The Irish Virus litmus test: are people really getting more stupid?

To me the answer is yes; this blog post serves to provide my reasoning.

Once upon a time in my IT career (it was the 90's) this meme (we didn't call them memes back then) came around:

We all laughed a lot, it was patently absurd ... it was unquestionable: nobody would be that stupid. Then I encountered this article in Ars Technica.

You fucking what now? You open a terminal (as administrator) and enter that string of text without even understanding it into the heart of your computer... breaching every defence it has and invite the invaders in through the tunnel you dug for them.

Fuck me, people are more stupid than I thought possible. So here I submit the remarks from "The Dadbod reacts" as my closing.

So it seems that we are indeed getting to live in the plot of Idiocracy....

The UberSchmarotzer

I quite like Nietzsche's phrase "UberMensch" (a man above the usual human limitations and social constraints), so as a hat tip to Nietzsche I have decided to make the word: UberSchmarotzer to celebrate that (apparently) uniquely Russian (and from now on I'll only call that cunt-tree RuZZia) ability to overthrow their harsh oppressive Monarchy (the Czars) and to be fooled into replacing it with parsites like Lennin and his following (further composting society) "leaders" such as Stalin and (so far) culminating in Putin. 

Perhaps SchmarotzerMensch is better ... I'm not sure.

As you know the Russian Revolution led directly to where RuZZia became the sort of autocracy where invades its neighbour (Ukraine) and attempts a genocidal engulfment of them in the manner of one huge uncaring amoeba with apparent impunity.

The "apparent" is because they have inadvertently set in motion their own (slow motion) demise.

This litany of vile sub-humans (who must surely be sub-human because of their psychological lack of empathy and care) set about iteratively constructing a system which was designed to be a "jack-boot stamping on the face of their people" (borrowing from Orwell) for eternity.

They have gone past the need to have an expensive police force to ensure compliance and have selectively bred a class who are so subjugated that they have simply ceased to be anything more than the lower intelligence mice that Calhoun discovered emerged from his Universe 25.

So I expect that RuZZia will soon breed itself out of existence.

Take Care ... choices make the difference between a bright future and oblivion.

reality

A philosophical post.

 

Since high school (after over 10 years of punishment by Christian Nuns and Brothers) my philosophy of life has been the search for truth and the "minimisation of distortion of reality.

I have tried to live without hope, not expecting anything (either good or bad) but embracing what comes along each day.

This meme reminded me of that choice made long ago.

Longer term readers of my blog will know that I've spent a lot of time on philosophy; not as an abstract but for the very real psychological and physiological problems that confronted me.

For sure I could have committed intellectual suicide by refusing to think, by believing in a distorted reality where "God" was being merciful and loving, but too much harm was visited on me in quick succession to even remotely allow this to sit. I played no part in this, and especially that my wife was totally innocent of my prior sins so why was she punished (by death) as well as her whole family from her loss?

Christians (and perhaps Muslims and Jews) will say "this is a mystery" ... well where others see mystery I see just reality (genetics, age, illness ...); natural outcomes and statistics. To me the others are trapped in a living hell of an iteratively fictionalised character story built on the lines of Psychopathic narcissism, gas lighting and innate  Stockholm syndrome.

I was well acquainted with Stoic views (from my studies of Greek and Roman history at school) but the philosophy of Albert Camus, perhaps this (link) is as good a place to start on Camus if you don't already know his work.

Being Stoic does not mean you don't feel pain, but instead it guides you how to attribute analysis and on how you should direct your responses. I've got a couple of articles on Stoic views here.

So, anyway, maintain your critical thinking, don't devolve into distortions of reality and be Stoic, be Absurdist and be a good human.

Best Wishes

my new bike: 1985 Yamaha SR500

I'd ridden one of these once (belonged to a riding friend) but certainly spent more time on the later models (the SR-X) and indeed before buying the KTM Duke 390 was actively searching for one. Sadly everything I saw was in crap condition or done up in a way that I hated (some wankers gravy stroke dream of what a cafe racer should look like). Still looking, I eventually found this one:

It was exactly what I was looking for: an honest looking version which hasn't been done up like an old slag at a nightclub to pretend she's at her prime. As well I was attracted to the fact that it has drum brakes on the front, making it both rare and easy to own. 

Now this last point will prove contentious, but being quite familiar with drum brakes, and being in the midst of the messy job of replacing the seals in my 2006 Yamaha brakes (twin disc, hydraulic, dual piston callipers), which have finally decided to stick to the pistons (causing problems not least of which was parts availability); the thought of needing to do that (and more) to a 1985 bike which has been sitting around for some time bothered me. So I looked for a drum brake version as a preference.

I already have decades of experience on bikes with drum brakes and know that 99.9% of the time the braking of drums is entirely sufficient (and I'm not making this a track bike so I don't need that 0.1% time). The small picture the the left there is me on my 80's Honda H100 2 stroke that I used to ride to Uni.

I suppose that some younger people will have mixed feelings about this, but to me the whole bike oozes genuine time traveller (who didn't short cut time).

From the tank ...

through to the frame (with little bits of surface  rust).  I just love that honesty (in not trying to hide anything beneath paint bog and polish).

Its so relaxing to ride, the low torque means also that I can avoid changing gears coming into slower corners and still pull out with just 2000rpm on the clock. With the KTM 390 Duke still in the stable here I can say that the old SR500 is more torquey, easy to ride at least as fun to ride and perhaps even a bit faster than the KTM. The specs of the two bikes make this clear too. 

FWIW I rolled it onto a local weighbridge here and it weighs about 160kg (oil in the engine, fuel in the tank.

Naturally as soon as I got it I did some basic services (changed oil and filter, checked valve clearances) and found that everything (well not the oil) was in excellent condition (relieved).

However on the 3rd day it wouldn't start. Bugger. So I started with the sparkplug (took it out) looking for evidence of fuel (on the sparkplug) or spark (resting it against the motor and kicking it over). Found fuel no spark. Long story short I found the problem under the timing cover.

I basically (still) have no clear idea how this mush of water and oil emulsion got there, none the less it needed cleaning out. So I took pictures, passed them around some friends who knew a few things, cleaned it up (taking off the flywheel and checking the stator coils and crank seal) and put it back together.

A couple of kicks, a back fire (which encouraged me) then - Started! (and the crowd cheered). I believe that the solution is that the coil up there (red circle and arrow) was being blocked from "seeing" the rotation of the flywheel and thus it stopped sparking when the oil/water emulsion got too much.

Somehow I felt like I'd passed a test, but either way I was unaccountably happy.

Why this bike?

As you may have guessed by now (especially if you read this blog much) a reason why I targeted the SR is not only because I like riding bikes, but also because I like doing things myself. The SR represents a point in motorcycle evolution where the owner could do everything needed for basic maintenance themselves but was sufficiently advanced that it was as fast as needed to keep up with modern traffic.

• No fuel injection
• Simple air cooled engine
• Single over head cam
• Valve maintenance by screw and lock nut adjusters

You see I've run the gauntlet of having to find good mechanics and in the middle having crappy work being done to my motorcycles by idiots (as described in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) for decades. Further I've gained great personal satisfaction from the outcomes. Its really become a way of life for me now not least because of the personal satisfaction I get from it. I very much subscribe to the interpretation of Nietzsche's "Will to Power" being the exercising of my own personal power to facilitate my needs and enhance my independence. Just like any of my projects be it solar floor heating or building my shed, the successful outcomes give me a sense of satisfaction and indeed happiness that just never comes from hedonistic pursuits (eating, fucking, and other transient pleasures), although I like them too ;-)

The supplied toolkit underscores this design philosophy is embedded in the bike by Yamaha; I've never seen a toolkit (outside of old BMW motorcycles) which comes with everything you need to keep the bike running nicely.

Conclusion

The small problems at the beginning of owning this bike were sort of like it testing me: is my new owner a narcissist or a competent human who'll look after me. You see my focus on philosophy these last ten years or so has led me to a different understanding. A book I read some time ago by Matthew B Crawford made some points about the differences in personality type between people. Let me quote:

A washing machine, for example, surely exists to serve our needs, but in contending with one that is broken, you have to ask what it needs. At such a moment, technology is no longer a means by which our mastery of the world is extended, but an affront to our usual self-absorption. Constantly seeking self-affirmation, the narcissist views everything as an extension of his will, and therefore has only a tenuous grasp on the world of objects as something independent. He is prone to magical thinking and delusions of omnipotence.

A repairman, on the other hand, puts himself in the service of others, and fixes the things they depend on. His relationship to objects enacts a more solid sort of command, based on real understanding. For this very reason, his work also chastens the easy fantasy of mastery that permeates modern culture.

I recommend the book, you can buy it on Amazon (here, and note I make nothing from recommending it).

The small trials I've been through at the start of this process have enabled me to see again that its through the struggle that success tastes sweeter and its in the power you have and the ability to develop it that leads to the most salient rewards.

Enjoy

Reviewers are the problem

Recently there was this headline on the site "Make Use Of" that exemplified why reviewers are probably the most significant part of the decline of technical gear (including software).

Reviewers are apparently so specialised on reviewing things more than using things that they are bored with offerings quickly and want some new thing to come along and dazzle them (NB allow them to dribble more about stuff). The truth is this simply muddies the waters rather than making better use of things.

This article (especially its title) clarifies that the author goes to their computer for some wizz bang experience and not to actually do work.

In contrast I use my computers desktop to access applications and the file system, I couldn't give a rats arse about animations and slick roll ins. I'm there to make use of my computer to do things:

• development (you know, making software)
• editors (video, image and text)
• communications (email, and other services)
• entertainment (playing music and watching video)

I don't want a desktop that gets in the way of the above. I don't want to be constantly re-learning how to actually get to what I want.

Now sure, I like to see some changes, but having been with Ubuntu (to follow this example) since about Karmic Koala and made iterative updates over time. I have always been cautious in my updates but each iteration has been better at fixing issues.

Notably the community of users is actually against adding bling  ... but then unlike the author what they want is functionality not "a UI as entertainment" or "user experience" (you can do twitter for that).

What happens with this sort of driver (shallow reviewers) is a thinning of depth of experience which often results in a loss of understanding of what can be done (or indeed the doing of that).

My phone (Android) is a good example of that. Reviewers made shallow and blinkered assessments of that version of software and ignored (because probably they were too naïve and shallow) the great advanced features that it came with (which took some years to find their way into Android officially).

Shallow and dim reviewers pushing stuff to an unsophisticated base of users (who should probably stay with Windows 8) result in people never actually making best use of their stuff (perhaps they aren't able to anyway if my support calls are any indication)

Ultimately my view on a good design is not to continually add more, but the view of when there is essentially nothing left to take away while leaving it functional. Updates should be based on user requirements changing. An example of this is that I once wrote a small bit of software that queried the HR system (on the Oracle server side) and returned names, office location, phone and email. I subsequently left the organisation (to do more advanced things elsewhere) and came back 10 years later to find that the modern iteration of that was just using my original software and wrapping it in a nice HTML presentation layer. Nice pat on my back there.

Ubuntu is pretty much there right now in terms of functionality.

So my next submission is about a phone of mine, I bought it soon after it was released even though I expected the reviews were wrong. I bought it mainly because it had VoLTE capability and as I was entirely "hot-spotting" here at home for my internet needs (laptop, tablet ...) it turned out that 1) VoLTE wasn't effective in my area and 2) the WiFi Hotspot was pretty inferior to my exsting phones exemplary implementation.

However one thing that's ball-tearingly clear in what was wrong with the reviews was Image Stabilisation in video ... this phone rocks!

and yet the brain dead lazy (clearly copy paste each others works) reviewers all said it didn't have stabilisation.

The only way they could have missed this is to not actually try any hand held video and then look at the results.

So sadly ... reviewers are the problem (them an spec sheet gazers)

The AOL effect

 

Many years ago the internet was a place where only government agencies or education facilities existed. These players were denoted by one of the following domain suffixes:

*.edu
*.gov
*.mil

Then along came the .com revolution and those of us on the net found a new group of people "the general public". At first this was people who were not typical members of the public because in 1989 the people who had a computer were fewer and usually had some legitimate business reason to own something of such specific use. 

AoL however tried to capture the mums and dads of America and the experience became more and more the opinionated and uneducated and quickly if you saw a argument occuring you'd find that the protagonist had a domain suffix like .aol

Quickly it became known as Arseholes On Line and opinions were more like:

Then came internet on phones and it all got much worse as the base of internet use expanded. To me its not insignificant that the guy is using an Apple computer. Despite Apple not being the first to produce smartphones, they were the first to lowball it ot the General Public even adding cunning things to their default system seeings like "Sent from my iPhone" on emails. Making idiots think that only iPhones could do that , while making the rest of us facepalm.

Now its about "main stream TV" level.

are we the masters?

 Its often good to have a background in biology to be able to ask questions like: who is in charge

"However, we should never forget the hard-won cautionary lessons of history. Alchemy was not only a proto-science, but also a “hyper-science” that overpromised and underdelivered. Astrological predictions were taken so seriously that life had to adapt to theory, instead of the other way around. Unfortunately, modern society is not free from such magical thinking, putting too much confidence in omnipotent algorithms, without critically questioning their logical or ethical basis." (citation)

and are we then to become like wheat to the AI? Because wheat could be see as having enslaved humans as propagators and carers for it.

Worthy thought right there about the basis of symbiosis.

If we defer to the new religion to run our lives we need to ask basic questions like "is the machine a good parent".

Good Morning

The Big Question

I read this Guardian article this morning and it resonated with some of my views. Without reading too much into the word "meaning" in this it makes the important point of "we're all we've got"and perhaps we should stop thinking about SciFi, stop placing God as the center and start thinking about humanity as the center ... 

I would place religion as a key player in our environmental problems as well as our problems of getting along together. Religions (particularly the Abrahamic stemmed faiths) somehow are key in fostering the idea that somehow "God" and the "Final Conflict" are what we were created for.

So its not for the prudent management of our selves and our world, its somehow about pleasing God. Its almost as if all religions want to celebrate our death as the sacrifice for God.

To me this is complete madness.

The reality as I see it is that we have (in the last few dozen years) become truly world changing agents and are slowly waking up to that fact. 

We have to realise that if we fuck up here we fall forever, there is no "new land" to migrate to.

We need to get rid of the toxic mental disease at the heart of most of religion (all or most of them really) and make anthropocentric views the center of what's important.

Now to be clear I am not saying that  there is no God, what I am saying is that the human views of God are wrong. If we continue to rely on the ideas of a bunch of illiterate un-educated sheep shaggers and War Lords to inform us of what God is then we're locked into a thinking from 2000 years ago which is entirely out of step with human capacity right now.

investment watches

Its been a while since my last post here and so I thought I'd whack something together which I was thinking about a topic that came up in an internet discussion. The topic was "will this watch make a good investment".  Note: not this watch

but it sure is a nice watch.

Anyway, I see this being bantered around on various watch discussion sites where an amount of intellectual self delusion goes on (commonly I call this watch wanking).

A well known watch review site did an article (here) about the resale values of Rolex models and identified some pretty stand out models. I thought I'd discuss a the stand out model of the Daytona 116520 White.

Introduced in about 2000 its only been naround a few years. As you can see from their chart (which I've edited to remove distraction) that seems to have grown in price from around US$13,000 when new to nearly US$30,000 now.

A KingWang type would just leap on that and go WOW ... I can make a packet on a watch.

Lets just do a little more analysis depth than that simplistic wanking, hmm? So to be able to get that sort of growth you had to know in advance which watches would go up and which would not. Notice that the Cellini Time actually went down in cost over the time between release and used price researched for their article (2020).

Now the Daytona 116500 was made in 2000, which means that you'd have had to keep it not only in good order, but either proof of service or a recent service done if you wanted to get that money. Such things are  not free. Financial people call this "cost of carry".

Now lets look at what would have happened if you'd put $13,000 down on something else, lets say good old fashioned gold. Now how much gold would you get in the year 2000? 

Back in 2000 gold was about US$279 per oz, that $13,000 works out to be about 47oz of gold (people didn't buy fractions of an Oz ).

So now, if you'd put aside that gold, what would that be worth today? Well at US$2,424 per oz at the moment of writing means you would have US$112,946.23. Suddenly the less than US$30,000 seems like peanuts doesn't it. That is because gold has risen like this since even the 70's

So you could now go out and buy 4 Daytonas and still have change.

Amusingly gold isn't even considered a good investment ... 

Watches as an investment? Laugh ... I nearly shat.

I've done my own research

More or less I'm just going to republish this as it stood; in the unlikely place of Facebook (link) However in case that goes away or you don't have Facebook here it is. 

NOTE: emphasis and formatting mine:

---

“Do your research!!!”

Here’s the thing. Research is a learned skill; it is hard, it is nuanced and complex, and it is true that the majority of people would not even know where to begin or even HOW to do [their own] research.

Research is NOT:

• Googling,
• doom scrolling your FB newsfeed, or 
• binge serial watching what the YouTube algo feeds you or 
• reading Reddit / 4Chan 😖 

to search for the results you are hoping to find to be “true.” These are called confirmation biases, and are quickly and easily ruled out when doing actual research.

A post credited to Linda Gamble Spadaro, a licensed mental health counselor in Florida, sums this up quite well:

Please stop saying you researched it.

You didn’t research anything and it is highly probable you don’t know how to do so.

Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on the reported results? No?

Did you at least take each article one by one and look into the source (that would be the author, publisher and funder), then critique the writing for logical fallacies, cognitive distortions and plain inaccuracies?

Did you ask yourself why this source might publish these particular results? Did you follow the trail of references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them?

No? Then you didn’t…research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little or no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotional filters and called it proof.”

This doesn’t even go into institutional review boards (IRB’s), also known as independent ethics committees, ethical review boards, or touch on peer-review, or meta-analyses.

To sum it up, a healthy dose of scepticism is/can be a good thing…as long as we are also applying it to those things we wish/think to be true, and not just those things we choose to be sceptical towards, or in denial of.

Most importantly, though, is to apply our best critical thinking skills to ensure we are doing our best to suss out the facts from the fiction, the myths, and outright BS in pseudoscience and politics.

Misinformation is being used as a tool of war and to undermine our public health, and it is up to each of us to fight against it.

PS: this video emerged on YouTube in late August of 2023 by Sabine

I strongly recommend watching it in full.

Next from this lecture in what amounts to a teams 50 years work on a topic we get this sound advice:

https://youtu.be/7mOvJbmpG6A?t=569

From the transcript starting at 9:31

Now before I present any clinical evidence let me just make three principles about research.

First of all my boss in the my early years in Cardiff, Archie Cochran, of this University, he very effectively publicized the principle that; in evaluating evidence it's essential at all available evidence is considered and never just a selection.

It's awfully easy to have a hypothesis and spend a Friday afternoon going through the literature and finding one or two Publications that show the same kind of thing as we're looking for in that particular hypothesis. That is so misleading it should never be done. So he went to enormous efforts as you will see in what follows that we would collect all the available evidence.

Then the follower of other modern medicines William Moser he said I think it sums up "medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability". In the end science never proves anything, always [it is] another explanation and conclusions about a particular hypothesis [and] can only be established at best to be Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Don't look to me for any certainty in what I say but I think we've established a number of important steps which go beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Sage words.

Lastly a new skill (for anyone not still in high school, where at least in Australia this is now part of the curriculum) is the concept of Critcal Thinking. Its outlined well at Monash Uni's site here.

Becoming an expert takes a lot more than just time, it takes feedback that you were wrong or confirmation that you are correct.

Best Wishes

What is the vegan agenda?

I often wonder what it is that is the real Vegan Agenda. 

A quick look around shows that involves grandstanding, putting "their message" out there in a highly visible way (like this model chick in an Asian city)

(seeming to biggyback of another quasi religious organisation called PeTA) and aligning with "saving the earth".

Now I know that vegetarians have been around for most of recorded history, but Veganism is something new. Vegans go beyond vegetarian and will often make a fuss about even the merest amount of "pollutants" in foods, yet that same vegan can be observed eating non-vegan foods (if one is careful because its often in in seclusion).

Why is it so?

The answer in my view is that Vegans seek beyond all other things to be noticed, to be special, to be apart and to signal their virtue. Interestingly this is the exact realm of the narcissist.

Lets take a look at what a narcissist is first.

further that because Vegans have an agenda and look to a systematic belief system it also ticks many boxes of "Cult"

The question of "religious" style motivations is already examined by some papers on the psychology of Veganism. For instance this one which explores how people inclined towards a religion are indeed also inclined towards Vegan ideals.

Results show that religiosity exerts some effect on consumer environmental predisposition, and that, in turn, such predisposition determines vegan purchasing intentions. A split model is then proposed considering Christian and Buddhist consumers. Results of multigroup analysis show that religious influxes on consumer environmental predispositions might vary according to different religious faiths.

Someone who is religious is often more inclined towards "magical thinking" (and do recall that religion has been the #1 enemy of Science since Science really started).

Vegans will have you believe that their "teachings" are the only way towards the (holy) goal of a Sustainable World for humanity.  Yet that claim really does not bear examination; indeed closer examination will reveal that title belongs squarely with good old vegetarians (and especially if they make a few concessions to dairy and eggs). 

This study for instance 

found that the vegan diet would feed fewer people than two of the vegetarian and two of the four omnivorous diets studied.

So any moral high ground would only be apparent if you don't actually test the claims. 

Interestingly this is exactly in line with Malignant Narcissists who love control and hate facts.

but wait ... there's more

The Vegan agenda goes beyond just "sustainable" and well into control for controls sake. While turning a blind eye to the amount of animals killed in the harvesting of their soya bean crops (or even the entire eco-systems laid waste in clearing habitats to plant them); Vegans will decry medications for their excipients , refuse beers or wines because of miniscule components used in manufacture and even tell you what shoes to wear.

Whats even more amusing is that numerous health studies have shown that being Vegan (and probably vegetarian) is not universally good for health and involves many complex tricks to make sure you're not setting yourself up for a deficiency disease (link to a University Publication). An amusing anecdote is that a person I know was getting sick, so she consulted her Doctor. Blood tests were done and the Doctor suggested that the problem was her Iron content was low. He suggested a small serving of red meat weekly. ... NOPE ... not for the faithful. So he suggested a glass of Stout or Guinness (evidence for that), but again NOPE ... its not Vegan 

Sounds a bit like "its not Catholic" or "its not Halal" or some other non scientific impractical and often cruel religious view doesn't it.

Lastly Vegans (much like religions) seem to feel its OK to bring violence to bear because of "what's at steak" (oh, steak ... mmmm).

From that article:

• Animal activists who brought central Melbourne to a standstill recently have vowed to step up their campaign of civil disobedience and raids on abattoirs and farms.
• Activists say they will risk big fines and possible jail terms for privacy and trespass offences
• Chris Delforce, said animal rights activism was a natural extension of the growth of veganism, as people became more aware of the treatment of animals raised for food, fibre, entertainment and research.
• The extremists and the radicals that we've seen invading farms and businesses, it's unlikely they'll ever have reasonable conversations.

Extremists and radicals ... fits the picture.

It gets even more ridiculous...

...when you consider that quite a lot of Vegans don't want to make substantial changes to the food that they eat. so rather than just "don't eat it" they want to eschew eggs and have their mayonnaise ... talk about Marie Antoinette 

and manufacturers (who just want to sell stuff) place VEGAN in big letters (perhaps for the morons) on what is obviously a vegan product anyway.

What's even more ironic is that (aside from wanting to have their views but not make any changes) these products are often more expensive to make, release more CO₂ and other areas (study):

The vegan mayonnaise had a significantly (p < 0.05) lower impact across 4 categories, but a significantly higher impact across 8 categories out of 16, including climate change and resource-use-energy-carriers.

Laugh ... I nearly shat.

Long ago I wrote a whimsical piece about the Zombies of Moronity ... I see that Vegans are forming up as a group and taking that crown by force (along with say, QAnon).

The King is dead, long live the King. King Wang, King Wang, Wanking...

responding to changes and emergencies

I'm quite fond of philosophy that doesn't rely on "magic plot devices" such as "god will help" ... I prefer instead to see things from the perspective of "all humans have strength and dignity" (well except malignant narcissists manifest large in politicians like Trump et al).

So whatever your facing humans have faced it before and the Stoics formulated some philosphy around this common experience. For everything we face today humans have faced for thousands of years before.

Marcus Aurelius is one of my go to philosophers (and was of course once a Roman Emperor)

herd immunity works (or so I've heard)

While busilly deploying to the swarm a good friend the Professor Von Explaino remarked 

"I have no plan to fix these bugs. I’m just going to keep deploying them until the end users develop a herd immunity to them."

I expect he'd heard it worked somewhere ... herd immunity that is ... but they could also be pretty bugs

“He remarked to me then,” said that mildest of men,
          “‘If your Snark be a Snark, that is right:
     Fetch it home by all means—you may serve it with greens,
          And it’s handy for striking a light.

More to life than simply death

A friend of mine (and Father figure) often mused "that there must be more to life than death" ... I believe he is correct but not in a way he was perhaps angling from.

We are not just individuals, we are a functioning part of a society. When we focus on just our own lives then we fail to see the ongoing interconnectedness that our lives have in society.

 If *we* are achieving nothing then that's our choice. We do actually (see it or not) form part of a fabric of society.

The cotton plant produces short fibers which are spun into longer threads and woven to make a blanket, jeans or a shirt. We don't see that bud but it was there.

What happens when I die I can't imagine, but what I can do to help others is something that I can imagine, and choose to do.

Be that Cotton Bud

I seem to have found a kindred spirit

Recently in my youtube feed this fellows talks came up.



Given my 2013 post (here) about my views and experiences with "Religion" its almost like he's telling my own story, which means there are probably quite a few of us who went through this wringer and were subjected to the abuses by these "loving" people too.

Happy Easter

After a long Friday, and being dead for a bit ... shit like that will turn not just your shit white, but you too...

To the believers ... may god bless you

A Post Anniversary Post

Ten years ago yesterday Anita and I made public before friends and relatives the commitment to our love and our relationship. A relationship which began in Korea in 2005 and crossed a few continents.

Its been over 6 years since I've held her hand (or hers mine), enjoyed her baking or had her direct influence in my life. So many holes created by her departure will never be filled, to remain permanent infarctions in my life (see here).

It has been a hard time reconciling everything these last years, and while in our time together before and after marriage there were surely conflicts and disagreements I enjoyed learning how to come together with Anita to live in harmony. I know we were evolving together and becoming a great team with a common sense of humor.

I can't say I've enjoyed the (soon to be more) years of learning how to be apart.

In those years I have come to see at least one thing clearly: there is no God who is like the Churches teach (although there may be a creator), its just lies and deceit to keep people turning up, preying upon something deep inside our makeup. A need, a want.

I hope that there is more to Life than just Death, but in this life I will never know. Perhaps I will never see Anita again, perhaps I may. However I must live my life as if I will not and can only in good faith keep the love for her in my heart and respect all I learned while we were together.

So if you have the good fortune to be in love ... cherish it for its value is not to be underestimated.

The purpose of this post is not to seek sympathy (or express those desires) but to encourage anyone out there who is in a state of love to not take that for granted. Express how you feel, stop sweating the small stuff and enjoy the life you live together, for there is nothing surer than that you will be apart one day (well unless you both die simultaneously). I would like to quote a poignant part of a well scripted video (and then provide a link to that).

Our emotions are a combination of two elements: an affective movement within the body and a judgement. Suffering arises when we attach judgements to these affective movements that are beyond our control. For example to love someone is within your control, the judgement that this love should be returned and should be so forever is not.

I like the teachings of Stoicism because it is a philosophy to help you to make your own life better. It teaches you outlooks and views upon whch you can build your own strength (and not place you in a dependence relationship with a parasitic organisational organism {organised religion},which has found a weakness in human minds and preys upon it).

I hope that your life is made just that tiny bit better by this.

Old Homestead

Back in the early Pioneering days of Australia people were poor (yet somehow managed to not be impoverished) and made do with what they had, often building and then adding to their houses in stages. Now everyone "gets in deep" with million dollar loans (even that word has lost significance) and has to "have it all and have it now".

Sometimes I like to immerse myself in that for a little while and reflect upon that to understand it. Which is why I'm drawn to older (often abandoned) buildings.

As I currently live in a rural area, and so there are always old homes left on properties as people either "sold and moved on" or (often the kids) just built another home somewhere else on the property. My eye was caught by this lovely old place on a ride the other day, so I thought I'd share a little of it.

I don't like the stark and contrasty light of mid day so I chose to go out there in the late afternoon with the sun barely over the horizon (and falling fast as it does here). Accordingly I like to adjust the images that the camera gets to fit how I saw it with my own eyes.

I love the obvious stages of a veranda on the front (right side) and then added an annex on the left.

Back then it was most common to have the bathroom / washing room in a different place (so as to keep the floors from getting rot from water inevitably splashed around (having redone a bathroom in a modern house a few years back I think its something we could learn from, as waterproofing is still a big issue ...).

note the construction of the sink and the simple drain (out into the yard). Given how bloody dry it is here most of the time and given how little water people used (probably a tenth of today) for washing it was obviously quite a satisfactory arrangement. Having a concrete floor was clearly a sign they had some money too.

My Mum grew up in such a place (and Dad's wasn't too dissimilar although he was a city boy) and she applied the same principles in the gradual addition to building of our house (where I grew up). Mum was very much of the Stoic School (although having been infected with the mental virus of Christianity at the hands of Nuns at boarding school may not have known it). I believe that mum operated by the view

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.” 

So while she never told it to me, I believe I have understood that an embodied it myself.
Thanks Mum

Lastly, as is pretty obvious to any reader of my blog photography is one of my passions, so too is motorcycling, so I may as well share how I got there to take these photos with you too.

My trusty T-Max (its my second now) and while they're not common in Australia (but are in Europe) they are a great highway cruiser and very handy practical (500cc) bikes. They are a bit sketchy on dirt roads tho ...

:-)

(My car is as hot as an oven...) Taken Literally

I'm one who was brought up on Science and who has a number of years of study in that area (culminating in a research Masters). So its unsurprising that I take literally the motto of the Royal Society of "Nullius in verba".

Think for yourself and verify

Sadly in modern society Education has failed and the Division Engines of Social Media have made it easier for Zombies of Moronity (article on them here) to just foam at the mouth with whatever emotional response they may have to something they like or don't like. Its important to consider the "Pied Piper" principle here in leading fools with what they like or what happens to be consistent with their world view.

This is however the basic recipe for "how a fool and their money are easily parted", and the antithesis of how all the technology in our daily lives (you know, like how you're reading this post) operates and was created.

So when I saw on FarceBook the following post I thought "that doesn't seem right" ...

Particularly the words "proof " and the description of "parked in the shade" by Mildura Cafe ...

Being who I am rather than bleat about "that's bullshit" or "ouh it does feel like an oven in my car" (which are all meaningless), I thought I'd set up my own "experiment" to see if  I can replicate it myself.

Method

So taking their description as instructions I decided that I doubted it would work so rather than waste time I went straight for "do it in full sunlight"

I altered the experiment a little by not using an open baking tray (as per the picture above) but in a glass lidded casserole dish. My logic was two fold:

• I didn't want my car to be smelling like steak for weeks
• evaporation will actually cool the steak so the sealed casserole dish would be better at keeping in the heat of the oven (which is why we use them)

Here is the meat in my casserole dish

with a little dash of oil in the bottom so it didn't stick.

So I parked my car in full sunlight on a fukken hot day (we're in the middle of a heat wave at the moment) and left it there for an hour before I put the meat in at 11am (as per their method). I didn't think to photograph it till after I'd put the meat in there, but here it is and you can see its "full sunlight" not shade

When I placed the dish on the passenger seat I thought I'd measured the temperature, so I closed the door (to keep in the heat) and dashed back for my thermometer ...

already warming up ...

At 1:30 I thought I'd just check my cooking, so I went out and had a quick peek in the oven. It was warm (hot enough to have killed anyone in the car by then), but not hot enough denature the proteins (which is what cooking does quick primer here).

a puddle of liquid has started to appear in the dish, but its not cooking and is still red to the sight... so I thought I'd sit it on the (metal) dash of the Pajero for an hour or so to just give it that bit more solar energy

Shot through the windscreen. The car is facing North, and so as this is the southern hemisphere you can infer the time from the shadow angles to be around 13:45pm in this shot.

An hour later I knew the passenger seat would be getting better sun (you can see it in the earlier picture already) so I moved it quickly back to there (getting full sun through the window).

I then went back to my other jobs and prepared the tipod in the kitchen to make the "fresh out of the oven" video which is below.

This clarifies what the steak looked like and the texture and condition. As you can see the steak was essentially slow cooked to a rare stage. Indeed I finished it off by thin slicing it and then quick frying it in the pan just to sear the meat. I served it with dinner with greens (rather like a Snark) crushed peanuts and a glass of Shiraz ... who says research is not its own reward ;-)

Discusison

Now its important to note that the original intention of the Farcebook post was to remind people that you should not leave children or animals in the car in summer. I accept there was some theatrics in this post to add some whimsey. However what drew me to do this experiment was the amount of conflict generated in the comments (make sure you read that Division Engine post above) and the emotional and evidence-less squeals of both the Yah and the Nay respondents.

Fucking no-one even thought to try it. Born to be sheep. Worse, that although my first reply to a caller of bullshit was "why not try it yourself". Later when I posted my finding and photographs, even with the above evidence was told it was bullshit. Nice to be called a liar by morons, it somehow validates me. Let me quote from Epictetus (philosopher of the month for me it seems) how I see this:

• If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."
• It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting 

So I implore you (probably not needed for anyone who reads my blog much) to not take things at face value, to seek evidence if you feel its wrongor even if you feel its right but "maybe not".

Before you make judements.

The Unexpected (and yet) Expectable Changes

It becomes obvious if you say "going through changes changes you", yet this is exactly the "unexpected outcome" that we find when we view our lives in hindsight.

Obviously (when viewed like this) the bigger the change that occurs (and its duration), the bigger the change that you'll find in yourself.

In the movie Blade Runner one of the main characters Roy Batty has a scene where he expresses how the things he's seen (and done) would be incomprehensible to those in the society in which he lived. In one of Cinema's epic monologues Roy says that "he's seen things you people wouldn't believe" as well as "done questionable things" (in his discussion with Tyrell). He is advised to simply revel in his time by Tyrell. All of this has to leave a mark (as we say today) ... changed him probably.

However by the time we get to the scene with Deckard Roy has already gone though more changes, witnessed the deaths of some more of his friends, the grief in the loss of his partner (Pris) and Roy is reflecting as well as reacting.

Movies are melodrama, they attempt to compress time to a span which is comprehensible to a persons thought processes. Our own lives are much longer than the hour or two to watch a movie (or the day or so to read a book), so its difficult to see that what we go through changes us. Its usually only on reflection (often driven by some significant circumstances) which we take the time to reflect on who we are and how our reactions and feelings are different to what they were when we were younger.

Few people actually make significant changes in their lives, and by significant I mean something like become a migrant, move to another country, learn another language and attempt to become a member of that different society.

Doing things like that leaves changes ... indelible ones usually. If you remain in that place (that you've migrated to) you will always carry with you that which has made you before you got there, that which will always clearly mark you (for better or worse) as a migrant. These can be anything from simply an accent, to a different world view. What you may not see immediately is the changes in yourself.

Returning back to your "home" can make these clear to you. Sure when you get home its great to re-unite with Family and Friends. They may all be interested in your stories (or indeed maybe not), and you can all laugh and cry about stuff.

Its in the settling back into life "at home" that you can discover (as many migrants do) that being abroad has given you a different perspective, a different view, and indeed changed how you are not only how you see things.

This is where things are challenging. Indeed you may find that you struggle to fit back in entirely to your cradle.  Things won't feel right for inevitably you'll have found things (new things) that are done in that "other land" that you like, that you came to appreciate. The longer you stayed there, the more likely this will be and the more likely it will be a difficulty for you.

Grasping this may make it clear to you that you've changed, not them (although the society does always change as society is a dynamic thing and you may yearn for the "place you left"), but you see ... its not there. The others around you (having all been in that river of change floating with the current) won't actually see the changes in the same way you do which can be frustrating and possibly alienating.

Other times you can undergo changes without going anywhere, simply life itself can bring changes upon you that make you see things differently, perhaps challenge your (socially) accepted view of reality. This could be something like becoming an Ambulance, Police or Fire Officer, or it could be the death of someone you loved.

If that person was your wife or husband then you'll really have your world rocked because not only did you both change together, but now you don't have them with you anymore. Then there is no one who understands things as you did (assuming you had a good communicative supportive relationship and grew together), as well as no one to support you (even emotionally just by their presence). Its worth observing however that the divorce and break rates (and causes) for Emergency Services Personnel is probably due to those exact changes that their environment wrought upon them and the gradual distancing from their partners which resulted (PhD topic hint there).

For most people this happens (all things being equal) much later in life. The common response is that the changes are too great to deal with and people give up, probably dying. However if one is resilient enough (and with youth often comes resilience) one can make it through this "cathartic change" and emerge on the other side with strength and ability to keep on making a life.

There will however be profound changes, which may not be visible to your friends, and which may make you feel unable to relate to them as well as you once did. If you're lucky and have good friends you'll all get by. However you will always feel that "difference" which is because of the changes which happened due to the events you underwent.

I can't tell you what to do about that, because 1) we're all different and 2) I'm still trying to sort that out myself.

So, as the old European saying goes: Merry Christmas; peace and good will to all men (meaning humans, but English lacks in that area, in other languages it would be clearer that its not sexist).

Best Wishes