Cleansing the streets

Turkish police have used tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters in Istanbul and Ankara.

The demonstrations were over a proposed government law to increase controls on internet usage. The controversial bill will give the government the authority to keep records of all user activities for up to two years.

BBC

One of the main barriers to Turkey's accession to the European Union is a failure to protect fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and assembly.*

Here in Britain, we've already got the Great Firewall of Cameron, mass surveillance and the slow throttling of our rights of assembly and protest. Unlike the Erdogan government, the British authorities can't just take one look at people exercising our cherished right to protest freely subversive troublemakers and decide to wash them off the streets with high-pressure water cannon - yet.

I'm imagining the gargoyle above with a shaggy mop of unkempt blond hair and seeing Boris Johnson's intended monument to posterity.


*Not that the EU seems to be taking those fundamental rights very seriously, when they can be suspended at a whim in order to spare EU officials from having to witness the catastrophic consequences of their own policies.


Image from Gordon Marino's Flikr stream

 

Hoggart's Law

Almost every line reflects the law of the ridiculous reverse, which states that if the opposite of a statement is plainly absurd, it was not worth making in the first place.

"An economy where people who work hard are properly rewarded", or in the least gracious alternative, "an economy crafted to benefit lazy skivers who would rather watch Jeremy Kyle than turn an honest hand".

"Reduce the burden of excessive regulation" or "tie up business with yet more red tape".

"A fairer society that rewards people who work hard" or alternatively "an unjust society that rewards bent bankers and speculators". Oh, hold on, that's what we've got. So perhaps there really is a policy change there.

The late Simon Hoggart on the state opening of parliament, 2013. Lots of people posted their "best of" quotes when he died, just over a week ago. I'm late, because so much of his best stuff was so intensely topical that it's bound to date and I've only just come up with* something that also speaks to posterity. Others have mocked specific examples of the law of the ridiculous reverse, but Simon Hoggart deserves kudos for identifying it as a general principle.

The 'law of the ridiculous reverse' is a great mental filter for sifting out distracting, content-free mom-and-apple-pie platitudes. Ruthlessly redact this rubbish and any remaining residue of actual fact and information** might be worth thinking about. It deserves a snappier title, though. Call it "Hoggart's Law" and it merits memehood as surely as Poe's law, Godwin's law, or Hanlon's razor.

The sort of inanities covered by Hoggart's law deserve to die in fire. If they don't, all those hard working families will be condemned to spend the rest of eternity pushing the politicians' rhetorical boulder uphill. Isn't it about time they had a rest?


*h/t Radio 4's Word of Mouth

**How about a memorial prize for the first person who can find a speech, press release or mission statement so completely devoid of substance that no meaningful information remains, once every statement that falls foul of Hoggart's Law has been deleted? If somebody could stump up some decent prize money, that should concentrate a few minds.

Higher bankers' salaries? Fine by me.

The Treasury had already launched a separate legal challenge arguing against the EU's right to set any limits on banking bonuses at all, saying that such intervention could lead to an increase in base pay and undermine financial stability.

How is this a problem? Why would anybody see a move to a form of remuneration that no longer encourages a few individuals to take insane risks that will seriously damage everybody except the risk takers as a bug, rather than a feature? Why are politicians and the commentariat queueing up to lecture the National Health Service* about Goodhart's law and the downside of target cultures, but not the banks?

Could it have anything to do with power, influence and self-interest?

Banker's pay - it's not about the politics of envy. It's about the collateral damage to the rest of us, stupid.


*These things do apply to the NHS, too, but it wasn't the NHS that blew up the economy.

 ________________________

Update ... one last, exasperating, thing. Controlling bankers' bonuses could 'undermine stability?!?!' Because the existing system of incentives has been such a major contributor to the stability of the economy that we shouldn't even think about reforming it, obviously... 

Droning on

Augustine's Law no. 16 states that defence budgets grow linearly but the unit cost of a new military aircraft grows exponentially, therfore:

In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.

Because I wibbled that cost and capability problems might get the F-35 do-anything combat aircraft project downgraded or cancelled which, in turn, might lead to air forces deploying a lot more drones a lot more quickly, in the certain knowledge that someone out there would have said some of it more wittly, with citations and a graph.

Others aren't convinced, although the scepticism seems to be directed towards the sort of high-end drones that might supplant something like an F-35, as opposed to the less capable types already operating in areas where local air defences are weak to nonexistent (or have been told to look the other way), a distinction missing from a lot of media drone punditry.


Graph created by Autopilot under this Creative Commons license.

Party like it's 1697

An Afghan citizen has been granted asylum in the UK for religious reasons - because he is an atheist... Lawyers ... said the man's return to Afghanistan could result in a death sentence under Sharia law as an apostate - someone who has abandoned their religious faith - unless he remained discreet about his atheist beliefs. 

 BBC 

Which must have embarrassed those politicians and officials who'd have preferred to show off how tough* they are by rubber stamping the word "bogus" on the poor man's forehead, before abandoning him to the mercy of the first idiot fanatic who fancies killing an infidel. Not to mention anyone claiming that the Yanks and Brits are getting out of Afghanistan because their nation-building mission has been successfully accomplished, rather than because they're cutting their losses.

According to the Islamic calendar, the current year is 1435AH, which translates to 2014 AD in the Gregorian calendar. At least it does in most countries where religion has been tamed into something reasonably civilised, if woolly-minded. In Afghanistan and six other states, the equivalent calendar's only got up to 1697.**


*Not that there's anything very big, clever, or special about that sort of "toughness" - we have all strength enough to support the misfortunes of others, as somebody once said. Update - it looks as if some officials may also have been disappointed to miss out on the incentives of shopping vouchers and bonus holiday entitlements, which are apparently being dished out to encourage staff to get refugees sent back to places where human rights abusers can conveniently torment, torture, or kill them.

**Actually, worse than 1697. They had Thomas Aikenhead killed for blasphemy, whereas there are still seven countries where you don't even have to blaspheme - just being an unbeliever makes you guilty and worthy of death.

Crystal balls

Or why the Large Hadron Collider is a colossal waste of time and money, Part 2. Because, using just a small piece of shiny rock, those boffins at CERN could have discovered everything worth knowing about our Multiverse and found out what happened before the Big Bang:

Crystal Cap Amethyst assists in exploring the multitude forms that life encompasses, not just the physical and material reality. It connects you to the immensity of life and attunes you to the most profound guidance. Crystal Cap Amethyst takes you into civilzations not as firmly corporeal as present one. You connect to Lemuria and live beyond the stars in other galaxies and universes, bringing back the wisdom and skills you garnered there. The stone conveys you to the start of our present universe and beyond to experience what went before.

With more New Age wibble than you can shake a dowsing rod at, The Crystal Bible 3, by Judy Hall, (an authority on 'spiritual development ... crystal healing, karmic astrology and past life therapy' no less) retails at £13.99 although, if you were to take its cosmological, archaeological and therapeutic claims seriously, its true price would be far above rubies (which are, apparently, most effective when embedded in a matrix of granite - 'The powerful lifeforece of Ruby or Garnet is magnified and focused by its granite matrix. It assists the transport of Qi around the body, energizing every cell. Excellent for repairing a broken heart, physically or psychologically').

My son has a copy of The Crystal Bible 3, a well-meaning present from somebody who knew that he was interested in rocks, minerals and gems, but failed to notice that TCB3 has less to do with mineralogy and geology then with such esoterica as 'karmic incrustations', 'high vibration energy', 'etheric blueprints' and out of body experiences.

Fortunately there are still plenty of books containing Actual Facts about rocks, minerals and gemstones (how they are formed, what they are made of, where they are found, the Mohs scale and so on). Rocks and Minerals, by Dan Green is especially good at summarising this stuff in a format likely to appeal to a seven-year-old. It's also way cheaper than TCB3, at a very reasonable £6.99:

Aliens

Ukippers, Migration Watch, the mainstream media and mainstream politicians all agree that Something Must Be Done about immigration. Not because it is a big issue ('The beneficial effect in the UK was small but measurable') but because people believe it's a big issue and it would be rude and unfeeling to question people's deeply-held beliefs due to some trivial detail like a lack of evidence.

Now that the hegemony of the reality-based community is finally starting to crumble I, for one, welcome our new touchy-feely overlords. But let us not, in our joy at the ascendancy of enlightened respect for all beliefs, forget those less fortunate people around the world whose strongly-held beliefs are still not being respected. According to a recent poll, 36% of Americans believe in UFOs (with 35% disbelieving and 29% sitting on the fence). Unbelievably, the Obama administration has taken no action whatsoever to recognise and reflect public concerns about the Serious Issue of alien visitation.

I urge you all to remember that the majority of American citizens who give a damn about the issue, sincerely believe that The Truth Is Out There and to demand that their evidence-free beliefs should be allowed to inform the national conversation and to drive the administration's future policy decisions. At the very least, Fox News should launch an in-depth investigation into the way the liberal media has ignored the issue. Perhaps they could borrow one of our leading public service broadcasters to look into the shocking conspiracy of silence.