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Here we go again

Said it before, although WOCBATLFI *, when Western governments go right and becomes saner on many issues they also get dafter in other areas, in particular we get more attention paid to Christian, AKA irrational, viewpoints.

Here we go again with changes to our abortion rules that will prevent 60,000 abortions per year. Why? If women don't want or can't cope with motherhood, abortion is the second best option, after not having an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. Do we really need more children in care or growing up on welfare at the expense of more responsible families? Do we really need more fatherless children given the statistics on them? The concept of a soul at conception is a palpable nonsense. Feelings aside, this is a blob with all the humanity of any other microbe-sized blob of human tissue and should be treated as such.

This is one area where Communist countries have sometimes had much saner policies than we have ever managed.

*We Obviously Can't Be Arsed To Look For It

List me

In the PC age there are three sorts of memory joggers, the calendar, the to do list and the daily planner.

Both men and women use calendar programs for major stuff in life like holidays, birthday parties, release from prison etc and they are very similar in format for both sexes.

REAL MEN have to do lists which grow continually from all the things they keep putting off, like decorating the downstairs bog. If there is any timescale it is vague, like "Service the central heating before winter". What all events on these lists have in common is that they are utterly tedious and men will not actually do them at all if they can get away with it. If the wife asks when you are going to do xyz, just say "It's next on my list" and you are safe until she asks the next time. Women regard a list as a statement of the absolute truth.

Daily planners are a woman's thing. These list the day's tasks, both major and mundane, in considerable detail. A major difference of this list from the REAL MAN'S to do list is that women will actually follow it! Some women seem very obsessed with their daily planners which go into the most trivial detail of what they should do with their day. Missus bloggoth even has "pack dishwasher" in hers, as if the mess of last night's dinner wasn't sufficient reminder.

Naturally, we at bloggoth are hoping that following her daily plan will turn into an obsession, then a bit of computer hacking might be in order.

Patent laws are a mystery

Do a search for cyclone on the net and many references (to the industrial device not the weather system) are to James Dyson. A search for cyclone separator brings up pages of recent patents.

How exactly does someone get a recent patent on a device for removing dust from air when people have been patenting variations on the same device for at least 120 years? I seem to recall seeing one in a historic flour mill so they may be older than that but the earliest patent I can find on the net was back in 1890 and it looks exactly like the ones I worked with in the 1970s.

Not bad for a moron

Went for a run along an old railway not far away, now a cycle/walking track and there is lots of ugly graffiti under the bridges. No Banksies here unfortunately, although this vandal seems to have a tiny bit more talent than most. Remarkable metallic depth to that arrow.

Last time we went running on that track on a really hot day we took a picture of this plaque as it reminded us of something, either a parasite or a horror film monster although we couldn't find it on the net. Then we ran on and just a bit to the left of that photo was a garden with a bunch of little nude kids playing in a paddling pool. That could have been misconstrued! Just as well nobody saw us standing on the track taking pictures. Scruffy old white bloke driving a van, we would have been convicted on sight.

Odd that, as earlier in the year we took this picture of a wooden carving with farm animals and just a bit further on was a small field full of pigs. No misconstruings there m'lud, we plead guilty. Any fellow enthusiasts wanting some candid pictures send £100 ($568,387,496) to the usual address.

Einstein was just a beginner

Time flies when we are having fun and drags when we are bored doing the same old things. On the other hand, if you are driving down an unfamiliar road the journey seems to take much longer than it does when you become used to it.

That doesn't make sense. A journey, like anything else, should be much quicker when everything is new than it is when youv'e seen it all hundreds of times before. Why does the perception of time when travelling follow different rules than when you are doing something in the same place? Why should just moving in space make a difference to our perception of time?

Time? space? It is obviously some sort of relativity thing. It has taken the amazing genius of we at bloggoth to notice this amazing contradiction, the way that the normal laws of perception of time are inverted when one adds in passage through space. Einstein didn't notice it, so what does that tell you about our relative intellects?

Tomorrow we shall probably go to the gym along the same boring old road as usual and we will use the experience to refine our improved theory of relativity that will show the world how deeply flawed the accepted one is. Big bangs, black holes, dark matter, Higgs Bosun particles - all will be explained.

Just as long as that f* tractor doesn't get in our way again.

Face touchers

We just happened to come across this. Face Touchers. Will it catch on? Better still, will there be an Arse Touchers? Mmmm!

Race hatred is normal, relative and often temporary

Our race hate laws are very absolute. Call someone a **** in the heat of the moment and you may get convicted for what is seemingly the worse sin in a society that has lost any sense of proportion. One might think that a violent attack would be worse than any mere words but hell no, the words get you three times the sentence.

The whole point of an insult is to insult and one naturally picks whatever seems most offensive so does a racial epithet say anything about the views of the sayer? It probably does but then at the most visceral level who is not a racist? Plenty of scientific studies, (plus watching Meercat Manor obviously) indicate that it is normal to feel less empathy with those who are not of our tribe, however that is defined. Can't find the snippet on the net, too sensitive maybe, but there's a bit in the film "The Chamber" where the Gene Hackman character, who is facing execution for race murders, asks what most really think when a black driver dangerously cuts them up on the road; do they think hey, African American, be more careful! or do they think you f* n*, what the hell do you think you are doing?

An astute observation by a fictional character in a world where real characters are not allowed such honesty. All the same, most real people, the sane people who judge things according to the perceived impact on them and their families, are not outwardly racist. Their perceptions change according to what they see and experience, they allow others to cross the divide once they see them as individuals or when the threat of the other group, real or imagined, is seen to diminish.

It's a relative thing too. A few weeks ago, Muslims were the real threat, then came the riots and the very dignified response of a Muslim community and suddenly perceptions shifted against the blacks. You might say that is irrational, that if our objections had been targetted only against the members of those communities who were actually a problem in the first place, the gang members and the extremists rather than those groups as a whole, then riots or terrorist incidents would require no shift in perception at all.

Unfortunately, we have never been permitted to hold such rational views. Any reference to the problem of criminal black youths has been dismissed as racial predudice against all blacks and any mention of Muslims who reject our view of society has been dismissed as Islamophobia. This idea of blacks and Muslims as indivisible entities, rather than as diverse groups containing good and bad individuals, is as much an invention of the liberal left as it is of the far right. If we are forced to accept the unnaceptable members of these groups is it really surprising that some conclude we would be better off without any of them?

None of these divisions were ever necessary. All we ever needed to avoid significant racism in the UK were practical immigration policies to ensure we only got people who accepted our society's values and who were likely to be a success and the criteria for deciding that should have been continuously evaluated in the light of experience. Was that really so difficult?

Unfortunately we never get rational government policies, only an endless sequence of irrational ones, each failing to correct the disastrous consequences of the last.

Damn again

Not for the first time we have to agree with comments from He Who Must be Stabbed , AKA Tony Blair. He often said sensible things and would have been a great PM apart from one minor flaw, almost everything he actually DID.

Damn

Something on TV reminded me of this Phil Collins song.

Fantastic. Beats me why there are negative perceptions about him and as far as we at bloggoth are concerned his retirement from music is a great shame. Is there something Collins has done or said in the past? We have no idea but we really don't give a fuck. He has done some great and rather moving songs that have lifted many people and what else matters? How often do we hear the usual platitudes about the recent deceased? Oh yes, he was a lovely person, so generous, good natured, everyone loved him/her etc. Sure, lovely deceased person, you were probably very nice, most people are, as the great sage Winnie the Pooh remarked, but what did you actually do that spread joy like Collins or so many other maligned celebrities did?

Most people are incapable of detachment, unable to separate the achievements from the person. Hitler? Worst of all nasty chaps so, QED, you always see his paintings described as amateurish, no better than some art school student or typical of a 14 year old. Churchill, on the other hand, was our great hero and so was also an aclaimed artist. Here are some paintings by Hitler and Churchill. Judge for yourselves.

Correlations don't tell us the reasons

The Guardian has a typically Guardiany article on reasons for the riots. It's all about poverty; their researchers found that "in almost all of the worst-affected areas, youth unemployment and child poverty were significantly higher than the national average while education attainment was significantly lower" Of course uneducated, low income people are more likely to commit crimes than others, that is a statement of the bleedin' obvious. What is much more questionable is any implication that the blame for "broken society" must lie with the rest of us.

Failures in British society certainly have little to do with the problem of the black gangs that, yet again, sparked the rioting. The English speaking nations of the Caribbean have some of the highest crime rates in the world and Jamaica is even more violent than Columbia. Half of the cocaine to the US and Europe comes from that region and the gangs in the UK, not just London, are frequently linked to the cocaine trade run by Yardy gangs from the Carribean. Other countries have exactly the same problems with this group. It isn't about race but about an Afro Carribean society that lacks aspiration and a key factor is the percentage from broken families who are raised without male parental input, around 57% compared to 25% of white children. This is not a problem caused by marginalisation in the UK either, because the percentage of fatherless children is even higher in Jamaica.

Sorry not to go along with the "anti-racist" dogma that everything is the fault of the white man but it is not the case that racism has broken a promising Afro-Caribbean society, it was already totally broken to start with. In so far as racism is a problem it is one that has been made much worse by the behaviour of some from this group who have further damaged perceptions of it and thereby damaged the chances of its more promising members.

Maybe some on the liberal left should really consider whether encouraging any group to regard its problems as being caused by others is actually doing it any favours. Until any of us recognise that we have a problem largely of our own making, one that it is within our power to fix, we can make no progress towards fixing it.

There's a solution to future "injustice"; just don't take the bottled water

There's a lot of moaning about the steep sentences handed out to some rioters and looters. 3 months in prison for taking a case of bottled water worth four quid certainly sounds disproportionate.

In normal circumstances we would agree with the concerns, a sentence should reflect the severity of the crime and the totality of the person's criminal record but these were not (yet) normal circumstances. While the initial riots were kicked off by mostly black gangstas who probably have little regard for the law anyway, there was subsequently a lot of copy cat rioting and looting by those who are not habitual criminals but just saw a great chance to get a lot of free gear and appliances. Many probably just got carried away by the whole thing or thought they could get away with it in the general mayhem.

Harsh prison sentences will not deter the real criminals but what it will do is make many of those who joined in, the ones who would not dare to smash places up or shoplift normally for fear of being caught, think twice before they join in next time. It is the very harshness of these sentences that will make the consequence of joining in future riots, no matter how minor the contribution, stick in people's minds.

Sometimes you have to ignore the rights of the individual for the public good.

Just like the Borg and yet nothing like them

We at bloggoth stopped being very interested in Wierd and Science Fiction in our 20s, getting more into "realistic" drama. Mistake maybe, Sci Fi allows for exploration of far more possibilities. Thinking beyond what is generally accepted as reality could give us some clues about what reality really is.

Take The Borg in Star Treck. Interesting idea, a whole race mentally linked and thinking as one with the single-minded idea of subsuming all of intelligent life into their ideal Borg collective. Sound familiar? All human societies have bits of the Borg collective in them, we don't fully function as individuals, let alone rational ones. The black gangsta mentality that causes huge problems in many cities throughout the Western world and in South America is just one example. Another is the liberal leftist thinking that refuses to accept this inconvenient "racist" truth although the evidence is overwhelming. Problems due to an irrational collective thinking are nothing new. Back in the 60s and early 70s the dropout culture was very damaging too. We knew people who had promise but they "tuned in and dropped out", failing to get the qualifications they could easily have got. Things like a career, wife, kids, nice house, were just so, like, uncool man and spiritually unfulfilling.

Any resemblance of human society to Borg society is purely superficial. We function in ways that resemble the Borg because we don't actually think like the Borg at all. It isn't shared mental and emotional experience that makes us act alike, rather, we act in ways that we think are required of us in order to gain acceptance by others. We don't actually think like others think, rather we think we should think in the way that we think others think. We deluge each other with an avalanche of pretence and each of us amplifies and passes it on and we end up living in societies that few of us want.

If we were real Borg we would pass on every real thought and feeling without filtration and a Borg society would inevitably be one that most of us were much happier with.

More lessons from the bird table

Some birds, like sparrows and tits are very social little creatures and often act in unison, all descending on the bird table or taking their baths at the same time. Some times of the day we look out of our office window and see hordes of them, at others there is not a bird in sight. You almost never see the odd one or two.

Generally you will see several feeding or bathing a few inches away from each other with little squabbling except when a minority of bullying individuals turn up. There is a Bluetit who always drives others off the peanuts and a Sparrow who insists on having the whole dust bath to himself although there is plenty for everyone. Obvious parallels with human behaviour here but are the reasons the same? Recent research on birds suggests that fledglings who are bullied became bulliers. It's not proven but the article suggests that this is not some characteristic that can be easily unlearned but is a long term effect due to changes in the brain.

Perhaps we would be doing the rest of the flock a favour if we got out our air rifle and disposed of these unpleasant individuals. We won't do it of course as we at bloggoth could never bring ourselves to shoot little birds and in any case it's too late, the new bullies have already been made and will be along shortly.

There is a curious failure in our society to accept the link between upbringing and behaviour. When some child abuse case hits the headlines people lament over the poor little children while villifying the perpetrators as evil and demanding they should be executed. Yet in many cases those evil abusers were once poor little abused kids themselves.

Sure, we could hang bullies and child abusers but it probably won't provide any long term improvement in society unless you hang their victims as well.

The Real EDL

Talking of the EDL, we at bloggoth have created this great little EDL demonstration from old bits and pieces, things picked out of waste baskets at work, free stuff picked up at shows, odds and sods from Christmas crackers etc. Come on you stupid lefty UAF lot, take these lads on if you think you're hard enough!

PS It also holds my marker pens. Lefties never do anything useful like that!

Variety is the spice of life 2

There was a chap from the UAF on TV the other day saying he opposed the EDL because he believed in diversity.

If diversity just meant we had a wider choice of cultural experiences, if such experiences were purely voluntary and likely to remain so and if the differences did not involve major ones about the direction of society, we would agree with him. Hindu dancing is fine with us, no more tedious than Morris dancing anyway.

Unfortunately, we know those conditions are not met and diversity is often another word for division. More importantly, how can anyone who says they believe in diversity possibly defend Islam, a creed which seeks to prevent, crush, marginalise or drive out all others?

People of other faiths have been prosecuted and discriminated against throughout much of the Muslim world. They also suffer violent attacks which are not simply by extremist minorities but often happen with the full support of many in the Muslim population and are justified by harsh state or regional laws on blasphemy, proselytising or conversion away from Islam. It is also evident, from the failure of the police to provide protection or to investigate attacks properly, that there is sometimes active connivance by the state at various levels. Even in the more stable Islamic states non Muslims are generally not able to practice their faith openly as Muslims can here.

Maybe before this naive and ignorant UAF chap invokes diversity as his reason for defending Islam he should check out its record on the subject.

WARNING! WARNING! MORE THAN USUALLY DISGUSTING CARTOON APPROACHING

Variety is the spice of life

News today of a "gay" wedding in Cuba.

Inverted commas are because the "bride" is actually "female", having had a sex change operation. What equipment does a transgender "women" have exactly? A hole cut out where bits have been sawed off and filled/decorated with bits from god knows where, intestine? elbows? feet? Think if I was the "groom" in this "gay" wedding I'd rather settle for a good old fashioned bumhole, at least you know where it's been.

On the other hand, perhaps if we did not have this obsession with being either recognisably male or female and surgeons were allowed to use their imagination, sex could be rather exciting.

Fantastic

Didn't get details but saw something in passing while flicking through Ceefax, Cameron is to be advised on public order by a senior American lawman. Was it Robocop or Judge Dredd? Either would be brilliant, soon sort these gangs out.

Rights, duties and other crap.

Going to a Catholic school we had a rightist mantra drummed into us. "No rights without responsibilities" Better than the liberal leftist theme of rights without responsibilites but does either make sense? Maybe there should be no rights, no responsibilities, no duties because all those things imply coercion. Worse, they imply that absolute standards of human behaviour exist when in reality there are no absolutes and nor should there be.

There are far too many human beings on the planet. In every other sphere, the more there is of something the less that something is worth. Grit is worth less than gold, dog turds are worth less than diamonds. There is no implicit value in the individual human being; he/she is born, lives a life and dies, just like a slug, wasp or bluebottle. He/she is objectively worth no more and no less than one of those.

That does not mean that we should not care about other human beings because worth is also subjective. Valuing our own species over others is a survival trait that nature gave us and nature rarely gave anything without reason. If we at bloggoth ever needed help we would probably seek it out from the many good people who provide it, from the Samaritans, Alcoholics Anonymous, cancer charities or whoever. Why not? We don't claim to be an especially caring person but have in the past helped others through voluntary work and have never just passed by when someone is in trouble.

So sure, we might seek help from others but if people who are total strangers to us don't feel they want to give it, we wouldn't blame them for it. Why should some unknown Mr Bloggs give time or money for us that he could be spending on his family? This attitude is probably true of the majority of fairly normal people who shift for themselves. Hoping for help from others is fine, expecting it as your right is not. It really doesn't matter what a person's problem is or to what extent he/she is to blame for it. The amount of help that can be provided, even to the most deserving individual, must be balanced against the cost to the greater number.

Insisting on a "right" of healthy people to jobs, housing or a reasonable standard of living is even more ludicrous. It may not be someone's fault that they have no ability or drive as they are the products of their upbringing but that is their problem. Others should not be obliged to have their lives dragged down in an (often futile) attempt to drag them up.

Let's forget all about rights, duties and responsibilities. If the majority of contributing individuals of a democracy want to help you via their taxes, if some want to help you out of charity, then you will be helped. If they do not, then either shift for yourself or perish. A society can only work when it is governed by the instincts of its people, not by idealistic values which they do not accept.

Who are these buggers?

At one time a google of "xoggoth" only brought up me. Now others seem to be using this name. Somebody called xoggoth asking about his talktalk account here. As it happens my broadband is by TalkTalk but that question is not by me. This person on a games forum isn't me either. Not remotely interested in online games, never have been. Sod off, you fake xoggoths!

Unrealistic expectation

It is more complicated than some on the right are saying and there are white youths and girls among the rioters and looters. Nevertheless, the most serious damage in London and Birmingham was disproportionately by blacks and the whole thing was kicked off yet again by the shooting, justified or not, of someone who appears to have been one of the numerous criminal black gangsters who make London's streets unsafe.

All about youths with no jobs or prospects? But there are many white youths with no jobs or prospects in the Welsh valleys and Tyneside, why no rioting or looting there? Is it all about discrimination? But Asians, especially Muslims, face that too, and they get over it far better by making an effort, they take what jobs they can get and often start their own businesses. Taxi firms, shops, restaurants and petrol stations quite disproportionately have Asian faces and there are probably many less publicly visible businesses too. Black faces are much less common in these humble roles and how often do you see or hear of a black run business?

That's not to say blacks can't be a success. The educated ones, often of West African origin, do figure significantly in the professions, the law, accountancy, medicine etc it's just that there seems to be a whole culture of unrealistic expectation among black society at the lower levels. If they can't be high flyers and make a mint they don't settle for what they can do or start legal businesses like the Asians, they just give up and turn to crime, it's more lucrative. A very PC teacher once told me that her black pupils were often among the best and most eager to learn but if they couldn't be great at something straight away they stopped trying.

My personal experiences fit in with this. Way back I worked briefly for Rupert Murdoch's empire selling childrens' encyclopedias from door to door and we targeted mainly black areas because we got more sales. The West Indian parents did lowly jobs but were very ambitious for their kids, they seemed to think that if they got the education they could be successful professionals. Unfortunately, the children of road sweepers rarely get to be doctors in our society, it isn't about colour but social mobility. I encountered the same thing a few years back with a Zimbabwean bloke I knew. He was 35 and his main career experiences were in working for a security firm and running a liquor store, yet he was set on taking a postal Visual Basic course in order to start a lucrative career in IT. I tried to tell him it wasn't that easy but he wouldn't listen. I daresay when he failed to get an IT job it would all be down to racism as nearly everything was with him.

Once any group gets into criminality it is hard to get them off it simply because it may make more sense, as this article suggests. The gang culture affects those in the whole community at an early age and it is not the case that bright qualified youngsters get out of school and turn to crime because they are not offered what they see as suitable jobs, they are influenced by this pervasive sub culture and give up long before that; they don't get those qualifications at all.

Against this background there is no point in expensive leftist initiatives to provide jobs for black youth because nobody who can make a good living from the drugs industry is going to want to stack shelves at Tesco for minimum wage, especially when the gangs provide them with a sense of belonging that these mostly fatherless youths didn't get at home. The best solutions may be the nasty ones. Stop gang membership being an attractive choice. Crack down hard and if that means our prisons are even more full of blacks so be it. Riots and looting? Use those truncheons and rubber bullets, use real ones for any who are armed.

We can't help those already steeped in the gang culture so let's not waste our time and look to the future. We are doing the decent blacks and tomorrow's black kids no favours unless the gangsta mentality is stopped by any means possible.

Wonderful

Another totally justifiable riot costing umpteen millions by our wonderful minorities. What can Mc Donalds, Tesco, Halfords, small businesses, private houses and carpet shops expect when they go round shooting innocent law abiding fathers? Anything taken from the stores is not theft but justifiable compensation for a grieving community.

So what if this lovely person had a gun and that the only picture even the BBC could find showed an aggressive gangsta-style two finger salute pose? We all do that. Trident is just racist propoganda by the police, this "black" gun crime, if there is any gun crime at all, is mostly by white youths. These people are a huge asset, the fact that the London boroughs they live in correlate so well with those that get the most government funding is coincidence or due to exclusion by white racists.

Similar problems on an even worse scale in the countries of origin have nothing to do with it either, those are clearly a legacy of colonial rule. If they had 200 years of controlling their own affairs or if they had never been colonised at all, then we would see what they could do. Just look at the success stories of Haiti and Ethiopia.

More unskilled third world immigration, that's what Britain needs. We at bloggoth can't wait.

Inflationary bird seed

The world is very depressing at the moment. Ludicrously low interest rates on cash savings, plunging value of investments and horrific inflation, way above the massaged official figures. Food prices for humans and birds is rocketing. A few weeks back we got a 12.5 kg bag of bird seed for £9.95, now I can't find anything locally that isn't getting on for double that.

We did manage to find something at about the previous price online but not for long probably as all the cheaper bags are marked out of stock or limited stock. Sorry birdies, either you eat less or we will have to get some really crappy quality stuff.

PS The birds at left are meant to be Polish or something. It isn't at all that we mirrored the callout but couldn't be arsed to change the text.

Discrimination

Gay Pride Marches are portrayed as being about equality regardless of sexual orientation. That's all very well but what about us other perverts? Pig Pride has a certain ring to it. It's decided, we demand pride marches for all perverts!

Another advert inspiration

God know why anyone bothers with TV, almost never ever a damn thing worth watching. Evening news and the occasional Family Guy we haven't seen, that's about it. Oh, and this chap, Andre Rieu. Me and the missus xoggoth love his concerts. This was a fragment of a tune overheard on a TV ad and tracked down via vague memory of Donald Peers. Sometimes it's a good thing that the most awful music sticks in your mind. Peers that is, not Offenbach.

Make do and

The bit we most liked in the film Apollo 13 is where they are rigging the damaged air system with tape and bits of tube.

The main flaw from our point of view is that they only resorted to this solution when things went wrong. Just think how much cheaper the space program would have been if all the space craft had been cobbled together with old bits and pieces in the first place. If we at bloggoth had been in charge the craft themselves would have been made from some old grain silos or perhaps some giant beer vats like these. Not new ones like that obviously, they could probably have got some obsolete or damaged ones from Coors at knock down prices and welded up any rusty bits.

Too much money spent on fancy electrical remote controls too. The emergency came about when one of the astronauts turned on fans to stir an oxygen tank and faulty insulation caused it to explode. Why do you need fancy electric fans to stir a tank when you can reach over and give it a bit of a shake! So it was in another module? Isn't that the sort of technical problem a bit of string was invented for?

Racing reminder

There's some boring ad on TV for Grand Prix Racing with a bit of this as the background. Not actually my favourite FM song but then there's that great bass bit towards the end.

Real consequences

As we have said before maximum sentences for crimes are a nonsense. Sentencing needs to be based on the totality of the perpetrator's behaviour and his net usefullness or otherwise to society.

The effects of each premeditated crime also need to be properly accounted for. Metal thefts are a huge problem. Just a few days ago we called in at a local craft shop and they had no card reader because the phone lines were down, due to a cable theft according to the shopkeeper. A thief might nick £50 worth of copper and businesses may lose thousands as a consequence. It's the latter figure that should go on the charge sheet.

Not unstable enough to be interesting

How can anyone be anyone these days unless they are alcoholics, drug addicts or generally falling apart?

We would just like to say to all the non-existent readers that before we retired we would regularly turn up at contracts drunk or out of our minds on drugs and be booed out of the office. When we are found dead from a cocaine induced heart attack, too much alcohol or not enough alcohol, we trust these facts will make our absence a great loss to the world rather than just to a few garden sparrows who wonder why their seed tray has not been topped up.

Actually, but please don't tell anyone non existent readers, our drinking is boringly within government guidelines. We do tend to have 3 single vodkas on Thursdays, as that's the night we often wander up to the Morlock village social club but tonight we looked through the window and saw nobody we knew was there apart from our ghastly neigbour. Not our idea of fun standing at the bar next to him, so we had our 3 vodkas at home, solely in the company of Mr P, our puppet parrot as missus bloggoth is at aged parents'

How sad is that? Not to worry, this is clearly a sign of a developing psychosis and it will not be long before we tip over into insanity and begin murdering those who have betrayed our country. Everyone will remember us then.

Let's see, shall we use the air pistol or the catapault?

Just believe and it will happen

There is a new story here: Images of a lady.

Looking back on past stories, like this, this, this, this or this there seems to be something of an obsession with we at bloggoth about the way we perceive things and why and the intriguing possibilities that:

1. How we perceive them is not at all the way they really are or
2. whatever the realities may be we can perceive them in any way we choose or
3. maybe our perceptions create the realities.

We regret to say we have made no real progress in our efforts to train our perceptions to provide perpetual satisfaction. No matter how we screw up our eyes missus bloggoth does not turn into Catherine Zeta Jones and whatever mystical mantras we chant we have never managed to enjoy filling in a CT600 online corporation tax return or find it spiritually fulfilling.

It will not stop us trying.

Whoops

Sometimes, things just come out wrong. After reading above story at the writer's club we were talking about perceptions and I was trying to say how life would be enhanced if we could train ourselves to enjoy those things we normally find distressing or stressful. I could have cited tax investigations or neighbour disputes but instead I opened my mouth and out popped "It would be great if we could enjoy the death of relatives".

Nothing like creating an impression that you are some sort of closet serial killer. Breaks the ice at parties.

Why do you think so?

What makes people think the way they do? Why do we see some things as desirable or right but others are not?

Sometimes the answer seems easy. We dislike dropping a hammer on our toes because it hurts and disliking pain is an instinct nature gave us to avoid harm. On the other hand, if the pain comes from a nude lady with a whip some seek it out while some religious nuts inflict pain on themselves for entirely different (so they say) reasons.

It isn't all a question of what we are taught either, while many dutifully follow the path their parents and societies set them on for life, some drift off it in time while others turn off at the earliest opportunity. Our natures probably have a lot to do with it, some of us are natural sceptics from a very early age but citing that as a cause is no explanation because what shapes our natures? Genes or earliest experiences?

Some individual attitudes may be the results of a physical defect. We know that brain damage can diminish activity in certain parts of the brain so that behaviour is dominated by another. Brain damage is not some all or nothing thing so maybe many of us have smaller defects that affect our thinking, the result of maternal behaviour during pregnancy, effect of apparently minor injuries, age, illness, accidental poisoning or drug abuse.

Are some things programmed into our brains? Are things like "racism" simply the survival instincts of the tribal animal? Studies show that to many of us races "all look the same" and others have indicated we feel less empathy with those who do not look like us. Quite why that is so seems to be disputed, one has to conclude that political viewpoint intrudes even into scientific research.

Are some beliefs simply an escape? Not seen any statistics but it does seem as if a high proportion of the most fanatical religious sorts are late converts and often the faith is a refuge from other problems in life like mental breakdown or drug addiction.

None of us are immune to influence. If you join a political group because you believe in its main objectives and find yourself in the regular company of those with more extreme views, how long before you begin to see things the way they do?

One thing is quite clear - we at bloggoth have no fucking idea what the reasons are although, unlike some, we do not think we do. We should, as always, be guided by what works and what most want, with the emphasis on the wants of those who contribute.

Lie to me

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was on TV last night. Very dramatic but could it be that the real takeover will be much more subtle?

Since it reset for some reason my pedometer is telling me I have a 1.8m step. Perhaps I have grown suddenly or I have became much more enthusiastic about my running. Or could the little bastard be trying to kill me by making me think I have only run half as far as I have, so I keep going when I'm knackered and succumb to a fatal heart attack in the woods somewhere?

Maybe, given our widespread dependence on information from machines, the terminators won't need to launch a nuclear attack. Perhaps even now, computers are feeding people with fatal advice on the net like how drinking battery acid is great for indigestion or how mains electric shavers work much better when used in the shower. Satnavs are directing lorry drivers off cliffs. Cable detectors are telling DIYers it is safe to drill their walls right over mains cables. Electronic scales are telling fat bastards they are skinny to make them eat more and spin dryers are enticing toddlers in with little kitten noises.

Will revealing this awful plot make us a prime target? If we at bloggoth suddenly disappear it will probably be because we have been attacked by an electric toaster from the future.

Grumble

One really annoying thing about modern commerce is the way that companies keep changing hands and/or brand names. My broadband suppliers were Nildram, then they were taken over by Opal, then they were taken over by TalkTalk. It can be a real pain, I once had trouble renewing my car insurance after three takovers as the documentation was so confusing.

My tiny business had hosting with Supanames which got taken over by 123reg and just left as a rump legacy system that never sees any improvements and suffered regular mail delays. After fruitless appeals to the "support" team I had to change all my scripts to use gmail. The business used card services by Worldpay, which became RBS Worldpay and is now Worldpay again. After the bailout RBS is perhaps not a great name to be associated with, I hear The Mel Gibson Fan club is now just called The Fan Club. Anyway, I now have to change payment URL on the website and change (yet again) all the logos and references. The currency conversion link too probably but they don't mention that. Whether there will be other problems only yet more testing will tell.

Ah well, if you can't beat em etc. I think the non existent readers of bloggoth have had things far too easy. From next week we will be moving to wwww.blongoose.com, then to wwwwwww.blaggmouth.co.uk before being bloggoth.org again some time next year. Please update your non existent links and watch out for future anouncements.

It's that normal distribution curve again

Despite the constant propoganda by UAF etc far right terrorist attacks are actually extremely rare, far less common than those by left wingers and anarchists and when they do happen they are usually by a loner rather than any organisation.

However, it would not be surprising if they were to rise. As we said a little while back extreme incidents can be isolated ones or they can represent the extreme end of a distinct trend. Take a look at comments in newspapers, it is clear that more and more people are very concerned at what uncontrolled immigration is doing to our society and how the growth of Islam threatens our values.

When valid concerns are continually ignored you get a shift in attitudes across the spectrum. If those in authority will not listen then some may feel they have no option but to take matters into their own hands. Very few are going to go out planting bombs or attacking people but when more people are resentful of migrants and fearful for their future you increase the pool from which the bombers and attackers will spring.

If the governments of Europe have any sense they would do well to pay more than lip service to the principle of democracy and listen to the concerns of the voters and taxpayers. If they do not start doing so very soon we at bloggoth predict that the Norway incidents will be only the start.

PLACEHOLDER FOR A RANT! says Zebedee

Placeholder

Like many others, probably, we had written a rant about Islam but then the Norway bombings and shootings turned out to be by a right winger so we did not upload it.

Naturally lefties like the UAF will see the initial reports in some papers as evidence of "Islamophobia" but a phobia is an irrational fear, and, given the history and current practices and laws in Islamic states, there is nothing at all irrational about loathing it. The worst terrorist attack in the world and the last two worst in Europe were by Islamists and there would have been others like that if our governments had not spent billions of taxpayers' money to protect us.

What happened to that initial report that a known Islamist group had claimed responsibility? It seems to have dropped from the news now the focus is on right wingers but was it true or not? If it was, then one can hardly blame anyone but the group concerned and the views it represents for a false perception. Sensible people might also conclude that if a significant group with the capacity to carry out such an attack sees it as something desirable and claims it as their own, that says much the same thing about them as if they had actually done it.

Still, one thing we can be sure of with an anti Islam rant, it will never go to waste because some awful incident will be along soon, a lot sooner than another from the far right probably. Hang on there Zebedee. You won't have too long to wait.

Is the end of the space shuttle program a victory for Satan?

A creator is as good a theory of existence as any other but there is no sound evidence whatever that god is concerned about us as individuals.

People cite scripture but when you look at sacred texts they are a confusing mass of contradictions and the ones we know today have often survived others only because they suited a political purpose. How can a man seeking the truth, as opposed to just believing what he was taught to believe, know which is correct? Surely any god truly interested in our personal salvation would have ensured his message was a lot clearer.

On the other hand, we could argue he is interested in our species because every natural quality we have, those he presumably gave us, is geared to our survival and dominance, just as with other life in Earth. The observable realities are that there is a continuity between behaviours of animal and man and that these behaviours are dominated by our natural instincts and not a matter of completely free choice. The "awful" things that men have done throughout history, like conquering or driving out other tribes or killing their personal rivals and their offspring, are entirely in keeping with what we observe in other social animals like chimps, meerkats or lions.

There are logical contradictions in religious ideas about personal salvation. Man clearly does not have completely free will to decide between good and evil so how can a loving and just god condemn the sinner quite so finally for what is not totally his fault? Why are some acts sinful when done by man but just part of the normal behaviour the creator gave them to ensure their survival when done by animals? It cannot be that Satan is tempting them too because religion tells us that only man has a soul and the prospect of personal salvation.

Logic says that if there is a creator he is interested only in our progress as a species not in us as individuals. Maybe paradise is the prize for winning in a team sport. We are competing against sentient beings from other worlds to see which makes the most progress in dominating the universe.

By spending on what many think of as more worthy things instead of the space program have we just dropped the baton?

Coincidences again but you do wonder at times

We at bloggoth have some sympathy with Linford Christie who crashed while driving on the wrong side of the road as we nearly did the same thing five years ago. We had stopped off at a shop in town on the way back from work, then turned back onto what we thought was the same one way system we had left and nearly crashed into a car at the next bend.

There were two factors. One is that, for some unknown reason, we felt rather dizzy and spaced out which is why we got confused, did not notice the lack of a one way sign and did not move to the left as we normally would even on a one way system. But there was another and that was really wierd. This was a main road in a major city during rush hour and normally we would have seen traffic going both ways on it before we pulled out but for some unknown reason it was totally deserted, as devoid of people or traffic as if it had been 3AM. It remained so until we went round the bend and almost hit the other car.

Does make you wonder at times if there are little evil things who delight in rigging accidents for their own amusement.

Crime of the century

Trying to shut down a limited company but like everything else in this shitty country run to profit lawyers and accountants it is not as easy as it should be. Today Companies Shitty House sent my form back. I had filled in form 652a instead of almost identical form DS101. The fields to fill in are exactly the same so maybe it is relevant that mine was headed "Application for striking off" instead of "Striking off application".

At least they had not wiped their arses on it like they apparently did with the last form I got back.

Stalin coded in UNIX

Big problem updating one of my Android apps. Pages and pages of people with same problem on Google and no answers. What utter shit the whole Android dev system is!

Developing in Microsoft is straightforward, for example, the project directory structure is what you want it to be. Not Android, you get umpteen levels of directories created from project name that makes basing one project on another a total nightmare. You develop in Eclipse, a bit of open source crap that rather resembles the British tax system in its labyrinthine complexity. It has all sorts of big brother knows best features that Microsoft Visual Studio does not because nobody in their right mind would want them. In VS you just paste in a bit of code, do that in Eclipse and you can find other lines stuck in or altered because it thinks that's what you might want.

Android is based on UNIX, a horrible freeware "It is my RIGHT to code without paying" sort of thing set up by a bunch of hippies in the 70s. Microsoft makes stuff that works and is easy to use but that doesn't matter to UNIX sorts. What matters is rigid adherence to STANDARDS even when there is no sound reason for so doing. Stalin or Chairman Mao would have loved these people. Who cares if a few hundred million people starve to death because the farm production quotas are unrealistic as long as we adhere to the glorious 5 year plan? And as with the Stalinist state you must not question it. Ask a question on a .NET forum and you usually get helpful replies, often with code snippets or links. Ask on Android forums and, if you get a reply at all, it will be something like "use the XYZ class". One reply I saw today was "You can write some code to fix that" Question the wisdom of an approach and replies can be downright rude.

And those UNIXy or open source websites! If downloads are in JAR, it will be a plain page that reminds you of a screen in a 1950's space movie with no proper descriptions of what anything is. If UNIX was a country it would be an Iron Curtain one. I nearly starved to death hitchhiking through Bulgaria where everything in the shops was in plain boxes with no pictures. I would buy what I hoped was a pack of biscuits and find I had a floor cloth or a bar of soap for lunch. The place was so tedious and uninspiring that the workers started drinking as soon as they left the factory gate and were plastered before they got off the works bus.

Will Google push out Apple? I used to think so but now I'm not so sure, despite the much lower prices of Android phones and apps. According to someone I know who has both an Ipod and an Android, the former is faster and slicker and the apps are much better. Not really surprising as they are properly vetted.

The Trabant was pretty cheap but we don't see many around.

Way overdue

Squatters' right to be axed. Brilliant! (If it really happens, obviously)

Somebody may claim to have a valid reason to be in possession of someone else's property, that they had permission for example, but if they do it is up to the police to investigate and establish if a crime has really been committed. Such a claim would not turn a car theft into a civil matter and there is no reason why it should when the property concerned is a building.

Paul Reynolds of the Squatters Action for Secure Homes group says it will serve the interests of property speculators in keeping properties empty to up their profits and that unscrupulous landlords will abuse these powers to illegally evict tenants.

Oh really? Do socially concerned squatters only target properties owned by property companies and wealthy owners? No, they do not, they also target those owned by pensioners who rely on them for retirement income or others of low income who have inherited a small place from deceased parents. Do they only target properties left empty for long periods without good reason? No they do not, they also target those empty for legitimate reasons such as difficulty in selling, repairs or temporary absence for work. If they are so socially responsible they would leave them in good condition for the next needy squatter but very often the houses are stripped and trashed by drug addicts, drifters and illegal or useless migrants. And how exactly can an unscrupulous landlord evict a tenant in contravention of a written tenancy agreement when it will clearly state the tenant's legal right to occupation?

Leftist lying nonsense basically but if outright lies don't work why not invent an opposition viewpoint and attack that rather than the real one? According to this there is a perception created by the media that squatting is the lifestyle choice of middle class dropouts. Oh really? Can't say I have that perception and I don't think many do. Far too many of us have experienced it, known someone who has or seen it going on locally. As I said above, it is numerically more likely to be about drug addicts or other inadequates. They may in some cases be deserving of pity but any help given should be paid for equitably out of taxes, not loaded unfairly on some group regardless of income because a bunch of leftists who are always railing against predudice themselves have this blind predudice against property owners.

And in so far as there are, or are perceived to be, those who squat as a lifestyle choice, is it really the press who are to blame? Or is it more down to groups of ideologically driven, middle class leftists who are doing their best to encourage it?

Update: Squatters like this. A shop that is on the market and currently under offer is occupied by squatters "to show solidarity with striking public sector workers" and used to "host talks from protest groups Climate Camp, Stop The Cuts and Pro Palestinian groups" How common is this? Not that uncommon probably. When squatters are not useless drug addicts they are middle class leftists, probably the sort whose avowed sympathy with the working class has been forged by never having done a day's honest work in their lives.

How can our leaders be so utterly, mind-bogglingly stupid??

Way back at the end of March I made this comment on bloggoth:

For a democratic nation to exist its citizens have to be capable of putting the needs of that nation and the society as a whole above more narrow allegiances and Arab societies are at least a hundred years away from that. At the present time there are only two options that our interference in the Middle East can bring about, more authoritarian rule, whether by an Islamic movement or a dominant family/tribe, or endless blood feuds/tribal conflicts.

Just a few days later I posted an update with a link from The Independent showing how the Arab "Spring" in Tunisia was already looking more like winter. Today The Independent carries another article:

Something has gone badly wrong with the Egyptian revolution. The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – just what the "Supreme" bit means is anyone's guess – is toadying up to middle-aged Muslim Brothers and Salafists, the generals chatting to the pseudo-Islamists while the young, the liberal, poor and wealthy who brought down Hosni Mubarak are being ignored. The economy is collapsing. Anarchy creeps through the streets of Egyptian cities each night. Sectarianism flourishes in the darkness. The cops are going back to their dirty ways.

Are we at bloggoth an expert on Middle East affairs? Hardly. What we said was utterly obvious to any reasonably intelligent person who bothered to spend a minimal amount of time looking at the issue. The government and sections of our press were totally and utterly stupid to go on about supporting democracy in the Middle East or to get involved in any way to that end. This is not unusual. A pub acquaintance who had spent time in the middle east said that there would be conflict and civil war in Iraq before the Western invasion began. He was no expert either but the tensions in Iraq between Shia, Sunni and Kurd, which only the ruthless Saddam kept in check, were well known to any with the most superficial knowledge of the region.

Our leaders are supposed to have expert advice and should make rational decisions based on realities. Most of the time we would get more informed and sensible foreign policy from a schoolkid who had spent a couple of hours in a public library.

Crow invasion getting worse - bloody hell

PS takes about 20s to start 1st time

Misery is a joyous thing

Nobody wants hastles like money problems, legal disputes, health issues, tax investigations. Sometimes, one can have no major worries like that in life, be quite happy, content with one's lot. That's great isn't it?

Yet why is it that in other areas one can long for complication, misery and despair, just as long as it brings that feeling of being emotionally alive?

No loss except to fireplaces everywhere

The News of the World was utter crap. All that intrusion into celebrities's private lives stunk and it beats me why people want to read that stuff anyway. Don't think I've ever paid for one and have probably read it a handful of times. For some reason it always seemed to have a story about a pony landing on somebody's car bonnet, not sure if that was just coincidence or a longstanding editorial policy.

It was probably excellent for getting winter fires going though. We tend to use The Daily Express for fire lighting as the missus brings back a stack when she visits her aged parents. In our experience right wing and tabloid papers burn much better than the more serious or lefty ones. The Financial Times and The Guardian are really bollux, you have to get the blowy thing out to get a decent blaze going.

Rupert Murdoch would probably make a fantastic display on a pyre. An overpaid BBC chairman or the likes of Bob Crow or John Prescot would probably just fizzle. It would be fun to try though.

Slimy

Clearing out a lot of old plant pots surplus to missus xoggoth requirements from behind the shed and came upon this fantastic big green slug. How can anyone not like slugs? Nevers seen one like it before, must be a rare species that has recently evolved in xoggoth's garden.

PS Slimy. Mmmm!

Update: It's a Yellow slug - Limacus flavus

Feedback

People are rather more inclined to speak out against PC nonsense than they used to be but sometimes reactions may seem extreme, as in the comments to this news item about an asylum seeker clinging to the underside of a bus. "Shame he didn't fall...into an oncoming lorry" says one.

I don't recall as many comments like that 30 years ago and it wasn't just because people were cowed by political correctness either. If there had only been moderate numbers of mostly genuine asylum seekers as defined by the UN convention, if the rights accorded them had been as defined by that convention, if they had only been given the basic safety net in terms of assistance, if the phonies had been removed as they should have been, if the concerns of the British tax paying public had been given precedence over the rights of those shown to be a danger to our society or its citizens, I suspect there would be far more sympathy. People like that commentator feel as they do because they have had their valid concerns ignored for far too long. Current "right wing extremist" attitudes which are now so common in Europe have been forged by decade after decade of liberal left wing extremism.

As a Chemical Engineer and a devotee of The Blessed Perry I am always intrigued by the way that society can be represented in terms of simple control theory. The way that it rarely converges to a sensible norm but swings back and forth in response to the latest perceived wisdom is like an ill tuned controller. From Nazism in Europe 70 years ago to the current denigration of the whole concept of nationality and a common national culture, now we seem to be swinging back because people have had enough. Will it reach some happy medium or should we start digging out our blackshirts and swastikas?

Of course, if a controller is very ill-tuned the oscillation will simply get bigger and bigger. In another 50 years will we see Adolph as a wet liberal?

Lies, damned lies, and failure to understand statistics

The liberal left often accuse sections of the press of encouraging "islamophobia" by giving prominence to cases of Islamic terrorist plots and extremism. They argue that most Muslims are peaceful and are not extremists so dwelling on these cases paints a completely false picture. They are half right. Nobody is suggesting that most Muslims are bombers or fanatics but that does not mean these cases paint a false picture.

Let us look at how statistics works. It is in the nature of random events that they occur at, well, random. If we had a string of murders by taxi drivers, would that mean taxi drivers have a particular tendency to homicide? No, it's just chance probably. On the other hand, if we looked at several societies over a long period and found that an unusually high proportion of murders and violent crimes were committed by taxi drivers we would be right to suspect a link and this is much more like the pattern we see for Islamic extremism and terrorism.

Obtain enough data and, while there will still be many outliers, you may see a pattern emerging, the familar normal distribution curve. The extreme end of the curve is a part of it and indicative of what it represents. Compare Christian and Muslim attitudes to secular society vs percentage of the population. It is not just that there are far more Muslim terrorists than Christian ones, there are also far more Muslims than Christians who would like to see peaceful imposition of religious based laws and far more who would just like to see a greater role for religion in society. The whole Muslim curve is shifted towards a rejection of secular society.

Islamic terrorism and extremism are not separate from mainstream Islam, they are part of it.

PS For those who like longer articles than we at bloggoth can be arsed to write, there is an excellent Guardian item here on the continuity between peaceful Islam and extremism and the foolishness of drawing false distinctions.

Sometimes you just have to ignore individuals and look at what is good for society

There is much hoohah about welfare cuts affecting the "genuinely vulnerable". One would assume that the system will still work well enough that we will not see paraplegics sleeping rough in the streets so the obvious concern would be for the far more numerous cases where the problem is marginal, where there is doubt that a real problem exists or where it is felt that those affected could help themselves more than they do. Presumably we are mainly talking about alcoholics, drug addicts, people who suffer from hard to diagnose conditions like back pain or depression or those with readily diagnosed but less serious conditions.

That is not to say that these cannot be seriously debilitating conditions that can make it difficult or impossible to hold down a job or even cope with everyday life. How can somebody work as a labourer with severe back pain? Drug addiction or alcoholism can be the result of a terrible upbringing or mental problems and are not necessarily the sufferer's fault; the only drug addict I knew well started taking drugs to cope with depression caused by diabetes. The problem with all of these disabilities is that it can be hard and sometimes impossible for even the experts to tell if the condition is real or fake, if it is as bad as is complained of, or whether the sufferer is making enough effort.

So what do we do? We can't afford to put every welfare claimant through a long and rigorous health or psychological assessment and we can't afford to give absolutely every welfare claimant the benefit of the doubt. In the real world it is as impossible for any system to ensure that all the genuinely vulnerable are helped anymore than it is to ensure that the phonies are not. All we can do is set a level of welfare that we can afford and at a time of prolonged recession and huge debts that level has to fall.

Will some genuinely vulnerable people suffer as a result of these cuts? Of course. Get used to it because there is actually not a damn thing we can do about it.

Today's social lesson from the bird table

It did not take the darn Jackdaws long to learn that the "dead Jackdaw" we used to scare them off was in fact a black woolly hat and they came back in force so we stuck mesh around everything. Now the seed and peanuts are going down much faster than before! With no large birds to scare them off, all those cute little Bluetits are now no longer popping on and off in ones and two's, we are getting five or six at a time clinging on for ages gorging their little beaks off. More Greenfinches than we ever had before too.

It does make you wonder if some obvious cures to human society would fail because of effects we had not thought of. What if we exterminated major criminals in death camps for example? It's a bit Adolphy but it would certainly produce a much safer and pleasanter society for the rest of us. Or would it? Much crime is by a hopeless underclass but get them out of the way, in effect remove all the workers of what can be very lucrative industries, and would not at least some upright citizens see a great opportunity, move in and fill the gap? Would our new Adolphy laws dissuade all of them? Probably not, because we see over and over with crime that fear of consequences if caught do not always deter.

And maybe too, if our criminal class was more intelligent and educated, they would make a much better job of it than the current underclass. Current burglars might nick a lot of your stuff but how much more could they do if they had MScs in burglary, if the whole thing had been meticulously planned by intelligent professionals to maximise the take and minimise the chance of capture or detection?