Votematch - Labour Leadership

Okay, so I played. And what a surprise I got:

Balls: 62%
Millielder: 58%
Milliyounger: 46%
Token Commie: 38%

So I went to check.

I agree with Bollocks on:

• No law limiting highest salary to 20x lowest (clearly, utter statist bollocks and not even Ben and Jerry's could make it work)
• Private companies within the NHS allowed to make profit (err, yes, that's the whole point of the 'private companies' bit - if you don't want a profit motive, keep it internal ...)
• Tuition Fees tbrb "Graduate Tax" - although I don't feel particularly strongly about this one.
• Academy schools - yes, bin them - stop ragging on public schools charitable status and bring back the 'Assisted Places Scheme'.
• FCO should promote British Business - yes, after promoting British government policy and the British public interest, that's what they should be doing (Consular Services being a different arm.)
• Third runway at Heathrow - yup - the market wants it. If the market can provide it ...
• Nuclear power - duh.
• Labour should have said what they were going to cut in their general election campaign.
• No tax relief on donations to political parties.

Okay - so that's 9 out of 21 - and, looking at them, I don't feel too dirty. So, what did I agree with Diane Abbot on?

• Tax credits too bureaucratic.
• Approval of drugs wholly free from government interference.
• Academy schools (yes, although she wouldn't like my alternatives!)
• 28 days detention without charge
• Low earners out of tax (a UKIP, Libertarian and Liberal policy, now being implemented!)
• Alternative cuts

Nope, still don't feel sullied by the reeking slime of socialism ...

And interesting to add that the only points of mutual agreement (as far as this fairly trivial survey is concerned) between me, Balls and "Token Black Female" are academy schools (where we actually fundamentally disagree) and the massive public distrust over what a 2010-elected Labour administration would have cut. That, is quite heartening.

Apparently

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

h/t the Heresiarch, who got it through a long chain of other bloggers.

Transmission Control Pixies

This is not original work - it was originally posted on /. (Slashdot)  by Wingnut. It is classic ...

The Transport Control Pixies and the Internet Pixies system the Internet currently uses can be abused, as the recent DoS attacks illustrate, especially with the fat pipes to which many people now have access.

These pipes allow many malicious Pixies to be sent to a target, completely overwhelming the targets ability to process them.

The large numbers of Pixies that can traverse these fat pipes is the main problem as I see it. A good short-term solution would be the replacement of the fat pipes with bundles of thin pipes. At the targets end, each thin pipe would have a small tap - when a DoS attack is detected, simply open the taps in turn to allow the unwanted Pixies to drain out into a bucket. Alternatively, a manned barrier could be set up at the end of each thin pipe, and any swarthy looking, suspiciously odious, black hatted, or otherwise dubious Pixies can be turned away. This doesn't aid tracing the source, but will allow the force of the attack to be diminished such that the target can remain relatively unscathed.

Tracing an attack to the immediate source can easily be accomplished by having a little valve in the thin pipe that when turned will shut off the Pixie flow. Subsequent Pixes entering the pipe will cause it to bulge gradually as the backlog builds up. By repeating this procedure back from each machine the source will eventually be found. To save having to walk all that way, the valves could have long pieces of string attached to them so they can be turned on and off remotely.

Finding the perpetrator of the DoS is more problematic. These days, the normal breadcrumb back trail can be easily garbled by the less than savoury element on the internet. The new Internet Pixie v6 implements the Taut String from End to End system to tie the source to destination - any severing of the string to re-route it can be instantly detected by loss of tension. However, this does us no good currently.

It only takes a single Pixie to start a DoS attack, and finding it may not always be possible. An amateur will often leave the initial Pixie unharmed. If a suspicious one is found, sieze it immediately (ensure to keep its hands away from any magic pouches/flowers/musical instruments that it may have on its person). A poorly cast Mind Erasure spell can easily be undone by any one of a number of Re_Mind perl scripts. A properly cast Mind Erasure can be tricky to undo and will require a special Module be used - if you're not at ease with compiling programs, pop the Pixie in a Jiffy Bag and post it to hemos@slashdot.org (you may need to flatten the packet a little to get it into the floppy disk orifice) - hemos will de-spell it and send the results back by return).

A professional won't allow such evidence to remain - a common method is the Pixie On A Bungee technique. The perpetrator fires said Pixie into the attack machine with a long rubber band attached. With skill, the Pixie shoots in, pushes the Start lever and gets yanked back out at very high speed. A telltale clue of this is often fingernail scratches - sometimes a misjudgement as to bungee length can leave fingers embedded in the lever handle. Unfortunately, unless the Pixie drops his ID card, the chances of tracking back further are very small, and really best left to the authorities.

Oh. Dear. God.

The Huffington Post interviews Fred Phelps. Some extracts ...

Look at the world of Noah. In his day there were 12 to 16 billion people on Earth, and only eight got out of that flood alive. The world is going to be devoured by fire.

12 billion people on Earth in, what would it have been, around 2300BC (according to some creationist timelines)? That's how Noah could get all of the animals in to one boat. All the rest had been eaten.

Is there anything you want to say to her?

No. Except that she should repent.

But her husband wasn't a homosexual.

So then why are they upset? If he wasn't a sinner, he doesn't need to worry. If he was, then it's too late for him. There's time for her though.

Seriously? The idiot doesn't understand why his picketing a funeral causes upset? And the dead soldier wasn't anything to do with the cause (homophobia) he is supporting? It would be like turning up to a church open day and protesting about RBS funding "Big Oil". Right or wrong? Doesn't matter - completely irrelevant.

The behaviour of these fools is enough to make me wish I was an atheist.

Recession, What Recession?

Thankfully, for my blood pressure, I did not meet these people but merely had them mentioned to me!

Celestial Paws specialise in astrology for pets. Pets are loyal, loving and a part of the family. Like us, they too have their own individual characteristics. Celestial paws can offer you a personality profile for your pet.

Prices from £15 to £30. If you can run a successful business doing this, there are clearly people around who deserve to have less money!

The Climate, It is A'Changing

Well, of course it is. It's not static - even on the timescales of human life. So it's changing.

Now, of course, are we in the 70's where best evidence was that it was cooling, or the early 2000's where it seemed to be warming, or the last few years where it may have been cooling again (although this seems to have been a temporary effect due to the prolonged solar minimum which is now over)?

Anyway. Enough of that. We need decent, long-run statistics. Then we can work out the basic up or down thing, then we can look at significance, then we can look at both causes and what we might do about it, if anything. And note that causes and corrections need not be directly related. You can make hot air balloons  rise by throwing out some ballast as well as by heating the air.

So this was fun (h/t to Lubos). Note that this doesn't "prove" anything about climate change, either way - it just shows that the well-derided statistical methods in a key global-warming paper fail the Huff test.

An Answer To Juliette

Juliette has been reading the Guardian again. It's bad for her blood pressure - anyway, I was going to comment on her post but apparently my answer is "too long to process". So reproduced below in full.

Firstly, the iniquity of the benefits trap is something even we rabid (libertarian) right wingers have been known to harp on about from time to time. Yes, we need to have a benefits 'floor' - a minimum living income for those who cannot work. Whether that is because there is no work for which they are qualified or because there is something else in their lives that means that they find it difficult to work.

That can be a disability, it could be because they are studying, it could be because they are the carer (normally but not always the mother) of a small child or the carer (normally but not always the wife or daughter) of a dependent adult. That's fine. Caring for small children is an honourable occupation - whether you are related to them or not. Remember that the authoritarian (or 'scumbag') right wing would generally insist (historically at least) that the "stay at home mother" was the ideal model for society. Clearly bollocks of course but ...

Mrs S-E couldn't wait to get back to work after either Miss S-E or young Master S-E. My sister-in-law, on the other hand, has decided that a formal career break (from a very good job, in pay terms, at least) is the way she wants to play things. Personal choices, personal circumstances. Neither are single mums, of course but that doesn't change the fundamental motivation.

So the benefits system needs to cope. It needs not to discourage women who want to work from doing so - that means reasonable marginal tax rates (compared to the headline tax rates). Whether it is a small amount of part-time work, which may be all that is available or it may be that the lass just wants to get away for a few hours a week from washing nappies and watching 'Peppa Pig'. And it needs to realise that, even on a full time job, she may not be bringing in that much more than child-care and transport costs (Mrs S-E has certainly been there.) Some benefits are particularly iniquitous - you mentioned housing benefit. Simplification is the right-wing bastard answer - with a 'Citizens' Basic Income' as the limiting exemplar.

Anyway - single mums. Some mums are single, as you say, because many men are shits (perhaps even most young men. You might 'think' we're an awful blight on society but we are, or from the pov of the aged, were that blight!) Some are single because they had a loving relationship and it didn't last. It happens. Some mums are single because they wanted a child and didn't particularly want the man that is, frankly, only necessary at the conception stage. Some mums - the stereotype, I suppose - are single because they wanted the sex and were too careless, stupid or pissed to take or insist on birth control.

It is going to be impossible to differentiate between the above (of course, with a CBI, you wouldn't need to), even if they were clear cut categories. Which they're not.

Anyway - happy to disagree with you about the Royal Family. Even if the verminous politician who would replace HMQ as Head of State cost nothing. Which they wouldn't. And the Queen didn't say, okay, thanks, I'll have the Crown Estates (2009 income - straight to the Treasury - over 4 times the 2009 Civil List IIRC), the entire Civil List would pay for on the order of 6000 child care places (advertised cost of c childminder near me, from the council site - £3.65 per hour, assuming 45 hours per week, including a minimum amount for travel to work and 'incidents' and a 44 week working year.) Not nothing but, realistically, 'drop in the ocean' stuff compared to the scale of the problem.

Confused? I am

Okay, I don't read the Indefensible very often but I was reading Matilda Battersby's appalling story on ContactPoint (Matilda, they're choosing to bin something that won't work and will / has already cost a fortune but will have a massive and unwelcome impact on civil liberties in favour of trying to sort out the actual problem!) and I came across the Independent on Sunday's "Pink List".

Okay, I thought, worth a read.

Now it's full of people I've never heard of, which isn't a great surprise, and a number who I am aware of.  Okay, so I'm not a metrosexual and, frankly, don't care particularly about what some public figure's sexual leanings or proclivities are.

But at no 19, I got a shock. Trooper Wharton, although a bit of a cheer-leader for celebration of civil partnerships in the military - albeit in the Household Cavalry where being a bit of a "mommy's boy" is hardly earth-shattering - more "influential" than, well, Ministers and their shadows, a couple of Judges (one Chairman of the Law Commission), the First Civil Service Commissioner, Matthew Parris, Lionel Blue, the vice-chair of the Conservatives and the editor of "Gay Times". Even some lesbian Lt Cdr? For what, exactly? Appearing on the front page of "Squaddie Monthly".

Well, I suppose if the most 19th most important gay person in the country is a private soldier, we hardly need to worry about being run by a shadowy pink-mafia. Unless it is all an incompetent joke. Well, it is the Independent!

Honest, I don't read the Sun but

I got there via an embedded link in one of Tim's posts. And it was quite amusing. Extracts from a book I'll have to get once it comes out in paperback.

Although "mimping whiffler" is quite good, I particularly liked

COCKTHROPPLED: Having an unusually large Adam's apple. 

Now, who do we (society that is - I'm actually too polite when sober) normally snigger at for having larger than expected Adam's apples? Trannies (whether -vestite or -sexual - and I think transgender means something different as well but I really can't be bothered. Splitters!) of course.

Now, would you say that their cocks might have been throppled?

To the First Minister, a modest suggestion.

In response to Senator Lautenberg's pleading, I'd like to make the following wholly politically inappropriate suggestion to Wee Alec for his response:

"The decisions of the democratically elected government of Scotland are not subject to review by the legislative branch, or any other part, of the government of the United States of America. Regardless of any need for co-operation or conversations between our respective executives, a public show trial in Washington is a completely inappropriate mechanism for international political discourse.

Special pleading by Democratic Senators needing to bolster their colleagues' mid-term re-election chances does not materially alter any of these points.

Or, in brief, FOAD!"

Support John Dixon

Yes, a councillor did actually say something honest, accurate and not fed through the local party PR machine before regurgitation:

I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.

Scientology is an enormous con - bigger than advanced fee fraud, just with better lawyers.  They don't have "churches", they have "mark fleecing centres".

'Stupid', to be analytical after the event, as is the right, nay the duty, of the commentariat everywhere, may not have been quite as good as "spectacularly gullible" or "needy, desperate and naive" but, in the context of 140 characters, it's a damn good approximation.

Religious tolerance, yes, to an extent. But only for religions, not for scams invented by a third-rate sci-fi hack writer.

Okay, this is strange

I have a draft in progress. It's nothing special - my thoughts on some of the killings that have happened recently. But work - both professional and social - got in the way and then I've spent an evening with my family. So I come back - the browser is still active and what is in the window?

But then, moving on, the researchers asked a further set of questions, about whether science could be usefully deployed to understand all kinds of stuff, all entirely unrelated to stereotypes about homosexuality: "the existence of clairvoyance", "the effectiveness of spanking as a disciplinary technique for children", "the effect of viewing television violence on violent behaviour", "the accuracy of astrology in predicting personality traits" and "the mental and physical health effects of herbal medications".

It's from a Ben Goldacre article published on BBC World about a week or so ago, apparently. The boggle minds! I'll blame it on a hash collision - YMMV.

BBC Understatement

From here:

Hizb ut-Tahrir, a conservative Muslim group known for trying to push a strict Islamic agenda

As opposed to their more rational statement in a 2003 Newsnight report:

promotes racism and anti-Semitic hatred, calls suicide bombers martyrs, and urges Muslims to kill Jewish people. 

Of course, Hizb still operate freely in Britain ...

PS - I was more than slightly surprised to see this article posted freely on Hizb's UK site. Clearly copyright doesn't exist in Sharia but, no comment? No point-by-point repudiation? No foaming at the mouth> Very strange. Okay, it is in a folder entitled "propaganda-war", but, really ...

Sauce for the Gander?

Just for the record, I'm as suspicious of the (ab)use of the Extradition Act 2003 in the Abid Nasser case as in the Gary McKinnon and Natwest Three ones.

If we know he is a member of Al Qaeda and suspect he was the leader of a plot to blow things up in the UK, why is he being arrested on a US warrant rather than charged under, well, ss11, 57 & 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and conspiracy to cause things to go "Boom"?