Star Wars is a Great Bullshit Detector

Star Wars is such a fascinating franchise. Whored to death of course. But what really intrigues me about these movies is that the context of the story is entirely dependent upon whether you watch it in its broadcast order (4-6, 1-3), or its intended order (1-6).

Episodes Four to Six

Watching the original run, we jump into a fully-fledged universe (of which I am always a fan of). The backstory is revealed eventually, but the key is that the mystery is not shown. It is up to the viewer to form this. The effect is great, you get the story, you get the inspiration for the viewers to imagine, and you get a franchise. Ker-ching.

Episodes One to Three

Let us ignore the significant drop in quality of the movies. What I find interesting about these movies (apart from the fact that filling in the backstory removed the inspiration for imagination in the audience – no wonder people got angry!) is that when you look at the overall narrative, it completely changes from a story about Luke to a story about Anakin – it has always been about Anakin.

We’ve seen the same context-switching structure in Lost – we initially think the story is about the struggles of the survivors of Flight 815. We later find out that the story is actually about the war between Jacob and his brother, with the survivors being the last battle.

The Bullshit Detector

We are constantly spoon-fed series of events which are revealed out of full context, so that they can fit a convenient period of time in a broadcast, a number of lines in a newspaper, or an established narrative. Without the full context, we must be aware that our imaginations will fill in the gaps; we will misinterpret.

Take the ‘political correctness gone mad’ narrative, which over time has carefully been interwoven with the ‘health and safety gone mad’ narrative. A lot of the stories reported in the press – such as councils banning the display of England flags on taxis – are reported and then virally spread. The councillors are not being racist, or denying patriotism. They are acknowledging that a taxi is a place of work, and more specifically a service. Health and Safety law applies. If you were to fly a German flag, you may be set upon by a drunk in a taxi rank, especially if you were flying that flag on the night England lost to Germany. Oh, injured at work? In goes a claim against the employer’s insurance – you could sue someone for something you caused, because they failed to prevent it.

The decision is therefore preventative, not just for the sake of health and safety, but for the sake of reducing insurance claims (which increase as a result of successful claims), the time spent in court and the cost to the public.

The issue of the rules and regulations regarding advertisements on taxis also arises. Again, the flag flying is a potential breach of those rules and so a preventative decision is taken to reduce the cost if the advertisers complain.

This suddenly changes the entire context of the story, and ridicules hooligan organisations who report such stories as more evidence of the Islamification of Britain.

Next time you’re being fed a narrative, such as Winterval, remember Star Wars.

It's Your House - Keep It In Order!

This is a quick post about Guido Fawkes' recent outburst on Laurie Penny.

I don't care which side is wrong or right. Nor do I care what sexual orientation Ms Penny is of, nor do I condone the bullying of her in the comments section and on Twitter. If somebody is wrong on something (and I'm not saying she is), then this is to be discussed with intelligent discourse, not hate mail.

Bullying is not "the new racist" (as some commenter claims). They're both nasty things which you simply shouldn't be doing in 2011. I thought we'd pretty much accepted that? One commenter even suggests that as the comments are anonymous (mostly) then it's not bullying.

Even threats to have her hung are still floating high up in the comments thread.

Guido may or may not share the opinions of his readers. The issue that I take is that, as the moderator of his site, it is his responsibility to keep his own 'house' in order. If he can't do this because of the volume of comments - he should reconsider his comments policy. To quote Guido's own website:

"The comments policy is arbitrary and inconsistent. Bear in mind hundreds of thousands of comments get made every year. There is a vague ad hominem offensiveness level that merits deletion as well"

Why, when he's running a Wordpress instance, he hasn't got a report comments plugin (of which many are available for free) is beyond me. Why do death threats and hate based upon an irrelevant sexual orientation count as above his "offensiveness" threshold? If he simply can't be bothered to do some proactive moderation (removing the anonymity of commenters would significantly reduce this workload - a simple step to a larger cleanup that hasn't been taken) - then he is advocating their views by proxy, by allowing his site to play host to them. Absolving himself of guilt by saying he might not moderate just shows idiocy, and the fact that his house is very untidy; metaphorically speaking. Or - he agrees with them. It's got to be laziness or agreement somewhere down the line; both are not desirable traits in this context.

Another commenter said that "if you don't like it - then leave". I'd like to introduce Kenneth Tong - whom Johann Hari has already demolished for publishing on Twitter that "hunger hurts but starving works". A follow-up email explained why criticism on the internet can stick. Once you've seen it, it can do a considerable amount of damage. Only with the gift of foresight could an "if you don't like it - then leave" system work - and even then it doesn't resolve the absolution of guilt of the twat who made the comment in the first place.

Politics does not need to take such a childish attitude and bring out the worst in people. Especially when people can hide behind anonymous comments on blogs with admins who can't be bothered to remove the stupid amounts of hate and trolling on their website.

Grow up.

Pope Blames the Big Bang on God

The Pope has said that God is behind the Big Bang.

I’d like to address a couple of the points that Popey made during this speech.

“Contemplating it [the universe] we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God.”

No, you and your misconceptions came to that conclusion, based on no repeatable experimental evidence. Further back than that, you are saying this particular God, in his “inexhaustible creativity” is the God that Abraham heard in his head telling him to kill his own son. Hmm. Your faith is not in this God, it is in humanity in general. As a species, we’re the ones who invented this shit in the first place because of our lack of understanding of the world. We are the ones who have crafted religious texts in some other being’s name and refined them over years to fit political needs. That’s why they’re full of inconsistencies. We are the ones who have raged war in the name of these gods, and the particular gods we worship we worship primarily as a result of our society at a given period in time. The faith is clearly not in this imaginary being.

Some Inconsistencies between the Pope and the Good Book

Dogmatic religions are about control. Control through the fear of God, through the fear of God’s punishment, and through the fear of God’s representatives on Earth enforcing those punishments. So put your money in the coffers. This reinforcement of the position of control is why Catholicism has its ‘anti-science’ image, and also why it cannot claim to be a source of morality either.

It seems to me that dogmatic religions are doing whatever they can to maintain a hold of their power in a world that is increasingly realising they have no actual claim to power. Shedding labels such as ‘evil’ and ‘anti-science’ is a start for them. The Pope is not the first person to extrapolate God to the Big Bang and will not be the last; heck he's not even the first Pope to do so. However, by doing so he’s signed up to some other stuff:

• We’re getting closer and closer everyday to understanding the Big Bang. The Pope’s put his weight behind it so surely he has to go along with the evidence that is produced in favour of a Big Bang, or against it when a new, better theory comes along (LOL).
  
• We have an age for the universe we can demonstrate with repeatable experimental evidence. This directly contradicts the 6-day creation period in Genesis. Wait, the literal interpretation of the word of God being wrong? Then why take anything else in a holy book as gospel (if you’d pardon the pun)?
  
• Likewise, we have an age for the Earth which we can demonstrate with repeatable experimental evidence. This directly contradicts the ‘6000 year-old earth view’ that some people hold. If the Pope is willing to accept the Big Bang theory, he has to accept this too.
  
• We then move on to Adam and Eve, the devil, Jesus and all the mindfucking inconsistencies he introduces, the horrid idea of Original Sin and so on. All of these either the Bible can’t decide on a view of events, or cannot provide any evidence, or both. Slowly, reason tears apart these documents. If the Pope is happy to abandon the 6-day creation, then surely these other truths will have to follow.

Of course the Pope is aware of the logical corner this forces him into and came prepared:

“they [scientific theories] only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality ...”

This is doing two things:

• Playing with the semantics of the language. Creationists do this all the time with the theory of evolution. Theories are theories are not theorems. Theories, when supported by a wealth of scientific evidence, represent our best interpretation of the state of something. Theorems, like Pythagoras’s, are common in maths but more difficult to establish in science. That in no way undermines the ability of a theory to give an ultimate sense of reality; or justifies a jump into the ‘well it has to be God' logic of the Pope.
  
• On a higher level of abstraction, this is trying to re-establish a border between science and religion. Science has no boundaries, it only presses forward and builds knowledge. When this erodes the power of religions, they should be upfront and re-evaluate their views based on the evidence. Creationism and Intelligent Design aren't even theories.

Conclusion

The Pope has put himself in a strange position, coming out in favour of science, but only if it suits some semi-relevant pre-conceived view (otherwise known as finding evidence to fit a conclusion, although when viewed in detail the evidence isn’t really evidence for that conclusion).

To conclude, I’ll end with a quote from the genius that was Fenyman:

“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.”

At least the Pope’s doing the job of laying the smackdown to new-world creationists though!

Questions Raised About the Browne Report

The Browne Report, the framework responsible for the new tuition legislation being rushed through Parliament, has been brought into question.

Read it in full.

The main claim is that most of the research money was spent on one opinion poll. The comments on the article seem to describe the situation brilliantly.

Of course, not all of the Browne Report is being implemented. Universities can charge up to triple the current rate rather than unlimited (oh thank you, kind Government!). However, it is pretty obvious this has not been thought through, both by those involved in the creation of the report and by the MPs who decided to vote ‘yes’.

Abstain

You can read the full debate online. The results from the first House of Commons Vote on these proposals are as follows:

Yes: 323 No: 302

The results show that 6 Conservative MPs and 21 Liberal Democrat MPs rebelled, whilst 2 Conservatives and 8 Lib Dems abstained. This resulted in a cut of the government’s majority to 21, although it is hardly going to stay at that level.

Given the situation – how unpopular this, how biased the report is, the cries for more evidence – the option to abstain is not a get-out-of-jail card for any MP who tries to pull that trick. When you’re not sure of something, don’t walk out of the vote, vote no. It really is that clear. I suspect the whips were encouraging the indecisive to abstain rather than vote no (as is the LibDem’s prerogative in this particular vote).

More Protests

All this whilst outside there was widespread anger. The protests had spilled onto Parliament Square (although you couldn’t hear anything from inside Parliament), there were outbreaks of violence and the Camilla got poked with a stick. Read Laurie Penny’s account of her time in the Parliament Square kettle, if you can.

Of course, the media turned this into widespread OMGZ, forgetting some of the earlier names they had called Camilla. This further detracted from what was again a largely peaceful, nationwide protest. Although once again I believe the real anger that is on show at the heart of these protests is something the media will not be able to percolate. Having the complete definition of privilege drive through the middle of a protest against ideological cuts manifested that anger in a way that will hit home for many people.

Later that night, the police decided to employ their good old kettling technique again. This time on Westminster Bridge. Look at that picture. Clearly this is not an appropriate amount of space to squeeze that many people into, yet for the police this is fine. This caused a senior doctor to come out and say this could have caused some serious damage on a Hillsborough scale. If somebody had fallen off that bridge…

End Result

The end result is the same old. We were promised this and that by this party and that party. New new new, get rid of the old. Change not indecision. Blah blah blah. Broken promises and everything stays the same. Of course the government weren’t going to be defeated on this one, but a widespread, nationwide campaign of disruption helped cut the government’s majority and stirred up memories of large-scale demonstrations from the last time the Tories were in power.

The media tried to dismantle this, they have too much to lose going against the government now, and they couldn’t break the protestors. The police tried to dismantle this, and they couldn’t break the protestors – they kept coming back.

I’m a firm believer in gradients of change. These plans aren’t the end of the world, nor are they the worst possible situation. However they are the start of something horrible, and once that snowball has been pushed down the hill… well, let’s just say that’s how the apparent need for cuts myth percolated into everybody’s minds. These campaigns, which will no doubt be joined by teachers, doctors and nurses, and even police officers in months to come as cuts deepen, all form part of an anti-cut movement which is going to define a generation.

Remember Remember

… The 23rd of April 2010.

David Cameron went on record:

"We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT. Our first budget is all about recognising we need to get spending under control rather than putting up tax."

The Conservatives were saying that a VAT rise is an unacceptable tax on the poor *.

Previously they had published the following on their website:

During the election, remember the Lib Dems running this poster?

Now

Today, the VAT has risen to 20% under a Coalition government of Conservative and Lib Dem MPs. Funny that.

Footnotes

* Be slightly wary of the figures, they're from the Tax Payer's Alliance, who are known to do a good old bit of twisting. This doesn't distract from the fact that Conservative Home were talking about a VAT rise hitting the poorest hardest.