Glob-a-log

Mary Shelly has a lot to answer for: Almost two centuries after she wrote THAT book, people still look at scientists with a decidedly distrustful eye. It’s a look that more or less says, ‘Hey, I’m not saying that you ARE creating a monster in your lab that will kill us all but I AM watching you!

Strangely enough, there’s that quite opposite type of archetype that’s pinned to the whitecoat’s white coat: that of the inept and farcical bungler. Far from being a Godlike madman who creates cumbersome creatures with all kinds of interesting scars and bolts through their necks, the scientist is seen as someone who couldn’t build a function mouse trap, let alone some evil kind of Supermouse.

The next story, obviously, belongs to this second ‘Hey, look what those silly scientists are up to now!’ variety - and I agree it all seems more than a bit silly:

British scientists have won a £1 million grant to find out if a robot can safely be employed to stir soup in a kitchen, it emerged today. The project called Co-operative Human Robot Interaction Systems (CHRIS) and based at the Bristol Robotics Lab (BRL) has been funded by the European Commission. A lab spokeswoman said today:

“It will specifically look at the problems of a human and a robot working together in the same space, for example in a kitchen where the service robot is performing a task such as stirring soup, while you add cream.”

Which makes you wonder how much money it would save if people just ate clear soups.

Still, £1 million for a robot that stirs soup doesn’t seem so expensive - not if you compare it to a certain president whose only function seems to be to stir up trouble:

The Iraq war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group’s analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.

Give me that soup-stirring robot any day of the week, says I…

Another day, another senseless killing:

PDT SAN FRANCISCO — Taylor Buckley, a San Carlos resident and senior at Carlmont High School in Belmont, was jailed Saturday on suspicion of murder in the death of 18-year-old Anthony Giraudo, a first-year student at Cañada College in Redwood City.

Police said Buckley punched Giraudo during an argument Friday night outside the gates in center field, causing Giraudo to fall, hit his head on concrete and suffer a fatal brain injury. Prosecutors are expected to decide today or Wednesday whether to file charges. San Francisco jail officials said Buckley was under psychiatric observation.

All of which is sad enough, of course. Now enter Douglas Horngrad, Buckley’s attorney:

“He’s expressed to me, and his family has expressed to me, that it’s a tragedy. He’s a young man who has plans to attend college in Arizona. He’s devastated by what happened. He comes from a good family with long Bay Area ties.”

So, that’s alright then.

I don’t mean to be flippant but Jesus Christ. We’re all very sorry that young Buckley’s entrance to the university might be slightly delayed. As we are delighted to hear that his mama and papa are on speaking terms with the ghosts of the Mayflower.

Still, there’s this other guy. Admittedly, I have no idea if he came from the right side of the tracks - but that is kind of academic now. ‘Cause he’s dead. Which, in the good attorney’s eye might be unfortunate for the victim but is truly devastating for his own client.

Ah well, maybe the attorney isn’t the callous douchebag this quote seems to make him. Maybe his heart bleeds too for the dead victim, while he will try to persuade the court that nothing should stand between his client and his future plans. Maybe.

Anyway, I’m certainly not saying master Buckley is a stone killer who should be sent to the electric chair for this crime. He should indeed not have his whole future taken away from him because of a stupid quarrel that ended with one man dying a stupid death. Though it should have befitted the attorney to concentrate a bit more on the fact that this whole future was indeed taken away from the victim than on any resulting inconvenience to his client.

I can’t help but feel though that we hear altogether too many stories like this one. Maybe it’s our TV shows and movies that mostly serve up this cartoon type violence - where punches and chairs and God knows what thrown at people during fights never seem to have any real consequences. The hero can be hit in his face time and again and will still stand up and walk away from what in normal life would have resulted in death or at least a severe head trauma.

So, maybe nowadays, people confuse Hollywood with real life more than at any time in the past. We certainly watch more TV than ever before, and watch happy slapping clips on our mobiles, and gang rapes on YouTube. Hell, even our wars are now coming to us live on TV, be it heavily sanitised. Perhaps too many people actually believe that guns don’t kill people and that fists don’t kill people and that hitting someone in the head is just what you do ’cause they do it on TV all the time and it’s just a bit of fun…

Ah well, what do I know? Humans (and especially young males) have always done stupid things - and Cain killed Abel somewhat before the advent of 24 hour TV and violent video games. It’s just so very depressing to read these news articles about people being killed in some stupid fight again and again - and it would be nice to believe that people were able to learn from these kinds of stories: that reporting on this tragedy will stop at least some people from getting into similar fights come the weekend.

You know what though? I don’t believe for a moment that this story will affect anyone’s behaviour one tiny bit - and maybe that’s the saddest thing of all.

I’ve said it many, many times before but science can be such fun. Like this latest Japanese invention:

Teenage smokers in Japan could soon be taking their last illicit puffs thanks to the introduction of cigarette-vending machines that can spot underage customers just by looking at them. The machines are equipped with a digital camera that can compare users’ facial characteristics with a database of more than 100,000 people. Their ability to spot sagging skin, wrinkles around the eyes and other signs of maturity means underage smokers - in Japan anyone under 20 - will have to look elsewhere for their nicotine fix.

It’s kind of funny if you think about it. One of the ways anti-smoking campaigners are trying to wean people off the evil weed is to appeal to their vanity - because it seems to be a fact that smoking is bad for your skin.

To have a machine that actually recognises the quality of the skin and that only hands out ciggies to those whose skins are already ravaged by time and by years of smoking is a fitting supplement to this ‘You’re going to look like Godzilla when you smoke’ campaign.

I wonder if you could apply this to other things as well. Machines at the entrance of bars that refuse to let anyone in who doesn’t look like a hopeless alcoholic, or hypodermic needles that can tell the true junk from a rank beginner. Slot machines that only accept money from gambling addicts.

Still, first things first, so let’s forget this smoking machine for a moment. I really want to give that inventor a call, to ask him if he could develop a voting machine that can recognise born-again Christians & radio talk show listeners and immediately annul their votes.

God help us but the guy is a hypocritical so-and-so, or a complete moron, or both:

The US is prepared to strengthen the Lebanese army to help disarm Hizbullah, after a week of violence between the militia group and pro-government gunmen that has left 81 people dead. The president, George Bush, said the US would continue its assistance to the Lebanese armed forces to “ensure they are able to defend the Lebanese government and safeguard its institutions”.

“It is critical that the international community come together to assist the Lebanese people in their hour of need,” Bush said on the eve of a visit to the Middle East.

Yes, and we all remember quite well how president Bush and Tony Blair came together to assist the Lebanese people in their hour of need the last time round, when Israel invaded Lebanon two years ago, when it tried and failed to deal a decisive blow to its Hezbollah enemies. Indeed, then both Bush and Blair refused to do anything at all for the Lebanese people who were caught in the middle, choosing to let Israel finish the war on its own terms first. This from Wikipedia:

The conflict killed over a thousand people, most of whom were Lebanese civilians, severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure; and displaced 974,184 Lebanese, although most, if not all, were able to return to their homes. After the ceasefire, some parts of Southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to unexploded cluster bomblets.

Bush didn’t give a damn about the Lebanese people then and I have a hard time believing that he does so now. It’s rather telling that he only comes to the defence of the Lebanese government when it’s Hezbollah marching through the streets and not the Israeli army.

Anyway, and as I started saying, this American president is such a hopeless idiot that he doesn’t understand at all how his actions and his every word are now perceived and received in the Middle-East. His unconditional support for Israel and, of course, the whole Iraq adventure make him, in the eyes of most people in that region, the least suitable person on earth to play the role of honest broker. Anything Bush says will be met with unbelief and enmity over there.

It is, of course, obvious that the Lebanese government is faced with incredible problems. It has both Israel and Syria meddling with its affairs continuously and quite murderously and then it also has to cope with Hezbollah, which is being paid by Iran and used as a psychopathic attack dog whenever that country says ‘Fetch!’

Faced with all those problems the last thing the Lebanese government needs is the public support of George Bush. Having George Bush behind you in the Middle-East is about as helpful as a truckload of raving Reverend Wrights would be to Obama.

So, let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that George Bush truly cares. That he lies awake at night thinking about the plight of those poor, poor people in Lebanon and that he genuinely wants to help. Well, in that case I do have a suggestion and that is for him to shut the fuck up already and stay out of this latest mess.

Now here’s another depressing little story for you:

Lawton, Okla. — A three-year-old girl has been accidentally shot by a five-year-old boy in Oklahoma. Police in Lawton say the girl was hit in the leg by a bullet fired by a .45-caliber handgun that the boy had found in his home. Investigators say he thought it was a toy and fired it at the girl. A police investigator says there were adults present at the time but, for now, no charges have been filed.

In this life we mostly have to paint the silver linings around clouds ourselves - so I suppose we must be glad that, so far, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘law & order’ prosecutor with a re-election campaign to run who wants to prosecute the five-year-old boy as an adult.

What I don’t really get is why they wouldn’t want to prosecute the parents who left a loaded gun where a five-year-old could reach it. If you can sue McDonald’s for serving its coffee hot, why can’t we put grown-ups on trial who endanger their children in this incredibly stupid fashion? It’s a weird world where we don’t allow smoking (or, God help us, homosexual) couples to adopt children but where there are no strict laws concerning guns in the home. When it comes to people who are unfit to be parents I’d put folks who don’t keep their guns out of reach of their children very high on the list - somewhere between registered paedophiles and crack hookers.

It is, of course, one of those, mostly unsung tragedies: the accidental deaths which go with the right to keep lethal weapons in your home. More law-abiding citizens - children and adults - get killed accidentally or during domestic disputes than ever get killed by home-invading criminals. Statistically, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have the right to protect yourself in your home if having a gun around only makes you more likely to become a gun shot victim.

The ‘right to bear arms’ debate is, of course, not about statistics but about doctrine. So, we will keep reading about kids being wounded and killed by these ‘home defence devices’. As we will hear again and again how some drunken quarrel led to some stupid killing.

It’s often argued that guns don’t kill people but that’s it’s people who kill people. That is perfectly true, of course. Still, as we’ve seen in the news article above, you don’t want guns in the hands of a five-year-old. Nor do you want them in the homes of morons who don’t know enough to keep them away from these children. So, maybe it’s time to admit that there are many people who simply can’t be trusted to have lethal weapons around the home and have us some laws which takes this brutal fact into account.

Ah well, here’s another dilemma for you: should I file this under hysterically funny or incredibly sad? The latter, I think:

HARD-UP soldiers are having to be issued food vouchers, an internal Army report has revealed. A report drawn up for Chief of General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said growing numbers are close to poverty. Many soldiers quit because they cannot afford to support families.

Under a new “Pay As You Dine” scheme, those not on active duty pay for each meal eaten in the mess rather than a flat rate for all meals. But some ran out of money by the end of the month and had nothing left to pay for food. New “Hungry Soldier” schemes see those affected get meal vouchers paid for from future pay.

So, let me get this straight, as long as soldiers are not actually fighting they have to pay for their own food, even while they work, train and live in their barracks? Does this mean they also have to pay for the bullets while they are merely practising?

What’s with these fucking politicians running (and ruining) our lives?

On the one hand they’re always going on and on about patriotism, doing one’s duty and whenever they can they will get on the photo with soldiers, trying to look macho and caring at the same time. Fuck, if soldiers would get a pound (or dollar) every time any two bit politician said something about ‘honouring our brave soldiers’ none of these soldiers would have to worry any longer where their next meal would be coming from.

And vouchers - that will be paid for from future pay, no less: how humiliating and unmanning and utterly gross is that?

If these politicians want to wage their fucking useless wars all over the planet, can they at least treat the people fighting and dying in them even half-decently? I mean, everybody knows their pay is crap and that the government can’t even be bothered to give them decent, often life-saving equipment. We also know that returning wounded soldiers are treated like shit and that invalidity compensations are insultingly low. The government refuses to give these ex-soldiers decent health care and psychological support, or even a place to live.

All of that is well-known and disgraceful enough - but can’t we at least fucking feed them while they serve their country? Food vouchers. Give me strength!

Most of the times, when you read the news, it seems, as the old cliché has it, that the inmates have taken over the asylum. Whether that is true or not, we now have at least some proof that in Britain the pagans have taken over the prisons:

Hundreds of Pagan worshippers locked up in British jails have been given the right to take twigs into their cells to use as magic wands. The ruling, which also allows hoodless robes and rune stones, was made to ensure the 300 or so Pagans currently serving sentences have the same rights as other religions.

The permission to use the “religious artefacts” was agreed after consultation with the Pagan Federation which advised the prison service on what equipment its members needed. There are estimated to be one million Pagans in Britain – around 300 of whom are in prison.

Pagans in some prison hospitals are allowed to receive visits from celebrants of their faith. Pagan chaplains can offer bedside healing rituals, meditation and special prayers. They may also bring in healing stones and sufferers may be allowed to have small gods and goddesses by their bedsides. However, the Pagans have decided to tone down what are seen as the more exotic and striking forms of their worship and ritual, such as carrying flaming torches.

No demand for flaming torches in their cells? How very moderate and accommodating of them…

Truly though, are these people insane? I don’t mean the pagans. I’m not sure believing what they do is much stranger than believing that grape products made by non-Jews may not be eaten, as people do in Judaism - or that one should at least once in his life travel millions of miles to walk around and kiss some stone, as the Muslims believe. Or that God sent His own son down to earth to be nailed to a tree. Most religions must seem quite ludicrous to those who aren’t of it.

Anyway, the thing is, why should prisons accommodate to any particular belief system at all? Let’s, for the sake of argument, presume that all those in prison actually did do the crimes for which they were sentenced and take things from there. In other words, it’s nobody’s fault but their own that they find themselves in a situation where their freedoms are seriously restricted. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that whatever crime they committed was also seriously frowned upon by the God of their choice. So, these prisoners may indeed feel the need to do a lot of praying to make amends to their God - but I don’t think it should be part of the prison’s remit to go out of its way to enable them to do it in the style and comfort to which they were used before they chose to commit the crimes which put them there in the first place.

I don’t mean to be a spoilsport and of course I don’t give a damn if those pagans are allowed to gather a few bits of twigs and a handful of pebbles but it’s the whole principle behind it that I find ludicrous and, in all honesty, quite nauseating. This extreme sensitivity when it comes to the private or mass delusions - sorry: religions - of people is a very unhealthy phenomenon. It’s partly informed by the whole Muslim & Christian situation: that, because of 9/11 and the whole Iraq thing, some in our society think it’s better to show them that we respect their faith as much as ours (or any others’.) Which can culminate in absolute lunacy, like when the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed that certain types of Sharia law could be introduced to England.

In a broader sense this kind of inclusiveness can lead to all the nonsense and real dangers that come under the header ‘cultural relativism’. Meaning that you can’t judge anything, because some things are part of another person’s culture and since all cultures are equal… Which means that according to these cultural relativists it would be morally wrong for us (and watch here for the obligatory reference to colonialism) to condemn things like the forced burning of widows, the genital mutilation of girls, the hanging of homosexuals etcetera etcetera.

So, I truly believe one should never try to accommodate to the beliefs and cultural practices of the whole bloody world. Bending over backwards to keep a handful of pagans happy with some twigs and pebbles is indeed not such a big deal but it’s part of a collective mindset that can all too easily lead to a situation where we are quite happy to allow certain insane imams in mosques to proclaim that all homosexuals should be thrown from high buildings and that suicide bombers are martyrs - or that we shouldn’t try to impose our laws on those immigrants who mutilate their young daughters’ genitalia.

Remember why ‘we’ are in Iraq - and why we went there in the first place? Admittedly, the leaders who lied us into the war have changed that particular script a few times, especially after there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found.

Still, our leaders always could proudly tell us that removing the monster Saddam was a good thing, and an honourable thing - and that the Iraqi people would be better off without him.

That last bit may even be true, if you are an Iraqi man, living in Basra. If you are a woman though, you’re fucked, or maybe not fucked but just stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death.

So, yes, this is what we have been working towards, and why the bombs still go off, and thousands of American soldiers have died and God only knows how many civilians. This is the Iraq our liberation war has helped to create: yet another fundamentalist hell hole, a nation sized prison where women can be tortured and killed at will.

Isn’t life great, and shouldn’t we be proud of Bush and Blair, who made it possible for this to happen - and of John McCain, who wants to keep us involved and over there for another 100 years, if ‘necessary’? Billions of American dollars and untold gallons of American blood spilled to create yet another fundamentalist Muslim state:

Two weeks ago, 17-year-old student Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father after becoming infatuated with a British soldier in Basra. In a remarkable interview, Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant - and how police backed his actions. Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies report

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

Yes, it’s been an honour indeed, to fight a war that freed men like this to kill their daughters unpunished. I’m not sure Bush or Cheney or even John McCain gives a fuck about that but shouldn’t the rest of us have a good think about this bloody war and the people who got us into this very bloody and dishonourable mess in the first place?

Now would be a good time for it, don’t you think, with another presidential election coming in the USA?

Well, here’s a bit of light relief news from the war front - sort of:

The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of American service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere at a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended yesterday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement. The facility, located in an industrial park near Dover Air Force Base, has cremated about 200 service members, manager David A. Bose estimated last night.

Pentagon officials said they do not think that human remains and animal remains were ever commingled at the facility. “We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever at this point that any human remains were at all ever mistreated,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference hastily convened last night.

Obviously, you can understand the Pentagon’s panic attack over this. After all the other bad news stories they were not exactly looking forward to headlines like ‘Army treats soldiers like dogs’.

It is kind of funny though that they get so nervous about the way they treat dead soldiers. If I were a soldier I wouldn’t give a damn what they did with my remains in case I got killed but I would like to be sure that my bosses, be they generals or presidents, would choose their wars wisely - and that I wouldn’t get sent to fight and maybe die in a war that was senseless, immoral, quite possibly illegal and counter-productive as well.

It would also be nice if those same bosses would care as much about what happened to me when I was alive as when I was dead. Personally, I wouldn’t give a damn if my ashes would be mingled with that of some Trigger or Lassie, as long as I could be sure that the army had done all it could to protect my living body while I was fighting their wars. Some armour on army vehicles at the start of the Iraq war would have been quite welcome, for instance.

Furthermore, they could bury me in any pet cemetery they chose, as long as they treated my wounded body with at least the same care as most people would have for their pets. It’s not particularly good for your morale to know at the start of your working day that at the end of it you could be sent to some Godforsaken Hell hole of a place called Walter Reed Army Medical Center - which would make a much scarier horror movie than another ‘Pet Sematary’ flick.

In other worse, it would be nice if the Pentagon cared for the people fighting and dying in their wars a bit more than they seem to do about their own image.

It would be quite funny if it wasn’t so very scary, and quite sad: to realise that obiviously no-one in the White House or the Pentagon really has a fucking clue:

WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

It’s not nuclear science, people; we know the very recent history. The fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan ran into serious trouble because Bush decided not to pursue Bin Laden and the others but to invade Iraq instead. He did leave some of the army in Afghanistan and relied on the highly unreliable European NATO partners to take over some of the fighting, which most of these partners refused to do. That was a serious miscalculation on the part of the White House: to think that the countries who were lukewarm at the very best about the whole Iraq adventure would take over the fighting in Afghanistan was somewhat naive. Still, one might have expected these so-called partners to do a little bit more. As it is, they didn’t and still don’t but in terms of miscalculations this was a relatively mild one for the Bush administration.

There were two more, much bigger mistakes that the White House made though. The first of these was to rely on the Karzai government in Afghanistan to get at least some of his house in order. That was a seriously foolish expectation though, since Karzai had to rely on various warlords even to stay in office, let alone exercise any real power outside of the capitol - and none of these warlords had even the slightest interest in following the Bush agenda.

The second and even bigger mistake was what the Bush administration did in Pakistan. Having removed most of the US army, unable to rely on the NATO allies or Afghani forces, the White House made one last desperate gamble: to trust Pakistan’s army leader and dictator-in-chief Musharraf and to gamble that he a) would be able to stay in power and b) would be willing to actively pursue the Taliban and make sure that its forces couldn’t use Pakistan as a safe haven.

In doing so the White House chose to ignore the fact that the army had always condoned and even cooperated with Pakistan’s most hardline mullahs. Also, the army had long standing deals with Pakistan’s mountain tribes, who were the friends and allies of the Taliban. In order to stay in power Musharraf was happy enough to take the millions of dollars the US gave him - and he was also happy to parade in front of the cameras as the trustworthy and moderate ally of the USA. Musharraf was gambling that the support of the US would help him to stay in power, enabling him to do as he pleased with the opposition, with the tacit approval of the Americans. He was also hoping that if he did just the minimum that was required to keep the Americans happy, they would keep supporting him.

Musharraf’s gamble proved to be as foolhardy as any that the Bush government made. Even the token help he offered the Americans in the War against Terror proved too much for the various other power blocks in Pakistan. When he sent some of the Pakistani army into the mountains the local tribes saw this as an insult and they waged war on and humiliated these poorly equipped army troops. The mad mullahs and their Islamic schools were also deeply offended by anything that even resembled help to the infidel Bush and from silent partners of the military regime, they turned into Musharraf’s most dangerous enemies. So, in order to stay in power Musharraf became more and more dictatorial, alienating most of Pakistan’s society, from its reasonably moderate majority to its most rabidly violent minority. In the end, Musharraf lost his gamble, lost the presidency and even lost his army position.

The White House, of course, now was without any real ally in Pakistan. The fundamentalists hated the Bush administration more than ever, the moderates despised the White House for allowing Musharraf to oppress the moderate opposition and to fire most of the High Court judges. What’s worse, even during the years that Musharraf had been in power he had not done anything that was of any real help to the US in its fight against the Taliban. Supporting Musharraf had been another financial, political and military blunder. So, now the US no longer had any friends in Pakistan. Which was seriously bad news, for this meant the Taliban could now move with even greater ease between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Worse, in a way, was that all of this had left Pakistan seriously unstable and for a while it seemed that an Iran type Islamic revolution could be a possibility. Not a good scenario at all, especially since Pakistan had nuclear weapons.

In other words, the Bush administration needed to mend fences in a desperate hurry. The new Pakistan coalition government both either hated or deeply mistrusted the White House. It was willing to talk but not willing to do the Americans’ bidding. In other words, what the USA needed to do more than anything else was to tread very carefully, to be on its diplomatic best behaviour.

So, of course, what did the appalling White House & Pentagon idiots do? Yes, they gave the post of most senior officer in Pakistan to the guy who had been the boss of the Guantánamo Bay prison: one of the most hated symbols of all that is wrong with American foreign policy in the eyes of the whole of the Muslim world. Nice going! As I started saying, it would be very funny if it wasn’t so scary and sad - and no, they obviously don’t have a fucking clue, which does not bode well for any of the rest of the world.

ERRATUM: While Musharraf lost the elections, for now he does remain the president of Pakistan, since the ruling government doesn’t have a 70% majority to impeach him. His powers though have been severely diminished.