I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
And finally ..
I don’t claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, preface of Down to Earth
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
I refer you back to George Carlin above – They Own Us. We are merely subjects. We are all disposable, a population to be managed. Most people don’t even know what a “subject” is.
Truth is, we still live in a feudal society (and the robber barons haven’t changed too much) it’s just extremely well disguised. It’s really up to you if you want to know about it or not – a lot like the Matrix choice of the blue pill or the red pill.
I’m making the most of the internet BEFORE they shut it down.
Ben Franklin, I suggest that you take Mary’s 25 Sep, 7:57 am comment seriously; the treatment of Babar Ahmad is a disgrace.
Abu Hamza seems a much more dangerous individual, but it should be noted that he has been utterly demonised in the corporate media, who deride him as “hook handed” without mentioning that he lost that hand, and an eye, whilst diffusing land mines in Afghanistan, whilst fighting on the US side in its proxy war against the USSR.
Jemand, thanks for the link. A discussion of that sort is much appreciated; I’d been looking for that sort of thing without success. I’ll read it later.
Nice work, Zoologist – think some of our co-commentators are limted to the obvious machinations of the CFR and TC ;).
Hope you realise Chatham House is RIIA btw.
Clark;
Mary;
Mary is reading between the lines, but, in a sense, she’s reading me accurately. I am somewhat ambivalent about Hamza. He’s a lousy father and apparently a poor husband, as well. His first wife, who converted to Islam, lost access to her 4 year old child and did not see her again for 14 years because of the bastard. I think Ahmad seems more dangerous with specific acts he has been connected with. Hamza is just a big mouth the Queen felt should be arrested because he seemed dangerous. He’s just another thug who likes to send others to do the dirty work. Torture and abuse is always counter-productive, and the fruits of such labor can be seen by all. I don’t countenance it, However, due process is ok with me.
Sorry. Will be incommunicado for balance of day. Cheers
“Sorry. Will be incommunicado for balance of day. Cheers”
and you accuse others of narcissism…
Oh the irony. I came across this last night on BrainPickings.com:
“The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.”
That was written by Anaïs Nin in 1946.
Jemand, I read that discussion between Makhijani and Martin. Martin’s points about the waste issue seem better than Makhijani’s, who, from his comments about molten salt heat storage, is probably and advocate for solar concentration…
(Oh no! The Club of Rome set up TREC which advocates the Desertec solar concentration project; it must be a plot to kill poor people!)
I think solar concentration should be developed, but that doesn’t help to burn up existing actinide “waste”. I note that both speakers confirm my assertion that the main obstacle to MSR development is the current regulatory and licensing situation.
It’s a shame the discussion wasn’t longer and more technically detailed.
Scouse Billy, you’re obviously a bit of a genius, as demonstrated by your proficiency in initialism. What’s your solution to actinide waste?
“Scouse Billy, you’re obviously a bit of a genius”
Really? I am widely read as Zoologist said and I look at life holistically, sceptically and with an open mind.
I profess I have never considered the issue of actinide waste, so I suggest you follow my example and do your own research with healthy scepticism and an open mind.
Wikipedia as a starting point is fine but please don’t accept it as authoritative or unbiased – furthermore those citing it as such tend to lose credibility.
YOu might actually look at the link I posted with you in mind. Although 15 years old now, it is a reasonably fair picure of the history of zero point energy from Tesla to date – nor is it too technically heavy wrt the physics: it was made for public consumption.
Ah, now I see why you posted the platitudinous comment and question – so you be the 1000th comment… really!
Zoologist 24 Sep, 2012 – 8:25 pm
“Oh, and on “Humility? Allow me quote you directly :
stop being such a cunt and you might get better fucked.”
That’s hilarious. You even cut and paste your insults. I might be flattered if you were not so simple.
A filter bubble is a term coined by internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name to describe a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see, based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history). As a result, websites tend to show only information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint, effectively isolating the user in a bubble that tends to exclude contrary information. Prime examples are Google’s personalized search results and Facebook’s personalized news stream. According to Pariser, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble. Pariser related an example in which one user searched Google for “BP” and got investment news about British Petroleum while another searcher got information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and that the two search results pages were “strikingly different.”
Add Confirmation Bias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
@Clark – “It’s a shame the discussion wasn’t longer and more technically detailed.”
That’s all academic now, Clark. You see there’s this new technology I’ve been reading about called Tesla Zero Point Free Energy that makes Thorium-MSRs look as cutting edge as an East German moped. You can read all about it on the most authoratative and unbiased website that documents controversial political and scientific issues – see below. I downloaded plans from a website, showing me how to build my own power plant, cost me fifty bucks. I know the site was legit because it had lots of animated gifs. I modified the design by wrapping the zero point Tesla copper wire around my cat and shoved a twenty gram free-energy ceramic magnet up his arse. Man, he shot off like a bolt of electricity – thus proving the concept is sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_free_energy_for_crackpots
Jemand, you obviously should have read this first. “How to Pill a Cat”. Or for Scouse Billy, HTPAC:
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?id=10278
Clark, HTPAC, yes I’ve been there. First thing to do is to trim the claws. Hah!
Jemand, I have a friend who used to read Fortean Times and Nexus Magazine. He’s an alcoholic now. But these magazines were full of anti-gravity devices and machines to harness “free energy”. Plans could be purchased, but such designs published free of charge seemed to have had units converted, either from Metric to Imperial or vice-versa, such that dimensions were specified to at least six significant figures. They always specified that the design would only work if constructed to sufficient accuracy.
“Never invest in anything that contravenes a law of conservation.”
Clark and Jemand proving GIGO yet again – ignorance is bliss, eh.
LeonardYoung (25 Sep, 2012 – 11:40 am):
You wrote: “Yes that’s right, but the point is we were taken to war BEFORE (if my memory is clear)the security service doubts emerged into the public domain. Please correct me if I got this wrong.”
Official doubts may have surfaced after the event, but no objective observer could have thought this WMD notion was anything but fabrication, both before and at the time we went to war.
The weapons inspectors were on the ground, appearing in interviews, pleading for more time to absolutely comprehensively prove that there were no WMD. At the same time, Rumsfeld was giving interviews stating that he knew exactly where the WMD were (if my memory serves), “In Tikrit and Baghdad and north, west, south and east of there.”
The weapons inspectors said that IF Rumsfeld knew where they were, would he mind passing along the information so they could verify it right away? They were ignored.
I watched weapons inspectors, with the Iraqis, destroying their Al Samood missiles, because they went a bit further than the 50KM range allowed. (Details may be a bit off, I’m doing all this from memory.) Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector, said, “We are not breaking matchsticks here!”
The UK’s dossier on WMD was derided by people who knew what was happening on the ground. Blix said that they’d taken away question marks, and replaced them with exclamation marks. The second “dodgy dossier” was a cynical attempt to pass off some ropey, speculative PhD thesis from an American student from years back.
We all knew at the time that Iraq posed no threat.
Indeed, Jemand. Beware men bearing gifs, and never accept cookies from strange websites.
Clark, if you’ve not seen it. A fledgling search engine, DuckDuckGo, has set up an info page on bubbling:
http://dontbubble.us/
We all knew at the time that Iraq posed no threat.
Exactly, Glenn. That’s why millions of us were out on the streets, protesting. The London protest was the most peaceful I’d ever experienced, with people of all nations, families including children… People wouldn’t even shout or chant.
We should have stormed the House of Commons.
Better than being a fake science GIGOLO, Billy.
Without cutting and pasting can you point out where any science I have referred tois fake – you know by thinking fr yourself and using your impressive bank of scientific knowledge and comprehension?
Lol good luck with that – don’t blow bubbles in your bong or it’ll turn acidic …
Clark/SB – I think the scientific arguments are fine to have, but aren’t accessible to the layman. I prefer the approach of following the background of the leaders of each respective movement, to see whose motivation I most trust. The world has become too specialised now for the man in the street to become sufficiently expert in a subject to take a view on it, and we certainly can’t require it of people before they are permitted to take a view.
Clark, my brother discovered “free energy” when he squatted in London. Apparently he stumbled upon this astonishing phenomenon when he rewired the electricity meter so that it went in reverse.
Och come on Jon, we’re over 1000 comments down this thread, with three newer posts and a load of other threads open. No one is reading this unless they’re interested. Let Scouse Billy post his “science” and discredit himself entirely.
@Jon – “Clark/SB – I think the scientific arguments are fine to have, but ..”
Jon, are you referring to MSR or Free Energy?
@Jemand – neither, I was making a very general remark, which I apply to things like climate change, medicine, health, etc. Ultimately, the layman has to trust an expert, rather than take a Ph.D in each discipline.
@Clark – sure, I wasn’t saying it shouldn’t be discussed. Just that a highly technical approach is not accessible for most people, and thus is not persuasive. I think showing how spokespeople on either side of the climate change debate, for example, is highly illustrative of motivation. Sadly this creates another impasse (presumably) since whenever I point out that the propaganda will primarily come from energy/oil companies (to discredit AGW, which would hurt their profits), I guess someone will suggest that more money can be made from green taxation and carbon trading. Phew!