Fact.

I have just deleted a huge block of text, chock-full of links to Wikipedia articles about Travis County and Social Democracy.

To summarise:

Here are some good points to discuss when talking about socialised health-care systems such as the NHS. Is it mandatory? Is it even feasible if it's not mandatory? Should the state force people to indirectly pay for abortions or drug rehab clinics they may disapprove of? Those of you who actually think it's a bad idea can probably come up with more. I ackowledge that this isn't neccesarily a situation where there is an obvious right or wrong answer, though I'm all in favour of it.

Here is an argument I find less convincing.
"I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer- and, thank God, I was cured of it – in the United States? 82 per cent. My chance of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 per cent under socialised medicine.”

Hey, good use of facts to support your opinions! Except...

1)This fact is widely at odds with numbers in medical journals and NHS statistics
2)The fact came, in fact, from an article written by your campaign advisor
3)Said article was published in a partisan magazine, not a medical journal
4)His original source for the figure came out with a statement saying "Dude, that's totally not what we said, the UK has a better survival rate than the US."
5)Considered opinion is that this is pretty tough to judge but that neither system shows a significant advantage over the other
6)Even if it did, all it would prove is that the market system works for people who are former mayors of New York and millionaire knights.

Rudy Guiliani, loose a point for electioneering. Boo.

P.S. Not strictly related (let no-one say I engage in demonising my opponents), but I couldn't help but be reminded of this YouTube link.

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Godsdamnit, I've been saying this for years!

Food for thought

Every good manifesto should start with the words "I think..."

So here are my two cents about GLOBAL WARMING!

The problem really, with global warming, is that if you say to a Climate Scientist (such as I hope to be in a couple of moons) "So, climate change. It's happening, right?" they tend to look a bit panicky.

And naturally so. They probably have a background in say, Physics or Maths, and they like things to be provable. They like graphs. They like experiments. What they don't like is when someone says "I disagree - prove me wrong" and they can't.

And that's the exact problem we face. We don't have a test earth, and it turns out Newton was wrong about some stuff, and unfortunately in the absence of a computer with a brain the size of a planet, we'll never simulate anything half as well as we'd like to.

And all this time, while we really think it's extremely likely that climate change is screwing us over even as we speak, there's nothing we can do. Personal conviction can be thwarted in the time it takes to say "Possible multidecadal oscillation - need more observations". By the time anyone has collected enough data, it will all be over¹.

The problem as I see it is not what we can do to halt climate change now², but what we can do to facilitate living with it. It's often misrepresented as a doomsday scenario - the world will end - but what I think we're most likely to have is a situation in which life continues in almost the same way for the western world, but Sub-Saharan Africans and Polar bears³ have a hell of a time. And that is what we really need to avoid. More should be done to help people in the firing line - flood defences, irrigation, hurricane proof homes.

In summation - I think we have the wrong focus. I'd love to be able to say that if we all work together, we can halt climate change, but no documentary is going to make people switch off their TVs. No concert is going to persuade people to catch the bus home if it's raining. Madonna shouting "If you want to save the planet, Jump Motherf*ckers!" solves nothing.

It's only right that climate change is a pressing issue for the generation currently in power. The issue for our generation is how we're going to live with it.

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1. You could argue that this is a situation where we can't afford not to act. Well, tell that to the Government.
2. Though Geoengineering offers some interesting ideas, they do all sound like they have the potential to go horribly, horribly wrong. And frankly asking people in the West Midlands to recycle a bit more isn't going to do a whole lot for the rainforest.
3. Well, this cleared up a couple of my fears about Polar Bears.

Scientists gone wild

OK, in case you lot didn't know, I enjoy playing games. And I especially enjoy playing games that have a point to them, or games that involve numbers. That made the game I recently played with Nathan extra fun¹. But this is a different game, one that arose out of the fact that there's a road in Chicagoland that's called Euclid Avenue. That brought up the discussion about naming roads after people who were valuable in the sciences, not just politicians and activists.

So we got to a-thinking, about who we'd name streets after. And, just for fun, we decided that we'd limit our city plan to 26 consecutive streets, alphabetically. Sure, then we have to chose between Hooke, Halley or Heisenberg and Fr. Mendel or Mendeleev², but it's easier that way than having unending roads named after semi-obscure scientists.

So my game is: who would you have as your alphabetic roads, keeping in mind both scientific advancement and popular opinion of them?

My partial list;
(Archimedes, Boltzman, Curie, Darwin, Einstein, Faraday, Geiger, Hooke, and then I give up trying to think of an "I" without straining myself)


¹I am thinking of a rule which governs sequences of three numbers. The sequence 2-4-6, as it so happens, obeys this rule. Write down a sequence of three numbers on a card, and I'll mark it "Yes" for fits the rule, or "No" for not fitting the rule. Then you can write down another set of three numbers and ask whether it fits again, and so on. When you're confident that you know the rule, write down the rule. You can test as many triplets as you like.
²I really wanted to link to the Oscar Mayer Periodic table, but after 10 minutes of searching, I couldn't find images of Bolognium.

If only I could tell the ram to scram...

Today, kids, I'm going to rant about stupid people, yet again. Or, not necessarily stupid people, just people who don't think too well.¹

The first type of people are the partisans, those who don't think beyond what they're told. This came up since I've recently been reading a lot of the Daily Kos, a Democratic website devoted to winning at any cost. Now a lot of these people are pretty good thinkers, but the majority are just reactionary. If the Republicans say something, it must be bad, by the virtue² that the GOP is supporting it. It's thoroughly frustrating to read some of the comments.³ And, unfortunately, it's hard to avoid these people when there's so gosh darn many of the them and our nations espouse democracy.

The next ones I loathe are the sheeple. Those who just think as they're told. A good number of these people start out as malleable children and evolve⁴ into the partisans. That's what learning to answer a question on a test does as opposed to learning for the sake of learning or expanding the mind. And they don't think beyond what the media says.

Which brings me to the media. This is the worst group. But there's so much to say about this that I can't be bothered to type it all up. Perhaps when I have more spare time. Let's just say that I rue the media slightly less than I loathe politicians and the government.

What started this rant? Well, the inspiration was something I absorbed from the media. I'm not sure if I read it on the interwebs, heard it on CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, or read it in a newspaper (so I can't provide a reference), but it was an opinion by someone about our use of oil.⁵ They were saying that we should be ashamed at using oil for (solid) plastics when it's so much more valuable to burn. That's just a perfect example of group number 2. Why would oil be better to burn? Once it's burnt, it has no use whatsoever (except to grow things very indirectly), whereas in solid form it's practically indestructible and so reusable (and, I daresay, recyclable). Additionally, it's far, far cheaper to make alternatives to fuel than it is to petro-chemicals of most sorts. This is a perfect example of not thinking through an argument. And it made me mad.

So there you go. Sorry for a half-baked rant. Here, go play some games designed to make you think. The Illinois one is not fun at all, but it is fun being an oil god.

¹Full disclosure. I'm not stupid. I'm quite smart, in fact. I'm in the top 5 percentiles for both Mathematical and Verbal tests, and I do quite well analytically, too (but have never been tested aside from essay writing, which was broadly marked and in essay form. So far, I've written 5 essays since leaving high school, so practice may help on that front). I am, I have to admit, smart, and so slightly, ever so slightly, biased against people who judge and don't think things through.^6
2I get the irony.
³This may be due to the fact that I prefer the Republicans marginally, but I do get annoyed at similar right wing websites, so I'm going to believe it's the people, not the policies.
⁴Unless they're creationists, in which case they're set on a path by God himself and so shouldn't deviate from party lines.
⁵Every medium I use now tends to blend together, mainly because of the sheer volume I use, but also due to the facts that they all report 80% of the same news with different spins.
⁶Which, quite often, means that I'm biased against myself. But it's OK, I'm Catholic, so I feel guilty about it.

Point, Counter-Point.

There are unexpected downsides to re-entering the real world after three or more years in Oxford. The city doesn't feel like the real world, and the University encourages you to remain inside your four, comfortable walls (three in the case of Mansfield quad) and think only of your studies. Today I slept in until 12 completely accidentally because home is so incredibly quiet by comparison. Move to a real city and you'll start wondering why there aren't any Japanese tourists, people wearing rowing kit or chamber music concerts.

And then there are the people. Debate is pretty common-place in Universities¹ or so I hope. It's pretty standard to be challenged, to defend your point and if needs be, to concede. But entering the real world, all that changes. Take the following, which happened today:

My brother: The pope is a bigoted idiot, he hates women and his only reason is "because I want to".
Me: That's bollocks - what on earth are you talking about? He holds views that represent the fact that he's a Catholic.
MB: Yeah, but he has no reason for it. He can't back it up.
M: He's one of the most eminent theologians alive today - I think he can pretty much back up his arguments.
MB: Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about. I've studied this - I did GCSE RS.
M: GCSE RS? That includes a full critique of the pope's theology?
MB: *Continuing rant* Shut the fuck up, I know this because I've studied it - have you studied it? NO? THEN SHUT UP!

Exeunt MB.

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1. Russell group, anyway.

Calculus and Liberalism

It has occured to me that, for a blog names after an obscure bible verse, it is only appropriate to get all up in some ethical philosophy every so often.

Therefore, further to Charlie's last post, let's do some internetting. I particularly like Morality Play and the PG-13 Taboo. Comments in the comments!