s an odd use of the word “cannot.” The pope’s response would have been far less troubling if he had said, instead, “should not” — “One should not provoke, one should not insult other people’s faith, one should not make fun of faith.”

Think, for example, of Rule No. 1. That’s an important rule — that’s why it comes first. But what kind of rule is it?

It’s certainly not a legal rule. “Don’t be a dick” doesn’t mean that dickishness is or ought to be against the law. So I wouldn’t want to rephrase Rule No. 1 as “One cannot be a dick,” but rather as something more like “One should not be a dick.”

Rule No. 1 doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to be dicks to one another. What it means is that we’d all be better off if we used our freedom and our rights to, you know, not be total dicks.

Rule No. 1, in other words, isn’t the same kind of rule as Amendment No. 1. But just as the First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech mustn’t be limited or qualified by the obligation not to be a dick, neither should the guaranteed, unqualified right to freedom of speech be treated as an exemption from Rule No. 1.

Mark Silk thinks that’s what Pope Francis was trying to say. Given the context of the pope’s other remarks about the religious conflicts in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, I suspect he’s right.

I think we can see that, too, in the other places in his remarks where Francis uses that term “cannot.” Just before he said “one cannot insult other people’s faith,” he said, “One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God.” He said that while acknowledging — and confessing – the reality that killing in the name of God is something that happens. There, it seems, his use of “cannot” seems to mean something closer to should not.

I suspect the same is true in his supposed endorsement of limits on freedom of expression as well. He says “one cannot react violently” to religious offense, but then immediately after says that such a violent response is likely and expected. So I suspect, throughout, we might better understand Francis’ comments by substituting the translation of “cannot” with the phrase “should not.”

But that’s just a guess. And, in any case, I do not speak for the pope and the pope does not speak for me.

So let me just speak for me: Religion is not off-limits when it comes to the freedom of expression. We have the right to offend, to disrespect, to question, to mock, to insult, to be irreverent, and to blaspheme.

But that doesn’t mean we should. Having the right to offend, to disrespect or to insult others does not mean that we are obliged to do so. It does not mean that it is always wise or truthful or constructive or loving or just to do so. (Sometimes, I think it is. In the context of laws forbidding blasphemy, for example, I think blasphemy may sometimes become a kind of moral duty.)

But an unwavering, unqualified commitment to freedom of expression doesn’t mean we can claim to be exempt from Rule No. 1. Having the right to act like a dick doesn’t miraculously make it possible to act like a dick without thereby becoming a dick.

Or, as Voltaire didn’t say either, “I disapprove of your dickishness, but I will defend to the death your right to be a dick.”

We may all be unique, but few could be as unique as Mike Marqusee, who died last week, as it’s hard to argue that what the world has too many of is American socialist cricket fanatics.

Usually described as ‘writer and activist’, for Mike this phrase was nonsense, as each activity was meaningless unless they combined with and enhanced the other.

His life as a glorious mix of disparate cultures began on his first day, born in New York in 1953 to white Jewish parents, who became civil rights activists travelling to Mississippi to oppose segregation, and one day he came home from school to find Martin Luther King in the living room.

His attitudes were shaped partly by a youth spent in 1960s New York, when defiance of authority moulded every corner of culture. So as well as organising campaigns for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, he was embroiled in the battle for fun. He was captivated by the music, poetry and occasional spliff of the times, and developed a special affection for sport.

All aspects of this background landed with him, when he came to live in England in the nineteen-seventies. He joined the Labour Party, becoming a prominent supporter of Tony Benn, and more fundamentally became obsessed with cricket.

One product of this fusion was a book that helped to transform sports writing, Anyone but England, an account of the game that lauded its beauty while raging against the snobbery and racism that had spewed from those who’d controlled it throughout its history.

This was a blasphemy that must have burst a million arteries amongst those in charge of English cricket. Books about cricket were supposed to depict glorious summers and splendid figures and never stoop to ask grubby questions such as why the MCC supported apartheid, or why the odd England captain admired Hitler, because this was cricket. Anyone but England was cricket’s equivalent of a scientific breakthrough that smashes all previous laws. And he was American! The impertinence!

The book was shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year Award, and praised around the world by figures such as Pakistan captain Imran Khan. But its greatest effect was in enabling thousands of cricket fans, who’d always felt uneasy about English cricket’s   imperial image, to proclaim a corner of their peculiar game.

For Mike, cricket was probably the ideal spectator sport, because it allowed time to dwell. A day watching cricket with him was an extraordinary education, as he’d discuss which province in India the batsman came from, then the role that region played in winning independence, its architecture, the poetry the batsman read, then why all this contributed to the reason he got out to spin bowling.

His next book on sport analysed the figure that did most to unite the defiant culture of his youth in both sport and politics. Redemption Song – Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties ricochets between Vietnam, Alabama and knocking people out, each strand shaping the others, culminating in the thrilling scene in which Ali stands in a military office, refusing to cross a yellow line as his name is called out to be drafted into the army, declaring “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.”

He employed a similar combination of admiration and enquiry for Chimes of Freedom, on Bob Dylan’s influence on the sixties. Then he confronted an institution arguably even more challenging than the cricket authorities; the state of Israel. ‘The Story of an Anti-Zionist Jew’ flashes between a personal account, and a history of the Middle-East that manages to embrace the prophet Amos.

It begins with his shock as a schoolboy at a Jewish Sunday School, when a young soldier who’s fought for Israel in the 1967 war is introduced to the class.

“He told us the Arabs are ignorant people, who go to toilet in the street. I’d heard this language before, from bigoted white Southerners towards blacks. I raised my hand and said this seemed to me, well, racist. Angrily the teacher turned to me and said there would be no discourtesy to guests in the classroom.”

This incident began a lifelong tussle with Zionism, never as raw as when he was accused of being a ‘self-hating Jew’ for opposing the ethics of the Israeli regime. He enjoyed quoting the Jewish son of a friend who was accused of this, and replied “No you misunderstand, it’s you I hate you bastard.”

Throughout each project he played prominent roles in campaigns such as Stop the War, and in local groups opposing cuts in his area of Hackney.

In 2000 he left Labour, assessing the radical change he supported was unlikely to be advanced by an organisation led by Tony Blair.

His partnership with Liz Davies, who he’d met when they were both in the Labour Party, was much more impregnable, and the constant pride they exuded for each other was almost implausibly heartening.

In 2007 he was told he had multiple myeloma, a cancer diagnosis that created a new subject for enquiry. Amongst the articles he wrote on his illness was one called The Bedrock of Autonomy, describing the multitude of characters that led to his treatment being possible, written while on an IV drip. It includes “all who contribute to the intricate ballet of a functioning hospital, the Irish physician Frances Rynd who invented the hollow needle, those who built and sustained the NHS… the drip flowing into my vein is drawn from a river with innumerable tributaries.”

One of his most frustrating times was when he was in a ward for 3 days with only one other patient, who appeared to have no interest in any subject at all. Eventually this chap noticed a headline in the newspaper about the Chinese army shooting at Tibetan monks and said “That’s terrible.” Mike thought ‘at last I’ve got something to discuss with this bloke’, until the other patient said “I mean, you can’t just let monks run all over the place like that.”

Despite this, throughout his illness Mike continued to write, speak about and be fascinated by William Blake, Kevin Pietersen, Indian poetry, the campaign against the Bedroom Tax, ways to confront UKIP and the corporate nature of the Indian Premier League, and how they all collide with and impact upon each other.

And he could convey his thoughts in a manner so inspiring they could make you thump the table and yell in public.

Because what seemed to drive him above all, was the idea that it makes no sense to have fun in this world, if you’re not prepared to insist that fun should be equally available to all of humanity. But there isn’t much point in contending for a fairer world, unless in the process you’re not prepared to have an enormous amount of fun.

(The first, and possibly last, of a series of pitches for films that don’t exist)

From an early draft, which ended with a musical number.

The Cast:
Prime Minister: David Tennant
Aide who’s a bit sleazy and doesn’t have much to do in the second half of the film: Matthew Horne
Aide who’s very idealistic and about to quit until she sees the human side of her boss: Romola Garai
Adviser played by someone who we clearly only had on set for a few days because he had better things to do: Steve Coogan
Supposedly edgy street kid who never swears or does anything that dangerous: Some poor sod fresh from the Brit School who’ll look back on this as the highlight of their career
Leader of the Opposition: Christopher Eccleston
Leaders of other ill-defined parties: David Mitchell, Olivia Colman
PM’s party enemy who’s somehow hoping to benefit from all this: Rupert Penry-Jones
Antique expert (archive footage): Arthur Negus
Debate moderator: Keeley Hawes
Overly stressed producer: Pip Torrens
Those annoying cameos you expect in any British movie: Danny Dyer, Meera Syal, at least one member of Girls Aloud, Roger Moore, Ken Livingstone, Anne Widdicombe, Jeremy Paxman’s beard
Pointless cameos just to make sure the fanboys watch it: Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy
Not returning our calls, no matter how desperate we got: Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi

Likelihood of good reviews: Low
Likelihood of anyone abroad understanding 10% of what’s going on: Very low
Likelihood of appearing continually on ITV2 from now until the end of time: High

I started at the newspaper in October 2001. Here’s your desk, here’s your phone, over there’s where your mailbox will be eventually when our mailboxes are returned.

Mail delivery to the newsroom had been suspended. All of the paper’s incoming mail was being handled and inspected elsewhere because of the anthrax attacks.

Those attacks, weirdly forgotten just a few years later, lasted for several weeks during the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The main targets were newspapers and TV news departments, but they also included the offices of two Democratic U.S. senators, the headquarters of several supermarket tabloids, and a few other random citizens whose infections and deaths have never been explained.

Ultimately, the anthrax letters sent through the mail would wind up infecting 22 people with the disease, killing five of them. And then, after a few weeks, the letters just stopped showing up and the crisis faded away.

Back in October 2001, though, nobody knew how many of the letters had been sent, who was sending them, or why. No one knew where those letters might arrive next.

The first victim of the attacks, Robert Stevens, died on Oct. 5. Stevens was a photo editor for American Media, Inc., the Boca Raton, Florida-based publisher of several supermarket tabloids, including the National Enquirer, the Sun (where Stevens worked), and the Sun’s main rival for paranormal hilarity, the Weekly World News.

The Sun and the Weekly World News were simultaneously tabloids and parodies of tabloids. They were satire. Sometimes that satire was pretty brilliant. Other times it was hilariously over-the-top. Often it walked a troubling line by seeming to reinforce the very things it was ridiculing (the “Ed Anger” columns seem to have been read un-ironically by many people who shared the column’s apparent racist, sexist, nativist, homophobic views). And more often the satire of these tabloids adopted a sneering tone toward all the marks and rubes who weren’t in on the joke — who read its accounts of alien abductions, “Bible prophecy,” cryptozoology, ghosts, and the like without fully realizing it was all a gag.

But my point here is not to critique or to analyze the quality or meaning of those now-defunct satiric tabloids. I just wanted to remind us all that just a little more than a decade ago, a terror attack here in the United States targeted and killed a visual artist who worked for a satiric tabloid.

The anthrax attacks targeted journalists and satirists alike, and prompted a great deal of chest-thumping, defiant affirmations of the freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

And then, three weeks after the death of Robert Stevens, the Patriot Act passed the U.S. Senate on a vote of 98-to-1 and was signed into law.

Plus ça change. …

I.

A recent Cracked piece: Five Everyday Groups Society Says It’s Okay To Mock. It begins:

There’s a rule in comedy that says you shouldn’t punch down. It’s okay to make fun of someone rich and famous, because they’re too busy molesting groupies with 100-dollar bills to notice, but if you make a joke at the expense of a homeless person, you’re just an asshole. That said, we as a society have somehow decided on a few arbitrary exceptions to this rule.

“Somehow decided on a few arbitrary exceptions” isn’t very technical. Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t expect technical explanations from a humor website. Let’s try something a little bit more rigorous, like poetry:

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling faggots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn.

’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father’s graves,
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;—
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s;
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

No? Still not technical enough? I guess that was kind of a long shot. Fine, let’s do this the hard way.

II.

Earlier this week, I wrote about things that are anti-inductive. Something is anti-inductive if it fights back against your attempts to understand it. The classic example is the stock market. If someone learns that the stock market is always low on Tuesdays, then they’ll buy lots of stocks on Tuesdays to profit from the anomaly. But this raises the demand for stocks on Tuesdays, and therefore stocks won’t be low on Tuesdays anymore. To detect a pattern is to destroy the pattern.

The less classic example is job interviews where every candidate is trying to distinguish themselves from every other candidate. If someone learns that interviewers are impressed if you talk about your experience in tropical medicine, then as more and more people catch on they’ll all get experience in tropical medicine, it will become cliche, and people won’t be impressed by it anymore.

Evil, too, is anti-inductive.

The Nazis were very successful evildoers, at least for a while. Part of their success was convincing people – at least the German people, but sometimes also foreigners – that they were the good guys. And they were able to convince a lot of people, because people can be pretty dumb, a lot of them kind of just operate by pattern-matching, and the Nazis didn’t match enough patterns to set off people’s alarms.

Neo-Nazis cannot be called “successful” in any sense of the word. Their PR problem isn’t just that they’re horrible – a lot of groups are horrible and do much better than neo-Nazis. Their PR problem is that they’re horrible in exactly the way that our culture formed memetic antibodies against. Our pattern-matching faculties have been trained on Nazis being evil. The alarm bells that connect everything about Nazis to evil are hypersensitive, so much so that even contingent features of the Nazis remain universally acknowledged evil-signals.

It would be premature to say that we will never have to worry about fascism again. But for now, we are probably pretty safe from fascism that starts its sales pitch with “Hi, I’m fascism! Want a swastika armband?”

Huey Long supposedly predicted that “Fascism in America will attempt to advance under the banner of anti-fascism.” I’m not sure I like the saying as it stands – it seems too susceptible to Hitler Jr. telling Churchill Jr. that he’s marching under the banner of anti-fascism which proves he’s the real fascist. Then again, in a world where capitalism marches under the banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, who knows? I would prefer to say that fascism will, at the very least, advance in a way which carefully takes our opposition to fascism into account .

Sure enough, people who had learned to be wary of fascism were still highly susceptible to communism, which wore its anti-fascism proudly on its sleeve as a symbol of how great it was. It convinced a lot of very smart people in the free world that it was the best thing since sliced bread, all while murdering tens of millions of people. Meanwhile, our memetic immune systems were sitting watchfully at their posts, thinking “Well, this doesn’t look at all like Nazism. They’re saying all the right stuff about equality, which is like the opposite of what the Nazis said. I’m giving them a pass.”

In fact, I’ll make the analogy more explicit. Every winter, there’s a flu epidemic. Every spring and summer, people’s bodies put in a lot of effort making antibodies to last year’s flu. The next winter, the flu mutates a little, a new virus with new antigens starts a new epidemic, and the immune system doesn’t have a clue: “This virus doesn’t have the very very specific characteristic I’ve learned to associate with the flu. Maybe it wants to be my friend!” This is why we need the WHO to predict what the up-and-coming flu virus will be and give us vaccines against it; it’s also why their job is so hard; they don’t know what’s coming, except that it will look different from however it’s looked before.

Nowadays most people’s memetic immune systems have some antibodies to communism, and people talking with Russian accents about how we need to eliminate the bourgeoisie and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat sends shiver up the spines of a lot of people. Nowadays an openly Communist party faces the same uphill battle as an openly Nazi party.

But that just means that if there’s some other evil on the horizon, it probably won’t resemble either fascism or communism. It will be movement about which everyone’s saying “These new guys are so great! They don’t pattern-match to any of the kinds of evil we know about at all!” By Long’s formulation, it may very well be marching under the banners of anti-fascism and anti-Communism.

(I’m not vagueblogging, by the way. I honestly don’t have anyone in mind here. The whole point is that it’s probably someone I’m not expecting. And if you say “I KNOW EXACTLY WHICH GROUP IT WILL BE, BASED ON THOSE CRITERIA IT’S CLEARLY X!” consider the possibility that you’re missing the point.)

III.

But getting back to the Cracked article.

We as a society have mostly figured out that shouting “GET A JOB, LOSER!” at the homeless is mean. We have mostly figured out that shouting “YOU’RE GOING TO HELL” at people of different religions is bad. We’re even, slowly but surely, starting to wonder whether there’s something problematic about shouting “FAGGOTS!” at the local gay couple.

Stupid bullies will continue to do those things, just as stupid investors will continue to read “How To Beat The Stock Market” books published in 1985, and stupid socialites will continue to wear the fashion that was cool six months ago.

But smart bullies are driven by their desire to have their bullying make them more popular, to get the rest of the world pointing and laughing with them. In a Blue Tribe bubble, shouting “FAGGOT” at gay people is no longer a good way to do that. The smart bullies in these circles have long since stopped shouting at gays – not because they’ve become any nicer, but because that’s no longer the best way to keep their audience laughing along with them.

Cracked starts off by naming mentally ill celebrities as a group society considers it okay to mock. This doesn’t seem surprising. Nowadays people talk a lot about punching-up versus punching-down. But that just means bullies who want to successfully punch down will come up with a way to make it look like they’re punching up. Take a group that’s high-status and wealthy, but find a subset who are actually in serious trouble and mock them, all the while shouting “I’M PUNCHING UP, I’M PUNCHING UP!”. Thus mentally ill celebrities.

The other examples are harder to figure out. I would argue that they’re ones that are easy to victim-blame (ie obesity), ones that punch down on axes orthogonal to the rich-poor axis we usually think about and so don’t look like punching down (ie virginity), or ones that are covertly associated with an outgroup. In every case, I would expect the bullies involved, when they’re called upon, it to loudly protest “But that’s not real bullying! It’s not like [much more classic example of bullying, like mocking the homeless]!” And they will be right. It’s just different enough to be the hot new bullying frontier that most people haven’t caught onto yet.

I think the Cracked article is doing good work. It’s work that I also try to do (see for example number 6 here, which corresponds to Cracked’s number 5). It’s the work of pointing these things out, saying “Actually, no, that’s bullying”, until eventually it sinks into the culture, the bullies realize they’ll be called out if they keep it up, and they move on to some new target.

All of this ties way into the dynamic I talked about in Untitled. I mean, look at the people on Cracked’s list of whom society says it’s okay to mock. Virgins. The obese. People who live in their parents’ basements. Generalize “mentally ill celebrities” just a little bit to get “people who are financially well-off but non-neurotypical” and there you go.

I apologize for irresponsibly claiming to have found a pattern in an anti-inductive domain. You may now all adjust your behavior to make me wrong.

Our glorious prime minister, failed TV company marketing director David Cameron, has proposed banning all forms of encryption that can't be broken by the security services. I'm not the only person who thinks this policy is beyond bonkers and well into criminal insanity (even his own deputy prime minister has reservations), but for the record, let me lay out why this is such a bad idea.

0. It is already a criminal offense to refuse to disclose your encryption keys, or to decrypt an encrypted file, on receipt of a lawful order to do so by the police or a court, under powers granted by Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), in force since 2007. (Immediate consequences: paranoid schizophrenic jailed for refusal to decrypt his files. Apparently French anti-terrorism police became suspicious when he ordered a toy rocket motor. Strong encryption is the new tinfoil hat for technically ept paranoids: there's a human rights issue here. But I digress.) The point is, legal powers to essentially compel compliance with Cameron's goal already exist.

1. What Cameron is asking for, however, is a lot more drastic: the outlawing of endpoint-secured communications protocols. In other words, the government must be able to decrypt any encryption session used within the UK. This has drastic consequences which would, in my view, drastically undermine British national security (and cripple our IT industry).

What are these consequences?

2. If the government can decrypt an end-to-end encrypted session, then a third party can in principle use the same mechanism to decrypt it. (The third party could be a rogue government employee, or a crypto hacker.) This is not a hypothetical: it's intrinsic to how cryptography works. It's either secure against all third-party snoopers, or it isn't secure and will be cracked in time inversely proportional to the value of the data conveyed. Also, merely knowing that an encryption protocol has a weakness makes it easier to attack.

What sort of stuff would be at risk of third-party snooping by criminals or random hacker gangs like the denizens of 8chan or Anonymous?

3. Let's start with email. Not just your regular email: how about privileged lawyer/client communications? Internal transmission of confidential medical health records within the NHS backbone network? Your accounts, going to and from your accountant?

4. But email is only the tip of the iceberg. How about the encrypted web session you use to check your bank account? Or to pay your income tax? If you're a small business, the VATMOSS system is obviously a target—and a high value one, where an attacker could steal large amounts of money. Mandatory back doors in encryption imply weakening the security around the government's own tax-raising system. (Talk about sawing off the branch you're sitting on.)

Some systems require end-to-end encryption or they are simply too risky to permit. What are they?

5. Let's start with SCADA systems that control blast furnaces, nuclear reactors, water treatment plants, and factories. Then we can add other online systems: the in-cab signalling system used to deliver signals to drivers of trains on railway lines cleared for high-speed running, traffic signal boards on motorways, and in the not too distant future systems used by air traffic control for filing flight plans and transferring security-related passenger information.

We should then add online finance systems, from Paypal to the APACS credit card settlement system, the BACS payment system through which about 80% of the pay cheques in the UK are sent straight to the recipients' bank accounts, to inter-bank settlement and reconciliation, the share dealing system used by the London Stock Exchange, and every supermarket and wholesale warehouse inventory management and stock control/ordering system in the country.

What is the worst case outcome of mandating that the security around all these systems is weakened?

6. How about a group within 8chan deciding, purely for lulz, to scramble all the patient medical records accessible over the NHS Spine? Or that the Russian Mafia, who are already very much into cybercrime, hit the BACS system and use it to siphon off or scramble all payments going into the HMRC Income Tax accounts on January 31st?

Here's the key message that Cameron simply doesn't understand:

7. There is a trade-off between internal security and external security. You can have perfect security against message traffic between external hostiles if you ban encryption ... but by so doing, you destroy your internal security against attack from any direction at all. Or you can have total internal security with end-to-end encryption of all communications, and be pretty much immune to certain classes of hack attack, but lose the ability to listen for terrorist chatter. These two circumstances are opposite ends on a scale. You can adjust the balance between the two, but mandating either end of the scale is idiotic. Our prime minister has mistaken the rotating knob for a push-button with a binary on/off state. Hopefully his advisors will take him aside over the next few days and teach him better, or he'll lose the election this May. Either way, though, this proposal is disastrous and if it happens, well, I'll just have to get used to being a criminal.