Blind as a Bat

I, needless to say, am blind as a bat and always wrong.

This statement is according to my wife and is backed up by the following evidence. Firstly, I can never find things that I need/want/could do with. Despite them “always” being “straight in front of my eyes”. Secondly, even when I have what I believe to be a cogent argument, backed up with evidence, witness testimony, newspaper articles devoted to my side of the story, the wikifiddlers working for me for a change, I’m just wrong. Perhaps ‘wrong’ is the wrong word. Maybe it is analogous to Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”, whereby it is that feeling where you know something is true and factual not because of ‘facts’, but because you feel it to be true  deep inside you. And that can’t be wrong! So my wife feels that I am always “wronginess”. And that also can’t be wrong.

I refute both of these statements. I don’t know how it is in your house, but in my house, I have my shit and I know where everything is. Yes, things can be a bit messy, but I know where the stuff that I want is hiding. Of course, I am not in my house 24 hours a day, so every so often my wife “tidies up”. Now this entails (according to empirical evidence) her taking my things haphazardly and selectively and hiding them in a difference place. The next step is to forget that she has tidied, and the step after that is for her to forget that she has forgotten. So me, a week later.

 “Wife, my 5/8s torx screwdriver was on the speaker and it’s not here now, did you touch it?”

“No! I don’t know what that is and I never touch your things. Your things are so dirty and untidy! I will clean up soon and touch your things.”

“It looked like a little metal rod.”

“It must be there already! Oh you are so blind!” Huffs and puffs over to me. Wild stares. Scrabbles around the speaker. “Look! Look! There it is!”

“No, darling, that’s potato.”

“Oh.”

“Did you tidy things away?”

“No!”

So a week later I am pruning a petrified gorse bush near the decking and find my torx screwdriver. I brandish it in front of her and the insouciance is palpable. “I dunno.” 

Come on Olly

I am a republican. Notice the small ‘r’? I am not a US Republican (as they are the equivalent of a metastasizing tumour), but a ‘republican’, i.e. one who would like to live in a republic. As I am British, that means I would like Britain to be a republic. I read at the weekend that the Queen was unwell and had to cancel a trip to my hometown. I hope the old lady bounces back. I think she has performed a marvellous service linking different eras of the UK, not to mention been an excellent queen. By ‘excellent queen’, I mean keeping out of the limelight in terms of scandal or whatnot, and waving when she is told to. Not drunkenly falling out of the Rolls-Royce or flashing her pants, that is a quite a skill for a famous woman to have. The Queen is dignified, for someone that is wheeled about and told what to do by her advisors.

However the rest of the Royal family are a bunch of conniving, rude, selfish, cretinous, idiots that have ever sucked oxygen. They are feted as actually being better than us commoners when they live in the biggest bubble of unreality that exists with the possible exception of the circumference of Donald Trump’s head. I would love the Royal Family to be brought down to earth however I doubt they realise its existence. The finances of the Royal Family are largely a mystery. There is no transparency or accountability. Why don’t the National Audit Office audit them? Why is the Royal Family exempt from Freedom of Information requests? Prince Charles lobbies extensively on a number of subjects and issues yet we are not allowed to know what, how and when, and to what effect. Up until 1998 (but still technically now as well) advocating the replacement of the monarchy with a peaceful republic is a criminal offence and could send me to prison for life.

Monarchist routinely claim, and this is the main reason espoused, that the royal family is worth keeping because of “tourism”. Well, let me debunk that particular argument. Tourists go to see buildings and castles because they are interesting within a historic context and look pretty spiffy as well. They do not go to see people. If they did, they would be sorely disappointed about 98% of the time as tourists virtually never see the royal family. According to visitbritain.com, the top tourist attraction in the UK, Chester zoo is higher up the list for people to visit above Buckingham palace. There is a compelling argument for a family of Orangutans to replace our existing royalty if we are basing it on how popular the tourist attractions are. “But it wouldn’t be the same without the royals living there.” People still go to see the Taj Mahal, don’t they?

I just think we should get with the whole 21^st century program and become a Republic. 

Print is Dead

For the early part of my childhood, I never had access to a computer. They were still sci-fi devices all big and filled rooms and were DATABASES. They could shoot nukes across the world and were powered by a computer in American called WHOPPER which is why for ages I thought that’s what Burger King’s tagline ‘Home of the Whopper’ meant. So for all intents and purposes, for a small boy growing up in Bournemouth it might have been a parallel universe. So instead I read books. All books. All the time. Loads of them. And I absolutely loved it. I had my head constantly in a book pretty much from the age of 7 to 13. Then I got my own computer. It was pretty cool. I could make it speak in a weird Stephen Hawking voice and I could play games on it. It was a useful diversion. I remember doing some homework, making a mistake, applying some tip-ex, then booting up my computer to play a quick game whilst it dried. Several hours later my parents demanded to see my homework and I...er... oops.

I bought a modem for it by saving up my pocket money. Wow. The internet wasn’t quite as we know it but it was on the way. I was on bulletin boards and then AOL and it was keyword: amazing. But the speeds were slow, and I couldn’t really do much. I still read loads of books. Fast forward a few years where I hardly ever read a book for fun in university. Too much going on. Then I travelled abroad for a few years. I read a lot then as it was handy to have something to read on planes, trains, and er buses. I also got into audiobooks too, as I was sometimes too far away from English language books stores to buy books so I downloaded them and listened to them instead.

Nowadays, I am a book hoarder and collector, but seldom reader of them. I just don’t have time. Yes, I sneak in a few pages here and there during the day when I read the books I have on my phone, but I don’t consciously sit down and read. Yet ironically, I probably physically read more than I have ever done in my life. A few newspaper websites, magazines, numerous blogs, techy stuff, work PDFs on my kindle. I’m all read out. When I travel for business, I do read to pass the time, but that’s about it. I save up books now to read on holidays. I haven’t been on holiday since I became a dad so I guess I will have to see how that pans out.  

Cereal Killer

I had Frosties for breakfast today. I haven’t actually eaten cereal in years, ever since I read a great article about it (which I have managed to dig up here). The article tells the history of processed breakfast cereals right back to the nineteenth century in the corn belt of the Mid-west of America. In the article it goes on about how what was once a great idea, became gradually a bad idea (for consumers) and basically a wonderful marketing phenomena (which was good for shareholders and company executives). It was a presidential nutritional advisor that actually made the argument that breakfast cereals should be treated the same as sugar and alcohol, due to the empty calories that all three foodstuffs offered. Now, I am loathe to befuddle correlation with causation, but the two most obese countries in the world are COINCIDENTALLY the two countries where sugary cereal sales are the highest. There are bound to be other factors, natch.

What it boils down to is that fact that some damn fine advertising guys have been on the case for decades. I ate cereal when I was a kid. Everyone did. They probably still do. Why? Because parents bought them as they were hoodwinked into believing that all cereals were healthy. Why would the colourful cereal boxes lie? Well, they don’t exactly lie, but the fact that the cereal companies fought tooth and nail to prevent a traffic light system on their boxes is highly informative. Portion size, daily amounts, the difference between type of milk that should be used all muddy the water and prevent first time analysis in the supermarket aisle. Also, kids screamed for cereal. All the TV adverts showed wonderfully inventive cartoon characters doing funny things. They don’t so much now, but when I was a kid there used to be toys in the boxes too. Or coupons to collect where you sent them off with a few stamps and you would get a Tony the Tiger bike sticker set after a month!

So anyway, I had some Frosties this morning. My normal bowl, which I use for normal stuff, has a capacity for 2.5 times the recommended daily allowance of 30g of Frosties. So I filled it up. With milk. And the calories contained were more than a bacon sandwich which I thought I wanted more but naturally declined as I thought it would be more calorific. Now, I am not saying that all cereals are created the same, but even things like all bran are damn high in salt, and special K is damn high in sugar. Ironically, all of the vitamins that they say are contained all occur naturally in corn and wheat, but the process of creating the cereal strips them out so they have to be artificially added back in.

 I don’t think I will be feeding my son sugary cereal when he is old enough.

Edit: shit, I gave him some sugary muesli for breakfast this morning. Oh well, if it was good enough for me... 

Eastleigh Waldo Moment

The by-election at Eastleigh is today. Formerly a safe Liberal Democrat seat but since the disgraceful Chris Huhne resigned all bets are off. Ok, well, some bookies have got the Libdems keeping the seat but unbelievably, some have got UKIP to win the seat. This is quite exciting stuff. Typically, you can have individual candidates stand as a protest against the incumbent or due to the antics of the MP who has resigned and win. Martin Bell, Caroline Lucas and George Galloway have proved that. And UKIP used to be basically one issue and one person (Nigel Farage). But now UKIP have actually managed to crib together some sort of organised manifesto and are actively challenging Eastleigh.

For the record I abhor UKIP. I disagree with all of their policies, and I cannot stand Nigel Farage, their erstwhile leader. However, I am also sick of the main three parties treating the voters as a tappable resource, as idiots who will vote for the big parties no matter what. The main parties take us for granted and in the case of the Coalition, do not carry out our wishes. At a general election, a party publishes a detailed manifesto about what they will do and they get voted in if people like that manifesto as there is the reasonable presumption that they will either achieve what they say will do, do something like it due to some necessary politicking, or will at least try. The current Coalition threw both manifestos out of the window when it formed and trotted out a few wishlists and mashed them together.

I want disruption. I want the Westminster elites to be shocked. I want the normal rules to not apply. I want UKIP to win at Eastleigh today. I do not want the populace to be taken for granted. I want to have a person say they will do something, and then they do it. I do not want craven career politicians suppurating their oozy politics of self-interest to rule us. I want honest people.  I want the main parties to take note of what we want, not do what they think we want according to lazy anecdotes and asinine and disconnected focus groups.  

I want a Waldo moment. The episode of Black Mirror this week (which I have written about here) could not have been timed better. There was some terribly lazy stereotyping in the episode but that can be easily overlooked as the genius was how it connected into how dissociated normal politicians are with normal people and the fact that if you have something new, then people will be attracted to it. It is fresh compared to the current offering, even though it is still stale by comparison. Waldo slinging dirt just like the politicians (case in point – Lord Rennard’s 2009 indiscretions coming to light just before a crucial by-election) but in a way that people can associate with is popular.

Bring it on, Waldo 

Sony Game Change

A lot of hot air has been puffed out by people regarding the Playstation 4. Will do this, could do that, might do this. One thing that was touted before the “detailed” announcement last week was the cracking down on used games. In the press event, Sony flat out said this would not be done by them, but left the door open for developers. There was a similar rumour about the Microsoft Nextbox which hasn’t been commented on by the Microsuits yet. In related news, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida told The Guardian that every single PlayStation 4 title will be available digitally. "PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc," he said in an interview last week.

Now I am totally not down with the banning of used games. Heck, I would hardly play any games at all. I buy new games maybe once or twice a year as there is such a dearth of instabuy games and with me being such a picky twat, it just doesn’t happen. The last few ‘new’ new games I bought were Batman Arkham City  and before that, Mass Effect 3. So I would probably skip any console which did allow for the banning of used games. HOWEVER: What if Sony was prepping a Netflix-style online rental streaming type of thing using their Gaikai cloud streaming servers? You pay a few quid a month, and you can play whole back catalogues of games back to the PS1 system. Triple A games wouldn’t be available initially, or you could buy separately, but after a period of time, would be available as part of the package.

This would literally be a game changer.

I wouldn’t care about the availability of used games or whether or not they would be playable on the system. I would have my Battle Arena Toshinden and be damn happy. My Metal Gear Solids. My Infamous. If Sony do something like this, then I would happily sign up. No wait, hang on. They already do. The PlayStation Plus network already gives you free games, full game trials, discounts etc. So if they had their Netflix style streaming it would just sit alongside with that. Microsoft Gold costs £40 a year (approximately) and gives you no games and the ability to use services that you have already paid for, and to play online. Sony’s offering could potentially murder the NextboxLive service if all things were equal.

We wait in hope. 

Food Stamps y'all

I came across an interesting article today about how legislators in South Carolina are proposing to treat benefits payments. They basically want to restrict food stamps to only be able to buy healthy food. For those of you that are not aware, in the US, food stamps are how the most common form of benefits are distributed. They are coupons with a monetary value which most supermarkets accept and they are currently restricted so you can buy all food and drink but not cigarettes or booze.

In the UK, the BBC had a poll last year where they asked people about this idea as with the soon to be introduced Universal Credit could be used to bring something like this about using a prepaid credit card. Generally, according to the poll, the majority of the people favoured some sort of restriction on what benefits could be used on.

So the case in point with food stamp restriction. I think it is a great idea. Three quarters of society in the US (and two thirds in the UK) are obese. Obesity is more prevalent in lower income families. Billions of dollars are being spent on trying to make people eat more healthily and billions more on dealing with the effects of obesity. Obviously there need to be safeguards over what constitutes “healthy” food but I think it could work. Some frozen and canned food would be acceptable, as only fresh food means more trips to the supermarket meaning more in petrol or public transport costs and time. The only issue is that all the big purveyors of crappy highly processed food will lobby the hell out of not carrying it through. Guess why? Fast food companies can accept food stamps!