unknownj

I'm watching the coverage of the by-election in Glasgow, it's quite neat.. ( So a rant.. )

Real life e-mail conversation (if paraphrased):

J: Could you reset my password on System B?
IT: I've reset your password to X.
J: No, you've just reset my password on System A - I need System B reset.
IT: System B has been reset.
J: I still can't get on to System B - can you have another go?
IT: I've reset your password on System A.
J: No, I need you to reset my password on System B
IT: Your password has been reset.
J: I'm getting error Y.
IT: A minute ago you were querying System A, that is a System B error. I have reset your System B password.
J: Thanks, that works fine. But now I can't get onto System A - can you reset that password?

See, in all, she reset my System A password anything up to six times, and I can't guess which one of them she actually left it as.

I think my father would have been proud of the amount of swearing that took place a few minutes ago...

This morning, I validated two theories.

The first is that if on my way to the bus stop I see the bus go past, then I do have the time to turn back, cut through the alleys, and get to the next bus stop before the bus arrives there. It's a comfort to know that this is possible, since I really hate seeing the bus go by without being able to catch it.

The second theory is that I'm not yet well enough to be sprinting 200m for the bus. At least I think it was residual flu, rather than general unfitness, that was the problem. The desire to be sick afterwards was certainly heightened by the need to cough, as per my last remaining symptom.

I'm confused at the distance - I measured it on Google Maps, and calibrated their path distance tool against a running track to make sure it's measuring correctly, and it was definitely 200m. It felt like I ran it in about ten seconds, so it's entirely possible that I've set a new world record, and probably ought to challenge Mr Bolt to a little race or something....

Either way, it reminds me of something that's very important to me - however unfit I might be, I don't know I'm unfit. The day I stop running up the escalators on the tube, or give up sprinting for the bus, or decide not to randomly throw myself into six mile cross country walks, that's the day when there's a problem. Until then, I at least stand a chance of getting back to an acceptable level of fitness.

In related news, I have a £500 Halfords voucher with which to buy a new bike, lights, safety equipment, lock, etc. TMA, want to find me something worth buying? :o)

Raditude is not at all mis-named.

Between this and the Red album, I'm set for the evening.

I actually had a good night last night.. I think..

Made sure to have the window open to keep the room cool, and managed to turn the obsessive thoughts that pop up into trying to work out how best to regulate my body temperature.. The hallucinations were more about how my bed was a piece of real estate, and I had to keep it cool, and in good order..

It seems to have worked, anyway, because I didn't over-heat at all, and actually got some proper sleeping done.. Dare I wonder if maybe I'm over the worst of it now..?

Hallucinations are no fun.. In the shower just now, as the water ran down the back of my neck, I wondered if maybe I could grow some gills and "reproduce aquatically".

Then I started thinking about the "Five Core Values" that I believe in (the what?), which must have been a fevered product of this afternoon's nap (sponsored by random aspects of Star Trek Voyager).

I keep on getting into situations where I over-heat, and my brain stops working properly :o\

Yup, it's definitely some sort of flu.

Spent twelve hours straight in bed, and that was probably my worst night in a long long time..

The first chunk of it was spent dreaming / hallucinating about being in the TV show Angel (since that's what Naomi and I were watching yesterday - I sort of saw that coming).. When I would wake up, I couldn't tell which parts were a dream, and what was real..

Then Angel became Eastenders, and I spent a few hours obsessively drawing lines in my head between characters, plot devices, storylines, scenes, it was.. odd... Brain hyperactivity is unpleasant.

Then finally I had a break, in which I dreamed about spending some time with Claire, who had moved back to Surrey and was working as a shelf packer in Tesco (odd thing for somebody with a PhD to be doing). We had a nice sedate conversation about life, walking along a country lane near Naomi's work, and it made a nice change from the other dreams.

Then I woke up and it was about midnight, and I was shaking uncontrollably, which wasn't great. That went on for several hours, in which my head was running around and around again.. Random thoughts, nonsense words, not being sure where I was or what was going on.. Nice..

I finally managed to get up to get a drink at 4am - I'm not sure what exactly happened in the time between, but it was bad anyway...

I'm awake now, and feeling a bit better.. Still, that was very unpleasant - I don't want to go through that again. Flu sucks :o\

Please accept the following list of defects as a complaint:

1. Throat sore, also slightly ticklish, makes me cough more, thus more sore

2. Neck sore also. Not fun.

3. Head feels hot and stuffy. Basically, everything about the shoulders is fucked.

4. Legs feel slightly unreal, sort of tingly, weak, odd..

5. Generally feel like crap.

On a Sunday? What the shit is this?

Spotify is, y'know, kind of good.

I know, I know, late to the bandwagon, but who cares?

Legally obtaining music is awesome :o)

Okay, so if the totality of existence is some high-entropy soup, in which a dreaming brain in a jar is a more probable and lower effort explanation of consciousness than the spontaneous creation of a whole universe (a point on which I disagree in the first place), then the physical laws in the dream state (our reality), whilst appearing self-consistent at least, need not bear any relation to the wider entropic soup. In other words, the very principles on which one could base a Dreaming Brain in a Jar argument hinge on an understanding of physical laws which are themselves imaginary, and which would not in themselves constrain a wider reality. In other words, you can only suggest that this reality is not real, by arguing that its existence is not consistent with its own physical laws (again, disagree) but once you've established that those laws as we understand them do not apply, you have no basis for an alternative hypothesis.

Yes, this is what I think about on the train to work...

Apparently feedback says that I never show my "true self" on here, and that I put up walls.

Is this your experience?

Am I that hard to get to know?

If their Question Time appearance was an early Christmas present for the BNP, then it was lovingly wrapped and hand delivered by Peter Hain.

How much additional publicity did the show receive as a result of him trying to convince the BBC (in a very public fashion) that letting the BNP on would be "illegal"? What started off as a bit of a political curiosity was turned into a media circus by this small minded man and his crazy "My iron rule is better than their iron rule" philosophy, in which he somehow believes himself uniquely qualified to tell us which ideas we may or may not consume.

I watched it again with Naomi yesterday, and a few things jumped out at me. The first is him complaining at the lack of an "English" option on the census (because really, they're the English National Party - the Scots and Welsh have their own parties, and they're far more concerned with devolution than kicking Darkie out). Given that the "English" are actually German invaders from 1500 years ago, does he really want to open that box? Especially when his own website claims 17,000 years worth of "English" residence. And of course ignoring the fact that his dark hair and blue eyes mark him out as more Brythonic - granted, a more ancient resident of the island, but certainly not English in the "racial purity" way he would like.

His accusation that immigration policies amount to genocide misses a very obvious point - nobody is forcing the white folks to breed with the dark folks. It's not like they're coming here and raping our women, polluting them with their genes. Well, in Mr Griffin's head it might be just like that. But in reality, we are choosing not to value and protect our "racial purity". And I'm glad of that.

Finally, the trial of Radovan Karadzic really provides a glimpse of the dangers of this way of thinking. Anti-Muslim sentiment, coupled with a desire to protect racial purity by driving out and killing The Other led to arguable the worst war crimes in Europe since the second world war. This is where nationalism based on race leads.

I've double checked with the council that I'm eligible to vote. While the BNP have no presence in my area, ot's still important at the national level that there's at least one more non-BNP vote.

One amusing thing that my brother pointed out - I would be interested to know how the BNP would handle the level of immigration if their dreams came true and all non-English people were ejected from the country, if the Americans then followed suit. There are 90m ethnic English around the world, largely in the US. If they also adopted a policy of sending non-indigenous people home, I'd love to see how we'd cope with that population explosion (an extra 50% on what we have now).

It's funny, thinking about the whole "God wants things to be down" explanation of gravity.. I remember being very young, let's say about five or six, and reading "What Do People Do All Day" by Richard Scarry. I think - it might have been another book along similar lines, a sort of "this is how the world works" type thing for little kids. Anyhow, there was one page with a dam on it, and I remember thinking for a little while that the water wanted to be lower down, that's how it works.. And so why couldn't the water just creep up over the top of the dam, knowing that in doing so, it would get to fall over the other side afterwards?

Of course, it's sort of possible, under a different set of physical constants, I'm sure. A much more spontaneous and chaotic environment, in which almost speculative fluctuations in energy exist would do the trick. But such an environment wouldn't be appropriate for life - the same mechanism that would allow the water to jump the dam would similarly donate activation energy to a whole host of reactions that we'd prefer didn't happen. The same force that would cause the water to jump over the dam in order to shift it to a lower energy state would similarly combust humans spontaneously so as to reduce them to their lowest energy state - charcoal. Entropy gone mad - it's not ideal.

So the water stays put in the dam. Probably for the best...

I realised this as a small child too - the water doesn't know that it could be lower down on the other side of the dam. I was okay with that, but I always wondered if maybe there was a way to let it know.

A few years later, I discovered what "siphoning" meant, and in a way the world made a little bit more sense. It was possible to effectively let the water know that it could be lower down, and give it the opportunity to remedy the situation. I mean, the mechanics of it are more complex than that, but roughly, that's the general idea.

So that was an exciting discovery right there..

Then a few days ago I found out about a particular form of liquid Helium IV, which acts as a superfluid and "creeps" over surfaces within a system, creating its own self-sustaining capillary effect. Effectively the superfluid can "seek out" areas where the fluid can exist at a lower energy state, and transfer the fluid to those areas. It's a really rather brilliant effect - within a closed system, it allows the level of the liquid helium to equalise in its optimal state. I can't describe how intellectually satisfying it was to find this out - my five year old self would have been thrilled to find out that superfluids can actively seek out the lowest energy state for themselves. They are self-siphoning.

I love the universe...

The last few days have been 'good'. I use inverted commas not because it's not a good description, but because it's not a good description. Hmm, perhaps I should start again..

Went to see my grandparents on Thursday of last week, which was nice - I haven't seen them since I left back in mid-July, so it was about time. Edward and I then decided to walk back home, which is about five miles or so - an easy task, but for the fact that it was already starting to get dark, and the walk basically takes us across fields and through woods.

So as it turned out, it was an excellent walk. Highlights include very deliberately not going up the "ghost walk" - an old track used in pre-Roman times to take bodies up the hill for burial, which is always darker than the surrounding paths, even at night. We got lost up there once, at night - it wasn't all that much fun... Also, managing to somehow miss part of the route completely, somehow skipping past a section - I don't know how that happened, and it's a bit creepy that it did, but hey, whatever... By the time we got back to the village, it was pretty much pitch black out - so much fun :o)

Then since Thursday was Anna's birthday, there were presents given, and delicious food eaten, and all was well :o)

On Thursday, Edward, Anna and I went to see Fantastic Mr Fox, which was indeed fantastic. I never read the book itself - a glaring omission in my otherwise fairly decent Roald Dahl collection - so I can't really comment on how faithful an adaptation it was. But I'll say this - it was exactly as suitable for children as any other Roald Dahl work. In that it was perfectly suitable, but not in the way that most adults would necessarily hope for.

From my point of view, there was a very healthy amount of Wes Anderson in it, and to be honest, that's what I was watching it for anyway. The fact that it involves George Clooney's fox and Bill Murray's badger swearing at one another really is just a brilliant bonus. The animation was amazing, the characters were outstanding, and the whole thing came together in a much more enjoyable way than I had expected it to. Everybody should see this movie.

And then the weekend, in which Naomi and I just hung out and did very little indeed, which was great. There's something really wonderful about being able to look at each other, and just burst out laughing at the same time for no good reason. We've been watching her Angel boxset, and we're almost at the end of the first season. Only four more to go, then we'll have to find something else to demolish :o)

So yeah, it's been a good few days off.. Now back to work!

I saw a website earlier talking about the way in which bats' "hands" have adapted to suit flying, with webbed fingers that can unfold like wings, yadda yadda, all the good evolution stuff that I do so love..

Probably worth mentioning that this was on creationism.org..

See, because then, it went on to say:

A far simpler explanation is that bats, like cars and planes, are the product of very careful, intelligent design

So they've actually tackled the tricky bits of exactly how these things come about, and have decided to just throw it out...?

I really should start bringing "God" into things more often. How does gravity work? Well, there's this concept called space-time curvature, and you have subatomic particles that give matter mass which.... well actually, the simple version is, God likes it when stuff is down. So things move down to make God happier. When you fall over, that makes God smile.

Advocates of Intelligent Design must think that people are stupid, if they're offering the "simpler answer"... I find that more offensive than creationism, to be honest - at least the creationists are arguing their point of view because they think it's right, not just easier. It's not inherently anti-intellectual, unlike intelligent design...

I've had a little time to collect my thoughts on Question Time, and I still maintain that it was some of my favourite TV of recent times. Not since I watched Obama winning the US presidential election have I Watched a piece of political programming that has given me a sense that maybe there is some semblance of sanity in the world, even if it doesn't always overlap with the mainstream majority point of view.

Simply put, Nick Griffin came across like some perverse composite of The Office's David Brent and Joseph Goebbels, with all the failings of both and neither commanding the pity of the former, nor the effectiveness of the latter. He's that nasty fat kid at school who seemed every so slightly psychopathic, and whose response to being caught out being a little shit would be to laugh because he doesn't know how else to react.

Eventually Griffin had to be told that the subject matter was not funny - I believe during a discussion about the Holocaust. A subject on which he has all sorts of different views depending on the occasion - last night, he explained that he no longer denies the holocaust, but couldn't leave it be, and felt compelled to further explain that European Law prevents him from going into the details of what he thinks, or why. I wonder if he perhaps over-estimated the number of holocaust-deniers who watch Question Time, and if this was a misguided attempt to "keep them sweet".

Caught out describing his aims to control the media, and his belief that when this happened the general public would support his plans to repatriate the "non-indigenous English", he complained of being misquoted, lied about what he had or had not said, and eventually just defaulted to smirking and laughing once all other options were exhausted.

Quite who he imagines these indigenous English to be, I don't know. When last I checked, the word itself derives from the Angles, and the "ethnic group" is whatever mixture of Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans and Britons eventually won out. The "indigenous people", if you can really call them that, were displaced from all but Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. There are no "English" in the way that he fantasises, successive invasions over a thousand years ago took care of that.

Of course, he was probably using that terminology for emphasis. In the official party literature, they talk more about Western Europeans in general, thus taking care of the rather uncomfortable fact that "English" is just like "American" in its level of racial purity. But if we cast the net wide enough that it covers most of the people who live here, but not wide enough that it includes any black folks, that works, right...?

Naturally he very graciously offered a "foreign looking" chap the opportunity to remain in the country should he come to power. That it would even be necessary for such assurances to be made should tell us something, but worse still is the fact that in BNP meetings, this is most certainly not the position that's put forward - quite the opposite, they wish to return Britain to the "mostly white" makeup of the 1950s (or whichever convenient decade seems to be the whitest at any given time), and repatriation is the way they propose to achieve this.

He seemed positively happy that consensus was that many of the votes he received were protest votes against the immigration policies of the government. Taking pride in a victory won not through one's own efforts, but by the incompetence of others, is for idiots. If you play a bad game of football but the other team manage to score more own goals than you, you don't sing and dance about how thrilled you are - you're only drawing attention to your own inability to win on your own merit.

But on that subject, the following thought occurs when considering the protest voters.

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

It's like the school child who sides with the violent bully in order to "send a message" to the teaching staff. You know who else gets the message? The kids being bullied. In this case, while I'm sure the government takes every vote for the BNP like a punch in the gut (because honestly, who wants to be that shit that people would sooner vote for racist cunts?) it sends quite another message to people of ethnic minorities, who might have been born here, grown up here, have all the accent and dialect of a "native", and who are now being told that there's growing support for a party that would favour sending them "home", by which I just mean "away".

Any person who would stand up and support a cause so vile in order to "send a message" has lost sight of the bigger picture, or has just decided not to care. I would rather vote for the "Let's abuse our expenses" party than the "Darkies Out!" party. It's called perspective, you fucking cretins.

In any case, he came across as a small, angry man, who lacked the tools to cope with his own bare-faced lies being exposed. That was all I had hoped for. I believe strongly that if the majority of the population are ignorant, racist idiots, then they should be entitled to vote for an ignorant and racist leader. What I wanted to be reassured about was that nobody who didn't tick at least two of the 'ignorant', 'racist' or 'idiot' boxes would vote for Nick Griffin. After that performance, I'm satisfied.

Ah, Question Time.. I'm excited and nervous all at once.. I hope the BNP get fucked...

Edit 1:

Man, I love that Nick Griffin is talking about the non-violent KKK... What a star...

They're screwing him senseless, and I couldn't be happier..

Edit 2:

"I cannot explain why I used to deny the holocaust, nor can I explain why I changed my mind"

Fucking Hell... Also, I think I'm going to have Jack Straw's babies...

Edit 3:

This is some of my favourite TV ever, I think... Nobody gives a shit about what that fat racist cunt has to say, and he's being serially raped by his own absurd and offensive statements coming back to haunt him...

Edit 4:

"We Christians find the sight of two men kissing creepy" apparently... Homosexuality should be kept private, apparently... Good one...

Final Edit:

Fucking awesome. If it gets them more voters, then those people are fucking idiots, so fuck them. As far as I'm concerned, this was more or less exactly what I had hoped for.

God, I fucking love Paxman..

Peter Hain is such a cretin, he really is... Honestly, how does this man's brain function sufficiently to regulate his vital bodily functions?

Who or what does he think he's protecting here? Because he's trying to kill democracy, so it's probably not that....