Started watching a programme on crop circles the other night while flicking through the channels before going to bed. Most of it was just various people talking about how they're from another world, or how they're faked, and showing how they actually do the fake, but there was a section in there about a video someone had made. He claimed it showed a crop circle being made by 2 balls of light. He'd faked it, obviously, but there was someone on there who appeared otherwise rational, who said it was real, and that the guy had recorded it and then lied after he'd been got at by the people covering these things up to say it was fake. Never mind the guy and his mate actually recorded themselves faking it and then confessed later they'd done it. Nope they'd been got at by someone (I assume government but I kind of missed who the someone was, if he said). The argument was no-one else had ever seen a video like it, and no-one had ever made another one as it was too difficult, so it had to be real, and that seems a little odd, why would you repeat a fake seems a better one to me. Took the production team less than 2 hours to replicate on the same kind of software so the no-one could fake it argument went. Although I doubt that bothered his argument too much. Evidence can generally be ignored where it doesn't suit your worldview.
What it set me thinking about was general conspiracy theories, there are a hell of a lot of them out there. And they're mostly bullshit. I say mostly, I suspect they may all be but there's probably one somewhere where some is right about some minor thing, which then allows all conspiracy theorists to say see, told you there was a cover up. The thing is there is rarely a cover up for anything. We had the 9/11 conspiracy theories getting an airing earlier this month, and the ignorance of evidence there. People believing there was no reason for the towers to go down because they were hit by a plane. I don't think they stress tested for a 747 coming into the building, there was no reason for them to stay standing. It's lunacy to suggest that the government organised these attacks as some do, considering the American government can barely organise their budget now, there is no way something that would have required that many people to pull off could have been covered up successfully. It just isn't possible with people talking, someone would know and tell, they can't kill everyone, no matter what you think. They really can't.
Conspiracy theories are a bit of a mystery to me, I understand why you might go there, but I prefer to look at the evidence personally. Generally you can find something that explains what you don't understand, and if you can't it's worth looking again. I don't know if people who believe strongly in them are missing something in their own lives, but it's odd that people can't accept reality. The word But is a good one to use sometimes, but mostly when the truth is told you can tell, and when you can't, you find out quite quickly, especially nowadays. Don't accept bullshit but you should know when it's being spouted.
One final thing, if you believe 9/11 or UFO conspiracy theories are the work of wingnuts, do a search for either Celtic or Rangers and referee, or maybe just SFA. "The Refs are a' Masons agin the bhoys/He had a Cross on his whistle." These are the work of the mad. Much more than anything else you read.
Friday 30 September 2011
Sunday 25 September 2011
Trolling
There are too many people calling trolling at the moment. Dom Joly is particularly bad for this on my twitter feed, exposing trolls when they are not trolls in my view. They're people shouting abuse, possibly flamers if that term still exists. nothing more or less than that.
To Explain, my definition of trolling would be put in another way, shit-stirring. You're throwing a comment out for the reaction you get, you're saying that Star Wars is crap where Star Trek is the dogs bollocks, and waiting for people to rise to it, and getting off on the reaction. I've never got why you would but apparently some do, which is ok but you don't feed them.
To make what I think clear, this is not a troll, whatever the telegraph believes. He's a wanker, yes, he's a flamer, he's an obnoxious prick, but he is not a troll. There is some thought behind trolling, and it shouldn't just get a reaction saying you're a stain on humanity, it should make people think about what they believe. Trolls should stir it up, they shouldn't abuse people. Please remember that.
To Explain, my definition of trolling would be put in another way, shit-stirring. You're throwing a comment out for the reaction you get, you're saying that Star Wars is crap where Star Trek is the dogs bollocks, and waiting for people to rise to it, and getting off on the reaction. I've never got why you would but apparently some do, which is ok but you don't feed them.
To make what I think clear, this is not a troll, whatever the telegraph believes. He's a wanker, yes, he's a flamer, he's an obnoxious prick, but he is not a troll. There is some thought behind trolling, and it shouldn't just get a reaction saying you're a stain on humanity, it should make people think about what they believe. Trolls should stir it up, they shouldn't abuse people. Please remember that.
Friday 16 September 2011
Bring back the Cane?
Was listening to Jeremy Vines show on Radio 2 this lunchtime and caught the piece on bringing back Corporal Punishment in schools. They had someone on arguing with the same phrase everyone uses when they argue for it, "Never Did Me Any Harm". You need to define harm as what it actually seems to have done is that it's made you into someone who can't see anything wrong with hitting a child because you can't make them listen to you.
Basically the argument seems to be, when I was young things were better and kids were better behaved in class, we had the cane in schools when I was young, therefore things were better because we had the cane. A kind of odd circular logic, that takes no account of any changes in society in the last 20 to 30 years, and places all worsening behaviour in the context of teachers not being able to thrash the children, rather than looking at any other reasons for it. Drives you mental.
We never had the cane when I was at school, or the belt or anything like it. Was banned in my primary school before I went, and I went to Secondary school (in Scotland) in 1988. I don't remember anything like the problems people speak about today then, although I do believe they're exaggerated in a lot of cases anyway, but it didn't cause any problems to my teachers not being able to hit us. Or didn't seem to anyway, as I remember. Some of them were better teachers than others, some of them couldn't manage a class too well, but it was never an issue that led to violence in the classroom, or any major problems. So why do you need corporal punishment, how will that help anything do you think? Without looking at whats causing the problems you're telling us about, it's just more unjustified violence in my view.
Basically the argument seems to be, when I was young things were better and kids were better behaved in class, we had the cane in schools when I was young, therefore things were better because we had the cane. A kind of odd circular logic, that takes no account of any changes in society in the last 20 to 30 years, and places all worsening behaviour in the context of teachers not being able to thrash the children, rather than looking at any other reasons for it. Drives you mental.
We never had the cane when I was at school, or the belt or anything like it. Was banned in my primary school before I went, and I went to Secondary school (in Scotland) in 1988. I don't remember anything like the problems people speak about today then, although I do believe they're exaggerated in a lot of cases anyway, but it didn't cause any problems to my teachers not being able to hit us. Or didn't seem to anyway, as I remember. Some of them were better teachers than others, some of them couldn't manage a class too well, but it was never an issue that led to violence in the classroom, or any major problems. So why do you need corporal punishment, how will that help anything do you think? Without looking at whats causing the problems you're telling us about, it's just more unjustified violence in my view.
Thursday 15 September 2011
The Price of Fuel
Yesterday they announces that the EU had approved a plan to try to reduce the high cost of petrol which especially affects those of us in the islands of Scotland. Today our petrol prices went up. Again. You can have an argument about fuel prices for the entire country being too high, due to taxes etc, but as Brian Wilson put it in his comment piece in the West Highland Free Press this week it's the price differential that causes us issues up here. About 20p a litre on city prices I think, now up to £1.50 a litre at my local petrol station, or near £7 a gallon.
I also found another comment from Brian Wilson in 2003, when he was an energy Minister in the Labour Government - "There is a danger of price increases at the pump becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in circumstances which do not justify them.". Also says about prices surging to 90p a litre. Remember that and weep. I will. I just looked up the prices when I passed my driving test in 1994, around 50p a litre. Even allowing for inflation it still makes nasty reading.
But the differential is the particular problem that we see here. I've heard a number of excuses for it over time, it's the cost to get the fuel to the island, or the lower volumes put through the pumps that causes the prices to rise. I've yet to hear a definitive theory that actually makes any sense. There isn't a huge difference in the cost to get fuel to other remote areas of Scotland, or to the volumes but there is still a differential even there. In the Wilson piece he uses Fort William as an example, similar volumes sold, and fairly remote to get it to, but much cheaper than here. The fuel comes to the island by Tanker, direct from Grangemouth I believe, which isn't particularly different to how they get it to other places, but it costs us more to fill up.
The major problem as I see it is that someone is ripping us off on fuel prices, and no-one wants to properly investigate who. Why not? There may be all sorts of reason, investigations have looked at if the retailers here were operating a cartel, but no investigations have ever looked at the suppliers. I certainly don't know why it costs so much, I'd like someone to tell me but I won't hold my breath for it. I do have a feeling I'll be getting fitter with walking so much more from now on though.
I also found another comment from Brian Wilson in 2003, when he was an energy Minister in the Labour Government - "There is a danger of price increases at the pump becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in circumstances which do not justify them.". Also says about prices surging to 90p a litre. Remember that and weep. I will. I just looked up the prices when I passed my driving test in 1994, around 50p a litre. Even allowing for inflation it still makes nasty reading.
But the differential is the particular problem that we see here. I've heard a number of excuses for it over time, it's the cost to get the fuel to the island, or the lower volumes put through the pumps that causes the prices to rise. I've yet to hear a definitive theory that actually makes any sense. There isn't a huge difference in the cost to get fuel to other remote areas of Scotland, or to the volumes but there is still a differential even there. In the Wilson piece he uses Fort William as an example, similar volumes sold, and fairly remote to get it to, but much cheaper than here. The fuel comes to the island by Tanker, direct from Grangemouth I believe, which isn't particularly different to how they get it to other places, but it costs us more to fill up.
The major problem as I see it is that someone is ripping us off on fuel prices, and no-one wants to properly investigate who. Why not? There may be all sorts of reason, investigations have looked at if the retailers here were operating a cartel, but no investigations have ever looked at the suppliers. I certainly don't know why it costs so much, I'd like someone to tell me but I won't hold my breath for it. I do have a feeling I'll be getting fitter with walking so much more from now on though.
Sunday 11 September 2011
The Performance of Grief
There's been a lot of comments, blogs, TV programmes today about 9/11 on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. My personal memory is that I was working, in Glasgow in an office in the science park out the far end of Maryhill Road. Would have been just after 2pm when one of the managers came down and said that a light plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre, which was what the first reports said as I remember it. Then everything in the office went quiet. There wasn't a phone call coming into the place, the only call we had all afternoon was from one customer who was in Brazil, and he was just told to put on the TV. He called back 3 weeks after if I remember right. And we all sat there watching the TV for the afternoon and seeing events unfold just as a group. One of the girls I worked with was trying to contact her parents that afternoon, as they were supposed to be flying from Boston that day. She found out they were ok hours later as I remember. And I can't tell you anything else about that week, or even that evening. What happened after everybody knows, eventually we wound up fighting in Iraq as an ultimate consequence of events that day, or that was one of the excuses used at least.
The thing is that it seems to be the amount of commemoration and talk about it comes across as almost a celebration of the events, and that should not be. It's not so much the overkill, and the amount of TV programmes, especially on the History Channel this week, but it's the way it's being done. I don't have any personal connection the the events, no-one I knew was there, I know no-one who died or was injured, so I don't feel any grief for those who died. Sympathy for the families yes, sorry for the loss of people but not actual grief for their deaths. I see grief as a personal thing, you need to know someone to feel it when they die, anything else is just sympathy, not real grief. You can appreciate the sacrifice of Soldiers and that kind of thing, but it's not really grief for their deaths.
But we seem to have come to a point where everyone has to grieve, this I think started with Tony Blair when Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in that car crash and he was saying the stuff about her being the peoples Princess. It's a national mourning thing that occurred, when everyone was supposed to be grief stricken for the loss of someone they saw in the papers but didn't know. I've never quite understood it, it seems to have taken on it's own life and become a performance of something you were meant to do and were not allowed to question. In a sense it's the same with the meeting of the dead coming back from the war that Blair and Bush started at 9/11. In Wootton Bassett they were lining the streets when the bodies were repatriated. That started as a few people stopping to honour the dead as they returned, that being fair enough and a personal thing. But it then took on it's own life and it became a ritual, and in doing so it lost a bit of meaning. When it came to an end it was handed over to another town. That had become a performance, not a thing that was done for peoples own reasons, but just a performance that was put on without thought. It began another way, but that's how it ended up. Just a show. People may believe that it's right, and I'm not going to argue, we respect those who fight for us, or we should anyway, but I'm not sure that something being automatically done helps, I hope I'm never in a position to find out.
The thing is that it seems to be the amount of commemoration and talk about it comes across as almost a celebration of the events, and that should not be. It's not so much the overkill, and the amount of TV programmes, especially on the History Channel this week, but it's the way it's being done. I don't have any personal connection the the events, no-one I knew was there, I know no-one who died or was injured, so I don't feel any grief for those who died. Sympathy for the families yes, sorry for the loss of people but not actual grief for their deaths. I see grief as a personal thing, you need to know someone to feel it when they die, anything else is just sympathy, not real grief. You can appreciate the sacrifice of Soldiers and that kind of thing, but it's not really grief for their deaths.
But we seem to have come to a point where everyone has to grieve, this I think started with Tony Blair when Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in that car crash and he was saying the stuff about her being the peoples Princess. It's a national mourning thing that occurred, when everyone was supposed to be grief stricken for the loss of someone they saw in the papers but didn't know. I've never quite understood it, it seems to have taken on it's own life and become a performance of something you were meant to do and were not allowed to question. In a sense it's the same with the meeting of the dead coming back from the war that Blair and Bush started at 9/11. In Wootton Bassett they were lining the streets when the bodies were repatriated. That started as a few people stopping to honour the dead as they returned, that being fair enough and a personal thing. But it then took on it's own life and it became a ritual, and in doing so it lost a bit of meaning. When it came to an end it was handed over to another town. That had become a performance, not a thing that was done for peoples own reasons, but just a performance that was put on without thought. It began another way, but that's how it ended up. Just a show. People may believe that it's right, and I'm not going to argue, we respect those who fight for us, or we should anyway, but I'm not sure that something being automatically done helps, I hope I'm never in a position to find out.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Why 50 Things to do before you die?
The guy who drove up Snowdon said it was one of the 50 things he wanted to do before he died. I'm not sure if it was just drive up a mountain or specifically drive up Snowdon, although why is eluding me altogether. I can't see the excitement in it, I can't see the challenge or the point. It's a pretty dull thing to want to do as far as I'm concerned, let's drive uphill for a bit off-road. Another tick off the list.
I'm not a fan of these lists anyway. Mostly they're done by adrenaline junkies, or some real idiots who want to show off about the things they've done, like bungee jumping in New Zealand - the question would be why make a suicidal leap without the commitment to the afterlife? Or the places you simply MUST visit, like Machu Picchu, I'm sure it's a fantastic site but it's in Peru, not likely to happen, and likely to be disappointing after the build up it's had over the last few years.
I don't really like people telling me what to do, or where to go, which may be something to do with this, but these kind of lists do really annoy me. It's putting your life down to a tick in a box, yes, done that, next hugely important thing I must do before I die as I've been told my life is incomplete unless I've been attacked by a bull in Pamplona or gone heli-skiing in the Alps. And suddenly everyone has to have a list, and you can't move on, or actually live your life and see what happens, as everything must be geared towards the next tickbox on your list, the next life-changing experience that you simply must do as otherwise you're not a whole human being.
Personally I just take things as they come, I will never go bungee jumping (I don't trust my life to a bit of rubber and some nutcase tying a knot). I'll visit where I want to go, not where you've decided is cool, or massively important and must be seen. I'll do the things I enjoy, and I'll make my own choices thanks. And I'll never drive a car up a Mountain. Because I don't see the point. Driving it round the Nurburgring would be a different matter.
I'm not a fan of these lists anyway. Mostly they're done by adrenaline junkies, or some real idiots who want to show off about the things they've done, like bungee jumping in New Zealand - the question would be why make a suicidal leap without the commitment to the afterlife? Or the places you simply MUST visit, like Machu Picchu, I'm sure it's a fantastic site but it's in Peru, not likely to happen, and likely to be disappointing after the build up it's had over the last few years.
I don't really like people telling me what to do, or where to go, which may be something to do with this, but these kind of lists do really annoy me. It's putting your life down to a tick in a box, yes, done that, next hugely important thing I must do before I die as I've been told my life is incomplete unless I've been attacked by a bull in Pamplona or gone heli-skiing in the Alps. And suddenly everyone has to have a list, and you can't move on, or actually live your life and see what happens, as everything must be geared towards the next tickbox on your list, the next life-changing experience that you simply must do as otherwise you're not a whole human being.
Personally I just take things as they come, I will never go bungee jumping (I don't trust my life to a bit of rubber and some nutcase tying a knot). I'll visit where I want to go, not where you've decided is cool, or massively important and must be seen. I'll do the things I enjoy, and I'll make my own choices thanks. And I'll never drive a car up a Mountain. Because I don't see the point. Driving it round the Nurburgring would be a different matter.
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