Permission and Cause

The Pitch! (mark 1)

2012-02-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

So finally I have written an entire thing! I am happy to have achieved at least this, although something tells me that getting two friendlies to read it and doing some corrections based on their observations will not suffice. But it's a start (until I buy a book called 'Your Screenplay Sucks!'. Yes, real book.)

Anyway, the entire screenplay (yes, dear reader, I am a screenwriter this week) is called Fallout (until I run into a copyright issue) and can be found here, under the SCREENPLAY tab.

And this is the pitch (until I change it):

As a douce Scottish village on the river Forth recovers from Hogmanay 2013, Doug and Helen Birrell are horrified by the decline of their beloved family dog, Sapper. An overexposed X-ray links his demise to Britain's first designated Radioactively Contaminated Land, the MoD landfill site nearby in Dalgety Bay. As the year of the Independence referendum starts, the village becomes an environmental disaster zone and the MoD send in one of their most reliable officers, Sandy Forbes, to do damage control. But Sandy, is Doug's old friend and a local resident. With eyes firmly fixed on the end of a long and thankless career, he quickly finds himself in a critical mess of vested interest and divided loyalties.

__________________

This month SEPA, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency are deliberating on whether to irrevocably declare Dalgety Bay in Fife Britain’s first designated Radioactively Contaminated land. I explore how a culture built around obedience can accept what cosy suburbanites can barely conceive of, how anger can drive politics to a point unthinkable only a few years ago, and what would happen if someone broke ranks at just the right time.

News-sh*&e

2012-01-05T12:52:00.001-08:00

Kirsty at Better Nation, a leading Scottish political blog, reports that the new positivism of the SNP’s pre-referendum campaign will kill stone dead the exasperated anger and negativism of the ‘cybernats’ leaving such base tactics to the opposition.

That’s the problem with coming late to the party. First I thought; “What can she mean? And who are these cybernats?” Some of the commentary seemed to suggest they are a fiction made up by the relentlessly negative campaigning of the other side. Which would be weird.

Later, I watched both Newsnight and Newsnight Scotland. The former examined the impact and implications of Steven Lawrence’s murder on the Metropolitan Police and on the black community. There was a restrained debate between individuals from both sides of the divide in every sense; the white Former Police Commissioner, the black female member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the black male former gang member turned youth worker. It was relevant, it was meaningful.

Newsnight Scotland debated, without irony and for 23 minutes, whether we were getting too worked up about the weather.

My initial reaction was; roll on Independence, or an independent national broadcasting body. At least then we can take our pick of global, national or local issues to report on.

Then, I thought of a poorly punctuated Facebook page about how we don’t destroy our cities because we’re too busy stabbing people that don’t support the same team as us, and thought of the echo chamber of self-righteous navel-gazing that it could so easily become, elevating non-issues to news and smugly deriding the problems we don’t have or think we can ignore.

And I thought. Cybernats. That’s me, that is.

I think I should stop listening to the 'O Brother where art thou' sound track

2011-11-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

I think this is microfiction: It's called 'Angels only Sing one Song'. It's a bit maudlin ;)

Sometimes the sadness is so great it comes out of you, like them angels that can only sing one song.

Sometimes it’s the difference between living with regret and ending it all.

“Hush your moaning,” she says.

Well the drink don’t help it

“Might as well do something useful, now you’re back.”

Well the drink don’t help none

“We managed just fine without you.”

If the drink don’t help, then I’ll pray to God

“Would be better if they’d never let you out.”

And I’ll get my gun
And I’ll get my gun

And sometimes the singing makes it worse.

With apologies to Steven Fry's Planet Word

2011-11-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

                                   Well put
                                    down
                                       a word
     and pick up a song              can change our minds
     spark joy in a heart              lifted by relative position
     and bear me along              beyond a mere shape of letters
       on a tide of                       it becomes a key to unlock
        shared lives and loves and minds.

Questions no one seems to have asked...

2011-11-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

No results found for "Why wasn't Soundgarden 4th of July'used in the film Independence Day?"

WHAT?!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4L6THYAbM

The Narrative Sat Nav

2011-10-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

Country: Endor UK Europe

From: The House at Bag End, The Shire,
To : The Grey Havens, Eriador

Add Via Point: Go Direct

OK. I admit that might be taking things a teensie bit far. But editing rocks. And is hard. And he does go on a bit, doesn't he?

UK 'Sustainable' Forests company in Ugandan land grab (allegedly)

2011-10-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

I posted on Facebook yesterday that according to an Oxfam report the UK based forestry company New Forests had been involved in the forcible eviction of up to 22000 in central Uganda. Since slackivism is as close as I get to Doing Something About Stuff, I emailed both New Forests (info@newforestscompany.com) and the Forest Stewardship Council (info@fsc-uk.org) which according to its international website "is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world's forests", you know the guys that tell you your B&Q garden furniture doesn't have an environmental and social cost much greater than the price tag.

I got this reply back from FSC. I might be too easily please, but I found it a little reassuring. I don't know how any of this helps the people who got evicted, but although it's easy to be cynical about slackivism, I think there is an important function here; namely that people can (sometimes) be held to higher standards if they think someone is watching. Where they exist, we can influence the regulators, which is why it is so important we have the regulators, what ever the area or industry. That said, we must also be able to trust those bodies, as there have to be limits to regulation too. What I think those might be, could perhaps be another blog post...

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Hi Barbara

Thank you for your email.

FSC takes the findings of the Oxfam report very seriously, and will investigate the issue thoroughly to ensure that FSC Principle 2 requiring demonstrated land tenure and use rights, as well as all other relevant principles and criteria, are upheld.

The findings from the recent Oxfam study were brought to the attention of FSC in late September. The Oxfam report reveals serious land tenure concerns. The certified operations in question are related to licenses held by the New Forests Company operating FSC certified plantations covering 12,607 hectares. The operations were certified by FSC accredited certification body SGS Qualifor in March 2009, and are in the Mubende and Kiboga districts of Uganda.

Accreditation Services International (ASI), who monitor FSC accredited certification bodies such as SGS, performed an assessment audit of NFC in February 2010 with local experts and a full stakeholder consultation. FSC has determined that the process of certification made by SGS did evaluate the change in land use on the government owned land where NFC obtained a land lease from the National Forestry Authority.

Findings from the Oxfam report indicate that outstanding claims related to land ownership and use rights were not fully considered and may have escalated since the evaluation. FSC will thoroughly investigate the situation in Kiboga and Mubende in a transparent process where all findings are publicly available to stakeholders. Our priority is to ensure that any contradictions with the FSC Principles and Criteria are remedied.

The FSC system is designed so that stakeholder concerns are addressed in the certification process. Where this intention is not fully realised, additional measures exist to ensure that concerns and disputes are addressed to the fullest extent required by the FSC Principles and Criteria. Working with all relevant stakeholders, FSC will ensure that the concerns regarding the NFC certified operations will be given full consideration and that any disputes or non-compliance will be resolved.

I forward updates on this issue to you as soon as they are available.

Best Regards

********************

Business Advisor

Forest Stewardship Council UK

Ancestor/ Descendent

2011-06-26T01:11:00.000-07:00

Two meet, make one,
and in the geological blink of an eye,
these genes coalesce like fireflies,
into a form, never seen before, which makes Time say
You look like someone I used to know.

Frankenstein's Gas Fire

2011-04-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

It lives
but only so long as I kneel supplicant before it,
pressing in the dial
feeling the weak heat from its spluttering flame.

It chimes,
like someone playing spoons on organ pipes,
it clicks and rings and breathes,

like an old man with pneumonia

Until eventually, it can be taken off life support,
and I can get on with my evening,
very slightly warmer.

Not another f*%^ing Wikileaks post

2011-02-06T17:31:00.000-08:00

I often don’t bother writing about things because I find other people are much better informed and smarter than me, so it is easier just to read what they say.

But for some reason, over this, which the world and their uncle has something to say about, I decided I am going to say something.

I have been following the Wikileaks ‘circus’ with something approaching a disgraceful level of interest because I think it is one of, or possibly the most, important news stories of our time and I am waiting for it to be treated as such. I am waiting for something specific to happen. Two things actually.

1) For a reasonable debate about what are appropriate levels of secrecy in Government to start. I read something by one of those smart, informed people about starting this debate. I supposed that in order to properly start this debate, we need to have all the facts, something which I will admit is tricky when we are talking about whether something should or should not be secret, but hey, there’s these cablesa, which are already public domain. So rather than saying ‘this is criminal’ or ‘this is a storm in a teacup’ why don't we make the question: ‘Should this information have been secret?’

2) For us to engage in a debate about individual privacy versus corporate or governmental secrecy which rises above the level of ‘you show ours and we’ll show yours.’ Seriously?

So is that OK? No one is going to send round the damned-by-association police with their logical fallacy writs? Just asking.

a. I guess that means actually reading them. Bum. Or, waiting for smart people to do it.

Why the Norwegian Nobel Commitee may just have guaranteed that Assange cannot be extradited to the US

2011-02-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

So, no, I don't think he's going to win it. But if I were Obama, I'd be thinkin'... could be mighty embarrassing ;)

PS Julian is a lot easier to draw than Barack

Back for (post) Burns night Special!

2011-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

All traditions need updating.

So I give you... The Tartan spreadsheet ;)

Lost, Transcendentalism and an outpouring of National Grief

2010-05-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

So having dragged my ass through to the last episode, having Lost the plot, picked it up, Lost it again, we finally get to the final episode.

And of course, not a lot of answers, a hundred more questions. Was the way it ended a metaphor for heaven, or as all us atheists hope, was the church at the end merely a memory palace in which is stored the sum of our interactions with others, and which to a great extent is the sum of us?

Was the Island a metaphor for death, and the man in black's efforts to escape it the struggle of man against the inevitable, while Jacob's docile acceptance was the result of a deeper self-knowledge, that ultimately, there is nowhere we can run from our end?

And all this talk of being 'special', the strong theme of 'listening to the island'; is that a bit of New England Transcendentalism dropped in there? America's favourite philosophy, full of mysticism and special people who hear messages from the divine soul. Sounds about right to me.

And in the end? We have a plane full of people, who died, resulting in a tortured journey over many years to try to give their loss some meaning. We are left with the fact that we knew them and they us, that we shared life and experience, and through that sharing there is meaning. There I think, at some level, lies the root, if not the meaning of Lost. People, in a plane, who died. Perhaps I am missing the mark here, but you don't have to delve too deep into the recent American psyche to see where the need to explore the meaning of the deaths of thousands of people who died, quite suddenly and quite unnecessarily, might arise. It might be crass, but there you are, I think that Lost, in some way, was an expression of grief for 9/11.

And that's the only meaning you're going to get out of Lost, I think.

A hug for my friend.

2010-04-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Where I live

2010-04-12T13:02:00.001-07:00

... you see stuff like this quite a lot. Bit cold for it at the moment, though.

Long time coming...

2010-04-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Been away for a bit. I was doing some *actual* writing you see.

Anyway, this is where I live.

I am in a little playpark in a grassy angle between two streets, sitting watching my daughter playing. There are two other girls also playing, one Somali, in a headscarf, the other perhaps Jamaican, in a floppy hat. The girl in the floppy hat steals the headscarf, runs away, waving it like a trophy. The other girl obligingly chases after her for a bit before playing her trump card. "I'm going home for another scarf," she announces, grinning. The first girl concedes the point, eager for her friend to stay.

On the pavement a teenaged couple, him in a hoodie, her in a headscarf, are kissing tenderly before going their separate ways. The guy at the hand car wash stares at them with slightly unnerving intensity.

My daughter chases the pigeons out of the park and the cherry trees finally come into bloom after a long, cold winter.

Oh boy, I love that Streisand effect...

2010-02-18T02:24:00.000-08:00

I just got to get me some of that Streisand effect action.

You hear the one about the Naturopath who got a blog removed because they questioned his right to call himself a doctor?

No?

Well, you can, here, and here.

Whoa!

2010-02-17T14:48:00.001-08:00

Feeling nasty tonight, apparently. So to nice things up, some swans.

I took this before the bird 'flu, just in case they all died.

It's OK. They didn't.

Lent - practice for the rest of your life.

2010-02-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

Why don't you give something up? Anything. I don't care. Talking, for example. Go build some character, why don't you?*

Introduce a hole in your life, in order to be more whole. Seek a positive out of a negative.

You'll appreciate it more when you get it back.

So give something up. But not anything hard. Chocolate is always a winner. Or sugar in your coffee. You don't want to be like those Ramadan girls, clutching the radiator all day at work, white knuckled, grey faced, wobbling into the newsagent at sundown for anything to get the blood sugar up.

No; that's to much like sacrifice. God knows, life is hard enough and we need these little extras to get through the day. The cappucino in hand getting off the train after the morning commute, the OK/Hello/Heat magazine, the new shoes/jeans/accessories. The just went into town and I saw it and I just had to have it. The flat screen, the MP3, MP4, new sofa, new car, new house.

New face cream. New face. Because you're worth it.

New credit card.

New bank statement

New debt.

New job. Where am I going to get a new job at a time like this?

New perspective; is bankruptcy an option?

Lent - practice for the rest of your life.**

*No, of course I don't mean you.

** I'm just being bitter about bankers. Ignore me, please.

Harking back, again.

2010-02-01T12:58:00.000-08:00

Being a scientist

2010-02-01T12:55:00.001-08:00

I was watching an interesting programme on BBC 4 about chaos.

The narrator, Jim El-Khalili, was describing how Russian scientist Boris Belousov repeated and repeated an experimental result until he was certain of a result. Now we were all told during our training that when something didn't work according to expectation, or indeed works better than expectation, we should repeat it. I also remember getting potted histories of certain major discoveries, such as the structure of DNA. What I don't remember getting was elucidation and discussion of best scientific practice, beyond the simple mechanics of an experiment and new methodologies for it.

I wonder why?

Cold...

2010-01-29T14:51:00.001-08:00

Friendship and the withholding of favour.

2010-01-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

Friendship and the withholding of favour.

I read a lovely blog post recently, clearly written by someone who actually knows something about something. The language was beautiful, calm, measured, thoughtful. And it was about friendship. About the danger of defining in the narrow terms of what you get out of it. It is something I have been thinking about a lot. For ten years, my husband and I lived in a state where we really made few demands of each other. We were happy rubbing along, living, loving, sharing because of mutual interest and care. It was not always as perfect as the picture I paint may appear, but it was pretty good. We could respond to each others needs with no calculation, content that any reciprocity would flow naturally from our love. But events have somewhat sharpened that awareness of payback.

Cut to the present day.

"Will I do bath?"

"OK, I'll do bed."

"No, no, you did it last night..."

"OK, thanks love." Score. Some adjustment of the accounts will be required but for the moment this represents a win.

Our daughter, who is perfect, adorable and, we think, pretty sharp for two and a quarter, looks from one of us to the other. Our bargaining is only human, I feel. But she's going to get some of this pretty soon, right? That in some way, doing bedtime is a chore. But that is so untrue! Bathtime is splashy fun, and bedtime, story reading, cuddles on the chair in the dark, gazing at the luminous constellations on the ceiling, singing songs, which she insists upon, is a joy.

Its just that you get so tired after a day at work. Any other time is fine, but those few hours, you just want to slump on the sofa until you can recover a little. I remember back in the pre-kid days, saying to young parents of my acquaintance that I did't know how they found the energy to keep up with their kids. They would look at me as if I were a bit odd, and say something along the lines of, well, you just do, because you have to. And it's absolutely true. The burden of parenting is shared by us upright monkeys, and to a greater degree in modern families, thank goodness. God know how single parents manage.

However, the net effect is to reduce the night time routine to a series of bargaining chips, and our relationship to one defined by reciprocity. This is not the way I want to approach any part of my life, or my daughter's formative years.

I'm not overly worried. This is not the sum of us, and simply by remembering why we do these thing, out of love, the humanity can be injected back into the transactions. And when you are too dog tired to do that, knowing that you do it out of love is sometimes enough.

But it did get me thinking about relationships, in particular about the sort of relationship where the other party can't really give you a great deal back. I had thought about joining a prison penpal scheme. It seems like a humanistic thing to do. Prisoners can often be abandoned on incarceration by friends and family, adding to their isolation from society. Surely a bad thing, if we are serious about rehabilitation. But they are also criminals. I'm not, one might think, going to have a great deal in common with them, me being a (reasonably) law abiding, middle class person. This is exactly the sort of relationship, thinks our blogger, where we strip away all that reciprocity crap, and just get down to a relationship based on care.

Only that is bollocks, on a number of fronts.

Firstly, there is the assumption that I am going to get nothing out of it, to learn nothing, that I will be there, pedagocically handing out scraps of well worn 'normal' experience of the law abiding outside, attempting to steer my new acquaintance away from the rocky shoals of reoffending to the calm sandy beaches of a decent, law abiding existence. What arrogant rubbish, as another blog that I read has illustrated to me. Whatever the law may define them as, there is more going on than just the product of a crime. There is a human.

Then there is the obvious feel good factor from doing a Good Thing. Not to be underestimated in this minefield of reciprocity. I do get something out of it, and If I unconsciously define the experience in those terms, then as soon as I don't think I am getting that any more, my motivation is gone.

And perhaps worst of all is the power dynamic. Now powerplays could be initiated from either end, with a smart crook attempting to hoodwink the unsuspecting dupe that they are alright when they are a baddun, but there is no getting away from the fact that I hold much of the power. So there I am, handing down my gems of wisdom, when I get a letter I don't like. I can write of my displeasure, or disagreement. I can go so far as to withhold my favour, by not writing. By stating that I am withdrawing from the relationship. I have seen this happen, most often on blogs. At that point a relationship based on reciprocity become one based on exploitation. Because unlike my husband and I at our very reciprocating worst, there is no real balance here. One party is tremendously disadvantaged compared to the other, in term of the control they have over the relationship. I think this is possibly descriptive of the entire Criminal Justice system we have saddled ourselves with. I just don't believe that no-one in the Prison service takes advantage of this enormous power disparity.

Anyway, I hope that If I do get round to writing to someone in prison, I remember that I don't have to constantly pass judgements on them. That already happened, they are in prison. Perhaps I will simply try to be a human, to give a little bit, and if I get something back, to be grateful without defining the relationship in those terms. And perhaps I will extend the same courtesy to my friends, my husband, and my wonderful baby girl.

Free Prisoner Ben.

2010-01-16T13:25:00.000-08:00

A very good friend has set up this facebook site. Please, please look and join.

At the age of 14 Ben Gunn killed his friend after an argument. Both boys came from troubled backgrounds and were in care at the time. He was given a life sentence "at Her Majesty's Pleasure" with a tariff (minimum term) of ten years. The sentence reflected his age and the remorse he had shown. Because of his peaceful fight against abuses of power in the the prison service, and despite no further acts of violence, he is still incarcerated: Ben will be 45 this year.

Please join the campaign to have Ben released by joining our Facebook page using the button on the top right of this page.

20 years after the judge's 'tariff' expired, Ben is still in prison. To find out why, we must examine the prison service's requirement that inmates show 'compliance' to prison rules before they can be released.The logic goes that, a person who does not follow prison rules is unlikely to to follow the laws on the outside. On the surface, this is a sensible notion, however, the rules are often arcane and illogical and those who enforce them often abuse their power. Not suprisingly, some prisoners challenge both the rules and the abusers; Ben is such a person.

Throughout his long internment, Ben has consistently challenged the abuses of power he has seen; he has done so in a peaceful and highly articulate manner. 15 years into his sentence, The Parole Board recommended he be moved to an open prison (the first stage in the release process). The then home secretary refused to accept the recommendation. Over the next ten years, The Parole Board recommended open conditions four times, but Ben remained in a closed prison. Finally, in 2005, Ben made it to an open jail. Sadly, a combination of external circumstances, bad timing and Ben's refusal to conform to senseless rules, saw him returned to a closed prison, Shepton Mallet, where he remains to this day. Here is the whole story of Ben's imprisonment in his own words.

Ben's barrister, Flo Krause, has this to say about him:

There is NOTHING in any of his papers which remotely indicates that Ben would pose a risk to the public if released; but Ben is a peaceful activist. He is a fighter and a subversive thinker. He would not hurt anyone (and as far as I can ascertain, this has been the position for over 20 years) but he will speak out and refuse to be silenced. This is seen as unacceptable and the system punishes him.

For Flo's full testimonial please see the FAQs.

Ben has sought to empower himself through education and is currently engaged in research towards a PhD in Human Needs Theory in Prison Conflicts. We are shocked and appalled by the continued imprisonment- at huge cost to taxpayers - of a man who has repeatedly shown himself to have repaid his debt to society and to be ready to take an active and valuable role on the outside. We are not alone; Lord Ramsbotham (former Chief Inspector of Prisons) has said keeping Ben inside serves no purpose and the continued imprisonment of him and others like him contributes to prison overcrowding, while Eric Allison (The Guardian's prison correspondent) compared Ben's treatment to that of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson who were released after serving only 8 years.

We believe that the time has come for Ben to be released. Not just sent to open prison for another two years, as is the unnecessary standard, but released into the care of his Circle of Support and Accountability who are ready and waiting to help him adjust to his new life. The Circle of Support (CoS) protocol was imported from Canada where is was developed in response to high risk sex offenders being released without supervision. Each Circle comprises volunteers from the local community, plus the ex con (the 'core member’). The central idea is that the Circle protects the community from the ex con, whilst protecting the ex con from the community. Broad, yet very tailored, support is given to the ex con in order that he can safely reintegrate into the community. The Circle also challenges the ex con should he begin to slip in any way. Hence 'support’ and 'accountability'. For more information please see the FAQs.

It has been shown on countless occasions that well known prisoners with the weight of public opinion behind them are released more quickly. Please join the likes of Lord Ramsbotham and Eric Allison in calling for not only Ben's release but an investigation into the scores of other prisoners kept inside long after the expiration of their tariffs and at no benefit to the themselves or to our society.

Become a fan of this page today and spread the word to show those in power that it is time to FREE PRISONER BEN.

Ignorant thinking...

2010-01-11T17:24:00.000-08:00

This is something I wrote at 2am the other night. It's satire, OK?

And in the Sunday Times some idiot said this, more or less: I'm just a normal guy, same as all of you, strike a light, love a duck, and I don't know about you I'm really struggling with the 4 wheel drive option on my Range Rover in this terrible weather. And we had to let go of the boy that collects the coal from the cellar, because the Government say its illegal to employ minors! Since when, I ask you? Damn their eyes, do they know how difficult it is to get into the cellar if you are over 4 feet tall? If we don't sort something out soon we shall freeze to death. I shall have to employ midgets from now on.

Speaking of the weather, clearly all this cold means Global Warming is complete tosh. I said so to the little woman and she flinched and said yes dear, and then got on with defrosting the piggie's water trough by breathing heavily on it.

And well she might agree with me. I was right about something else once, so I must be right about this. And because it's cold right now, wind farms don't work...ever. So what have you got to say about that then? I thought not....

Anyway, everyone knows those Climate scientists at UEA are a bunch of politically motivated shysters and it's about time someone brought them up again in a thinly disguised attempt to remind everyone that in some vague way those guys are bad, but without referring to exactly the same quotes that everyone else was because they are old and possibly discredited as a means of tarnishing the climate scientists' names, but you get what I'm about, right?

Of course you do. Because you're not idiots. You see through all this political posturing and technobabble. You, like me, call a spade a spade, and you don't listen to their nonsense. I mean the Tories once did a Stupid Thing, which, if they had asked me, I could have warned them about, but that was a generation ago, and surely they have learned from their mistakes since then, and besides, everything since then has been Labour's fault, hasn't it? Well, hasn't it?? But doesn't that young rogue Cameron look terribly good, I mean serious in those election posters. But what I really think is that they are all as bad as each other and we're not buying your nonsense, Mr Politician, Mr Scientist. We are free thinking Brits, every man jack of us. And good thing too.

Anyway after writing this in the toilet in five minutes flat, I showed it to the little woman. "Do you think the Times will print this? It really is the most ill thought out tosh."

"Don't worry dear." she said. "All the other editorial pieces this Sunday are weakly written mealy mouthed twaddle by right wing apologists who are still trying to convince themselves that they are good people. At least you don't bother with the pretence."

I do love her, silly old bat.

______________________________________________

And on a completely separate and unrelated note, I read this, and it made me think of this. This certainly wasn't the article I was referring to above.

Everyone needs a little Kay Nielsen in their life...

2010-01-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

A chance conversation brought back a memory from childhood. Get a hold of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, illustrated by Danish artist Kay Nielsen if you can, or just a have a look for some of his illustrations.

Hakk...

2010-01-10T14:53:00.000-08:00

Below is something I wrote. Hope you like it. Sort of near future setting. Criticism very, very welcome.

________________________________________________

"Disgusting." says Jamie.

"Can you believe this? Fucking lowlife scum." says Grace, with some heat. She quickly covers her mouth with her hand, casts a guilty glance in the baby's direction.

"Some people do, more's the pity." responds Jamie gravely. "It's the idea that they are willing to mess with millions of people's lives for a game. I just don't understand the mentality. As it is, I understand that the FO down at Whitehall are having to smooth things out with the Chinese, reassure them that we know its rubbish and that we are doing everything we can to counter it and catch these guys. It's like the old MMR thing, only deliberately manufactured for someone's idle amusement."

"I just feel for all the decent journalists who've been suckered into engaging with it. You have to be so careful these days." It is important for Grace, identifying with journalists, now she can no longer really claim to be one. And it is nice for her when Jamie pops over the bridge from Edinburgh, fresh from a debate or a select committee, or a date with a really hot guy. Its makes her feel as if motherhood hasn't taken her out of the loop completely.

The report they are watching elaborates on how these fucking disgusting lowlife scum, players of an exceedingly tasteless online game call Hakk, release manufactured news stories into the blogsphere via one or a number of faked news blogs. The supposed authors of these blogs turn out, on examination, to be fictitious individuals, sockpuppets lovingly crafted by the actual author, the Hakk player. There are programs which can generate entire posts given enough sources and an arbitrarily chosen political stance. The Hakk players are then given points for the number of comments, links to their blog and general controversy that the story generates. The more controversy, the more points you get. And this story, that the vaccine for the new SARs strain that the Chinese had developed and were giving out for free was actually designed to cause brain damage in non-Chinese recipients, was very, very controversial. It shouldn't have been, of course. It should be been laughed of the face of the blogsphere. But the methods used by the Hakk players are incredibly sophisticated, and the data that is usually presented with the claims is so hard to disprove, due in the main to its sheer volume. And there is so much trash kicking about on the web, it is almost impossible to be discerning. If something gets picked up, it usually starts a snowball effect, until some people believe it just because it is popular.

"Do the police stand any chance of catching these guys?" says Grace.

Jamie frowns. "Thing is, they could be anywhere in the world. And they are very good at covering their tracks. Hijack other people's IP addresses, use programmes which turn PCs into zombie terminals. But the police are using every tool in the box. They want a scalp, and when they catch one of these bastards, they're going to throw the anti-terror book at them."

Al is on the sofa pretending to update his profile on his palmhub, earwigging on his wife and cousin while resting a foot on the hind quarters of Davie's hobby horse, absently rocking him to and fro. He thinks about the contents of his other palmhub, the one he pick up second hand about three years ago, and which is currently buried at the bottom of his patrol pack. The one which had come with the Hakk delux pack on it. The full suite, including Gonzo, Tabloid and Political Hakk, not to mention the lower brow first person shooter, Hakk and Slash, in which your journalist hunts and is hunted by Special Forces assassins determined to silence him or her. He appreciated that slight irony. He had been curious, and had quickly become hooked, bored by endless variants on the video game theme of killing people, which, in truth, was a bit like the day job. And it was educational. You couldn't be a really good Hakk player unless you kept up with the news, with the who's who of politics, with the issues of the moment. In a way, he blames Jamie. It was hanging around with him that got Al interested in that stuff, after all.

In addition to the usual accessories, trend analysis programmes, data miners and the like, he has a few of the less kosher add ons, including trendbender, which massages the blips in data into trends, blogblagger and blogjacker, datafaker, Fakebook and perhaps the most contentious of his setup, IPjacker. He has been quietly building his latest sockpuppet for six months. Bonnie is a middle American republican housemom stranded in Godless, lefty Vermont. She even has a Facebook page, complete with photos mined from the deep history of the net and tweaked a bit to bring them up to date. He had upped her activity recently, posting a few off the wall stories about liberal conspiracies, the encroaching hordes of Chinese socialists buying up land in Alaska and how the musical 'Cats' was an attempt by lefties to turn your kids into gay atheists. They had garnered Bonnie quite a following, not to mention a few detractors.

Among Bonnie's choicest quote were "All I have to say is you liberal sinners better watch out because the Rapture is coming." and "They want to destroy our traditional values and way of life and turn everyone gay." But the best was to come. Bonnie had been going to uncover a plot to remove thousands of good republican voters from the Vermont electorate by making everyone sit a test of basic political and constitutional understanding. Of course those over-educated Democrats had skewed the test to ensure that it would disproportionately disqualify poor, hard-working Republicans who didn't have a liberal-arts degree. There is supporting documentation and everything. He is pretty sure it will create a modest storm, particularly in the extreme wing nut states. If he had got a mention on Fox News, he would probably have had enough points to knock the guy who came up with the SARS vaccine as Tool of Genocide story off the top spot, even though the story wasn't so global. And when 'Bonnie' was exposed as a sockpuppet, the wing nuts would be left with a gallon of egg on their faces. In comparison with the SARs guy, his effort really isn't so ammoral, he feels. He is holding up a mirror, really. If people can't see that it is all nonsense, surely that is their fault? Whereas the SARs story, that is... Well, it is incredible. A part of him is filled with admiration, that someone could go quite so far, push the thing to the very limits of taste and legality. And beyond.

Thinking about it, it is perhaps irresponsible, which is perhaps why he has been sitting on his story so long. It would represent both his greatest Hakk coup, and in all likelihood, his swansong as a Hakk player, as he can't really be doing this sort of thing any more. He hasn't got the time since Davie was born, and now that he has his commission his days no longer contain endless hours of hanging around on base waiting for something to happen. He has his career to progress. If it gets out that he plays, he's for the high jump, good and proper, probably get a court marshal and a dishonourable discharge, not to mention the contents of the aforementioned anti-terror book. Besides, it would look terrible for Jamie. And Grace, come to think of it. No, it really has gone too far. He'll have to can it. Shame really. He had grown quite fond of Bonnie.

_______________________________________________

I can't think that you would but if you want to use any of the above, please link here or ask me.. thanks, Babs

Snow...

2010-01-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

I may be riffing on this theme, photographically, for a while.

Also, you must have seen this , right?

Petrification

2010-01-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

I used to think, before I had any, that experience acted in some way to distill the spirit, removing what was extraneous and concentrating that which was desirable. Life as a filtration exercise.

As time passed, as experience accumulated, some achievements, some disappointments, I started to rethink this theory. In particular those experiences which result in my giving up some part of myself, surrendering a cherished ideal to pragmatism, led me to think of it more as a process of petrification of the spirit. Something is crushed flat under the weight of reality. But it does not disappear entirely. Instead it is sedimented into a layer of disappointment and regret at having let yourself down. Or that is what it feels like the first few times.

But even that stage barely lasts. Year upon year, these layers are laid down, and not all of them are bitter. Instead, they are simply what we are able to hold onto. So many memories to cling to, eventually it becomes impractical, so we keep what we can. These layers of compacted experience become metamorphosed, indistinguishable from the self. We look at ourselves and we say, look at all the layers I have. What an accomplished person I must be, to have build myself up like some exposed cliff face on the Grand Canyon. We look at the bigger picture and forget to examine each layer again. Easier perhaps than looking back.

And then something happens, some new experience, some set of circumstances we have not been exposed to before or in apparent geological ages and these layers fan open like the pages of a book, and we read upon them the stuff we are made of, wondering that these words were always a part of us, even when we had felt that any sense of who we once were was lost.

Now lets see if I can act on this feeling ;)

Merry Christmas xx

2009-12-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

Writing 101: As excuses go....

2009-12-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Being one of the 2.3 billion people¹ currently 'writing a novel' I reckon writing stuff might be the best way to get better at, em, writing. So one of the aims of this blog is to have a go at different writing styles, see what takes my fancy and get a bit of criticism. It is also a great excuse for occasionally posting a complete load of tosh...²

1) I made that up

2) Do you feel some sort of labelling mechanism is required to distinguish heartfelt rants from entertaining fictions? I endorse this post completely, 100% Fullfat opinion, no artificial additives, that sort of thing?

Being Nice

2009-12-20T15:52:00.001-08:00

I once lurked around a very grown up web forum where the first rule of posting was to pretend you were doing so at a dinner party, where you knew a few people, but where the majority of the guests were strangers to you. Break the rule, and you got unceremoniously chucked off. I liked that, and the forum definitely benefited from the politeness the policy produced in its members. Now, I know that merely stating that I like politeness is to invite the opposite, and that on an unmoderated blog it is too much to expect that everyone will be nice. Also I am not entirely averse to a bit of good, vigorous.. ahem, debate.

These days the places I hang around on the internet can get a bit shouty at times. And that's fine. Topics such as science, politics, climate change, religion and criminal justice do tend to go hand in hand with strongly held opinions. If only I was into football, I'd have the full set of contentious subjects as defined by my late, beloved grandfather.

But seen from within the narrow walls of the web browser, it would seem that positions are hardening to the point that opposing sides can no longer speak civilly to each other. Now we can all have our say, we do so vehemently, frequently butting heads with the ill informed bigots/woolly minded apologists who oppose our sometimes freshly defined opinions. Each group of individuals accuses the other of being a 'lobby' or worse, a 'conspiracy'.

The result?

I think I witnessed it when I recently went to see Richard Dawkins speak. He asked if there were any creationists present in the audience. No hands were raised. Not even one of the protesters from outside the meeting hall had paid the £8 to get in. Well, its a fair bit of money, and to be honest....

Anyway. So there we are. This choir being preached at, a closed loop of communication if ever there was one. Now, I know for a fact Richard gets out there and chats with the great and good of the religious world, but as to the ordinary believer in the street? I don't think so. And I can't see how this is a useful situation.

Most of my very good friends self identify somewhere on the agnostic/atheist/humanist end of the belief scale. I am a humanist who thinks the most important bit of humanism is compassion. But there is a girl who lives up the road from me who is really nice, whom I like a lot and whom I would like to get to know better. She seems fun, enthusiastic, and is deeply committed to charity work. She is also a deeply committed Alpha Christian. I am sure we could spend a lot of time disagreeing about stuff, but up to this point, I have found it more useful and rewarding to explore what we have in common. I hope that as we become better friends we will be able to disagree without falling out, and without becoming immoderate in our stances. Even if we don't become good friends, I am certainly not going to be berating her on her beliefs.

I know I am jumping from creationism to religious belief here. I know they are not the same thing, but there is definitely overlap between the two groups, as there is with the atheist/evolutionist camp. I think it is fair to say these two debates perfectly illustrate the polarisation of stance that appears so intractable to the casual blog browser. I am not undertaking a one-woman crusade for moderating one's tone while posting on the web, apart from anything else because I cannot always promise to be moderate myself, so I might be on a hiding to nothing. Nor am I saying we shouldn't disagree, that we should be tolerant to the point of being mealy mouthed. But I feel that we have to keep talking, somehow. It can only be a good thing, surely?

It's winter

2009-12-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

Permission and cause...

2009-12-16T07:34:00.001-08:00

Apparently I need neither to blog.

Whose idea was that anyway?

Anyway, lovely to see you here. I'm sure we'll find some interesting things to talk about.