Another Article Backlog

Once again, college hogs all my time. For the next week or two I'll be churning out essay after essay about Bismarck, Education, Marx/Lenin, and Memory.

The current backlog of lengthy draft posts include: McDonalds/Coca-Cola - Food and Revolution, The SQA is Out to Get Me, and Part Two of Property, Theft and Thoughts Thereof.

Of course, the minute I finish my college essays another batch will come along. My Alternate History project has already been pushed back to the Winter Solstice (and will probably be pushed back to April or next Summer). I'll be publishing my Marxism-Leninism essay from Politics on Dardanelles along with the rest of them whenever I have a moment to upload them.

At least I blog more than Para :P

EDIT - Updated backlog list
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DEstroyer of CiviliSationS

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Made In China

Well, the Chinese have been to space again. This is a bit late because I could only write-up a short draft on the 14th.

Although they agreed to join forces with the Russians in the 1990s in developing the International Space Station, the Americans, Mr Clark [of the British-based Molniya Space Consultancy] said, still see China as a rival, not an ally. "It's not space as such that's the problem... it's what's the Americans see as technology transfer," he said.
"They don't want the Chinese to have access to American technology, because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that any technology that the Chinese get access to will immediately be applied to the Chinese weapons programme."

Not that the Americans have ever had a problem with using other nation's technology. Nor are they averse to the flood of cheap Chinese-made crap that keeps America's malls full. On the other hand...

"The Americans specified that no American-built component on any satellite anywhere in the world may fly on a Chinese rocket," Mr Harvey explained.

Anyway, we need to get back to Luna to cover-up Nixon's signature.

Also on Shenzhou VI:
An orbital manoeuvre is a sure sign of something wrong! A good example of people writing above their level. Does this qualify as news? Perhaps if atmospheric drag and the Sun, the Moon and Jupiter didn't previously exist. And I wish they'd use a bloody different illustration of Shenzhou's design - that picture of the model is ancient.

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Opportunists Should Understand Concepts Like 'Forwards' and 'Backwards'

I've got a backlog of draft posts on various topics that have irritated or interested me over the past week or so. This is one of them; imagine I'm a heckler, these are my responses:

Introspection

My 11 month old cat, Leila, is dead - runover like the Squirrel. I am not happy. I was originally going to write today about whether everyone is [mildly] bi-polar, rather than just the mentally ill. Instead, I'm expanding on it to include some new thoughts on the subject.

Freud theorised that the human mind is split into three parts: Id, Ego and SuperEgo.

Essentially, the Id is instinct and unable to comprehend logic or reason. The SuperEgo is morality gone awry, and the Ego attempts to regulate both in order to fit into society.

Taking this partition theory of the mind, I've also drawn from Gene Roddenberry's commentary on humanity - Star Trek.

[Heavily edited for privacy]

Vulcans (the evolution of their culture can be viewed as a victory of SuperEgo over the Id) and Klingons (vice versa).

In between these two is Humanity. I could also bring in thesis, antithesis, and synthesis for even-greater analogy. Suffice to say, humanity is a mixture of the two extremes of instinctual aggression and evolved logic. Our personalities derive from this conflict.

EuroSoviets has been investigating culture in NS over at SD, and Black Adder said:

Being a Mason is supposed to be 24/7. Game or not it is part of what we are so it translates out into how we react. Masonry isn't an ideology so much like Socialism or Libertarianism, its a moral credo.

I disagree and say that ideology also something that is part of people 24/7. Christians ask "What would Jesus do?" and Marxists try and understand society through the history of humanity.
If NEDs go on a rampage, I - as a Marxist - don't say it's because there isn't enough investment in the community. I say it's because society is rotting under the pursuit of money, clamouring over each-others' malnourished bodies. My worldview is also in conflict.

My comments on society above are humanist - the side that still has "faith" in humanity, and believes that NEDs can be changed and that false-consciousness can fall away for them. Then there's my misanthropist side. Last Friday I was talking to a fellow student about how humans were 'a disgusting virus intent on the destruction of this planet and everything on it'.

It's confusing how I can have two opinions of my own comments... The humanist says my comments are only true of certain individuals in society - eg, that only the capitalists are destroying the rainforest. The misanthropist says my comments are entirely accurate and the faster we destroy ourselves the better it will be for the rest of the species on this planet. The misanthropist has also declared an interest in the sterilisation of NEDs. I believe this is also the side that found Nazism fascinating as a Tweenager - only with my discovery of Lenin at the age of 13 did that end.

This is probably a very difficult article to read, and in all likelihood I've written it just to straighten-out my mind and thoughts to try and understand them. The only resolution available right now, is to refer to humanity in the third person. Must get around to that emotion-suppression experiment...

Leila: nth November 2004 - 15th October 2005

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Property, Theft, and Thoughts Thereof (Part One)

Theft is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

Theft (also known as stealing) is in general, the wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's willful consent.

File-Sharing cannot be theft, because the file is not taken away from anyone - it is only replicated. Of course, it's done without the consent of the record labels - though file-sharers themselves do consent by their very actions. Therefore, it is not theft.

The Ripple Pool

If Record Labels can copyright sound waves, presumably I can go swimming and copyright the unique waves I make?

Why are people paying £0.99 for music over iTunes? 90% of that goes straight to the record label and you think legal downloads can't get any cheaper?
What is the defining characteristic of a legal download? There's no huge warehouse of MP3s as there is for physical products - just a server and a file - Yet it costs 99p.

When legally downloading, you get a copy of the file from the server, but you're restricted in what you can do with it.
When illegally downloading, you get a copy of the file from another computer, and you can do what you want with it.

I don't think 99p is required to cover the costs of production. Do I charge myself £0.99 when I backup my computer? Do I install Digital Rights Management to limit myself to only three backups? I just copy the files - I don't need a factory to do it. Look at Daniel Beddingfield. He recorded his entire debut album at home on his computer - yet the record label made a fortune from him.

Owning a CR-RW drive is equivalent to owning the means of production of entertainment.
The only thing standing in the way of communal ownership of the internet are the ISPs.

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I Smell A Methoxymethane Soaked Rat

How does Wikipedia define advertising?

In general, advertising is used to convey availability of a "product" (which can be a physical product, a service, or an idea) and to provide information regarding the product

Thus, M*Donald's, for example, will perpetually tell you that their cheap crap is now even cheaper and that you can go down to your local M*Donald's to "eat" it (and that you are apparently "lovin' it", in yoof speak).

So let's get to the point: What's the fucking point in perfume adverts? It doesn't pass the above test. Yes, it tells you the leftovers of fractional distillation are available for you to cover yourself in. However, I have yet to see an perfume advert 'tell' me (maybe I can't hear them) exactly what function perfume performs. It's all just 10 second art-pish - stupid angles, climaxing music, semi-clad models/advertising whores.

And you know why they can't say anything? Because the only justification they could ever give for their product is that 'it makes you more attractive to the opposite sex'... and they can't say that due to advertising regulations (nevermind the fact that it is unproven). That's all it's about - sex. No hope yet for your species.

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Come and Talk to G*d on the Party Line

I can think of nothing more dangerous than this: Let me split it into two issues...

1)

"Mr Bush launched an impassioned attack yesterday in Washington on Islamic militants, likening their ideology to that of Communism, and accusing them of seeking to "enslave whole nations"
The Independent

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That is the most misleading and contradictory thing ever uttered by anyone in the history of the spoken word. Aside from Afghanistan during 1979-1989 where the two "evils" allied to destroy America's world-renowned tolerance and secular-humanism, compare the following:

"[5.] A classless, stateless, society in which its members have free access to all resources."
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Communism

and

"Islamic fascism [is] a totalitarian mind-set, a hatred of the West, fanatical extremism, repression of women, loathing of Jews, a firm belief in conspiracy theories, and dreams of global hegemony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamofascism#Concepts_and_terms

The two are quite obviously in league.

If you wish to raise yourself above the level of the Monkey President, it is critical you understand that totalitarianism is the correct parallel of Islamic Militancy/Fundamentalism/Fascism. Whatever negative understandings you have of the word 'communism' are wrong and, importantly, unsubstantiated - Again, the word you are looking for is 'totalitarianism'.

2)

"I feel God's words coming to me: 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.'"
George Bush

Truly the words of the the almighty. Compare:

"Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you"
Exodus 3:14 (King James Version)

I remember being in primary school and being taught not to repeatedly say 'and' and 'get' in a sentence. I'm amazed there's actually a comma.

Rather than say he was: told by the CIA that there were WMDs/a 'freedom-doer' who had to free the Iraqis from tyranny (circle as appropriate for the time of day), he is now insisting he is carrying out divine will. At least with the intelligence reports, someone can be found accountable. At least with the belief in "freeing" the oppressed, his ideology can be found accountable.

By claiming divine inspiration, no-one can be found accountable. If I claim the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me to kill college lecturers in order to free classmates from the oppressive workload, I'm pretty sure I'd be in an institution.

"If G*d did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"
Voltaire

Similarly, if one does not have a decent excuse, you can always invent someone to 'blame' (or credit in this case). Of course, the desire to free people via killing them is not inconsistent with "his" "observed" behaviour (not to mention a number of "his" followers): drowning everyone for stuff other people did, having Beelzebub torment a farmer, inciting terrorism against the Romans (especially the evil-doers at The Judean People's Front and its sister organisations - They were responsible for the Dark Ages! Do you know how long it took to rediscover concrete?).

Where this leads is unaccountability - as if we weren't already heading in that direction.

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Copy and Paste Threatens Our Way of Life

Originally, Pirates were sea-going persons who stole other people's merchandise and sold it (or for some reason, buried it, allowing someone else to get it via an elaborate story).

Today, the only people who can accurately be described as pirates are those in certain street markets selling dodgy videos and CD-Rs. Those internet users who upload music are not making a profit - remember that it is only the capitalists (eg, major music labels) who would use the internet to make money.

The corporations talk of [internet] piracy as the reason prices must rise. Firstly, the internet drives prices down (to the maximum of free). Secondly, prices will stay high for as long as that product is scarce. Digital media has made scarcity unthinkable; thus, through taking downloaders to court and raiding pirate server locations ; artificial scarcity is enforced. Imposing restrictions on legally downloaded music has the same effect.

An extract from my Holiday Diary, Written in Albufeira, Portugal - 22/07/05
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Surfing the High-Seas

You can tell life's become absurd when software predominantly used to break copyright, is itself copyrighted - In particular I refer to KaZaA (not that I'm using it... *cough*).

Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks, had the ad-stripped Kazaa-Lite banned. They should know that if Kazaa-Lite is on "the network", they have no way of driving it into the ground (the ultimate irony). Even if file-sharing technology was banned, which looks increasingly possible but probably ineffective for the above reasons, there is still always the old-school way... disk-based shareware/freeware.

I remember the final few years of share/freeware; Test Drive II, Crystal Caves, Wolf 3D, Commander Keen; from my pre-10yo forays into Personal Computing. They just don't make DOS like they used to - to the extent that Win doesn't have real DOS anymore. Once the disk is out-there and endlessly-copied, you have a low-tech file-sharing network. Of course, this is comparing cup & string to e-mail.

Regardless, you can't stop people copying copyrighted material - we're not in the age of the first printing-press, we're in the age where everyone has the capability to publish and distribute. It's just that copyright is a relic of that age.

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I'm Sorry, I Thought I Heard A Politician Speaking Sense

Jack McConnell, someone who has never really looked like a First Minister of anything, has gone insane and spoken sense:

Until there's a solution to the problem of nuclear waste, I don't believe that we should be involved in further generation of nuclear power.

In fact, one could almost say he sounded like he was in touch with the public... except, the SNP believe this is an example of Holyrood taking orders from Downing Street - how exactly? Labour are pro-Nuclear, amongst other things.

Richard Lochhead, Scottish National Party energy spokesman, says:

The first minister should rule out new nuclear power stations once and for all and throw his weight behind turning Scotland into a renewable powerhouse instead of a nuclear danger zone.

Yes! Go the whole fucking hog! Can someone tell me why we're still reliant on non-renewable energy sources? Could it be: lack of political will, corporate manipulation and the rest of the crap that defines our 'democracy'? (Those are also reasons why we haven't been to the Moon since 1972 - it's not like its far)

I find myself gravitating towards the SNP. My SSP vote was wasted whatever way you look at it (their share went down in May, they're in a mess since they booted Tommy from the throne, by definition Marxists should know they can't change the system through the system) and the SNP went up here (here being a safe-labour seat).

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