It's Just My Blog

I can't take any credit for this but it's another that deserves immortalising:

"SOCIALISM

You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk..

NAZISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM

You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM

You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM

You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION

You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION

Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy....

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION

You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive."

"If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilization and the progress of our generation. Even though the result disappoint us, must we not base our actions on better expectations, and believe that the prosperity and happiness of one country promotes that of others, that the solidarity of man is not a fiction, and that nations can still afford to treat other nations as fellow-creatures?" - The Economic Consequence of the Peace, Ch. 7 'Redemies', sec. 1 (1920).

Thirteen years later, after Germany had been saddled with crushing war reparations payments which Keynes had shown were impossible for it to meet, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. And we all know where that ended up.

I read with delight that a female journalist has been sentenced to 60 lashes over a TV show in which a Saudi man openly discussed his many extra-marital affairs (he got 1000 lashes and five years in prison):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8324117.stm

Yet again the Saudis lead the way in re-establishing morality in the cesspot of vice that is the modern world. Hurrah; we are saved once again.

But surely this sentence is, if anything, too mild? For merely reporting such filth, the journalist should surely at least have had her eyes put out. And why not actually castrate the philandering beast who she deemed worthy of airtime? If there is one thing I am absolutely sure of, it is that God only intended us to have sex for purposes of procreation. Such a vile and unspeakable form of activity could have no other justification. I am tempted to write to the members of the House of Saud and urge them not to go soft; I can detect the sulphuric stench of Western liberalism at work here, and am deeply concerned lest this creeping corruption reach any further.

I wrote the following as a response to something else...

"I am probably both somewhat rationalistic and somewhat nihilistic. I take the general Nietzschean point about the lack of foundations for a meaningful human life to be entirely true, and to an extent one can embrace and even celebrate this as liberating, fashioning one's own meanings out of the materials one inherits, appropriates, or even invents for oneself. But then along comes the Buddha with old age, sickness, suffering and death, and none of these things strike me as particularly worth celebrating. An appreciation of one’s own mortality is one of the curses of self-consciousness; animals do not live every day knowing that they have to die, or indeed that they could do so at any moment with all their works unfinished. And that is merely at the individual level. When one surveys the extent of the vanity, stupidity, misery, and injustice in the world at large, one can indeed feel quite nihilistic about the human condition.

There was a lot to be said for the medieval conception of humanity as situated between the angels and the beasts – we are creatures of marvelous intellectual, artistic and scientific creativity, and great sympathy, friendship, and love for one another, on the one hand, and greedy, short-sighted, and even willfully destructive and malevolent, on the other. In the face of this paradox it is sometimes easy to despair, and for the insane laughter of absurdity to take over. Reason, insofar as it can recall one firmly to the facts of the matter, and thus pave the way for constructive action, is in this sense a kind of solution – but it is of course reason with a small ‘r’ that I have in mind, and it goes along with the cultivation of a ‘better half’ in oneself that cannot, in the end, rely solely on reason. Even then it offers no ultimate guarantee; there is actually no way I can see of insulating oneself altogether from nihilism, though that may in the end just be a matter of (my) temperament – some individuals may simply possess more natural equanimity (or insensitivity?) than myself (sensitivity by no means being an unqualified good; it can take a morbid form that can be quite literally unhealthy)."

Kind of a trick title, that. There isn't going to be one. At least, not for a while. Here is a marvellous quote from Max Weber, who understood a thing or two about capitalism:

"The Puritans wanted to be men of the calling - we, on the other hand, must be. For when asceticism moved out of the monastic cells and into working life, and began to dominate innerworldly morality, it helped to build that mighty cosmos of the modern economic order (which is bound to the technical and economic conditions of mechanical and machine production). Today this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed".

Weber wrote those words in the original version of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published over a century ago now in 1905. All that has happened since then is the intensification and extension of the mechanism. There is much talk, following the economic crisis of 2008, of the end of capitalism; in fact, I strongly suspect it is simply another of its periodic crises, one of those episodes of creative destruction of which Marx wrote.

What is very striking is that the whole world is now committed to the capitalist enterprise; the global effort by the major economies to co-ordinate fiscal rescue efforts was truly unprecedented. Whereas the crisis of the 1930s with which the present one has (in some ways justly) been compared occurred in an era where there still seemed to be genuine alternatives (communism, socialism, national socialism, fascism), the distinctive feature of the contemporary situation is that nothing else is on offer. The market is now regarded as the only viable form of economic exchange, for good or ill, just as Weber foresaw.

As proof of the trouble that the internet can get you into, look no further than Maxi Sopo, who was on the run for credit fraud.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8306032.stm

He managed to get himself busted because - get this - he was updating his Facebook profile by telling everyone what a great time he was having and in so doing giving plenty of clues about his whereabouts. Don't today's youth watch spy movies any more? Does he not realise that if you are a wanted criminal then the last thing you should be doing is making public announcements on the web? This is on a par with the woman who went swimming with polar bears (see below); at least she was probably suffering from a mental disturbance of some kind whereas this is really just plain dumb. Enjoy prison, Maxi; you belong there.

There's this channel I've been hanging out in for years. This might give you some idea of why...

7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) School 1970s vs. School 2000s
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fight after school.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best mates.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - Police are called; Armed Response Unit arrives and arrest Johnny and Mark. Mobiles with video of fight confiscated as evidence. They are charged with assault, ASBOs are taken out and both are suspended even though Johnny started it. Diversionary conferences and parent meetings conducted. Video shown on YouTube.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Jeffrey won't sit still in class, disrupts other students.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Jeffrey is sent to the principal's office and given 6 of the best. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. Counselled to death. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra funding because Jeffrey has a disability. Drops out of school.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbour's car and his Dad gives him the slipper.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. Psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mum has an affair with the psychologist. Psychologist gets a promotion.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Mohammed fails high school English.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Mohammed retakes his exam, passes and goes to college..
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - Mohammed's cause is taken up by local human rights group. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that making English a requirement for graduation is racist.. Civil Liberties Association files class action lawsuit against state school system and his English teacher. English is banned from core curriculum. Mohammed is given his qualification anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers, puts them in a model plane and blows up an anthill.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Ants die.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - MI5 and police are called and Johnny is charged with perpetrating acts of terrorism. Teams investigate parents, siblings are removed from the home, computers are confiscated, and Johnny's dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) Scenario: Mark falls during break and scrapes his knee. His teacher, Mary, finds him crying, and gives him a hug to comfort him.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 1974 - Johnny soon feels better and goes back to playing.
  7:51a    (~gjinn[a]lappy) 2009 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces three years in prison. Johnny undergoes five years of therapy. Becomes gay.

Someone sent me a link to this site recently and I've been enjoying it ever since. Basically, it's a bunch of short interviews with leading living philosophers (as distinct from recordings of dead ones, for instance) that you can download as mp3 files. Or 'podcasts', as I suppose they are called nowadays...eeeh, when I were a lad...

Even their art for the files you download is clever; they've used Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, which if you don't know it is one of those pictures that can be seen as either of two things but not both at once, depending on the attitude you choose to adopt to it. It's a simple line drawing that looks like either a duck or a rabbit, as the name suggests (like the one that is either an old woman with a hooked nose or a beautiful young woman turned away in profile). But the really clever thing is that the name "philosophy bites" also has a double meaning; the interviews are of course 'soundbites', short talks, but - at least I think this is the intention - they also want to suggest that 'philosophy bites' in the sense that it has bite, i.e. it has some connection to the real world and that it can be efficacious in one way or another.

And listening to the talks, this is certainly philosophy with bite. They are all in the form of interviews and are very much non-technical, so you don't really need to know anything about philosophy to enjoy them, although those who do will certainly appreciate being able to get an overview of the discipline. There are some real gems. Check out Alexander Nehemas on friendship; Antony Appiah on cosmopolitanism; Anthony Grayling on atheism; Mary Warnock on the right to have a baby; Raymond Geuss on politics; and many more, with new ones being added regularly. After listening to a dozen or so of them I'm filled with new enthusiasm for modern Anglo-American philosophy and the sharpness of mind on display.

So, I can only urge you to go to:

http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/

and check them out for yourself.

I was actually thinking of buying tickets for the Singapore Grand Prix, but have been put off, first by the outrageous prices they want to charge just for watching cars go by very very fast, and second by the disgraceful remarks by Bernie Ecclestone. Ecclestone, the F1 rights holder, has just been quoted as saying that Hitler was alright really because he got things done, or words to that effect [see http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/04/bernie-ecclestone-interview-hitler-saddam]. Never mind genocide and world war, Hitler got the autobahns moving for sure. Mr Ecclestone, you are clearly a complete political fool. When you put the delightful Ecclestone next to the F1 President Max Mosley (son of fomer leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, no less), it seems that this particular branch of motorsport is actually in the hands of crypto-fascist perverts; I still haven't forgotten Mosley junior's romp with a bunch of hookers dressed up in Nazi uniforms. Mind you, the British upper class in general seem to have issues on that front - step forward, Prince Harry. It's enough to make me a republican if I start thinking about it.

Anyone who plays videogames knows what I'm talking about; when you hit that stage of the game where skill doesn't matter because the game design is so poor. Wonky camera angles (or worse, a camera that you suddenly have no control over), inconsistent environmental behaviours (surfaces cause damage that didn't before), unresponsive controls that previously worked fine, introduction of a new vehicle or weapon that performs in a way that is inconsistent with the 'feel' of the rest of the game, and so on. You've invested many hours, perhaps days or even weeks (months?) of time to get to this point, and now the game designers have screwed it up for you. The frustration is enormous.

Anyhow, this is where I detail some of my pet hates, most recent first.

1. Prince of Persia Rival Swords [PSP]. The second stage of the final boss battle is a mess. It suffers from virtually all of the faults above. All of a sudden you can't control the camera independently, so you are being hit by moving objects coming from off screen that you have no way of seeing in advance. You can't line up your jumps correctly either; you run along walls instead of up them. Pressing the attack button if you do manage to run up the wall to jump towards the boss doesn't trigger the attack sequence, and when you land it is usually in the path of one of the moving objects you can't avoid. Now a boss fight at the end of any game should be a challenge, and you don't expect to win at the first attempt. But when you've had a couple of dozen attempts and you still can't manage it, the problem is clearly not you but the game. After all, if you can make it all the way to the end, you should really have enough skill to finish the game. But this is a disgraceful mess, made worse by the fact that if you die you have to complete the first stage of the fight again (which I can do no problem, taking virtually no damage, but it's utterly tiresome to be forced to repeat myself). I don't know if I'll bother to finish this now as it's getting so annoying. Caning across the bare buttocks is too good for the developers who coded this crappy sequence.

2. Marvel Ultimate Alliance [PSP]. The sequence in Murderworld where you have to play an emulated 8-bit videogame to escape. I was playing this on the plane and the controls were so poor that I actually bit my PSP in frustration. The tooth marks are still on the screen protector. Normally I'd scream and swear but I didn't want to alarm the other 200 people in economy with my gaming rage. I did manage to complete the game but I still have nightmares about trying to jump over crocodiles and repeatedly falling into the pool and drowing. Whoever programmed this sequence should be made to play it all day, every day for a year.

3. Drake's Fortune [PS3]. The sequence where you have to drive a jetski upstream through rocks while being shot at. Being shot at I can cope with; trying to drive a jetski with controls so leaden that a hibernating squirrel would be more responsive was harder. I wanted to throw the controller at the screen, and only the fact that I'd spent a four-figure sum on the TV restrained me. My wife was appalled at the howls of frustration that this produced and it was only the thought of divorce that made me reign in my anger. I did complete the game in the end but this part lingers in my memory as an utterly terrible effort. Once again, the developers should be made to eat their own dog food for at least 12 months.

4. Mafia [PC]. The racing sequence where you drive an old-fashioned racing car. I had to get through it on easy level in the end. Other than that, this is one of the best PC games ever, and I finished the whole thing, but I still remember the misery this inflicted.

5. GTA III: San Andreas [PC]. The wretched remote control planes. These were so hard to fly that I more or less lost interest in the game after that point despite being around 2/3 of the way through it.

I'm sure others will spring to mind, so do feel free to contribute your own suggestions. And if you think I'm exaggerating about any of the ones I've mentioned, have a look on the net; you'll find I'm only one of many who have suffered the irritations described above. Gaming is meant to be fun and a challenge; it isn't meant to be a frustrating and repetitive chore that means you give up trying to finish the story.