Gently's Four States of Household Entropy

Since I've haven't been partaking in the going out to work ritual for some time now (okay, over a year!) I've had plenty of time to sit and home and watch the comings and goings of household entropy. Entropy, being a measure of disorder in a system, is concept highly applicable to households and shouldn't be confined to the physics lab.

State 1: A perfectly ordered household has the least entropy and is the easiest to maintain. Think of Bree's home in Desperate Housewives, or how you imagine Martha Stewarts home to look like - with a place for everything and everything in its place its like a crystal lattice. Stuff just falls into its place, easily with the minimum of fuss. Like a crystal lattice, breaking up such a system releases a lot of energy - usually in frayed tempers and displeasure of its disorder state from the household matre-dee. Needless to say I do not live in such a household, and in reality no occupied household exists in it either. Only virtual TV households and imaginary households do. Imaginary households are those where its occupants don't see an army of servants flitting around from day to day maintaining order - they only imagine they live in a perfect self-organizing household.

State 2: A less than perfectly ordered household requires the most energy to maintain. Like a sauce that never thickens, or a pot that never boils it is never really truly ordered. A constant input of time and energy is required to keep it in a semblance of order. Often such efforts are of the "move it to another pile and dust" kind. Another analogy would be tending a large pile of sand that is just a tiny bit to tall for its width. Little rivulets of excess sand will always fall down the sides in a chaotic fashion and must be constantly moved up to the top again. For the most part I live in such a household, although it periodically progresses to State 3.

State 3: A mostly disordered household receives some energy to maintain its order but not enough to bring it to an ordered state, but enough to prevent it from sliding into complete disorder, otherwise known as chaos. Instead of move it and dust it is mostly maintained by dust-in-place efforts. Over time some piles of disorder attract more disorder and will eventually overcome any semblance of order. Without a periodic injection of unusually large amounts of tidying energy this is just a transitionary state.

State 4: Household chaos. In this state there is no place for anything and hence nothing in is in its place, or from another perspective everything is in its place - anyplace! (Is that even a word?). No tidying effort is necessary, just sling anything anywhere. The probability of locating any lost item are basically that of chance so on average at least 50% of the household must be search to have an even chance of locating it. Like the perfectly ordered household, no real life household actually exists in the chaos state. Some, probably inhabited only by large numbers of children, approach it, but the perfect chaos is reserved for post tornado households where the "lift, shake and spin" has been applied. Or TV crime shows where some obsessive compulsive hoarder has been discovered (usually deceased) in an apartment filled with 142 cats, 34 dogs, 4,681 copies of TV Guide, 1,532 discarded pizza boxes, 423 sacks of trash, and quite probably a couple of dozen prying neighbors stashed in the freezer or under the floor boards.

Three Laws of Fruit Buying

Today I composed the Three Laws of Fruit Buying, partly because Isaac Asimov beat me to the Three Laws of Robotics, but mostly because today I realized there is a bunch of strawberries moldering in the fridge, and then discovered a bag of peaches moldering on the counter, only to discover another bag of distinctly soggy peaches and nectarines underneath it. Oh how the fruit juice loves to eat our zinc counter like alien blood through the space ship hull in "Alien" (sorry, no photo). Still, the remains of the peaches were quite tasty once I'd flushed the rancid bits down the garbage disposal.

Hence, the three laws of fruit buying...

• 1. The riper the fruit, the more one is inclined to buy some for dessert tomorrow
• 2. Tomorrow hardly ever transpires before said fruit have turned to fuzzy green mush
• 3. Tasty fruit desserts are often distinctly low-fruit or entirely fruit-free.

Corollary of the Three Laws of Fruit - dessert is a movable feast, but fresh ripe fruit is not - eat it off the tree, or in the store, but never leave it in the fridge or on the counter "for tomorrow".

All your gas stations are belong to us

So today is the first I've heard that CNOOC, a Chinese oil company, may be trying to buy Unocal. Could this be the first in a long line of aquisitions of US owned gas companies, or does China already own sizable amounts of US oil interests? Certainly they have to do something with their estimated $1 trillion in US dollar assets.

It actually doesn't bother me much if this is the case - I think the more US oil interests are owned by other countries the more incentive there will eventually be for Americans to use something other than oil to power their country. After all, how is it that so much of the world's oil is controlled by US companies anyway? As was said when America invaded Iraq, "How did our oil get under their sand?".

Still, for some I think this news will smack of the 80s when the Japanese economy was booming and everyone was talking about how much of the US the Japanese owned. Normal American paranoia and xenophobia ensued. The only difference here is that China was never decimated by allied forces during WWII, however to the American's who got all freaked about Japanese investments I'm afraid to say the Chinese, for obvious reasons, are painted with the same "dang furners" brush.

Of course China doesn't have to own a single oil company to make a huge impact on oil in this country. After all, that's the consequence of America getting a taste of it own "cure all" free market economy medicine. With China in the WTO it'll be hard to discriminate against them, so long as they are willing to play ball. As the oil peak effect comes into play I wonder how long it will be before a giant squeeze in the oil market will destabilize the WTO? Or perhaps by then, the US will have become too dependent on selling to the 1.2 plus billion consumers in China to have the option to care.

As they say - we live in interesting times! My hope is that in my remaining 40 or so years I can live to see even more interesting times - like America finally kick its oil habit. If it hasn't by then I think its doomed, one way or the other.

Save the planet!

Well looky here, it seems as if someone is finally taking the issue of tracking asteroids a little bit more seriously these days, and boy, they've already found one with a 1 in 14,000 chance of hitting us by 2036. That'll be me mighty handy for solving the social security problem! However it seems no one in Washington wants to cough up $300M track the potential earth splatterer more closely - apparently because its too far in the future, unlike the social security problem which of cause doesn't run out of funding until about ten years afterwards

It seems to me that if the government wont fund such a mission then perhaps some beneificent billion could lob the required hunk of cash in its direction. Its a 1 in 14,000 chance it would make much of a difference, but what a legacy if it did. Just think, we could have Bill Gates as our great saviour - assuming of course the tracking beacon they want to tack onto the asteriod doesn't suffer a blue screen of death before its mission is accomplished.

Hitchhikers review

This is a review, of sorts, of the recent movie version of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was going to write it just after seeing the movie but in the end, for reasons that will become clear, I just didn't feel like it. A recent email from someone saying "So, did you see it?" prompted me to write the following review... of sorts. A kind of "half-hearted guide to the hitchhikers guide" review.

Lets cut to the answer, the ultimate answer, of life the universe and everything... 42. Yes, that's about what I would give the movie out of 100. It may be a tad low, because I think I'd rather see it than not so really it should be a little over 50% score, okay, so lets say 42 out of 80.

I know a great many other distinguished movie reviewers gave HHGTTG some glowing reviews. Even those I figured would probably hate it. Personally I had high hopes, I really thought this time, they were really going to get it right. Perhaps the movie deserves another look but I have to say I was disappointed, and to paraphrase Marvin, most of the minutes were pretty good, but most of the seconds were pretty awful. Okay maybe not awful, that's too strong, perhaps mediocre and certainly not of the same quality I usually associate with Adams work. I really start to wonder who it would have turned out if he had survived to see it to the finish. We'll never know and that will have to remain as one of the great unanswered great questions.

I think people who have only ever read the books liked the movie more than those familiar with the original radio show. As for people who are not familiar with either, nor Brit-humour-o-philes? Forget about it, they mostly hated it - especially Americans. After watching the movie I checked the Yahoo user reviews and of 1300 over 250 gave it an "F" in all classes - many said they left the movie outright. This clearly wasn't the universallly appealing whacky space adventure comedy like, say, Men In Black, that it was marketed to be. So a lot of people went to see it would probably have never bothered if they'd know it was another Brit comedy that needs brain to be engaged and cellphone set to silent ("what you mean I have to listen to the words while I watch?").

A couple of the best comments from the Yahoo reviews were "If this ever comes out on DVD it will have the words "Don't bother" on the cover in large friendly letters", and the other one was "If the ultimate answer is 42 then the ultimate question must be "How many minutes will it be before you walk out of Hitchhikers?". Clearly at least some of this reviewers were more intelligent than semi-evolved simians and I applaud their consumate humour in face of a disappointing movie experience. Now guys, the secret is to keep banging the rocks together...

The stuff I liked - the Vogons were wonderfully portrayed, although in quiet a different light from their mean callous nature in the original story. Their gargantuan size, inscrutable officiousness (is that a word?) and their fleet of ships - all wonderful. I liked Trillian and Slartibartfast, and the rest were okay, but not outstanding. Marvin was good - a much better imagery of his nature than in the TV show, that huge round head weighing him down really worked as did his voice over by Alan Rickman.

Stuff I didn't like - well the creation of a love interest with happy ending from Arthur's infatuation with Trillian really didn't work for me. I'd love to know if this is something that Adams actually wrote in the original screenplay versions or something that Hollywood jammed in. Plus the whole thing about the point of view gun and stuff which is from a much later book, and busting people out of jail... didn't work for me, out of place, and not terribly funny on its own. I wish they hadn't mangled some of the excerpts from the Guide, I know them too well to hear them edited. I just hope there's a directors cut with the full versions in it. That said The Guide animations themselves were great. I wasn't too fond of Zaphod's second head scenes, although it was an imaginative take on that - and much more successful than the TV show version which was more like a parrot of a head.

I should add the scene following the inifinite improbability drive deployal in which they all turn in the yarn characters - that was a hoot that really made me laugh - inspired imagery I'd say - of the metaphysical kind. If the movie had all been of that quality it would have been a blast - the biggest bang in sci-fi comedy since the big one.

I did like the ending at Magrathea, gotta love "Its a wonderful world" and such, but at the end I had to temper it with my feelings of "Oh well, not again", as in not again, another not entirely satisfactory rendition of the hitchhikers story. But at least this is probably the last, I really don't think there is the impetous or money for anyone to do anything else with it. If they had been smart they could have just stuck to the book and left it open for lots of sequels, but the way the story got wrapped up it was self contained and I doubt there will be enough money to fund a sequel. I'll trade 6 hours with the radio series of any visualization any day.

I think perhaps if they had spent the same money on three 2 hour not so fancy non-movie renditions it could have been a lot better. A BBC sci-fi made for TV kind of thing - sort of the high quality stuff that HBO puts out like Six Feet Under or Sopranos. Quality writing matched with quality production and a bunch of effects, but no Hollywood spoilers involved. A rehash of the original TV series if you wish but with all the modern effects and the original story line - hopefully the radio show one which I always prefered to the book story line. Plus if you stick to the radio script you don't have to spend all that money on script writers and screen writers.

Regardless of whether I've put you off, if you're a fan of The Guide you have to go see it, if only to pay your respect to the legacy of Adams' Life the universe and everything Hitchhiker-ish.

Darwin lives!

Just when I was giving up hope on Darwin I came across Dry-Ice Bomb Won't Explode and Man Leaps From Car to Retrieve Cigarette both in the same day. Now all he needs is a helping hand from Forrest Gump - stupid is as stupid does.

The long dark theater time of the Sith

I'll get it over and done with real fast - I enjoyed Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. Oh sure it had its flaws but really significantly fewer than I or II. Lets face the movie has quite an uphill battle - only three characters of any real significance: Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Chancelor Palpatine, and has an ending that almost everyone seeing the movie already knows and indeed the movie itself clearly "knows" from the start. So really it did a pretty good job to stay entertaining.

Could it have been better? Well yes of course - ditch Hayden Christensen for someone who can do a convincing transformation from light to dark sides, make Portman less of a doormat who just wants to go home and "get the room ready" for the kid(s) (sheez, don't they have birth control in the Star Wars era?), and maybe, just maybe, run the script by an average person or two (like me for instance) to weed out the worst of the awkwardness. We know Lucas pays amazing attention to the special effects - they are indeed top notch, especially the 100% CG Yoda, but does he and no one working for him just not care about crappy dialog? Didn't the dialog get panned enough in the first two for him to get the message? Well, perhaps - it was definitely better this time - in the first half there was even a line or two worthy of Episode IV or V banter.

It was also really hard not to read in some pretty strong political overtones in a few of the conversations about democracy, the senate and good vs. evil. He stopped short of having using the "you're either with us or against us" line from Darth Dubyous, but only just instead rendering it as "you're either with us or with the enemy". And when Padme watches the Chancellor declare himself Emperor she mutters the question "Is where liberty was lost - to rousing applause?". Sigh, I didn't think this was supposed to be a documentary...

I did like how Lucas managed to work in a good number of retro Star Wars visual themes. From bright white ship interiors, and clunky LED like displays and controls, to the wrinkling of Palpatines face, it all helped to remind us to we were on a journey to familar territory formerly known as Star Wars Episode IV, or just plain "Star Wars". Because back then we never even had an inkling there would be another five movies to follow it, and we never even minded that we were supposedly joining a story that was half way through. Indeed quite why Lucas choose to start the story at Episode IV I'll never know. Just how would it have all transpired it instead he'd stubbornly started with Episode I? Would we have had Harrison Ford as Obi-Wan, Mark Hamill as Anakin and Carrie Fisher as Padme? And would we all been bitching about how crappy Episodes IV and V were but that VI wasn't such a bad rousing finale after all?

Anyway, finally I should say that in the closing scenes where loose ends are not being tied up, but instead being hastily tied into the original Star Wars plot line, well I was definitely thinking back to a movie theater a long time ago in a country far, far away. Back then when I was fresh faced ten year old, my late father had, by some means I never learned (perhaps subconsciously, as if by a force unknown...) tapped into the zeitgeist of the time and decided that all the family should go see this hit new movie called "Star Wars". This was something our family just didn't do - it was rare enough to see a movie at a theater, (remember the late 70s were a very low point in theater going history), let alone drag our entire family to a sci-fi movie, a genre that was barely invented at that time. We had to drive to another town, the line was so huge I felt sure we'd never get a seat, the screen seemed emmense and I had no idea what I was in for. Who would think that almost thirty years on I'd still be going back for more of the Star Wars saga? I stopped collecting the Star Wars cards and lusting after Princess Leia a long time ago, but the fun still lingers on.

And you know what the best thing is about getting out of theater having just seen Episode III? It's that you know you're half way through, the going is pretty good and the best is yet to come. More to the point you wont have to wait another thirty years to get it!

Galloway vs. the Senate

Thanks to the Tin Man for pointing me to a story from the Guardian about Galloway's recent testimony at the Senate subcommittee for homeland security and governmental affairs. Apparently he gave them and the entire Bush administration a right royal tongue lashing in a way that only one versed in British parliamentary no-holds-barred debate tactics could. As they'd say back at the Houses of Parliament, "Hear, hear!".

Update: watch the whole 47 minute testimony video at the BBC or the just the "money shot" highlight.

The book is mightier than the sword

I find it ironic that the Whitehouse has chosen to jump so quickly into the fray over the "alleged" Koran flushing incident at Guantanamo. Where were they when it was an issue of abusing actual prisoners, actual living flesh desecrated? They were busy burying the story in secrecy for as long as they actually could. Now, with no photos and nothing thing to lose they are defending a holy book more vehemently than they defended people. The message from the Whitehouse is "Torture good - book flushing bad".

Yes I know the Koran is a holy book, and the story caused rioting and deaths in Afghanistan, but seriously do you have any doubts that US guards at Guantanamo would even bat an eye before flushing, burning or pissing on the Koran? Do you really have any doubts that now they are no longer officially allowed to humiliate their prisoners in naked pyramids and forced sexual acts, that if they thought that for one second they could get what they wanted with a mere book - that they would treat it with any respect whatsoever? Of course not.

Like I said I think the only reason the Whitehouse has been quick to jump in is because no one ever thought a guard flushing the Koran was photo worthy for the folks back home - "Look mum, there's me flushing the Koran while the prison breaks down and tells me everything about his non-combatant training camp". For that reason I feel confident in saying "alleged" because I feel sure that one time or the other it happened just it never became a Kodak moment to prove it. Newsweek almost certainly had some anonymous tipoffs that it actually happened, but without anyone willing to step forward and admit to it they had to back down and eat some humble pie or risk being labeled un-American and un-Patriotic by hordes of zealous red-staters who would turn to flushing Newsweek instead of the Koran.

Meanwhile the Whitehouse is putting on a "holier than thou" act pretending as if maybe it would stand by and watch a few "bad actors" torture prisoners but no way would it allow religious persecution. But what happens, I ask you, if stories come back that over in "I-raq" they are busy burning and flushing the Bible? Is that cause for rioting here? Will brown skinned folks be dragged off the streets and beaten by irate right wing religious fanatics? Will we declare war on them all over again to find stockpiles of bibles of mass destruction?

Really its all pretty dumb to me. The Whitehouse should have just 'fessed up because sooner or later someone is going to spill the beans. They should admit they have no clue about Islam and they should send all those prisoners back home. Seriously. Just how long can we justify keeping them locked up indefinitely because they hate America and have expressed ill will against us. Or would the Whitehouse have us go to Afghanistan and seize every single America hating rioter and lock them up indefinitely too? And ditto at home - sure we've already got over 2 million of our own locked up, about half for crimes not much worse than getting bored of America to the point where it was preferable to check out of it on drugs, why not add a few more to the penal melting pot?

All aboard the fastrack to sainthood

Now that the vatican has decided to put the late Pope J.P. on a fastrack to sainthood it got me wondering just how easy they are going to make becoming a Saint. Even buying a gun has a waiting period but Sainthood? No problem! We can do that right away. All it needs is someone who is sick to claim they prayed to JP and then recover in a way scientists didn't expect. That doesn't seem to high a bar to raise does it, I can assure you that every day people survive medical emergencies and recover from illness in ways not expected or explained by current medical knowledge.

Is that really where sainthood lies now - some gap in scientific knowledge creating a loophole leading to a stairway to heaven, and with a wave of the current Pope's hand old JP gets a fastrack to the head of the line ahead of all the other saint wannabees. I guess they are expecting that with all those 1 billion Catholics getting sick and praying and all it will be no time at all before unexplained miracles are being worked.

There lies the rub for me - is that all miracles are these days, is that where beatification, sainthood, acts of god are founded - as mere loopholes created by lack of scientific knowledge. No burning bushes, no walking on water, no water to wine - just some "incurable disease" that gets better for no explained reason. Because science has explained away all that other stuff... no wonder the Catholics made such an effort to persecute scientists, they didn't want all their Saintly appointments to be called into question, or to loose all sources of future appointments. But face facts, with progress of scientific knowledge its going to become harder and harder to find miracles to attribute to saint wannabees.

Yes, if I was terminally ill I'd try everything, even a bit of that good old fashioned blackmail praying, you know the sort - "I don't actually believe you exist, but if you really do now is the time to reach down and do some miracle work... please... I'll give you a second chance if you do". So anyone who gets better who actually remembers the "deal" they offered the deity upstairs might be tempted to attribute it to a miracle.

So I have an idea... why doesn't the Pope start focusing on other types of unexplained miracles, like George Bush getting elected - I'm sure a whole bunch of Catholics were praying for that and most everyone expected the old shrub to miss it by a squeak but low and behold he gets elected in declares a veritable "mandate". Surely that's some kind of miracle. Surely some saint dude was up there commanding a host of angelic minnions moving votes around and putting Xs where they neede to be to make that happen. If a huge stash of WOMD turned up in Iraq wouldn't a whole bunch of Evangelists instantly proclaim a miracle (even if they weren't put there by angelic workers but actually by CIA operatives).

Yes folks, every day all kinds of crazy s**t is going on that's completely unexplainable by science or rational logic and this is stuff that affects everyone, not just some sick person with a vested interested in getting well. Why does it have to be someone getting well after illness? Why not the car that doesn't start on the very day you needed an excuse not to come into work. Or the boss that drops dead the day he was going to fire you. Or the mega lottery ticket win - millions to one against, less likely than a lightning strike - that has to be a miracle. There has to be thousands of such events each daya - lets call these people's miracles.

With all these people's miracles happening all the time almost anyone could become a saint, a people's saint. Pray to your favourite dead person - from Einstein, Ghandi to Marilyn Monroe or even Ronald Reagan and sit back and wait for crazy unexplained miracles to happen. One fastrack to sainthood is on its way... "I got out of a parking ticket by passive non-violent resistance, now I pray to Saint Mahatma", or "I flew to Hawaii on vacation and came back feeling ten years younger now I pray to Saint Albert". Why the heck not? Why should the vatican have the monopoly on such things and like I said, with the increasing difficulty in finding "real" miracles (salt stained freeways notwithstanding) why not open up the field to every day miracles we can all relate to instead of having to pray to some crusty old white guy whose main distinguishing attribute is that he rose to the top of the papal pyramid by longevity.

Peace against terrorism?

I was reading an article about a new group called Global Majority formed to promote peace when it struck me how stupid "war on terrorism" sounds. I mean, what if it said "terrorism on war", why should that be any less acceptable? From the perspective of those engaged in "terrorism" (an ill defined and much debated term) they are simply fighting a war against someone else's war against them. They don't have billions of dollars and a uniformed army marching into battle - even if they could afford one they would usually have had their asses kicked or more likely blown off and handed back to them on a plate.

Its true that some terrorists are fighting for a minority opinion - but certainly not always. And sometimes its just other peoples colouring of that opinion as good or bad that leads us to care about them or even bother to label them as terrorists or not. If the oppressed people of the Darfur region in Sudan started suicide bombing, sniping and laying improvised bombs against the gangaweed militia would we declare war on their terrorism? Probably not. More likely we'd (in this case I'm using the "American we") hail the righteous freedom fighters in Darfur and perhaps slip them a few millions and some truck loads of weaponry. Were the French resistance fighters in WWII terrorists? The Nazis must have thought so - if the term was in common parlance then I'm sure they would have been labeled with it. So why then are the Palestinians terrorists and not freedom fighters?

Surely its because they are using violent means against violent means. But why is that other brand of violence against violence - war against terror - not also judged a bad, nay evil thing?

Some people will tell you that the war on terror is not a violent one. Why then the hundreds of millions spent to invade and occupy Iraq? Ditto in Afghanistan? What of the planned permanent detention of people at Guantanamo, purely because they expressed continuing ill will against the USA (a "crime" that hundreds of millions across the world are surely guilty of), is that non-violent act? If you detain a few hundred people in a remote place that's okay, but what if a few thousand, or few hundreds of thousands, or millions? When does a non-violent safety measure against a state of mind become violence against a state of people?

You see there are so many shades of gray and so little, if any, black and white. It depresses me that this as all been simplified, dumbed down for consumption of the non-thinking American masses as "war on terrorism" - which also just strikes me as bad grammar as well as being pretty darned close to an oxymoron from my point of view.

If you want to pit something against terrorism how about peace? Yes to me peace against terrorism sounds a whole lot better and who knows, as some have discovered (e.g. the British), it may take a lot longer but ultimately when the terrorists are fighting for a widely back point of view, it is much more likely to succeed in bringing about peace instead of just more war.

Prison for profit

Here's a thought: if prisons are to be run as private for profit businesses, such as is probably going to happen in Memphis, then what are the market forces driving their "product" demand and hence the price paid to them for their services? Shouldn't it be how good a job they do at rehabilitating prisoners, that is the rate of recidivism of those released from their system? So in a free-market prison system the corporation that does the best at rehabilitating the prisoners will be the most profitable and most dominant. In ideal world perhaps...

In reality I expect that corporations habit of being an externalizing machine will cause it to maximize profit in other ways, ones that do not benefit the community at large. Imagine a prison corporation that ships its prisons to some remote country where they are guarded and fed cheaply, and where if they riot, escape, or just plain curl up and die, well... out of sight, out of mind. The British tried that once with Australia - stuff them on a ship and sail them over the equator - problem solved. I can only imagine that some lesser form of this tactic is at the forefront of every wannabe for profit prison corporation.

The greatest trick the devil ever played...

If you take a Googleplex of links, shake 'em all up, add a splash of hocus pocus and a mischievous employee or two and what do you get? Well Dave over at Chicken or Beef? has found out. Yes indeed, in their directory Google they have cunningly cooked the books to indicate that the Evangelism section has 666 links, which it doesn't.

I'm wondering how long this "anomaly" will stay around once the word gets out, or indeed just how long its been there.

Taking responsibility

I don't want to cheapen the tragedy of the Japanese rail crash in any way, but I have to say, the Japanese really have a very different sense of responsibility than certain other institutions in the West. While investigators are still pulling apart the wreckage looking for clues Takeshi Kakiuchi, President of Japan Railway West is resigning. In a situation where perhaps no one will ever, beyond doubt, be fingered with personal responsibility, Kakiuchi is making a statement, that on his watch no such "accident" should have happened.

As I heard one person say about Abu Ghraib - you can delegate authority but you can't deligate responsibility. Blogging from a country where finding a fall guy to blame for every mistake is the modus operandi I have to say I find it almost refreshing to read about a country where responsibility is considered a top down thing.

Lewd and lacivious cohabitation

Although at the moment I don't blog every day I would say that not a day passes without something I could blog about occuring to me. Today its been the whole pope thing which completely ruined my morning of listening to KQED Forum and Talk of the Nation. I'd mentally started a blog about the irony of Bush railing against undemocratic leaders and countries while just today 1 billion Catholics were celebrating their voluntary subjugation to an undemocratically elected leader who could literally dictate their every behaviour and conduct (assuming they aren't "a la carte" Catholics)...

Whether I would post that blog entry I don't know - probably I don't need to now - 'nuff said. As it turns out the IRS just provided me with a more juicy and blog worthy topic, and one much less likely to be lost in the noise of all the other pope-centric blog entries today.

What happened was I on Thursday I tried to e-file my federal taxes as I've done for as many years as its been possible. To my surprise they bounced them back telling me that someone else had already filed a 1040 claiming my dependent as their dependent. I was like WTF! This lead me with no alternative but to file by mail which wouldn't have been a big deal normally except that Uncle Sam owes me a not inconsiderable amount of cash this year. Yes, thanks to not working for a year now I was actually in the enviable position of having to pay less federal taxes for 2004 than I paid my local Alameda County in taxes. That gave me a good feeling because I know that Alameda County will put my money to much better use than Uncle Sam - if nothing else because AC doesn't spend 50% of its budget on military purposes.

Anyway, I digress... this morning I called up Uncle Sam to ask "What gives" (no I didn't tell them "WTF!") and a very helpful man from the IRS proceeded to tell me what would happen next. Basically they'll investigate - but that's by the by. What really made my jaw drop was when he asked "Have you checked that your local city or state laws don't prohibit cohabitation with an opposite sex dependent?". At that point I really did have to bite my tongue to avoid an utterence of "WTF!" In fact I was thinking it so hard I'm sure he could feel my mental disconbobulations all the way over in Florida. How did I know he was in Florida? Well because he proceeded to say "Oh yes, in Florida its illegal to cohabit with an opposite sex dependent and we would deny your claim if you lived in Florida". What is more he went on to tell me there are no less than seven states that have equivalent laws and hence where my claim would be denied. Now naturally this wouldn't apply if we were married, and interestingly I wonder if it would apply my dependent and I were same sex. I'm also wondering WTF the IRS is taking into consideration state and city laws in levying of Federal taxes - surely that's up to the individual states to do in their state tax computations???

Natuarally I had to go and find out more about this, and no it wasn't April 1st and no he wasn't pulling my leg. I found an article that lists Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia as the seven deadly states I should not ever consider living in unlawful unwedded lewd and lacivious cohabitation. The article cites instances of companies people to reveal such information on job application forms, of judges requiring defendents to get married, move out or be charged, and all kinds of other discrimination based on this lewd and lacivious cohabitation.

And then there's the news that Virginia has only just repealed its law against sex between unmarried people, but isn't yet ready to strike their sodomy laws from the books. All I can say is thank goodness I live in California where all I have to worry about is identity theft from the shoe store and taxation without representation by a former bodybuilder and movie star.

The Hunters

The mammal was a scourge on the planet, an arrogant species that thought it was the highest form of life all the while multiplying without constraint and consuming without limit. A filthy pond scum festering on the surface of a beautiful green and blue oasis, it was smothering and choking the living daylights from its very own life source. It had to be stopped, it could not go on.

Then came the hunters.

First they came for the cats, then they came for the dogs^*, and then they came for the homo sapiens. At first it was just the dangerous ones, then the poor and starving who could not defend themselves, and then it was those that just wouldn't follow the rules and get their RFID implants.

What were these miscreants up to? Dodging the rules of society, trying to hide, trying to escape without their medication, without their every move being tracked for homeland security. They were a menance, a threat to society. "Kill them, kill them all", came the cry, "Death to wild humans!".

And so the hunter became the hunted.^**.

^* Trust me, any animal lover shouldn't click on this link, I added it purely as a reminder of what "hunting" animals can really be like - a casual and callous slaughter for entertainment's sake.

^** Yes this is one of my darkest posts in two years, but remember this is the long dark tea-time of the soul.

Going on up to the spirit in the sky...

Oh lordy, lordy. Until a little while ago I was blissfully ignorant of "The Rapture" and then Dave over at Chicken or Beef went and spoiled it all for me. Now I wake up this morning to the sound of excavation of a huge hole in the building site across the street and low and behold there they are - two different articles on The Rapture staring at me right from my laptop.

First we have Apocalypse how from the Chicago Tribune, and then there's Mark Morford's latest column Earth To Humankind: Back Off. The idea that whacko evangelicals are encouraging Israel to continue bulldozing the West Bank for its own purposes because it will hasten the onset of rapture frankly explains a lot.

Clearly GWB is working for the rapture crowd, going about the world stiring it up like a kid with a stick in a hornets nest, setting man against man, man against beast (thanks again C or B, more on that later) and all because a bunch of whackos are in hurry to get to heaven. Why can't they just go to their garage start the car up, or rent a big abandoned Wal-Mart somewhere and all put plastic bags over their heads like the rest of the cultists do? Suicide can be painless, but global war is bloody murder - just ask my mum who lived through one.

Hallelujah

After a week of media beatification of the late Pope John Paul 2 I've waiting for Christopher Hitchens, my favourite contrarian to lay into the old pontif. I mean he managed to write an entire book about how bad Mother Theresa was, so clearly he has now limits to his naysaying. However it seems that Arianna Huffington has managed to beat Hitchens too it in her latest column A Cornucopia of Death.

There's nothing new and suprising in Arianna's column, but I congratulate her on trying to be a little more balanced than 99% of the writing about JP in the last week. Maybe it was just too soon to expect to hear contrarian opinions, I mean after 9/11 no one was rushing to say "thank goodness, those buildings were too small anyway", but now that is the driving force behind all the new development at that site.

So will the flaws of JP's reign rise make it into the Catholic zeitgeist soon enough to make a difference in the selection of his successor? Or will they instead just go for a JP-clone who'll continue to spread the primary message of propogation uber-alles and blind-faith denial in the face of continuing moral decay from within the Catholic Church.

Who knows - the jury is out and we're waiting for smoke signals.

Recommended reading

I came across this article by Timothy Karr called Is cheap broadband un-American?. Having read it I can tell he and I have the same kind of angry bee in our bonnets over corporate legal meddling to stop municipalities from setting up their own broadband infrastructure. I've expounded on this several times already here and elsewhere, but in case you need a refresher I've posted a comment on this article which I'm too lazy to repost here (hey, I've been doing my taxes all day!). I'm sure I'll be reading more of Karr's mediacitizen blog in the future.

Peak Oil

Alternet has a nice write up on how peak oil has passed from crack pot idea to mainstream theory with oil peak dates issued by even the Department of Energy. The discussion of taking preemptive action about oil production peaking reminds me of the social security debate. Even the most conservative prediction for oil peak (2037 from the DOE) beats the day when social security starts running in deficit mode, and the consequences are far more severe. The world has two options - burn baby burn, or immediate conservation efforts.

As the article points out, a 60 year resource assuming a 4% growth rate in demand can be turned into a 300 year resource assuming a 0% growth rate. But with an annual 4% decline in demand the same resource can last effectively forever, wouldn't that be a nice legacy to leave for our decendents?

But no, the only response we've seen from the government is to just keep down the same path of burning oil like its an unlimited resource. Once in a while they'll pooh-pooh conservationists and mutter stuff about leaving the problem to "market forces". However what people forget is that the world has already experienced what happens when growth is left to market forces - its called the boom and bust cycle. This happened over and over until the 1930's when government started getting involved in regulating the economy and controlling the reaping of the commons. So with market forces in control the best we can expect is boom and bust in the energy world, something that was widely agreed to be a bad thing when applied to the rest of the economy.

However by heavily subsidising the oil economy (it's the free roads, tax breaks for oil exploration, production and free license to pollute stupid!) the government is actually putting its foot firmly on the energy growth accelerator. If the government was doing the same with regular fiscal policy it would be like cutting interest rates to 0% and opening up the spigot of government spending to the max, again widely agreed to be not a good thing.

Personally I believe market forces on the demand side will eventually catch up with the energy business. People will begin to take matters into their own hands and demand less demand, if you see what I mean. However at that point it may be way too late in the energy game. Countries like China and India that have a history of dealing with scarcee resources may actually have leapfrogged the USA in the conservation game and we'll be heavily dependent on their technology, and their products to get along. Really that might not be such a bad thing because being self-proclaimed top-dog in the world has definitely starved this country of humility and respect for our fellow people on this earth.