Remembrance Sunday Thoughts

 General, History, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 102013
 

Today (at least it is when I’m writing this) is Remembrance Sunday in the UK; traditionally a day to commemorate the sacrifice of ordinary men in the two world wars.

I did not watch the ceremony at The Cenotaph, or attend any of the more local ceremonies, although I have in the past. But one thing that is a noticeable change since my childhood – there is a much greater emphasis on the sacrifices made by our armed forces in all wars up to and including the present.

Fair enough; I don’t have a problem with commemorating the war dead from any war, but the the armed forces already have a day – Armed Forces Day – and Remembrance Sunday is special. It is special because it remembers the two world wars when ordinary men were called to service in their droves; whereas other wars involved soldiers, sailors, and airmen who had chosen to be shot at for a living.

Before WWI, there was nothing like Remembrance Sunday despite all the wars that the UK fought before – nothing for the Boer War, the Crimean War, the Napoleonic Wars, and nothing before. There were war memorials constructed – as a resident of Portsmouth, I can visit an unusually large number, but as for national ceremonies … excluding the burial of heros such as Nelson, they had to wait until after WWI.

Perhaps we need to move the Armed Forces Day to next to Remembrance Sunday to more clearly distinguish between the two days.

Perhaps we also need to make the commemorations somewhat less military in nature – encourage those whose relatives served in the two world wars to attend in place of them. After all the number of world war veterans is dwindling; it won’t be too long before none of them are left, and it would be a great shame to leave Remembrance Sunday to the politicians and the present-day military.

 

It’s Not Human Trafficking; It’s Slave Trading

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 022013
 

Why on earth have we got this new name – Human Trafficking – for the very old crime of slavery and slave trading? Is it some kind of attempt at putting a trendy new gloss on it? It’s not a crime that should have a trendy new gloss; even ignoring the fact that it is the kind of crime that shouldn’t be glamorised in any way, there’s a very good legal reason why we should carry on calling it slavery and slave trading.

Back in the 19th century, the British unilaterally declared that slavery and slave trading would be treated the same as piracy and set about (with the assistance of the US) eliminating the African slave trade. Under the principle of jus cogens they set about hanging slavers, confiscating their assets, and freeing slaves claiming that they had a universal right to punish those who took part in the crime of slavery.

In other words, some crimes are so heinous that anyone is allowed to prosecute offenders no matter where or when the offenses took place.

By keeping the old name for the crime, we retain it’s classification as a crime subject to universal jurisdiction. This opens the possibility of setting up a court – such as the ICC – to prosecute slavers wherever in the world they are, and the possibility of empowering law enforcement units to bring slavers to justice wherever they happen to be.

And after all, the fight against slavery isn’t going too well with more slaves today than there has ever been.

So Apparently I’m An Exceptionally Dull Weirdo …

 Computing, General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 252013
 

Apparently this idiot thinks that all coders are exceptionally dull weirdos. I’ll quite happily admit to being a weirdo, but as to exceptionally dull … I only seem that way to the exceptionally thick, or prejudiced.

Concentrating for the moment about this journalist’s (in the loosest possible sense of the word) insult to a good number of people, we can probably deduce the following :-

  1. He doesn’t know many developers socially. If he accidentally encounters one in a social setting one of the following occurs :-
    1. The developer denies all knowledge of computers because of the prejudice of idiots like him. This is a bit of self defence we geeks learned in the past and used in the past. So we can also assume he’s a bit of a dinosaur (like me).
    2. Once he learns someone is a developer, he will climb the walls to get out of the way.
    3. He converses in his own specialised area, and anyone who runs away is classified as an exceptionally dull weirdo.
  2. If he thinks that coding is mechanistic, he is totally clueless about programming, and thinks that anyone can simply start writing code immediately. As a little hint, the majority of the time spent programming is thinking; simply grinding out code is a relatively small part of the job.
  3. Lumping coding in with car mechanics, or plumbing in a derogatory manner indicates this guy is one of those fools who think that anything technical is a low-status activity. Hope his plumber tells him to fix it himself when his next water leak occurs, or charges him double!

Now onto the main point of his ill educated rant on the subject of teaching “coding” to school children. Hopefully the government plans to teach “programming” rather than “coding”, but does he have a point? Perhaps, although it’s a bit difficult to take an idiot like this seriously.

It really depends on exactly what and how it is being taught.

If the plan is to turn out vast swarms of fully fledged developers, everyone is going to be disappointed; apart from anything else, if we were going to turn out fully fledged developers it would have a catastrophic effect on every other subject being taught. After all, it would take so much teaching time away from other subjects, there wouldn’t be enough time for Maths, English, History, etc.

But if the intention is to teach programming in a fun way (say with Logo and robots), with the intention of giving students a better idea of how computers work and how they are instructed, it could well be a good thing.

Not everyone needs to code he claims. Actually most people may find themselves coding in ways that may not be thought of as programming – setting up formula in a spreadsheet, setting up a database, automating a task in a word processor. Although none of these are “true” programming, they do share some elements with it – not least to think about the task in hand, dividing it up into sub-tasks, and setting about telling the computer how to do those tasks in a way that the computer will understand.

Does everyone need this? Perhaps not, but they will find using computers much more effective if they have a better idea of what is going on.

Is The US Government Still Lurching Around Like A Drunken Sailor?

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 172013
 

With apologies to all drunken sailors who will no doubt resent – quite reasonably – being compared with a dysfunctional government.

The big news today (and yesterday – different time zones confuse these things) is that the US government has grasped just a bit of sanity and has stepped back from the abyss. Well most of them did, but the lunatic fringe of the Republican party (also known as the Tea Party) still persisted in trying to block the government from doing any work and paying any debts it owes.

But it is only temporary, and unless some more sanity returns to US politicians, we will get to see this mess repeated in January.

Ultimately this is all the fault of a fanatic wing of the Republican party who believe it is their right to undemocratically block the government budget until their favourite hobby horse is taken care of. Obamacare. Whether it is a good or a bad thing, it is a done deal, and it is undemocratic to try to sabotage it without first giving it a chance.

Yes the US has too much public debt, but too much is made of the so-call US ‘debt crisis’. The overall figure is immense to be true – so big that it is impossible to understand; so big that we have clever means to make it understandable, and to understand it in terms of affordability. If you look at the US debt as a proportion of GDP (in other words how affordable it is), you will see that the US is in 35th position (according to CIA figures) with a figure of 73.6% of GDP. Or 9th position (using the IMF figures).

Not a good position certainly, but hardly a basket case.

Now there’s a great deal of sense in reducing US government debt, but not in this way. Simply by stopping US government cheques would cause a catastrophic effect on the US (and world) economies.

Perhaps those with a vote in the US would like to remember this when it comes to voting next time. Your current set of politicians look dangerously dysfunctional; even in comparison to politicians in other countries.

Did Ralph Really Hate Britain?

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 042013
 

Ralph Miliband, Ed Miliband, and the Daily Mail. No prizes for guessing who the villain is; even blue-rinsed Conservative party card carrying reactionaries are beginning to think that the Daily Mail is on a sticky wicket with their latest story. But that part can all be best summed up with :-

The Daily Mail have somehow decided that Ralph was an evil person, hated Britain, and so Ed Miliband is an inappropriate person to lead the country. Which is bizarre on several levels, but rather than concentrating on whether Ed is suitable or not, or looking into the Daily Mail’s deranged reasoning, let’s have a look at poor old Ralph.

After all, Ralph is dead so he is hardly in a position to defend himself, so someone should do it for him. The Mail picked up on something he wrote shortly after arriving in Britain (after encountering anti-semitism: “The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world …”. Whilst it may be a little extreme, it is understandable coming from a Jewish refugee arriving in London in the middle of war fever, and not being aware of the Battle of Cable Street.

And of course Ralph was a prominent Marxist which is the sort of thing that will cause any Daily Mail editor to start frothing at the mouth. As a Marxist, Ralph was probably not too keen on the monarchy, and the British establishment. But hating the way that Britain is governed is not the same as hating Britain.

What the Daily Mail would rather have you overlook is that Ralph fought for this country during the war. And at the end of the war, he chose to stay in this country rather than return to Belgium, or take up any number of opportunities in the USA. Sure he was a Marxist and if he had managed a worker’s revolution and liquidated the whole of the Daily Mail, I would be the first to call him evil.

Let’s be honest, if we have to pick one of the Daily Mail or Ralph to label as “evil”, then the only answer is the Daily Mail.

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