I'm making an animated tentacle monster film.

In a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, tentacle monsters roam the earth devouring the last remnants of human kind but Sally is just worried she can't find any new shoes.

I need two voice actors to voice five characters: Sally, her robot, a tentacle monster and his mistress, plus a little tentacle-juice eating parasitic worm who doesn't really even talk, just make noises.

A very early picture of the main characters:

They'll all get more work before it's done, the monster(s) in particular, but it gives you some idea. The bedroom set will surely not be used in a post-apocalypic world. 

I can pay 25 quid each for two hours work in a basement studio in Woolwich (South-East London, UK) from 8pm on Thursday March 22nd 2012. If you prefer you can take a 2% of the gross from flogging downloads at a quid a pop, but my guess is the 25 quid will be more.

I'll send you a copy for your showreels etc. when it's done (aiming for about August, but who knows). The first act will be freely available anyway. If you're interested then record two of the sample lines from characters below and email an wav or mp3 to me, pre@dalliance.net , before Monday 12th of March please.

SAMPLE LINES:

EITHER:
* Sally: "It the world was going to be taken over by space monsters, couldn't it at least have been space-monsters with feet? Who like shoes?"
and
* Female Monster: "Oh goody, a crunchy human, how exquisite!"

OR:
* Robot: "Interstellar travel can't be done on foot miss, whatever your footwear. We need a flying saucer."
and
* Male Monster: "They've taken our flying saucer! How unsporting!"

Thanks folks,

Adam.

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My girlfriend was looking for a new computer, and some friends had noticed this little Samsung N150 netbook on sale in Sainsbury's of all places for less than two hundred quid. Sure, it'd need a bigger RAM card fitted but that's cheap enough. Sounded like a right little bargain to me so I recommended she get that one.

It arrived, and with some excitement was unpacked. And it ran like a dog.

I didn't really understand why. All my Windows Fan friends had been telling me that Windows 7 was much better than Vista and that it could run on little netbook hardware and that it was as fast as XP and everything in Windows Land was lovely and glorious. Yet here was this machine, taking 30 seconds to launch Firefox. Even WITH it being topped up to be as full of RAM as it'd go.

Needless to say, she was sad and disappointed. I suggested that the problem was Windows, and that it'd be a fine little machine if I installed Linux on it for her. She refused. So I said I'd buy it from her, since I recommended it, and it'd be just great once Windows was removed. She'll just have to pay twice as much so she can get a machine that'll run her favorite operating system. I'd be tempted to pay twice as much NOT to have to run it so I guess that makes sense to pay extra to get what you want.

Which left me with a new lappy and no actual purpose for it in mind till I remembered that in the band we'd been talking about being able to do more than just guitar stuff, maybe fire off some loops or samples on demand.

Debian install went easily and other than having to fetch the stupid non-free wifi binary (pah) seems to be working well. That was done easily enough by adding the non-free repo and then "apt-get install firmware-brcm80211". A step caused coz the wifi card manufactures refuse to let their source out under a free license.

Best of all, I fired up the GIMP, made a little image for it's wallpaper and then ordered a vinyl decal for the back, which arrived today. So here's some pictures of my new lovely Debian GNU/Linux machine, which I'll start taking to band practice soon and may be found on a stage somewhere in London next year.

Only regret is not refusing the windows license and pushing for a damned refund.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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The web is so abuzz with the news that facebook tracks which websites you visit even if you log out that even some of my facebook-loving friends are a bit worried.

So here's how I stop them doing so personally: By using firebox and Add Block Plus.

First, Install Adblock Plus. It'll make you restart your browser to activate it and then ask you to pick a subscription to a constantly-updated list of advertising servers to block. I pick "Fanboy's" list, mostly coz he also includes Google's tracking things to stop Google Analytics following you all over the web too.

Next we want to add some rules to specifically stop your computer talking to Facebook when it isn't actually looking at a facebook page.

Click the ADP icon on your browser (sometimes in the bottom status bar, sometimes near the URL bar, depends on how you've customized your browser) and select "Preferences" then "Add Filter" and paste in the following, one line at a time, so you've added four filters by the end.

||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

There. Now facebook isn't tracking you anymore. And better yet, it's also not showing you adverts, and nor is half the rest of the web. (Those adverts all track you too)

It will remove those facebook "Like" buttons from every page, so I guess if you ever use those buttons then you might wanna figure out another solution.

You may also wish to subscribe to other blocking lists of course, spiralX suggests this one from Adversity, espeically their "Antisocial" list.

http://adversity.uk.to/

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(I get on at the first stop, so my seat is usually available. And if not whoever's in it gets an evil glare as I pick instead the second-best. If I have to resort to third-best I'm quite sad since this is just normal-seat territory).

However, the new Met Line train was so quiet, it was eery. You could hear newspapers rustlling. Even people breathing. You could have had a conversation in there, except everyone else would have been able to hear too.

If all the tube trains end up that quiet we'll be able to talk to each other on the trains like they do in Paris. There'll be yet another place it's socially unacceptable for me to retreat into my anti-social silent book-reading mindstate.

Still, be good for my ears I guess.

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On this, X-Day eve, it may be important to reflect that today is the last day this poor earth will have to suffer though. By tomorrow at 7am, the saucers will be here and the world will be naught but dust and pain.

We note with sadness that the European Church Of The Subgenius, in a ban-frenzy, has banned not only each individual church member from their X-Day celebrations, but all their friends, all the yeti race, all the human race and even all aliens. It remains to be seen whether the aliens will respect this ban and commentators are intrigued about this unexpected possibility.

Meanwhile, in the US, many from the Subgenius Church are gathered in a field looking to the skys to see the saucers over the horizon.

On this day, the day before the saucers come, I link you to Jouni Koponen's excellent art work The Day The Saucers Came.

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As I eat my lunch today, I find the News talking of Alternative Vote.

I'm reminded that on the 10-o-clock live last night, which was excellent as usual, Steven Norris was trying to explain that because AV isn't the best voting system imaginable, we should all vote "No" at the referendum when it comes.

He was agreeing with every point made about what an absolute
mess First Page The Post is, agreeing that there should be
some change, but saying that this isn't the right change.

And I agree. To some extent.

AV is also a mess. It's still unrepresentative. It still
encourages monolithic parties. Thing is, the Libs wanted a
referendum on a full PR system, but a referendum on AV is the only thing the Tories like Norris would agree to after the last election.

So should we vote "No", and hold out for PR?

Of course not, it's a trap!

If the country were to return a "No" vote, the Tories and
Labour alike would insist that this was a resounding victory
for First Past The Post, that the public have spoken and
there is no need for electoral change at all.

Maybe it wouldn't be Norris himself saying this, though it
probably would, but it'll certainly be the rest of the slimy
cut-happy party he represents.

Course, if the referendum itself was a multi-choice
Alternative Vote ballot instead then there could be
an extra check-box on the ballot saying "AV isn't
far enough, introduce a PR system instead". I'd rank that
ahead in my preferences by a mile. Bit there isn't.

We're not being asked "Is AV the best system ever" we're being
asked "is there a need for electoral reform" and yes, frankly,
Yes yes yes, there is.

Personally I'm not convinced even PR would be far enough,
I'd like to nominate my representative and change them
as easily as I can change my electricity provider.

I would not be nominating anyone from the Tory party,
certainly not Stephen Norris.

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I'm trying to think about Logo Design right now, coz I'm gonna start trying to make my new project tomorrow. I know I won't do a good enough job, and that eventually, I'll have to get someone else to do it. Someone who can do a good job. It's not important enough at this embryonic stage to get someone in, on the other hand, the way it looks and it's shape and colours will inevitably influence me as I go on to build the whole feel and interface of the project around it.

As I mould the GUI like clay.

It's an interesting phase. I think Red and Gold are the colours for this one. For good reasons: the basic memes are fund-raising-thermometers and padlocks, which are typically Red and Gold.

Well.

Padlocks are silver. But Gold looks better and these padlocks need to shine and be bright and symbolise the hope of chains broken rather than locking things away in the dark. Hopefully most of the locks here will be OPEN!

And thermometers are typically mercury, which is also silver coloured. I have literally no idea why the iconic thermometer is red. For blood perhaps.

Symbolism is more important here than actual physics.

I'll probably just end up using The GIMP's auto-logo functions again. Writing a good auto-logo function could dictate the whole of commerce I suspect. Bend the minds of the prototypers.

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Yeah. Two blog posts in one night. I'm like a bus. Well, a bussle of busses.

Here's something I sent to my MP this week after getting something from her. Frankly, while I admit I was slack in relying, I was ten times faster than her.

Here's the thing what I wrote:

Thanks for replying in paper form again rather than replying my email as I'd asked,

I can't be bothered to type much of it in, other than to point out that you said this:

"We'll have to agree to disagree"

Do you even hear that? Did you actually type it, knowing it goes to someone you're supposed to represent?

I have to agree to disagree with my official parliamentary representative?

Well. You know. I kinda want a system where I CAN JUST HAVE A REPRESENTATIVE WHO AGREES WITH ME!

(Sorry for caps. I get emotive about this)

When my representative says that we need to disagree, I sort of think maybe that person isn't my representative any more? No?

So yeah.

Dunno how much point there is even writing again. If I have to agree to disagree with the person who's supposedly both promised to represent me and also promised (to her party) to vote against my actual preference, and I'm also unable to officially deny represents me and discount her vote, and also refused even a telephone interview about the fact as a referendum approaches on a not-nearly-far-enough proposal which would make little actual difference to correct that matter.

Well

We'll agree to disagree about whether or not I'm represented in parliament I guess.

I'll say it just to be sure: You are not representing me. As far as I can tell, you are not representing anyone that I actually know.

Adam............

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A friend tells me that in The Times Naomi Wolfe is arguing that the protest movement, student protest in particular, has failed to learn the lessons of her own protesting days, though I can't link it and I can't even read it since it's not even on the free web. Might be true. Might not be. Who knows. It's just deliberately held from record or links in order to extort money from us.

He tells me that she says violence is counter-productive,which, mostly, I agree with, while noting that the reason we don't get eaten by wolves in this country any more is because we killed all the wolves.

He tells me that she says, and again I agree completely, that images of people being suppressed are more politically powerful than images of people smashing up windows in masks.

Force the powers to oppress you, get someone to take photos, and publish them the best way you can.

This seems to be the formula for democratic change, for loosening the grip of power.

If they over-tax you, sit in their offices till they are forced to remove you, and broadcast far and wide the blood they produce as they escort you out.

Coz people aren't affected by argument, they don't change their mind based on statistics or meaning. They change their mind based on one thing: The images which their brain sees.

In his words, probably wrongly quoting her words, you "Manufacture pictures"

You know what? The depressing thing is that this statement really sums up all of human activism, at least the stuff done right. The stuff that works.

Manufacture pictures.

Not "Logically argue", not "Evaluate the evidence and encourage others to do the same", not "point out the weight of numbers"

Manufacture pictures.

*sigh*.

The Right realised this years ago, somewhere between the 50s and the 80s. Read Lakoff's "Don't think of an elephant" if merely trying not to think of an elephant isn't enough to convince you. Not thinking of the size of it's trunk? How long is the trunk of an elephant which isn't thought about?

The left is just beginning to grasp it, which is useful I guess. Finally. But you know what?

I just wish it'd stop fucking working. Because, it is, really, literally, insane. The whole fucking species is insane and reacts more to manufactured pictures than Bayesian analysis or scientific evidence.

I could convince you easily, if I could just come up with the right image. A bearded caveman, perhaps, scratching his head looking at a chalk-board with some incomprehensible mathematics on it. He's looking at an explanation of the way photons can be captured, processed, and projected though film. Meanwhile a projection of a train reflecting from that board rushes towards him shortly before he throws up his chalk and runs for the door.
Politics is all about finding the right images.

The right images for flawed, biased, often literally insane, human brains.

Oh well.

Course, Labour would have done the same. Alan Johnson said something like "We should be proud of our brave and correct decision to introduce tuition fees" coz in many ways Labour started it. I remember telling some nobody on the internet at the time they took over that, he was mistaken, the socialists hadn't won. The first thing they did was introduce degree fees.

They would have done the same. They are in the pockets of the same people. They are in the same conspiracy. They're just a different head of the same beast.

My friend, and (I assume, without her her stuff being on the free web) Naiomi Wolfe are basically right.

Manufacture images.

That's how you win the meme-war, which is what politics is all about.

Manufacture images.

To get even more topical:

If when you think of Julian Assange, you imagine a freedom-fighter running from an autocratic government that's needlessly persecuting him for revealing their lies then you'll support him regardless of whether his organisation will build a more free, true, or wealthy world.
If when you think of him, you imagine a heretic spy, devoted to the downfall of your society, hiding in the shadows and whispering your secrets to your enemies, then you'll fight him regardless of whether his organisation will build a more restrictive, false, or poor world. The manufactured images affect me too. I know they do. Even while I know they're manufactured.

I try to see past that, to see through my own biases, but it's hard. How far should I reverse-compensate? Do I reverse-compensate too much because I know I'm reverse-compensating and so compensate to match?

All I can think to do is look at the evidence. What does the evidence suggest will bring a better future for all mankind?

But nobody's even presenting any. It's all just argument and presupposition.

Where's the study that takes a group of students who had to pay fees, and a group of students who had free education, and contrasts within each group the number who actually did the education, their benefit from it, the benefit to even those who didn't get it but came into contact with them, and the general wealth of both groups, including the tax revenue from their presumably-increased wages?

Nowhere.

Nobody seems to even be trying to collect it.

It's just Fucking Politics.

For instance, here's a bit of the new government drugs policy:
(http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/drugs/drug-strategy/impact-assessme...)

Q: "When will the policy be reviewed to establish its impact?"

A: "It will not be reviewed"

You know what My MP said to me in the last letter she sent?

"We will have to agree to disagree"

Oh.

Good to feel represented in parliament then. Nice to know my representative has got my back.

Bah.

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My MP replied to my email about Voting Reform.
The reply was on paper in the post, so I mostly couldn't be arsed to type it out to paste it here given how boiler-plate it was.

My reply to her written tonight is, however, already in easy-pastable electronic form:

Emily,

Thanks for your reply, though I wish you'd just send
an email in reply rather than wasting paper, ink and the Post
Office's time by printing 'em out and posting.

It also wastes my time typing it all out again to pass on
to my friends of course. And introduces typos and
accidental misquotes.

Is all government business still done that way? I confess
I do sort of like seeing the parliamentary logo on an
envelope under my post-box, but it seems like I could
get an email as well at least? And I have plenty of
souvenirs now, no?

Anyway.

You say that it's important to know who your MP is, and hold
them to account, and imply that the only way this can be done
is through a first-past-the-post regional system.

I'd agree that a constituent knowing how to contact and communicate with their MP is important, but disagree that the First Past The Post system is the only way this can
be achieved, let alone the best system possible.

People would do the same as they do now: Ask Google.

You say that having a particular 'area' you represent makes
you a better representative, but the point is that for
the vast majority of national issues, geographical
proximity isn't the most important 'area'.

Would it not be better if my MP was someone who was close
to me on the political compass, rather than someone who lives within a mile or two but doesn't share my political outlook?

Having an MP to "act on my behalf" is pretty pointless
if that MP isn't actually acting as I myself would act,
if s/he isn't actually representing my view. If s/he
instead asks me to understand WHY they aren't going to vote
the way that would *actually* represent my position.

I frankly would like to see a system where I can change
my political representative as easily as I can change
my electricity supplier. And without having to wait
until a five-year election cycle to do so, let alone
pick from such a limited menu.

AV voting is just about the tiniest step we can make in that direction that I can imagine, but it is at least
an attempt. It might make things better, and it can
hardly make them worse.

You were my MP for four years without even making an
attempt at making parliament more representative.
Your party in government for over a decade.

I'll take what I can get from this limited menu, at least until I can find a way to order a-la-carte.

I guess it's not surprising if my MP will not be
representing my view in the debate, because the
electoral boundaries divide the natural political
constituencies of the political spectrum into artificial geographical lines on a map.

Divide to conquer.

Locking out all minority opinion and debate in the process.

I too would like to see more honest and hard-working
MPs, and a closer link between MPs and their constituents.
But the fist past the post system seems designed almost
exactly to avoid this. To avoid my MP actually being
someone who I can agree with on many issues, to avoid
my opinion being represented in the house, to avoid
my MP having to fear a withdrawal of my support since
they never even actually had it. Instead geographical constituencies and first past the
post voting dilute my democratic voice by averaging it with others who happen to live nearby.

In short: I would rather have a representative who actually agreed with me, who voiced my opinion, than one who happens to be the favourite of the people on the same bus-route as me.

Would that not be a better democracy to aim for?

I'd love to spend ten minutes recording a phone call
about these issues with you to share with my friends, peers, tweeps and blog-readers. Especially as the AV referendum approaches, for that really will be national.
Really might affect the outcome of the vote rather than
just influencing people who can have no say because
they don't share the same tube station.

Of course very few of them actually live in your
constituency. We find ourselves divided by geography from being able to pool our meagre democratic power to pull behind, or indeed against, any of our representatives. In any of our constituencies.

Divided by geography. In a city as small as London.
In the modern telegraphic age.

It practically beggars belief.

Alternative Vote isn't nearly enough to fix our
system, and I'd like a tick-box on the referendum
to say "Yeah! At least, and go further!", but in the absence of that I hope we can, surely, go as far as the Tories would give us a referendum on
during negotiations to form a government?

I understand your party offered much the same,
though without the number of MPs to back it up
unfortunately (but easily the right number of
votes, no?).

I'm sure a coalition of the left would have been
a better outcome if only the left's vote hadn't
been divided by geography.

A problem looking set to get worse under new
boundaries I believe.

Boundaries! In politics! Oh my. Fences to stop
the people really uniting. And you apparently
support them?

I'm serious about wanting a telephone interview
with you if you're up for it by the way. Once the
referendum campaign is under way. There's only a couple of hundred people read my blog, though it goes up a lot when I'm more interesting. As far as I
know I'm the only one that lives in your constituency,
but it would be there for you to point at to those who do live here, and in search for anyone interested
in your defence of your opinions.

We live in a global world now. Even people in our
limited geographical constituency can hear it if they search for it!

The people can really have a national conversation (even a global conversation!), we don't need to be limited
by the speed of a day's horseback ride any more.

I know I'm a dreamer, which is why I'm also a Fabian.
Gradual change, incremental advance. We shouldn't try
to restructure society all at once. But AV is, despite
it's limits, a step in the right direction.

If it isn't, propose something better, don't just oppose
suggested change.

How do YOU think we can work together to achieve a
representative system where every MP actually embodies
the political and sociological views of their constituents
rather than just trying to remain as unbiased as they
can when two thirds of the people who give them their
political legitimacy fundamentally disagree with them?

Is it really drawing lines on the map and letting
the biggest minority in each square vote to ignore the rest of the people who live there?

Finally, good luck in fighting the spending cuts that
look like they could cripple our economy. I suspect
we at least agree there. It's bound to happen that
*some* of my opinions will be represented by even
someone who 'represents' me mostly via a geographic roll of the dice.

I tend to think that *investment* is what a government
should do in a recession. Properly chosen investment at least. Something that'll create the jobs to pay the
tax bill we face.

Adam.........

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It seems that the fashion this week is for burning copies of religious tomes. Never ones to willingly miss out on a bandwagon, The European Church Of The Subgenius are keen to get in with the trend and hold a massive book burning session of our own.

But which holy book to burn? We don't want to encourage burning the Qur'an since, well, that's already been done and anyway, who wants to aggravate the Muslims and get a fatwa placed on their heads? Plus, we know they're keen on burning works of fiction written by heretics like Salman Rushdie so you'd hope they'd be up for helping us, taking part in our book-burning event so we'd sooner have them on our side than calling the fire brigade and squirting our book pyres with fire extinguishers.

So we thought what about the Bible? We could get together with a bunch of Muslims and warm our cockles over the sweet bright flames of the books of the apostles and revelations. We bet Revelations would go up like a firework, it's so crazy and trippy. Then Pope Finn pointed out that the Bible is already one of the best selling books in the entire world and that we don't want to open the gap between it's sales and the sales of our own religious book by encouraging people to buy burning copies.

And so it was decided that there's only one holy book which we can all agree works as well for kindling as it does for religious enlightenment, only one book which can unite all the religious cults be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, Sikh, Buddhist, Church Of Scientology, Holy Church Of Subgenius, Discordian or Hindu: The Book Of The Subgenius.

Since the fashion seems to be to have your book burning on 911, presumably to make it easier to remember the number of the emergency services should the bestseller bonfire get out of control, we decided to have our book burning at 9pm on the 9th day of the 9th month. This should help UK book-burners remember their own emergency number should anything go wrong with the fiction fire: 999

Your instructions are clear;

1) Buy as many copies of the Book Of The Subgenius as you can afford. Buy some for your friends, buy a whole bunch of copies, they're quite small and only burn for a few minutes. Try to empty all the local shoops of the book, ensuring that you'll have a big old pile of books to burn.

2) At 9pm this evening, put all the books in a pile, pour petrol over them and SET FIRE TO THE PILE OF NONSENSE.

3) Dance around whooping and laughing in glee at the message you've sent to the Subgenius Church. We don't be forgetting that in a hurry. Oh, burned!

If during the event a part of a page should float up, lifted by the fire, and land near you immediately rescue the fragment. It could hold important information from "Bob!" Store that tiny bit of truth and, as soon as possible, go and buy another copy of the Book Of The Subgenius. Look up where your cinder came from and study the chapter carefully. It could be the most important thing you'll ever read.

Praise "Bob!"

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So I was talking to this guy the other day who was insisting that we should behave more 'naturally'. Trying to claim that modern human behaviour is "not natural" in some way. Perhaps coz it can sometimes be so violent and selfish.

We as a species do plenty of killing, certainly, but do we do an unnatural amount of killing? Almost everyone that's ever lived has been killed by 'natural' causes. Billions of souls lost with only just six billion actually surviving at the moment.

It makes me sad, and I'd happily throw the "natural" state of human mortality out.

Of course everything humans do is "natural", there are no supernatural events, no magic, no ghosts. But if you define "natural" as "not man-made" then at least the idea makes some kinda coherent sense.

Even then it's still not true of course.

Where there is understanding, empathy and morality in the world it's a human thing, and not 'natural' in that sense at all. It's man-made. Invented in himan brains.

I want more of that stuff, of kindness and empathy, not more violent uncaring red-in-tooth-and-claw "nature."

Increasing consciousness is essential to properly ensure that the increases in power that come with science are used responsibly, sure, but I don't know any way we can get that increased understanding other than, well, more science.

Study the world, understand it, make it better.

Which probably makes me some kinda hippie. One of those new-fangled geeky cyber-hippies.

There may be things which can't be understood through science, I guess. Some clame there are. But I think I would contest that these are things which can't be understood at all in that case. It seems to me that investigating, testing, trying to prove yourself wrong, constantly improving your model, is how understanding works at all. And this is what science is.

We are indeed, as a species, making some unwise choices and reducing biodiversity, causing mass extinctions. The enviornment is suffering. But guess how we know this? Guess how we're coming to understand it and finally be in a position to do something about it?

Through investigation and data-collection and reason and the quest for knowledge. That's how.

Through science.

If you were able to do as some wish and stop science, end that progress, I'm pretty convinced it would be a bad thing for the planet, for bio-diversity, for us personally. After all, the hunter-gatherers knew more than enough to drive the mega-fauna extinct without really understanding what they were doing.

Learning to grok it is the only way to learn to do something about it.

If you were to somehow stop science, stop that learning, that knowledge gathering, you would stop the development of the kinds of consciousness and awareness of our world that we need to prevent it's descruction from happening at all.

If we are becoming aware of what we are doing, and I think that we are, it's not through turning a blind eye to the world and waiting for it to spontaneously evolve. That's not how Darwinism works. Evolution is blind and as likely to produce short-term solutions leading to global extinctions again as it ever was. If we're increasing awareness, becoming more conscious of our effects on our world, we're doing it through that thirst for knowledge. Through science. Stopping that growth of our own consciousness would be disaster. Deadly for the planet as thus for ourselves.

As far as we can tell, in the entire galaxy of a hundred billion stars, there's only one species which has ever become sapient, become aware of themselves and come to understand their own understanding. Their own origin and the systems which brought them to being: Us. Homo-saps.

As far as we can tell we are the only "mind" in the universe.

Which I think is precious, deserves everything we can to do preserve and fill the galaxy with empathy and understanding and morality and, well, mind.

Is there room for us all, if we stop dying, if we stop decay, if we become imortal?

There is plenty of room, we just have to get off this rock.

Course, we need to do that anyway, or else nature's more vicious weapons like space-rocks and super-volcanoes will kill us all at once rather than the more mundane ones of decay and ageing and disease doing it one at a time.

Exponential growth is lunacy, and especially as we live longer we'll have to have to grow less quickly. But this isn't a reason to condemn the 6 billion people alive today to all, every one of them, die over the next 100 years. Think of that. Six billion minds, gone forever. Six billion individuals with hopes and dreams and understanding all destroyed over a mere 100 years of horrendous slaughter. Over a hundred thousand people a day. Over five thousand people every hour, dead. Dead.

We should be doing all we possibly can to stop that.

Is our destiny as a species to sit on this planet, being careful not to use it up, preserving the status quo, until it and every one of us is destroyed by a space-rock or the exploding Earth itself? Or is it to use this planet's resources to spread mind through the rest of the solar system, to terraform Mars, to inhabit the moons of Jupiter, to send consciousness into the stars?

I know which I'm routing for.

I love "Nature", that part of the world which isn't human, but it will kill us all, one by one until the day it decides to take whoever's left all at once.

The only way to stop that is to use our understanding, our knowledge, our science.

And even that's a long-shot.

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I am very drunk, and should certainly be in bed rather than writing to congratulate my new (old) MP.

Nevertheless, I am not.

Damnit.

Open litter to my MP:

Dear Emily.

Excellent, surprising and (I admit, for me, disappointing) work there Emily. I don't know if you can receive email through the parliamentary system or not, but it's the only email address I have for you.

Um. Can we have PR now?

Really.

Surely this situation can give us a referendum on PR.

This vote wasn't one, but we can have one.

We haven't agreed much, but I have hope we can agree on that.

Hopefully.

Congrats again, really good election skills ;)

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So we're all anarchists now then?

Win.

I guess.

I think I described roughly this result as "best hope" a couple of days ago. But watching it unfold, watching Limbet lose his seat, watching Evens lose his seat, watching my lib candidate Bridget Fox have her opponent's majority increased by like thousands of votes, watching the Pirates all fall under 1%, it didn't really feel like a win.

The libs should deal with Cameron, if and only if he offers a referendum on PR. Surely? I mean that is the price.

But I don't think he will. Which makes it tricky. I hope I'm wrong

I think I agree with my assessment a couple of days ago. This is, basically, the best realistic result. God but it burns though.

Anyway. I should actually go to bed I reckon. Hope the party leaders are getting more sleep than me :)

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Ten days until the election here in the UK and things are looking more interesting than usual. The newspapers are calling it "The Clegg Effect" but then the newspapers also thought Mephedrone was called "Meow Meow" so I suspect their opinion on why the Liberals are polling better than usual might well be about as useful as their opinion on whether cannabis being class B or class C will stop someone smoking a joint.

Personally I suspect that anyone half competent in his place saying roughly the same things (IE, stating Lib policy) would be getting roughly the same effect. Kennedy or Ashdown probably a better effect. After all, they'd benefit not only from being neither Gordon Brown nor a Tory, but also from being well known and liked.

The Lib's Labservative campaign says it all really. Everyone's fed up with what we've had for the last ten years and the Tories look like the same only more so. As long as the alternative looks different and even vaguely credible we might as well try it.

Course, to judge by the chatter on the networks you'd think the Liberals were even more ahead than the polls say. Twit Vote is a sea of yellow, Facebook's got yellow by far in the lead,  Nick Clegg beats David Cameron at GoogleFight by 3 to one. (Obviously google-fight is no good for measuring incumbents, they've had 5 years of press).

Nobody seriously expects that to leak into real life, it's what they're dismissively calling "the twitter echo chamber" and it certainly is one. But echo chambers do one thing very well: they make the voices in them louder. We've had the capitalist corporatist echo-chamber of the print and broadcast media for so long we forget that the newspapers don't represent everybody either. The internet has brought with it lots more echo chambers and it's drowning out the traditional voices that tell everyone who to vote for.

Which opens up the field somewhat, even for those who aren't listening to that chamber. It still inflates the confidence and noise of their friends that do, the things said there do seep into real-life conversations. The twitter echo chamber, blogs, social and personal media, they're all making everyone's voices louder. Is it loud enough to drown out the corporate press who traditionally only really shout their own?

Perhaps not yet, but it's likely having an influence as much as the specific face standing looking slightly creepily into the cameras.

Anyway, whatever the reason the Liberals are polling better than usual, it seems to have both the other parties worried. The Guardian reports today that Labour and the Tories moved to confront the Liberal Democrat surge as they warned of the dangers of a hung parliament.

What does that mean? It means the leaders of those parties asked the newspapers to report that they thought a hung parliament would be bad and the newspapers uncritically agreed to do so.

Hurray for an independent questioning challenging press.

The mainstream parties claim that they fear "weak indecisive government," but who exactly would be making it indecisive? If they really would just prefer the opposition being decisive to to bickering and argument then all they have to do is stop bickering and arguing.

Surely?

It ain't that hard. You compromise, look for consensus, put ideas to proper evidence-based testing and analysis. Work with your co-workers not against them, like the rest of us have to at work every single day.

What they're really saying when they say "weak indecisive government" is "we care so little for the welfare of our country that we'll wreck it rather than seeing those others get their way"

Nice. Thanks for letting us know. Only I'm not really up for voting for people who would rather see Britain "paralysed" than play a constructive role in cooperative governance.

Clearly what they're really worried about is parliament actually representing the people, for in a representational parliament they would never have absolute power again. And they like absolute power. Politicians are attracted to power like I am to redheads. They'll genuinely try not to go crazy insane with desire for it, but they are absolutely rubbish at doing so. They go crazy anyway. They think their ideas are self-evident without needing to be discussed, debated, argued and even actually scientifically tested. If they're allowed to do whatever they want without a sanity check they'll not bother with a sanity check.

They even state it outright: They want "Strong Government," this is their reason to dismiss Proportional Representation. They want government to be strong.

See, I think that strong government leads us into wars despite millions out on the streets marching against them. It leads to to a poll-tax, to failed banking regulation crashing the economy. It leads to cow-towing to business that lobby against the freedom of the people. Strong government does whatever the hell it wants, consequences be damned.

Government is power, and power needs to be moderated, it needs checks and balances and should operate though consensus or not at all. We are better off with no new laws than bad new laws. Remember, like Bill Hicks says, all governments are liars and murderers. Personally I like my liars and murderers not to be strong. Perhaps we occasionally need someone to lie and murder on our behalf, but the rest of the time they should be chained and restrained not raging out of control boasting about the size of their majority, giving PFI corporate hand-outs to their friends and benefactors while stuffing their own pockets full of our cash.

Only answer is to vote for whichever party is promising to make parliament more representative. If the Liberals weren't offering that I'd be spoiling my ballot anyway.

Now personally I think the Lib Dems are far too unwilling to tax the rich, redistribute wealth, and remove all victimless crimes. I'd like to vote for an anarcho-socialist party. I'd like my MP to be someone who actually had something in common with my views and I don't care if he lives in London or Wales so long as he actually does that. Geographical link be damned.

But there is nobody like that standing, not in my seat, not in the vast majority of the seats. So I'll go out and vote for the folks who might make that a bit more possible.

What else can you do?

------------------------------

(If you liked this, link it, duh!)

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As promised, Rupert Murdoch's newspapers are moving to a pay model, it'll be two quid a week to read the Times from July.

Many of you will have previously clicked on a link to an article at, say, the New York Times and been confronted with a page saying "Register for FREE to read this article." If you're anything like me, you almost always think "Screw that" and hit the back button because it's just not worth the effort of filling in a form.

And now the London Times will not only require a registration, but also require a credit card number and a subscription of some kind. Which is the point of course. Articles behind pay-walls are almost useless: You can't link to them, you can't share them, you can't spread them, they don't gather responses from people who can't read it, they aren't a part of the global conversation. All you can do it read them. One-way media. Plus of course things that don't get linked to, don't get read. So you can barely even do that unless you check their own individual specially biased selected index pages.

So I welcome this change in the big conspiracy newspaper's behaviour. I hope they ALL lock themselves behind pay-walls in their own little inaccessible corner of the web and let hoards of tiny independent media co-ops take over the mainstream news content instead of the big lumbering corrupt media giants.

Hopefully any remaining good journalists at the Times will be able to quit and so cut the profit-whoring newspapers out of the loop and start self-publishing. You don't need so many well paying ads to just support one journalist as you do to support an entire press team. Do we need to find ways to fund quality journalism? Yes! Certainly. But the resulting articles need to be freely available because as soon as you charge for that article it becomes less valuable. It's worth more if it's free, which means all pay-to-read articles are intrinsically worth less than their cheaper, freer, competition.

The corporate media has never been good at funding quality journalism anyway. They just make things up, and even take to the courts to enforce their right to distort and falsify the news. If the corporate media, the Times etc., actually did represent the best journalism had to offer I might be a bit sad to see them go. But they're not. They're just tabloid biased lies and hate. We're almost certainly better off not letting them program our minds.

I hope we as a society find new ways to fund good investigative journalism, and I hope frankly that we can do it without having to concentrate power in massive easily-bought (if expensive) media conglomerates.

In the mean time if those big conglomerates want to lock themselves out of the global conversation, if they want to hide in a minority audience behind toll-doors, then I for one applaud the removal of their biased lying scaremongering crap from the free web.

Thanks Rupert! Can you please take the rest of your hate-filled biased rags off the free web as soon as possible too? Cheers.

I just hope the dying moments of the soon-to-be-extinct big media corps don't somehow bribe our government to betray us and gut the BBC, which is funded in a way which CAN give us free media, before the door hits them on their way out.

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As you may remember, there once was a lunch in Corfu between Lord Mandelson and David Geffen, one Hollywood mogul and record company exec.

After that meeting, Mandy came out with his new copyright bill, the Digital Economy Bill, which among other things, gives the government the right to force your ISP to spy on you and cut you off if you're accused (without trial mind) of unlicensed sharing copyright infringement, and not-incidentally also gives the Secretary of State, that is him, Mandy, the power to create new penalties for online infringements whenever he wanted without interference from the Commons, the Lords or even the Queen.

That bill is currently being read in the Lords (if you haven't written to your MP then you likely should have. I did, and I got a reply).

Some Liberal Democrat Lords have proposed an amendment which frankly just makes things worse.

I mean I dunno what they're thinking. Someone's convinced 'em that it's a good idea to allow courts to order all of Britain's ISPs to shut off access to specific sites if these sites were found to be involved with copyright infringement. Which would be all of the 'web storage' and 'backup' places on the entire net, basically.

I fired off a tweet to my local Liberal Democrat representative asking what the hell was going on? I mean, this ain't a freedom-loving amendment.

Rather than taking two months to reply, she responded initially within hours and then she blogged about what a bad idea it was and coordinated an open letter asking her colleagues to reconsider. Keeping me in the loop through twitter the whole time.

Which is pretty good I reckon. Hurray for Bridget Fox. Hope she gets to be my MP some day.

The amendment will hopefully be dropped, and the whole bill will hopefully fail to be pushed through before the election but it really seems to be the aim of the top Labour folks to get it through before they have to stand down and the Tories are offering their usual token resistance while clearly secretly thinking "Woah! I can't believe our luck! That's exactly what I'd do." so I dunno how much hope there is that it'll fail.

Incidentally, this is the same bill which will allow professional organisations to use your images freely, just so long as they fail in their "adequate search" to find out who they should pay while also ensuring they can shut off your ISP access if you repost one of theirs.

Fucks sake! This will all be law in six weeks or so.

Even if it does fail, the Tories will no doubt make something similar should they get in and there's literal secret conspiracies at top international political levels to try and do much the same.

This stuff is about the very thing which makes us human: our culture. Learning from and copying each other, about the free flow of ideas, about corporations being determined to steal our culture from us and force us to pay to get it back. It's about political corruption and bribery. Yet people barely seem to care. it sounds like the Pirate Party will barely have enough cash to run a handful of candidates at the elections, the only upside of which I can see is at least it won't leave me torn between voting for Bridget or some local Pirate.

*sigh*

And some folks think it's about "Stealing" music.

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New Novella

My new novella, entitled "Do Dream Sheep Bleat?" has been released this weekend. It's a short story about magic and mind, about consciousness, cognizance and conjuring. Also, there's a penguin whose picture is on the front cover.

You can read it online, for free, either in your browser or by downloading a pdf. You can also order a nicely bound print copy to be shipped directly to your door. As you can see from the pictures on this page, it's a handy pocket-sized mini-book. Nice and portable, easily transportable, weighing in at just 80 pages or so. The print copy costs just four UK pounds, but if you're to cheep to pay it, by all means just download.

What's it about?

The book follows a few days in the life and dreams of one John Shamrock, quoted on the back of the book as saying "Incredible, this book has completely changed the way I live my life. It's taught me my aims, my goals, how to achieve my dreams. Now I'm rich!"

John is, of course, a fictional character whose life is turned around over those few days by a book which he somehow acquires on a drunken night out. This book is a short novella with a picture of a penguin on the front called "Do Dream Sheep Bleat?", and appears to be a book about itself.

Over the few days reading that book, John meets a four foot tall, fat, squinty eyed penguin who teaches him about magic.

Magic

The penguin, it turns out, is a magical symbol infused with consciousness. It teaches John about "Sidual Magic," an archaic method to infuse symbols with the ability to have actual, physical, effects on the world.

A magical system which, of course, created the penguin itself, which gave him life.

As John slowly learns from the penguin, and the book, his understanding of his own consciousness, his world view, and as a result his whole life, is turned upside down.

Copyright Agreement

The book's unusual copyright agreement, termed "Copy-Far-Left," requires no payment, and allows anybody at all to copy the text with only one restriction: That they make another copy and send it to someone else.

If you do not make a copy and pass it on then you are a pirate and a thief, stealing my livelihood and worse, draining the penguin of the force which gives it power, consciousness and life.

Hope you enjoy reading the novella as much as I enjoyed writing it, please let me know what you think and even more importantly, don't forget to send it on to someone else too! Help increase the size and might of the army of penguins I've sent out into the world to do my bidding.

Click here to read or buy the book.

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Before Xmas I got a reply from my MP about The letter I wrote her earlier. Been too busy/lazy to update on that. The best bits follow.

The Government has a difficult balance to reach between protecting the creative industry from potentially huge losses incurred through illegal file sharing, and respecting individuals' rights to unrestricted and private use of the internet. The Creative Industries are currently undermined by illegal file sharing and measures to address it are due.

However, I understand your concern regarding the proportionality of proposed measures on peer to peer file sharing. A number of questions need to be answered including where due precess fits into a penalty enforceable by the Internet Service Providers. Furthermore, fears about the security and privacy of our private data and internet activity need to be addressed. I have written to the Secretary Of State for Business Innovation and Skills to raise these concerns[...].

In my view the industry should be putting it's energies into developing new business solutions and greater compromises may need to be made in order to develop these new business models.

I have written to Jack Straw to ask for more information on the next steps for reform of law in the area and I will write again when I receive a response.

She seems to be under the impression that file-sharing reduces sales. Despite the fact that the most shared things also sell the most, which is a common enough mistake I guess. Understandable, if mistaken. It's not clear from her reply if these "greater compromises" are copyrightists having to allow sharing, or file-sharers having to give up their privacy and freedom. Probably both I guess, that's the nature of compromise.

Anyway, I bring that up because she has indeed written again now that she has a response.

The Minister reiterates the importance of legislating to address online copyright infringement and explains briefly the process by which those identified as infringing copyright will receive warning from their ISPs and may be subject to a court action if the ISP is required to identify them to the rights holder as a result of a court order by the rights holder.

The further powers granted to the Secretary Of State by the Digital Economy Bill allow him/her to introduce technical powers through secondary legislation. As the Minister explains, these technical measures could include a restriction on bandwidth, or temporary suspension. The working of the independent appeals procedure which would be overseen by Ofcom are less clearly set out. The Bill is currently being scrutinised by the House of Lords and I am sure the Government will be pressed further on these powers. I will be following the passage of the Bill carefully.

At least it sounds like she can see giving the secondary powers is wrong, though it also appears she'll merely stand by and give her consent to such a thing should her party demand it.

She encloses the reply sent ot her from Stephen Timms:

Dear Emily,

The Government wants as many people as possible top enjoy all the benefits that broadband internet can bring. New technology has changed the way people wnat to use and access media content, in some cases faster than products and services commercially on offer have developed. We are also clear that the benefits of the internet must include economic benefits for our creative industries and artists. We therefore take extremely seriously the problem of on-line copyright infringement, and have been working closely with rights holders, media companies and internet fiorms to develop practical solutions to reduce and prevent this

Note: Big companies. They're talking to big companies, and no file sharers. No independent artists. No small struggling bands. Nobody with an actual myspace page. Likely no actual constituents. None of the people they're actually paid to represent. This is fairly typical.

He continues...

Whilst all parties would prefer a voluntary solution, rather than regulatory, it is clear that such a commercial solution is very difficult to achieve We recognise that one problem is the need for a level playing field and therefore acknowledge the need for a regulatory baseline.

The digital economy bill, published 20th November, sets out in detail our proposed legislation to tackle on-line copyright infringement, including unlawful peer to peer file-sharing. The Bill will impliment many of the key recommendations in the Government's Digital Britain Report.

The Bill would require ISPs to write to their customers whose accounts had been identified by a right holder as having been used for illegal down loading of their material. In the cases of the most serious infringers, if a right holder obtains a court order, the ISP would have to provide information so that the rights holder can take targeted court action.

We hope these arrangement on their own will secure the 70% reduction in illegal peer to peer file sharing which is our aim. If that proves not to be the case, the Bill provides a reserve power obliging an ISP to apply 'technical measures' to a customer's internet account to restrict or prevent illegal sharing. Technical measures might be a band width restriction, a daily downloading limit or, as a last resort, temporary account suspension. A proper independent appeal would be available against application of technical measures.

More widely we also include a reserve power to amend the Copyright Design and Paten Act. This will allow us to tackle quickly any misuse of emerging technologies for copyright infringement and provive an element of future proofing. These measures were adopted following two consultations on file-sharing and extensive meeting with all stakeholders.

ALL stakeholders? ALL of them? I wonder if Richard Stallman was there? I wonder how much attention they paid to Cory Doctorow? Or to ME, come to that. I wonder if those "stakeholders" were actually their constituents at all?

We also recognise the need to ensure proper education of consumers, for new attractive legal sources of content as well as a system of notifications. Notifications will play a significant part in that education role, but it is vital that there are attractive legal offers available so that unlawful behaviour is no longer the "default" for many seeking content on-line. Rights holders need business models which work in the new digital environment. That is why we welcomed the announcements such as the Virgin Media and Universal agreement, the development of Spotify and the music offers announced by Vodafone and Sky. These are the types of agreement which will play a critical role in moving the great majority of people away from piracy.

The agreements to which he refers, of course, are the agreements which are designed to ensure the big companies retain their stranglehold over our culture, that they remain the gate-keepers, able to determine which data is pushed at you through their 'legal' channels and blocking out all those who don't play their corporate game.

It's also interesting that these laws are being written by someone who still says "on-line" rather than online, who still says "down loading" rather than downloading, "band width" rather than bandwidth. Clearly people invested in net culture.

There's only one party which actually understands the issues here, which isn't in the pockets of the media giants.

Join the Pirate Party today.

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