Crimson Autograph

The Problem With Science

2004-12-01T20:02:00.000Z

Governments of any stripe in the UK have a problem with science.

It's natural that those who are most certain if the right policies will reach the top in politics. However, in politics, to a large extennt that certainty must be based on faith rather than evidence.

A scientist is taught to examine the premises as much as the logical structure based on them. Political debate generally simply assumes a consensual set of premises. The people who insist on examining those premises or even rejecting them tend to be excluded from the political mainstream. So, left or right, those who apply a scientific mind set to politics are unlikely to have a successful political career since they'll spend too much time arguing against party orthodoxies to ever be influential.

That's why there's long been a class divide in what subjects are studied at university, which is reflected in the make up of the political establishment. To rise to the top you need the ability to develop a logical seeming argument regardless of the premises. That has led to a bias towards law and philosophy as subjexts studied by those who grow up woth an expectation of being the decision makers. That reinforces the whole problem.

Some people with a scientific mind set respons by settling for being political mavericks, others simply settle for not thinking very deeply about politics. Either way faith based politics has the edge, whether it's faith in God, Allah, Marx or the Free Market.

Bans

2004-11-20T17:16:00.000Z

Fox hunting, smoking. Tell the truth Tony, it's a beagle thing isn't it?

I'm Livid

2004-10-22T12:59:00.000+01:00

I'm watching CNN's discussion of Europe's view on the Presidential election, View From Europe, and I'm REALLY angry.

I'm livid because of something said by an American journalist working in Germany, somebody who ought to at least have some perspective and historical knowledge. He's just said "not all Muslims are terrorists, but it seems like most terrorists are Muslim". This gets to the heart of something that seriously annoys me about a lot of American comment and policy.

The IRA, ETA, UNITA, Sendero Luminosa, and any mumber of other terrorist groups are or were NOT Muslim. They just didn't attack the USA. It's that self centred and unthinking dismissal of the entire rest of the world that upsets me. It isn't terrorism if it's Britons, Spaniards, Angolans, Peruvians or anyone else gets killed. It is only terrorism if Americans are the victims. If it doesn't directly impact on the USA it didn't happen.

Now there are Britons who are equally parochial and ignorant. However the difference is that they are generally seen as either cranks or morons. A few may manage to get work writing for the Sun, the Daily Mail or the Spectator, a small number make it into Parliament, but they are a tiny and frequently despised minority. In the USA it seems to be a respectable way to be amongst the intellectual elite.

I don't mind that John Doe in Power Cable Nebraska is barely aware of anything that happens outside of the USA. He's not setting US foreign policy or the news agenda. What scares me is that the people who decide how the USA interacts with the rest of the world have a quite astounding level of ignorance.

What I Actually Object To

2004-10-18T07:08:00.000+01:00

I've done this is conversation but it's long overdue writing up. It's a fairly complex point so bear with me.

What I can't forgive Bush, Blair et al for is this. The wrong lie at the wrong time. If there's any situation where there are moral absolutes it's when it comes to killing and being killed. It's the situation where all the complexities fade away and you are faced with absolutes. Kill or not kill. Do what it takes to stay alive or die. It's something that marks people for life. Whatever the war, if you listen to veterans of it you'll soon see it's stayed with them for the rest of their lives.

This is where you have to start. I've met a few people who have seen active service in the military, though I've not done it myeslf. Ranging from a chap who lied about his age to join an International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, through to knowing a couple of people who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. they are all strongly affected by what they experienced, however there's something even more important. They are all affacted by how they feel about what they did.

Those who served in WWII on the allied side seem to be very proud of it. Justifiably so in my view. There may have been atrocities (Dresden, Nagasaki) but they have a clear understanding of what they fought for, what they risked their lives and lost their friends for, what they killed for. The same is not true for all of those who served in Vietnam, or for many who served in Northern Ireland in the early years. This is what upsets me. There are a huge number of Vietnam vets whose lives have been destroyed by the fact that they had to go to war and they now don't understand why. They feel they were lied to, that they were charged with a life or death mission for a pack of lies. A central event in their lives, a basic factor in what makes them an adult human being, is something thay can only associate with danger, suffering and deceit. This is not good for their mental health to say the least.

Which is what I can't forgive. Aside from the direct casualties we are looking at hundreds of thousands of people who will spend the rest of their lives fighting self doubt. A huge number of people who will be unable to justify to themselves the most crucial thing they will ever do.

Some will respond by simply blocking out reality. They'll simply cauterise the whole thing. They'll never attempt to apply politics to anything parctical and they'll never question "authority" and they'll be able to function. I don't know that I'd count them as more sane than those who sink into a suicidal depression or those who spend the rest of their days in a morass of drugs and alcohol.

That's why I consider it beyond the pale to lie about the basic reasons why we went to war. It goes beyond the moral question of whether it is ever all right to be dishonest. It goes beyond the practical consideration of whether a particular war is or isn't justifiable. What gives ANYONE the right to destroy the mental health of hundreds of thousands people?

Different Badges

2004-10-09T04:14:00.000+01:00

I've just set up another blog at differentbadges.blogspot.com/. The idea being to have a separate place to indulge in musical nostalgia.

I also got my Hb1Ac results today, 6.3, which means I'm at least keeping the diabetes stable and under good control. Apparently my cholesterol is too hih at 6.6, so it's on to the semi-skilled milk from tomorrow. I feel knackered but not completely lousy, so I guess that's progress.

Also tomorrow I'm off to Sevenoaks to celebrate the wedding of two of my longest stsnding friends. They actually got married a few weeks ago whilst on holiday in California, but the important bit is tomorrow, the party. I'll be staying up tonight to watch the Presidential debate, but probably won't post anything about it until at least Sunday.

Tests

2004-10-04T14:55:00.000+01:00

Lots of things bugging me at the moment. Chief amongst them that "global test" thing. What Kerry said seemed vary clear to me, it simply seemed to me to mean that before you act pre-emptively you should make sure you can carry your own people along and justify it to everyone else later. Hardly controversial. So the Republican response scares me. Either it's a level of deliverate misrepresentation that goes even further than the "flip flop" stuff, or the Neocons really do believe that America should rule the world. The scariest thing about that being that it would mean that Bin Laden would be as right in his aims as he is wrong in his methods.

Then there's Mount St Helens. Not so much in and of itself, but coming on the back of a run of hurricanes and typhoons it all makes me feel very small and ineffectual, and right now I REALLY don't need that.

Then there's somebody I may see next weekend for the first tim ein several years. It's very easy to deal with a good friend who used to be a lover when she's happily married and generally having a good life. It's not so easy when you know she's having a really rough time but she won't say anything about it. It sort of sits at the back of my mind itching annoyingly.

There are actually several people I care about who aren't saying a lot at the minute. One of them is me. I'm having to force myself to communicate. It must be something in the air.

I'd make a resolution to start talking, phoning and emailing people just because, but I know the main reason I'm largely keeping schtum is that by the time I've done the communication that has to be done in order for me to survive at all, and all the realy easy trivial stuff, I've run out of hours in the day.

I NEED to get healthy.

Latest medical bulletin is that my GP thinks I should stay away from work for a month or two yet. My initial reaction was no way, now I'm not so sure. I tried to get back in working mode last week and it's pretty much led to me losing several days to sheer exhaustion. A mass of blood tests on Friday morning didn't help though.

Now Blogger won't let me post. I'll try again later.

Testing times.

Whatever Happened to Paul and Ringo?

2004-10-01T22:52:00.000+01:00

I watched the US Presidential Campaign debate last night. Something that struck me was how limited a range of subjects were discussed given that the subject was "Foreign Affairs". There was one question on Sudan and one on relationships with Putin (if GWB is going to try and present himself as a close friend of Vladimir Putin he might at least learn how to pronounce "Vladimir"). The Kyoto Protocol was mentioned in passing, but largely as something that if signed up to might help build a stronger coalition to deal with Iraq not as something of any importance in its own right, North Korea and Iran came up in terms of nuclear proliferation, Libya was mentioned as no longer a threat, Israel as either more or less threatened, and Poland, Australia and the UK mentioned in the context of Iraq.

It gave an impression that US foreign policy ONLY consists of dealing with nations deemed to be a threat, or with nations willing to ally against nations deemed to be a threat. I didn't notice a single mention of NATO, the European Union, poverty, or ANYWHERE in South or Central America. This worries me. It worries me in terms of how the US currently sees the rest of the world. It leads me to believe that Bush can't lose the election, because if the debate is purely going to be in terms of the US against the bad guys, for us or against us, then his absurdly simplistic views may make more sense than Kerry's more complex ideas. Unless the existance of the rest of the world is admitted to as part of the election campaign then Kerry pretty much must lose, and he can't set the news agenda.

I'm warming to Kerry. He's not trying to play the "great leader". Having lived under Thatcher and Blair I don't like "great leaders", they are just people who are good at getting their own way. That doesn't make for good government. A poor leader HAS to make good decisions, it takes a "great leader" to persuade and entire nation to mess up in a big way. I don't feel safe living under a "great leader" even though Blair hasn't been all that bad in most respects, the problem is that he can be.

Bush, on the other hand, continues to glorify stupidity. His whole campaign seems to be based around appealling to people as somebody who will be doggedly dumb, and who will refuse to accept that anything complex can be important. Especially as a lot of it seems to be based around ridiculing Kerry for going to a good university, for being fairly well travelled, and for attempting to express ideas that can't be encapsulated in a single sentence.

The USA used to celebrate cleverness. It used to be one of the things I believed the UK could learn from. I guess the lesson went the wrong way.

One thing that I haven't seen picked up in the media that exacerbates my fears of the direction the USA would take under a further Bush administration, it came up in the context of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

"But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted."

All I can say to that is "Camp Zero you damn hypocrite!"

Of course since the first uncensored communications from the British captives in Guantanamo Bay reveal that prisoners there are routinely abused and (at least) threatened with torture, it's certain that there are US military personnel who are open to prosecution by the ICC. The question is does that include their Commander in Chief?

What really upsets me about all this is that those Americans who have a serious interaction with the world oustide their borders tend to be amongst the most open-minded, tolerant and morally upright people one could wish to deal with. I assume that a fair number of those who don't ever look beyone the USA would be much the same.

A Question of Balance

2004-09-24T13:30:00.000+01:00

Something that has been nagging at me for a while is the news media's ideal of "balance". I'm coming to the conclusion that it has become the enemy of truth.

Let me explain. Take a pair of hypothetical political issues. Issue A is complex and indeterminate, perhaps a matter of economic policy. There are different opinions on the best way to deal with Issue A, and in the absence of objective evidence they are equally valid opinions to hold and decisions will largely be down to what values on holds. Issue A works well with a media determined to give a balanced view, a range of opinions will be shown and the electorate can make an informed and reasonable decision upon it.

Now look at issue B. This is a more clear cut issue, perhaps something to do with the environment. Issue B has some clear cut facts. An event has happened and there are a choice of approaches of how to deal with it. Now if all the approaches suggested are valid and reasonable then Issue B can be handled in a balanced way too. However what happens if a political party decide to use Issue B to promote a policy that has been tried before and failed to deal with the issue, or what if they decide to claim that the event never happened at all. Now we have a problem.

The problem is this, balanced reporting means that an outright blatant lie must be be given equal time to the truth. It must be treated in exactly the same way as the truth, if it is challenged then the truth must be challenged too. When a journalist attempts to challenge a lie they will be attacked as being biased.

That's bad enough, but we've gone further over the last few decades. Now unscrupulous politicians have seen how effective the big lie can be, and they will approach Issue A by inventing a big lie that, if true, would conclusively prove their case and then challenging their opponents to disprove it in a situation where they aren't allowed a neutral referee. Instead of an issue that people will see as something inconclusive they now have a clear cut polarised issue that people can be mobilised around.

We've lost the idea of objective reality in politics. Any lie is seen as just as worthwhile as a truth if it is presented with passion and commitment. If the voter doesn't know the subject matter they will simply see two sides saying "oh yes it is", "oh no it isn't". If this was limited to a small number of issues then we could do a bit of research and make up our minds reasonably. However it's the standard technique of a huge number of politicians of all views. There just isn't the time to check it all. A lot of people now seem to think that objective reality plays no part in politics, what they choose to believe is as valid as factual evidence.

I'm pretty well up to speed on a wide range of political issues, and I feel I'm drowning in deliberate misinformation. I find that very scary. The more I learn the less I know, other than that an awful lot of people are prepared to lie in order to get their own way.

2004-09-23T23:40:00.000+01:00

I'm watching the Vuelta again. Feeling full of flu and short of both breath and skin.

Yesterday Santiago did another round of heroics, breaking away from the peloton with Roberto Heras the race leader, and burning off Alejandro Valverde for over two minutes to take second place overall. That's not all though. He then went on to blow away Heras to the tune of half a minute. So he starts today one minute behind the gold jersey with only three days to go.

It's gripping.

One of the joys of warching the big road races is that no matter how you feel there is something comforting in watching a bunch of guys pedalling up and down mountains for several hours. Throw in the complexity of several individual competitions running simultaneously and a team competition, and you have a mix that throws up contant tension and drama, and there are few things to beat tense dramas involving people who are soaked in sweat and pushing the limits of their physical endurance.

It's particularly life affirming when taken with a nice meal and a large and very cold drink.

What is it good for?

2004-09-21T23:06:00.000+01:00

Absolutely nothing, say it again. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Today is the third International Day of Peace. It's the brainchild of a chap called Jeremy Gilley who seems surprised and delighted that it's been adopted officially by the UN. Proof that a single individual can create a little gap that lets a lot of other individuals make small differences that may one day amount to a big difference. Proof that we aren't entirely powerless even though it often seems that way.

Teo other little inspirations over the last few days have come from the world of cycling.

A bit over a year ago Santiago Perez was just starting out on a very promising racing career and about to get married. He'd landed a few successes over his forst two seasons and was marked down as a rider with a lot of potential. Thn his finacee, Vanessa, was killed in a road accident.

He's continued riding, but understandably hasn't continued his development. Until the last few days. On Saturday and Sunday he won two stages of the Tour of Spain in a row. In particular his victory in the mountain time trial on sunday was extrodinary. It's good to see that there's life on the far side of grief. It's good to know that the worst of setbacks can be overcome.

However there's an even more inspiring little snippet from the velodrome at the Paralympics. Brothers Javier and Ricardo Ochoa were both top class road racers, both has taken part in the Tour de France, both were coming to the peak of their careers. In 2001, whilst out training together, thy were both hit by a car. Ricardo was killed, and Javier severely injured, spinal, nerve and brain damage. He also developed cerebral palsy as a result of his injuries.

Yesterday Javier Ochoa won the silver medal in the 3000m pursuit at the Paralympics. He was beaten by Britain's Darren Kenney, but for once I was cheering on the rider trying to stop the Brit getting the gold. Still, it's a hell of a come back.

My heroes for this month are Javier Ochoa and Jeremy Gilley.

Have a peaceful day.

Sculptures In The Air

2004-09-13T09:57:00.000+01:00

That's what Frank Zappa claimed he made. It appeals to me as a description of music. It so perfectly removes absolutely everything that actually matters. I'm not listening to enough music. My hands are moulting at the moment so I can't play any music at all.

Partly I've been broke long enough that I've now built up a huge list of music I need to own now. The new Libertines album, anything by Franz Ferdinand or Tinariwen, Graham Parker's country album, a whole load of stuff I need to be able to hear now. It overwhlems the need to hear what I've heard before. I know it exists and I need to know what it's like.

Then there are the back catalogues. I've barely scratched the surface of Brenda Fassie or Angelique Kidjo's output, I need to get around to hearing what Martin Simpson has been doing.

I suppose I may have to get into the whole music download thing, but storage space is at a premium on my PC, so it'll have to wait a while yet. The other problem being that most of what I want to hear is fairly obscure. In the mean time I'll just have to settle for going over old ground again.

A Better Muse Trap

2004-09-09T15:45:00.000+01:00

I have a rather up and down relationship with my muse. Not any blazing rows or fights, but sometimes we can't get enough of each other and I can write for hours on end, sometimes we just don't speak for days. At the moment she seems to have gone on a road trip.

I say she because I'm sure my muse is female. I have to assume that because when she finds something for me she tends to wrap it up with pretty paper and ribbons and leave it somewhere I'll find it later. A male muse would probably insist I stop what I;m doing and come and look at the new shiny thing. One of the problems I have is that when it's all wrapped up I can't tell if it's the germ of a short story, a one liner, or the answer to the logjam in the verylongthingthatwillpossiblyendupbeinganovel. Which is OK most of the time, but a bit of a pain when my mind is littered with the things and I don't know which to open first. They go off you see. They tarnish after a few hours in the open.

She's not the most reliable muse. I suppose I'll have to accept that. Though there's one thing that will generally get her attention no matter what. That's music. She can't get enough of that. She'll even skimp on the wrapping and hand me the boxes just as I need them. If I could get her to find writing that exciting I'd be well away, or if I was actually a good enough musician to make use of the inspiration then I could go that route. As it is I suppose I'm going to have to settle for living with a muse that doesn't really suit me.

Back To Basics

2004-09-07T11:29:00.000+01:00

More about why I call this blog "Crimson Autograph".

There's the political side of course. I'll no doubt post plenty of political stuff, and in today's world a lot of that is going to be about not understanding a need for violence and confrontation. I think "(Hey Lord) Don't Ask Me Questions" admirably covers what I feel at present. However that's not the only reason I picked it.

I also leave a crimsom autograph just about everywhere I set foot at times. I bleed. Literally.

Not all the time, it's something that comes and goes, generally for a few weeks every few years. Though at present it's been eighteen nearly solid months.

I have atopic eczema. At times that means my skin gets a bit dry. At times it means my skin flakes off in layers leaving me raw in places. At worst it bleeds even if I manage not to scratch at it. It bleeds on clothes and it bleeds on sheets, it bleeds on pretty much anything I touch. For a while.

That isn't the problem with eczema though. The worst symptoms generally go away in a week or two with the right treatment. It's not all that painful, and generally it isn't life threatening except in that it means ones immune system is otherwise occupied when then gugs come to call. The problem with eczema is what it does to your head.

Think about this. What separates you from the rest of the world? What is the boundary between yourself and everything else? What makes YOU separate from your surroundings? Your skin. Now try and imagine not only not trusting your skin to be there when you need it, but knowing that your own body is attacking your skin all the time. That's the problem with eczema. Throw in the fact that most of us who have it have a self image with the condition at its worst. We KNOW we look horrific all the time, even if we've just looked in the mirror and seen that we don't. And we don't have anything that we can trust between us and the outside world.

This year I've been in and out of Robert Willan Ward in St Thomas' Hospital. It's had a huge impact on me psychologically, since it meant spending my time with a group of twenty four people all pretty much in the same boat. I've gained some confidence in the fact that even wrapped up in bandages from head to toe, a human being is still a human being. I'm still me, and it's OK if the outside world can break in a bit now and again, and it's OK if I leave a bit of myself here and there.

You have to make your own fun in hospital. In the morning the psoriasis patients would get a treatment that involved various medicinal goos under a layer of bandages. By four o clock these would have soaked through to make a rather impresssive purple-brown staining on the bandages. So that's the time of day we'd take a mass expecition to have coffee and cakes in the posh tea room in the hospital lobby. "Hi! We all have skin diseases and we've come to have tea with you."

Anyway, I've started learning about how eczema has made me the person I am. So that's the other reason for the blog title, because part of the purpose of this blog is for me to find out who I am and why.

A War Against?

2004-09-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

Just a few thoughts on US politics.

It seems to me that the "war on terror" is a misnomer. In terms of dealing with terrorism it's an abject failure. Terrorist incidents are happening more often than before it began. Yet it is central to Bush's election campaign and seems to play well with the voters. Since the war is being lost when it comes to terrorism the real target as far as most people are concerned must be something else. The question is what?

I offer this as a suggestion rather than a certainty. It is a war against the 21st Century.

Let me explain. What Bush seems to be saying is that if he has policies that assume that things are simple, then the world will become less complicated. At least that appears to be the subtext of much of what he says. It's a call for a return to simple cold war certainties, us and them, good guys and bad guys. It's a call for a return to world war two certainties. A determined attempt to return to the days when the nation state was the sole important unit of politics, and when you could identify the enemy easily and locate them geographically.

It is a war on ideas, and the ideas it is fighting are the complicated and difficult ones that a fast changing world produces. It is a war against economic reality, against global communication and trade, it is a war against understanding, it is a war against tolerance, above all it is a war against uncertainty and doubt. Yet we don't know how our world works at the moment. We don;t know what the Internet does, we don't know what it means, we don't yet know what it has changed. We don't understand globalisation, we haven't a clue about it's long term consequences. We don't know how climate change will work, we don;t know how far and fast it will go. We can't predict how our world will be in five years time. Bush is at war with that, and his plan of campaign is to persuade people that they would be happier if it was the early 50s.

If one looks at it in those terms, and if one sees it as a war fought purely in the heads of the American electorate, then it's a war that is being won. Of course that has nothing to do with anything real, but there's another war that it's merely a battle within. That being the war on Liberalism and social concern.

Which makes it hard for a socially concerned liberal sort of person like myself. You see the President of the USA is at war with me, and I think I may be a tad outgunned.

So Here We Are

2004-09-06T15:03:00.000+01:00

...adrift in the blogiverse. It looks fun and it may help me get a bit more discipline about my writing.

The blog title comes from the Graham Parker song "Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions", which has been echoing around my head for the last few years. At the moment it sums up far to much of what I think and what I feel.