The Dawlish Train Line

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 062014
 

The train line at Dawlish has collapsed after the recent storms (early February 2014) – details here.

Having travelled that part of the railway several times, I can say that the train line just there was always vulnerable and this sort of damage was pretty inevitable. Of course it needs to be repaired whatever happens.

However in the long run, it is time to think of moving the train line somewhere further inland. Fantastically expensive of course, but quite possibly cheaper than doing a patch up every time a storm washes away the line over the next 100 years.

Amanda Knox: The Murderer On The Run

 General  No Responses »
Feb 022014
 

The recent Italian court verdict has found that Amanda Knox is guilty of murdering Meredith Kercher together with her accomplices, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede. One of the accomplices is in prison, and the other is in Italy so it is unlikely that he will escape imprisonment but what about Amanda Knox?

The key fact here is that a court one assumes to be reasonably competent has found Amanda Knox guilty of murder.

So she is a murderer on the run.

You may believe she is innocent, but is that because you have taken a long hard look at the evidence and made a considered judgement? Or is it because she looks cute? Or because you have certain prejudices about the justice systems in foreign countries?

 

Remembering Pete Seeger

 General  No Responses »
Jan 282014
 

So I learnt today that Pete Seeger has died, and was somewhat surprised to hear the one line obituary only mentioned his 1960s protest songs.

It is somewhat understandable because just about everyone knows a Pete Seeger song even if they don’t know the name. His protest songs (and protest songs he popularised) were covered by others before, during and after the 1960s.

But he was more than that. He was also a deeply committed political activist from the 1930s all the way through to his death. With his banjo labelled “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender”, Covering issues such as racism, fascism, environmentalism, and war, he was one of the few people of whom you could say: “When the barricades go up, if you’re not on his side of the barricade, you’re probably on the wrong side”.

If you work through the list of awards he received during his lifetime on the Wikipedia article (link at the top), the ones for music leap out at you. But if you look closer, only 1/2 are directly for music; many are for his activism or children’s writing.

There was a lot more to Pete Seeger than just a few popular folk songs.

“There is hope for the world.”

The New Cold War

 Computing, General, Politics, Security  No Responses »
Jan 272014
 

I’m old enough enough to remember the tail end of the real cold war between the West and the old Soviet Union when we were waving nuclear missiles at each other. And threatening each other with nuclear annihilation.

So it is a bit of an exaggeration to speak of a new cold war when the threat is nowhere near as apocalyptic. But if you take a look at how the old cold war was fought – with espionage, and signals intelligence – you begin to realise we do have a new cold war. Intelligence agencies around the world are cooperating in fighting against a new enemy.

Us.

Oh, they’ll defend themselves by saying that it’s not the normal man or woman in the street they are worried about, but but the terrorists in our midst they are targeting. But to do that they have to spy on us.

They’ll say that they are not spying on the people in their own country; just on those sneaky foreigners. But when GCHQ spies on US citizens, they pass the information they obtain to the NSA; and the NSA passes information on their spying activities to GCHQ.

Which means that what little protection we have against our own intelligence agencies spying on us is effectively meaningless.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy Winter Solstice! Or Whatever!

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 212013
 

First of all, take whatever seasons greetings you would like from the list above, and ignore the others.

And now onto the ranting.

Reading some US-based Atheist blogs, it appears that our friends on the other side of the pond can sometimes get a little wound up about what seasons greetings they receive. To the extent that a woman has been punched for saying “Happy Holidays” – hopefully the assailant will get prosecuted for ‘aggravated assault’ or something equivalent. After all getting physical with someone who has deliberately insulted you is wrong; getting physical with someone who has just wished you well is downright evil.

Except for occasional outbreaks of gross stupidity such as Birmingham’s winterval controversy, people in the UK are just a little bit more sensible about the whole situation. In particular christmas is not seen as an exclusively christian event – to the extent that I’m seen as a little weird when I wish people “Happy Winter Solstice” (and I’m happy to be thought of as weird!) even though people know I’m not a christian.

Christmas isn’t a christian event? Of course not. Even christians don’t do the religious thing over the whole period; for most there is just a short christmas midnight mass and then it is back to eating and drinking too much in the company of family. If I were the christian god, I’d be shouting “Get on your knees you miserable sinners” the whole period.

And bear in mind that some of us get confused as well: I recently wished someone a “Happy Winchester” as a seasons greeting.

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