December 29, 2021

Horse 2953 - Turkish Delight: Love It Or Loathe It - There Is No Middle Ground

1-2-3-4, I declare a holy war.

There are some arguments which are practically impossible to reconcile without making people very very angry. Apple vs Mac. Ford vs Holden. Pepsi vs Coke. Titus Livius vs Dionysius of Halicarnassus. York vs Lancaster. One such argument that ravages minds, rocks households, and splits communities is this:



Turkish Delight is either lovely or loathesome.

There is no middle ground here. This is a case of there being two great hills of opinion, where anyone who even attempts to venture down into the valley between the two sides, will get shot, nay deserves to get shot, with the arrows of ridicule. You must choose a side. 

Everyone can agree that the purple one, although boring, is a classic. Most people will fall on the side that the green one with silver is nice. The light blue one with silver and the hard centre is the subject of fistfights; not because people hate it but because everyone wants it. The yellow and red one, the really strange Turkish Delight with the liquid centre, slices opinion almost exactly in half. If this was a parliamentary division in the House of Representatives, it would be 75-75 with the Speaker of the House being forced to flee in terror lest half of the parliament and by extension half of the nation (12,500,016) coming after them with pitchforks.

J.S. Fry & Sons started making their rose flavoured Turkish delight surrounded by milk chocolate, in 1914 and just in time for Europe to descend into utter chaos. Historians generally disagree. That's not an incomplete thought, it's a non-sequitur which has been kakjammed into a thought for no good reason at all. In 1914 and not long after the invention of Fry's Turkish Delight, Europe decided to have an argument about an unconnected topic and it wasn't until 1919 and after Europe had finished its spat and millions lay dead in fields across the continent, that J.S. Fry & Sons were "merged" with Cadbury. Just the mere invention of this corresponds with chaos.

Twenty years' later, novelist and writer and lay theologian CS Lewis, mentions in "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe" (1950) that one of the protagonists, Edmund Pevensie willingly sold his soul and sold out his own family for only a few pieces of Turkish Delight. 

Food critic and historian Cara Strickland, suggests that:

"While many people assume that Edmund was taken with a classic, rose-flavored version of Turkish delight, Lewis never specifies a flavor, only that it was “the best Turkish delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center.” Regardless of flavor, such a description implies that it was made correctly (and thus certainly not by a British manufacturer)."
- Cara Strickland, JSTOR Daily, 3rd Aug 2016

It is interesting that CS Lewis took his initial notes for the "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe" during the second bout of calamity and chaos that tore through Europe last century and Cara Strickland casts aspersions on Cadbury rather slyly by the inference that they don't know how to make it properly.
I think that given that Fry's Turkish Delight had been made since 1914 and that Turkish Delight had been generally known in Britain since about 1880, then by the time that CS Lewis wrote "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe"  in the late 1940s, that it doesn't really matter if he is referring to the actual product from Turkey or the supposedly inferior product made in Britain. However, I think that we can take it as given that must have eaten Fry's Turkish Delight at some point.

Clearly this substance has only two possible opinions that come of it. Either people love it and it becomes an obsession or people hate it and want it hurled into the sun.

There is a good reason for this. Rosewater is a strange flavour to be putting into a sweet. Either someone will think that it's amazing or horrible. This is a different category to whether or not pineapple belongs on a pizza because the material substance of Turkish Delight is already pure confectionary. Does confectionary belong inside confectionary? Yes. 
If that is true, then this comes down purely to a matter of preference of flavour. Japan with its quite frankly bewildering array of Kit-Kat flavours has shown us that green tea, bacon, mochi, wasabi et al. can be made to work in confectionary and inside chocolate; while Whittaker's and Cadbury have shown us that Vegemite and kiwifruit don't work all that well. Rosewater on the other hand, is the OG of flavours and is positively ancient. The process of making rosewater via steam distillation predates Islam and was further refined by Persian chemists in the medieval Islamic world. Turkey got hold of it in the 18th century. 

It is already established and settled law in the fake internet court of Judge John Hodgeman that:

"People like what they like. You can't force someone to like something. You can expose them to a piece of work, but if they don't like it, that's the way it is. You can't talk them out of it."
- Judge John Hodgman, Ep 229, 29th Sep 2015

This means that even trying to convince someone that their opinion is wrong on this subject, especially when this is a purely subjective subject which neatly divides the population in twain, is a pointless exercise.

In reference to this, I can only offer my personal opinion on this subject:

B1 - Extremely Fine
14. Fry's Turkish Delight

Everything rated C3 and above is acceptable and everything rated D (Junk) and below should be rejected. I happen to like the Turkish Delight which is in both the individually wrapped packet and the bar but your mileage may vary. I have planted my flag on one hill. Even by declaring that Turkish Delight is lovely, I will have alienated half of the readership and possibly just wished torches and pitchforks on myself.

December 28, 2021

Horse 2952 - Learn MMT? How About You Learn Something More Basic

As someone who has read Smith, Say, Keynes, von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Pikety, Modigliani, Krugman et numeri, I can safely say that I know enough as to why I am suspicious of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT is a largish macroeconomic theory which takes the root assumption that currency is a public monopoly and that effects such as unemployment is proof that central banks are choking the supply of that currency.

The problem is that MMT is supported by a Greek chorus of fools who seem to think that just because governments can print all the currency in the world, that they should and that any and all after effects simple do not exist. 

Basically because most governments issue the fiat money of the state, that they can chuck out money like it is made of leaves and pay for goods, services, make transfer payments, and buy capital assets without giving a hoot about collecting taxation or issuing debt instruments to cover it. On that note, a central bank literally can not go into default on the debt issued in the fiat currency that it has just issued. From this perspective, Bond issues are merely a monetary policy instrument and not a funding instrument and if you disagree you can take a long run off a short pier.

Even student of economic history will tell you that this is bonkers madness. Friedrich Hayek would have opposed this kind of expansionistic argument by stating that public spending and chucking out money like it was rubbish would completely destroy the allocational function of markets for money and capital. Even his frenemy John Maynard Keynes would think that this is bonkers madness. He once told Franklin D Roosevelt that this kind of thinking where the US Federal Reserve could create new money just by clicking its fingers, would be like a man trying to get taller by buying bigger shoes or a man trying to gain weight be buying a bigger belt.

I hate to say it buy even after reading "Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems" by L. Randall Wray (2012) or Stephanie Kelton's book "The Deficit Myth" which came out in 2020, you still can not out run the rather obvious concept that chucking more money to pay for a slower slow-growing supply of goods and services, is going to lead to inflation because people who have the goods and services to sell will want more money for the same packet of goods and services. 

The really massive concept that the evangelists for MMT seem to consistently fail to understand is the concept of fidus. Fidus is the faith that a thing will do the task for which it has been designed. Fidus is the belief that the future capability of a thing can be reliably depended upon. What does this have to do with money? Money has always been fiduciary since the invention of money.

When money was nothing more than metallic blobs of electrum, stamped with the markings of the authority of the state that issued it, the expectation was that the people who received these blobs of metal could take them to a merchant of goods and/or services and hand them over in exchange for physical product or work which has been or will be performed. If that sounds obvious, then good. It is. You can not build a wall of logic unless the bricks are sound.

Whether that money has been coined from a precious metal like electrum (was), silver, gold, platinum etc. or whether it purely exists as a universal token system, be it real or virtual, every piece of money from ancient electrum staters, to silver drachmas, golden aurii, golden thalers and sovereigns, paper and plastic dollars, to electric and virtual bitcoin, all relies on the basic concept that whoever is at the other end of the transaction also believes that that money will enable them to continue to hand it over in exchange for physical product or work which has been or will be performed. 

The only reason that anything in the world has value is because we believe that it occasions some use to us, or conveys or has conveyed some kind of story either upon us or we upon it. In other words, the only reason that value exists, is to do with the continual choosing and election by the people wishing to extend value upon the thing. 

Also, to be brutally blunt and to have reduced literally the entire world, all the things, and all the people (and God(s)), down to an elemental level, the entire concept of value and every single action undertaken ever, is dependent upon current and future fidus, and some kind of basic electing love.

This sounds suspiciously like we're veering close to the idea of Say's Law but the thing that Jean Baptiste Say never cottoned onto was that supply never creates its own demand. What happens if you have a thing that nobody wants? Say's Law should for instance tell us that there is a price that someone is willing to pay for something like nuclear waste and just because a thing exists, is no guarantee that there will be someone who wants the thing.

Because money is just a universal token system which is denominated in the defined unitary pieces of the collective group which has agreed to collectively believe in it together (which is usually the citizens of a nation state who collectively believe in the future of that nation state), then the buying power of that particular nation state can only ever be defined by the desire that people have for the tokens and the number of tokens that there are in the system. Congratulation, we've arrived at our second obvious thing and that is that the value of money is subject to the forces of supply and demand and the equilibrium position that those two forces want to push the two lots of aggregate curves towards.

The statement that carrots are worth $2/kg is not only a statement that one kilo of carrots will require two units of the universal token but that the universal token, is good for half a kilo of carrots. Both of these things are subject to change depending on the relative demand and supply of both carrots and dollars. If there is a carrot shortage, then in general you should expect that it will take more tokens to but the same amount of carrots and likewise, if for some reason that carrots are in particularly high demand then the proprietor selling carrots would be a fool not to raise their price in order to maximise the amount of profits that they could gain, without doing any real work whatsoever. 

We always come down to:

- Do people want the thing?

- Do people want to sell the thing?

- Interest is the cost of credit.

- Inflation is a statement of how many more dollars you need to buy the same thing. 

Now I don't even care whether you use MMT or some orthodox explanation for what money is but the simple fact of the matter is that you can not just print unlimited amounts of money without there being consequences and the MMT evangelists never seem grasp this fact.

To wit:

The price paid for the aluminium cap on the top of the Washington Monument was $225; which was comparable to if it was made of silver. The cap was placed on top of the tower in 1884. In 1886 the Hall–Héroult process which turns bauxite into aluminium, would have meant that that same cap cost about 19 cents.

If it is possible to make a lot more of a thing, the price drops. In the case of money, the buying power drops. The thing that MMT evangelists seem to consistently forget is that dollars, even though they are denominated in dollars and therefore will always be worth $1 whatever that is, are also subject to the same forces of supply and demand as any other thing, both real and non-real.

Just wishing that you can make more money is a fantasy which because you can just dream up more, is practically worthless.

December 23, 2021

Horse 2951 - It's The Most Triangle Time Of The Year

 toblerone

leronebob

terlernob

torlerrot

rotnerler

noblerter

terrotone

rotlernon

nertobnon

tobnontor

lernertor

rottorone

nertobter

onenobtor

leronebob

rotlernon

lertorrot

rottornon

lerrottob

leronerot

oneonetor

nernobtor

rottornon

tertobnob

nobtorone

nonnerler

tortorrot

tobnobbob

bobnontor

rotnobtor

onenontob

bobterone

bobrotter

nobtortob

lerbobrot

nertobter

onenobner

bobbobtor

tobtobter

nerrotrot

tertertob

rotnonrot

torlernon

onenerner

tortertob

bobnobtor

nernonbob

rotbobtob

toblertor

tobtornob

lertornon

onetorbob

nobbobtob

onenerrot

rottortob

nobtorbob

lertobner

bobtertob

nertertor

onenobbob

toblertor

lerbobrot

rottorner

lerbobtob

onerotrot

nonnertor

tobonebob

bobterler

onenertor

rotbobnob

onerotter

nertornon

lerbobtob

tobtornob

onerotbob

tobterler

tobtornob

tobrotone

onenertob

toblerbob

nonrotnob

onelertob

nonlerrot

rotnerone

tortobner

rotnerler

tortobnon

terrotnon

terrotone

bobtobner

rotlerone

bobrottob

tortobrot

nobnerler

nobnerone

tornontor

rotnobner

bobrotler

terlerone

noboneler

tornobner

rotonebob

rottobler

nontertob

torlerone

nononeler

rotnontor

bobnerbob

nonnerner

rottortob

rotternob

nobtorner

nertorler

tertobter

boblerrot

tornonnob

rotbobnob

onebobnon

terlerbob

nerbobone

terlernob

torlerbob

lerbobbob

rotlerner

lerrotnon

bobnontor

tobtorler

lerrotnob

nerrotone

rotlernob

toroneler

lernobnon

nontorbob

nernerrot

nonnertor

rotternob

noblerler

terbobone

onenerner

lertobrot

bobtobner

lernertor

rotonetor

nobnobtor

lernobbob

onenernon

tornobner

bobrotler

tornonner

lerrotner

rottorler

terlerrot

oneternon

nerbobtob

bobnerter

ternonnon

tornerner

onetobner

tobrotler

nerrotter

onenernob

rotnobter

nerlernon

nontobter

onebobone

bobnonone

oneterrot

ternonone

lerlernon

onetorter

tornobler

rotterrot

tobnobnob

oneternon

lerrotone

tobterler

nobnonnob

lernerner

tornerner

onetertob

toronetob

nobterler

nerlerone

nonnobone

torrotner

tornobter

onenobone

bobnonnob

onenobrot

neronetob

torrotter

nobtortor

nontobnon

onebobler

tortorner

bobtobrot

tornonter

nobtorbob

onenobnob

rotbobrot

torlernob

nonnertob

nobtorbob

tobtertor

teronebob

lerbobtob

rotrottor

onelertob

rottobrot

toronener

tortobnob

bobonetob

bobbobone

rotnerner

tornobtob

tobterler

rotbobnob

tobrotbob

tornontob

boboneone

terlertor

rotbobnon

nerrotrot

oneterler

nobrotbob

tornonnob

oneterler

onetorner

nobbobnob

oneoneter

ternobnon

tortortob

nobtorbob

leroneter

tertorbob

nernerner

bobtorler

lernonler

onenonter

ternernob

bobnobnon

nobrotler

nobnontob

rotlerler

nobnobnon

nobtobner

tobnerrot

tobonenon

ternobner

oneonetob

oneoneler

toblernon

nobtertor

tertorler

tertorrot

nernobnob

neronetob

leroneler

rotnontob

nernontor

tobrotrot

bobrotnon

terterbob

neronenob

lertobnob

tornonbob

boblernon

nonrotnob

nernonone

lertobtor

nobnobone

torrotone

nobnonbob

tobnonter

torlerner

onelerner

nontobtob

rotlertob

bobonebob

rotnonnob

nobtorler

tobtobner

onenerler

tobnobtob

rotnernon

tobnobone

bobnonter

tobnerone

torbobner

nobtornob

lernernob

torterter

bobnobtob

oneonenob

torterbob

lerterrot

onetornob

onenonnob

nertobnon

bobrotler

onetorner

terbobnob

ternertor

onerotner

onenonone

tortertob

lerrotone

rottobrot

nobtorbob

nerterone

bobnobtor

oneoneone

bobbobler

bobterler

oneterone

tobnobler

nerlerrot

rotnobter

tobnobter

tobtobler

nobtobnon

bobtobtob


December 21, 2021

Horse 2950 - Ricky Gervais: A Lesson In Unfunny

While on my way home from work on Monday Afternoon, thanks to the train strike and then catching the B1 bus to the City and be trapped on the 607X bus and packed in like matches in a box of Redheads (in the middle of a pandemic), I had the displeasure of enduring the so-called comedy stylings of Ricky Gervais. 

I can not say that I was offended by Ricky Gervais (though I suspect that that may have been his intent) but I will say that being stuck on the bus with a comedy routine of his coming over the tannoy, was still not a pleasant experience. 

One of the curious things about post-post-modernism, is that not only do we have a meta-narrative but there is also commentary on that meta-narrative. This kind of thing is just inside the boundaries of what still constitutes a monologue but really, comedians like Ricky Gervais are running a one-sided discussion where the audience doesn't have the right of reply. 

An oft repeated trope of this ilk of comedian is that they self-report that they want to challenge the audience. Now I don't really object to "challenging the audience" (whatever that's supposed to mean) because in principle, comedy and satire and narrative, all rely on setting up a series of expectations or narrative plot devices and then resolving them in some fashion. Chickens cross roads because there is a minor conflict between the protagonist and the environment; which is then resolved in an unjoke.

Setting -> Character -> Conflict -> Resolution

This is an ancient formula; which in the world of comedy, can be resolved through satire, vanity, parody, wordplay, and a bunch of other comedic devices. I am not above using any and/or all of them but that doesn't necessarily make me a comedian. What that makes me is a human who understands how stories work. 

As an essayist and not a comedian, I know the value in selecting words and turns of phrases, in order to achieve specific ends. I know why and how sentences and paragraphs and even how jokes are constructed; so that a logical structure is finished. The point of making sure that you carefully select words, paragraphs, and sentences, might very be because you want to make weak puns and jokes that go by undetected. However, a comedian isn't an essayist, a comedian isn't a polemicist, and neither is a comedian a thought provoker (though that might be a by-product of the craft).

What a comedian is, is someone who employs comedian to entertain the audience. Whatever challenges, whatever information, whatever piece of persuasion, whatever whatever that isn't entertainment for the audience, isn't the prime objective of the comedian. There is a place for the job of someone to make an audience think about both sides of an issue and there is even a place for comedians to go to really dark places but Gervais seems to want to go straight to the point where the audience is either pro-this or anti-everything and if you as the audience even think anything different to I, then you must leave. There is an irony that for someone who is anti-religion, he ends up being evangelistically atheist to the point where he is just as cruel as his targets.

The problem with Ricky Gervais, is that I find him deeply unfunny. The statement that "if you do not like it you are free to leave", actually does nothing to address the material of the comedian. If you offend someone, you're probably less likely to entertain them and although Ricky Gervais isn't directly trying to offend me necessarily, he fails at his first job of being entertaining.

This is a problem which a lot of comedians seem to be suffering from at the moment. They seem to have forgotten that comedy is about being entertaining. Other comedians such as Michael McIntyre bores me to tears, John Cleese doesn't think that he needs to write jokes any more, Jimmy Carr wants to use vulgarity as a joke, Chris Rock thinks that yelling is a prime delivery method. Hannah Gadsby wants to tell the audience stories, which I am not sure count as comedy. 

As I said, I am not a comedian; so the retort that "if you think that you can do a better job, then why don't you do it" doesn't really fly. If a plumber has come to my house and done a bad job and there's a leak coming from the ceiling, you can either get that same plumber to come back and do a better job or you employ someone else to do a better job. As a member of an audience, I obviously can not do a better job (unless I write my own comedy routine) but I can find some other comedian to do a better job for me. 

I will readily admit that comedy is subjective and what I find funny will differ from what someone else finds funny. I will also readily admit that what I find funny often revolves around the surreal, the absurd, and the cleverness in wordplay. I find comedy programs like BBC Radio 4's "The News Quiz", "Just A Minute", and NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" to be generally the funniest thing in the week. They also require the comedians to work the hardest without having anything to help them, even though I am totally aware that there will be set pieces and a lot of polishing in the edit suite after everthing is in the can. It's perhaps telling that none of those comedians mentioned are regulars on any of those shows and I think that it is because of a lack of fluid comedic skill.

Ricky Gervais though is an interesting character. He wrote an starred in an unfunny comedy series which found its humour in his character being a terrible person and the amount of social squirming that followed on from that. That kind of thing is where the comedian acts as the lightning rod and you expect them to fail. The problem with this kind of comedy is that there will always be sections of the population who think that such a person, however terrible, is a hero and that they no longer act as a lightning rod but a spokesperson.

The actual piece in question had to do with Ricky Gervais making fun of people with cerebral palsy. There probably is a market for comedy making fun of the disabled but I do not know why it is supposed to be held up as the pinnacle of comedy. I'm not really objecting to how 'politically correct' it is, it just doesn't seem all that fair to someone on the receiving end. I think that if anything, what I am suffering from is an abundance of empathy, and rather than acting as a lightning rod in the character of Ricky Gervais being someone not to emulate, he appears more as a spokesperson for cruelty. 

I will not judge you, you are allowed to like what you like and find something funny or not. For me, the most offensive thing about this as comedy, is that it is being passed off as comedy. Political correctness, cruelty and empathy aside, this just isn't particularly good writing. It might be delivered well but it doesn't demonstrate comedy which is entertaining. I imagine that the bus driver thought that this was amusing and good for him I suppose but I experienced an unfunny routine, against my will and I was not entertained at all. 

0/10 - not a comedy program

December 20, 2021

Horse 2949 - Could A Falcon Have Won The Daytona 500?

I sit here in 2021 after the Australian Motor Manufacturing industry has been burnt to the ground and with it, most of the brain power and talent that used to be used to create it. I want to wind the clock back 40 years and ponder what might have been because I suspect that no amount of support from the Australian Government would have stopped the eventual closure of the industry. 

The car makers deigned to build cars here because of taxation penalties and it was the removal of those penalties rather than subsidy payments which convinced the car makers that we are a market worth selling to but not one worth employing in. That view appears to be shared by the practically the entire rightist side of politics in this country. We are also swayed by what the United States tells us to do, based upon a crippling existential fear that generic 'Asians' will take over; which is ironic given that Japan, Korea, China, India, Vietnam, Thailand... all appear to be better at having things built in their own country. Australians over the past 40 years have deliberately been made more stupid and less capable by design.

This is why I ponder the broad question of why the United States' car makers continued to be perfectly happy to build bad cars from the so-called Malaise Era and beyond. At no point during the life of the Commodore or Falcon, did the United States produce a better car as an equivalent.

The Ford Falcon which was introduced in 1960 as Ford's "Compact" car in the United States, when built in Australia became Australia's "big" family car. Apart from minor modifications to the platform, most noticeably in 1986 in preparation for EA which debuted in 1988 and for the development of AU in 1999, it remained pretty well much the same for the entire run. Ford's Thriftpower Six engine which started out at 144cid, would eventually grow to 250cid before eventually settling around the 243cid mark. At no point of the existence of either the Ford Taurus or the Ford Fusion, were either of those cars either better built or more capable than the Australian Ford Falcon.
Likewise, the Impala 7 onwards, which was an almost 1:1 equivalent to the VT Commodore,  was also always worse built and less capable than the Commodore. From 1988, Commodore took on the Buick V6 and then the LFX V6; which were American engines. Commodore drove the rear wheels and not the front.
Even today, a 2016 Falcon is still better built and will probably be more reliable prospect than an out of the box 2021 Mustang. The 1964 Mustang was built on the 1960 Falcon platform and the fact that it hung around in Australia for 56 years says that it was pretty good the first time. I have driven the current generation Mustang and I am struck at just how poorly it is built and how unfun it is to drive. 

In 1981, NASCAR reduced the capacity of their cars from an official 450cid to 360cid. They also chose to run 'compact' cars with a wheelbase of 110 inches. Since from 1992 NASCAR switched to bespoke bits of kit which shared exactly zero components with the road car, this means that the 5.7L Commodore arrived way too late for my hypothetical. Falcon only had it's 351 Cleveland V8 until 1983 because worldwide production of that engine ended in late 1982 and Ford Australia managed to wrangle a smallish batch of stock before the end ot the run. This leads me to a pointed question. For an exceptionally small window, the XD and XE Ford Falcon, with its 111 inch wheelbase, would have been technically eligible to race in NASCAR. What I want to know, is could a Falcon have won the Daytona 500?


Standard production Cleveland V8s won the Bathurst 500/1000 in 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1977 and 1981. Dick Johnson's win in 1981 was a shortened race but the same car would front up for the 1982 event and finish that. 1000km is a shade over 621 miles; which means that distance hasn't really been a problem for quite some time.

Also what I think is interesting, is that during the 1981 Daytona 500 broadcast, CBS Commentator Ken Squires made the comment that the cars were generating about 550 horsepower. In the 1982 Bathurst 1000 broadcast, Dick Johnson tells Mike Raymond that his XE Falcon was generating 590 and maybe 600 horsepower; which says to me that a Cleveland V8 in the United States and a Cleveland V8 in Australia are practically interchangeable. 

Obviously a NASCAR Grand National Car would have been geared differently to an Australia Touring Car but gearboxes and differentials and the ratios of gears inside those components would have been changeable. I imagine that a car built for Bathurst, with its 20 corners and surprisingly slow sections, would have far shorter gearing for better acceleration, than a NASCAR Grand National Car which has to cruise on or about 200 mph for 500 miles. Even now they talk about short run and long run speed; taking into account gearing, tyre pressures and other minutiae which has to do with answering a different set of questions. 

NASCAR Grand National Cars of the early 1980s are rectilinear boxes, with massive notches behind the C-pillar and with what is basically a flat facing wall at the from of the car. The Falcon which was a four door, had a much gentler rear rake of the back window; which I suspect should mean that it produced less rear end drag. I also suspect that the XD Falcon and then improved XE Falcon with that lip that bends over the front of the bonnet, should also produce less frontal drag than almost every American car which ran in NASCAR in the period; with the exception of the Oldsmobile Cutlass which had a very pointy front section.

On the face of it, Falcon might look like a bad choice to attack the Daytona 500 with, as it was smacked 8:2 by the Torana and Commodore from 1975 to the end of Group C. Mostly that has to do with Ford Australia losing interest and Holden being the de facto factory team with the most horsepower. Mazda had a tilt and Nissan's Turbo Bluebird was still about 5 years away from doing serious damage. 

This say to me that if privateer Falcon competitors could on occasion compete against and beat the factory Holdens, then the underlying product must have been pretty solid. With a proper racing Cleveland under the bonnet, I think that it potentially had the ability to beat the Americans in their own backyard.

December 16, 2021

Horse 2948 - Oh No English, O English, O Thief

"O Holy Night, The stars are brightly shining.

It is the night, of our dear Saviour's birth."

Christmas is one of the strangest times of the year. As we live in an increasingly secular society, the instance of most people singing Christmas Carols has probably passed and now we're more likely to hear increasingly banal music that has rushed in to fill the void.

What once was a Christian co-opt and invasion of a Roman festival, is now a secular co-opt and invasion of that Christian festival. The banal has almost succeded in toppling the sacred when it comes to the kinds of songs that people sing; and with it, one of the last remnants where you are likely to find that curious word in the vocative register: O.

Yes, 'O'. One letter. That is not a misspelling. O is an acceptable word to play in Scrabble for instance, albeit one that is almost impossible to put on the board. When playing Scrabble because you have to build off of words that are already on the board, it means that it is impossible to make one letter words most of the time. The only time that you could in theory make a one letter word, is right at the beginning of the game, and those words are very limited.

A - which is the indefinite article in the singular. 

This is a blog post. It could be a waste of time. I have just seen a horse.

E - which is a regional interjection from Yorkshire.

E by gum. E up fluffy whiskers. 

I - which is the perpendicular pronoun.

I think that this is obvious.

O - which is what is known as a poetic vocative.

O English, what trouble hast thou wrought?

'O' is different to oh. Oh is used as an interjection. 'Oh' can be used to sharply express a whole cast of emotion; including disappointment, sorrow, joy, pain, pleasure, hesitation, regret, and can even be used as recognition of what someone else has said, or with a questioning intonation to further press someone for more information about what they have just said.

In text, 'oh' doesn't have to be capitalised and might occur in the middle of a sentence. As a hanging interjection, it will be entrapped by surrounding commas because it isn't of itself a clause. 

'O' on the other hand is always capitalized. As a poetic vocative, it always immediately precedes the person or thing  being addressed. This is the odd thing though, even though it is a poetic vocative (which means that it is employed in addressing or invoking a person or thing, it isn't actually a proper noun. 

Pronouns may be played on the Scrabble board. It is perfectly acceptable to play His, Hers, Theirs, Ours, You etc. on the Scrabble board. It is even acceptable to play 'I' on the Scrabble board because while I may be a pronoun, it is not a proper noun; for nobody has the proper name of 'I'. Cycling back around to 'O'. There isn't anyone or anything called 'O' unless that letter is used as the initial for something else. Roy Orbison was know as 'The Big O' but now we've moved well away from the word 'O'.

'O' as a vocative can be found in places like:

'O Yahweh, my God, in you I have taken refuge' (Psalm 7:1),

'O holy night, the stars are brightly shining' (Christmas carol),

'O Love divine, what hast thou done!' (Charles Wesley),

'O Canada! Our home and native land!' (Canadian national anthem),

'O Fortuna, Velut luna, Statu variabilis.' (Carmina Burana, Carl Orff)

'O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,' (Walt Whitman)

In all of those places, the poetic vocative is invoked when the person or thing is bigger than the one making the invocation. The vocative case in English is used in very formal settings and the most common places that you will hear it are in statutory bodies like courts and parliament. 'Mister Speaker', 'Madam President', 'M'lud', are all in this form.

The reason why a scabby language like English, that nasty little thief of the Anglo-Frisian language family even has a vocative case is likely because had it imposed upon it when the Normans invaded England in 1066. English's cousins in Norwegian, German and Icelandic generally do not have a vocative case and when they do, it is because English passed it back to them once the English edition of the Bible started to make its way around the world.

O in English is first recorded the middle of the twelfth century; and it is apparent that Middle English got it from Old French who in turn got it from Latin ō, who by that time had already abandoned it for academic uses. English's vocative 'O' is a late addition to the language; but was already seen as archaic by the time that the Authorised Bible was published, under the direction of King James I (James VI of Scotland). Probably because of the ubiquity of the King James Bible from 1611 onwards, 'O' was given a second chance to escape; hence the reason why it exists in Christmas carols and poetry.

"Oh Holy Night!" which is wrong, looks more like a creative interjection in place of a swear word; in the same way that Bandit Heeler's favourite injection in "Biscuits!". "Oh, Holy Night!" looks like either a declaration of surprise or disappointment. However "O Holy Night!" which is actually how the thing is spelled, uses the vocative case and declares that the "Holy Night" is the thing which is sacred or worthy. Likewise "O Canada" places Canada as the thing which is being declared as worthy; which is fitting as a national anthem is usually the national song which declares some kind of worthiness to the nation, flag, or monarch which represents it. "Oh Canada!" sounds like a swear word and "Oh, Canada!" sounds like the sort of thing that someone might say if they have been merrily sailing along for months and have accidentally bumped into Canada (to be fair, Canada is pretty big; so it's not like you could have missed it).

Vocative 'O' almost but not quite falls into the category of being a skeuomorph within the English language. Just like the little handle on the side of maple syrup bottles which is totally useless, or pictures of steam trains on level crossing signs despite the fact that steam trains haven't really been in main line use for more than 60 years, or even that picture of a dogbone handset on the icon for 'Phone' when it's totally obvious that the mobile phone that you are using looks nothing like that, vocative 'O' is almost totally useless but hangs around as a decoration to mark the worthy and sacred.

In a world where the most common songs that you are likely to hear at Christmas are now "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey, "Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time" by Paul McCartney, or "Jingle Bells" by whoever it is, then vocative 'O' can not exist because once the sacred and the worthy has been scraped away, there is simply no place for it at all.

O English, what trouble hast thou wrought?

Aside:

Compare this curious line from 'O Holy Night':

"Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand."

- O Holy Night

with:

"With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free,"

- O Canada

If you do have a glowing heart, then there is a chance that you are either radioactive and should seek urgent medical care, or that you are E.T. and should run away from urgent medical care. In both cases, it sounds incredibly uncomfortable.

December 15, 2021

Horse 2947 - I Couldn't Organise A Piss-Up In A Brewery

SENATOR WATT: I do, and it relates to infrastructure. The report, and there are copies here, says: "Backbenchers were frustrated with her (Senator Bridget McKenzie) leadership style and have not ruled out a challenge to her position."

One MP said it was a "waste of time" contacting Senator McKenzie because she "never gets back to you", while another said she "couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery".

- Senator Murray Watt, in Hansard

There's just something uniquely... Australian about Australian English. Maybe it's because the colony of New South Wales which kicked off the English language's adventures on this wide brown land, wasn't a colony of pilgrims and dreamers in search of a better life but a penal colony, made up of the refuse that Mother England didn't want any more and dumped sufficiently far away enough that they could ignore them.

We weren't good enough to send actual real money out to and so the colony of criminals and ne'er-do-wells used what they had, and since the government of the colony was martial law with what was an outpost of the Royal Navy in charge, the totally official unofficial currency of the colony of New South Wales for the first three decades was rum. I think that that says a lot.

We're a less than noble nation with a far from noble language and the fact that this kind of turn of phrase is to be found in Hansard (the official record of what is said in parliament) is inevitable. Is there a more Australian phrase than saying such-and-such and or so-and-so "couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery"? Not only does this play on the stereotype that Australians are boorish drunkards but it also makes use of that very Australian trope of language which turns simile and metaphor into hyperbole. 

The premise that someone "couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" assumes that a brewery, being a place with lots of beer, should be an easy place to organise a mass drinking event. However, as with quite a lot of turns of phrase and idioms, if you even scratch the surface just a tiny little bit, you find that the thing asserted is actually quite difficult. 

1.

The easy part is getting hold of the alcohol. By virtue of you already being in a brewery, beer is plentiful. However, merely bringing lots of alcohol to a venue is by far and a way the easiest single item on a whole slew of items that you need to mark off a checklist, in order to properly organise this event. This is just the first of many.

2.

The second thing, which is already done for you, is the licensing of the event. Presumably unless the brewery is extremely generous, which I very much doubt that they are as they are a commercial operation, then the selling of alcohol needs to be covered by a licence to do so under the Liquor Act 2007.

https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-2007-090#sec.32

32   Wholesale suppliers of liquor

A producer/wholesaler licence authorises the licensee, if the licensee carries on business as a wholesale supplier of liquor—

(a)  to sell liquor by wholesale, at any time on the licensed premises, to persons authorised to sell liquor (whether by wholesale or by retail), and

(b)  to sell or supply liquor, at any time on the licensed premises—

(i)  to the employees of the licensee or of a related corporation of the licensee, and

(ii)  to customers and intending customers for consumption while on the licensed premises, but only for the purposes of tasting.

- Section 32, Liquor Act 2007

A brewery will by virtue of if being a production facility of alcoholic produce, already have a production licence under the Liquor Act 2007; which they will have had to organise before they even produced a single drop of their product. A production licence already entitles the producer to sell product to either wholesalers, retail sellers such as pubs, clubs, and other licenced venues, as well as the general public. That makes sense and should be obvious as it would simply not do if you have a licence to produce a product but be unable to sell it.

3.

Immediately we run into the problem that if you intend to sell alcohol to the general public, then the Liquor Act 2007 directs the licensee to define the areas in which alcohol is to be sold. 

In order to sell alcohol to the general public, the licencee needs to have supplied a floor plan that clearly shows the boundaries proposed for the licensed area. Again, this is almost always covered when setting up the conditions for the licence in the first place but as a production facility which sells to wholesalers and retailers, then that might not have been the case. Similar provisions apply to bottle shops and big liquor merchants, who have what is known as an "off-licence" where the consumption of alcohol is done privately and off the premises of the business.

My assumption is that a brewery will more than likely have defined the terms of the production licence as an off-licence because they wouldn't normally expect to sell to the general public on the premises. You can of course apply for a temporary on-licence and this requires not only a floor plan but extra details of the proposed licensee, premises and business owner and the usual contact details for an authorised person.

Normally a venue will have to defind its requested liquor trading hours as part of the licence process but as we are talking about a brewery, the production licence already entitles them to 24-Hour trading, with the proviso that there be a 6 hour break somewhere in the day. Most big venues have multiple liquor licences which define different areas; which they will open and close throughout the day, which not only allows them to be compliant under the act but also allows the venue to employer cleaners to make the place presentable.

On the detail of defining the size of the venue, in this case it will be the entire brewery. Again, this will have already been defined when applying for the production licence in the first place. On that note though, for a very very big venue such as the Sydney Cricket Ground, the Sydney Football Stadium, or perhaps Olympic Park, the whole facility; perhaps including spillways, throughfares, gardens, etc. will have been defined as the venue, including if the venue holds more than a hundred thousand people. If you are watching a football match and nip off to the bar at half time and bring back some beer, then you haven't actually left the premises which is covered by the stadium's liquor licence.

4.

It should be obvious that you are inside a brewery. I have no idea exactly how big said brewery is but it might range from a micro-brewery which exists in a single room to a massive industrial facility. Immediately there will be Occupational Health & Safety issues which need to be addressed. 

Apart from the usual OH&S plan that needs to be in place in every workplace, the admittance of the general public presents and extra series of complications. Presumably there will need to be areas which are roped off or demarcated, where your soon to be intoxicated patrons will not be allowed to go. Ropes may not be enough. You may need to hire more substantial barriers and/or even security staff to enforce the restriction of movement. 

My suggesting at this point would be to hold the event in an area which would normally be used for transporting finished product; which will usually be where trucks and/or forklifts would normally be operating. Those areas in very big facilities should already be marked off anyway.

5.

It is probably sensible, though not compulsory, to consider setting up an incident register. An incident register is a record of certain types of incidents that occur at a licensed venue and they are mandatory if venue is authorised to sell or supply liquor after midnight at least once a week on a regular basis.

Given that a production licence already entitles the brewery to 24-Hour trading, then although the Liquor Act 2007 is unclear if it needs to keep an incident register, it surely can not hurt to do so.

6.

I am going to assume that the brewery will have some kind of toilet facilities. What I am unsure of is how many people that will be at this event. That second thing will determine whether or not the existing toilet facilities are adequate or not. 

In general, the minimum required number of sanitary facilities is:

- 1 toilet pan per up to 100 male users,

- 1 toilet pan per no more than 25 female users,

- 1 urinal and 1 washbasin per 50 men, and

- 1 washbasin per 50 women.

As an aside, this is the reason why in general that male toilets are on the whole, stinkier that female toilets. It isn't necessarily because males are more or less disgusting but rather, there are less facilities for them to use because the law assumes a higher throughput. A client of ours who operates a nightclub, has a venue with 2 toilet pans and 1 urinal and 2 washbasins in the male toilets, and 8 toilet pans and 2 washbasins in the female toilets. 

If this event is really small however, then the Occupational Health & Safety Act stipulates that there’s no need to provide extra sanitary facilities if the total number of people is not more than 20. You may in fact be able to get away with using the existing toilets in the brewery. 

7. 

Assuming that you have ticked off every single item above and before you have begun to set up your temporary bar, then you will need find or hire some people who can serve your attendees. Pulling a pint is a skill that can be learnt relatively quickly but there are legal obstacles which your bar staff and in fact the licensee will need to have climbed over.

Each of the bar staff will need evidence of having completed Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) qualifications, a current National Police Certificate issued within the last 3 months, and evidence that each of the three identity documents used when applying for the National Police Certificate have been sighted by the licencee.

End.

Having said all of this, depending on the brewery in question it might be possible that they already have everything in place. A brewery might see this as an extra avenue for revenue. For instance, the Bunderberg Rum factory in Bundaberg, runs tours of the factory; which after you have been through the facility, lets you taste their wares. I expect that the factory actually holds both a production and retail licence under the relevant liquor act of Queensland. The Carlton & United Brewery which used to be on Broadway in Sydney, owned and operated the pub which was on the corner of Broadway and Harris Streets but I have no idea if they ever conducted tours and or events in the brewery.

What I am certain of is that if the checklist needed to organise a piss-up in a brewery is longer than your arm, then saying someone "couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" isn't as scathing as initially thought. It turns out that the request involves setting up something which I assume isn't normally done and that unless you have had previous experience, or are just really good at organsing something and navigating the legal minefield then organising a piss-up in a brewery is probably beyond most people and certainly beyond my inclination and want to do so.

December 14, 2021

Horse 2946 - Train Drivers Have To Keep Track Of Every Detail - STRIKE!

As I write this, the Rail, Train, and Bus Union (RTBU) has taken industrial action has decided only run Australian built trains on the Sydney Trains network. Services right across the network are in all kinds of disarray and while the general public has been directly affected by this industrial action, they appear to be fine with it. I am personally inconvenienced but I am very much fine with this.

The RTBU's motives are actually pretty reasonable. Train staff kept have trains working during the pandemic, in spite of the danger that the virus could have presented them with a chance of death, and the NSW State Government under the then Treasurer and now Premier Dominic Perrottet and Transport Minister Andrew Constance have decided to reward train staff by announcing a works program which will replace the K-Sets and Tangaras with the next generation of trains that will not have guards on board. That is like saying: "Thank you for your hard word; by the way, you're fired."

Sydney's trains are unique in the fact that we are one of the few cities in the world to run full-size overland stock on heavy rail lines. I know of very few suburban rail networks in the world where you could run a mainline diesel train through an underground commuter station. Not only can you do this in Sydney but we have done in the past.

That presents an operational challenge which is different to say the Paris Metro, New York Subway or London Underground. Those three networks have all run driverless trains, quite apart from running trains without guards, but those networks also run relatively short trains compared with Sydney. We have already seen platform length barriers and doors on the Northwest Metro line in Sydney but to retrofit that kind of infrastructure to a lot of Sydney's suburban railway stations is an exercise in stupidity.

A train heading toward the city in Sydney, can be 50km away, running in the rain and will be outside for the vast majority of the journey. You could remove the duty of the guards and place it upon the responsibility of the driver and maybe that is what the NSW State Government intends to do but that says to me in principle that whoever is making the decision, doesn't fundamentally understand what the real world is like. 

Suppose that you are at Doonside Station on a Wednesday night and that it is raining. Do we really expect the driver of the train to pull the train up, monitor all of the eight cars, open and close the doors, and then pull away without either leaving people behind or getting out and helping less mobile passengers out of or onto the train? The NSW State Government does.

Suppose that it is 07:39pm on a Thursday evening and some hoodlums have got on the train. They are terrorising a woman on the train and threaten to steal her handbag. Let's remove the guard from this scenario. My advice would be for her to never get on the train in the first place because the trains are now decidedly unsafe. 

The RTBU who is not only looking out for their members and their working conditions, as front line workers who provide an essential service which maintains the proper functioning of our fair city, is also looking out for the general public; to whom they provide that service. Say what you like about whether or not you think that unions have too much power, the truth is that nobody else with any power whatsoever is in the corner of the general public and fighting for us.

I am pretty sure that the Premier Dom Perrottet who is the member for Epping, doesn't really use the train network even though his electorate is one of the most connected. I am pretty sure that the Treasurer Andrew Constance who is the member for Bega, also doesn't really use the train network because trains only go as far south as Nowra. I am also sure that neither of these people either care or have to live with the consequences of their actions. Power without responsibility almost always leads to knavery; which invariably it must do because people without exception are selfish.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it is that government can if it wants to, literally pay us money to stay home. I personally think that that's a horridly inefficient use of that money and so it would be more sensible if government employed more people to provide services for us. The point is that the government isn't a business and doesn't really have to return dividends and profits to its shareholders. As it is, the provision of public transport is generally a loss making enterprise; where the difference in revenues and expenses can be recouped through taxation. Paying people to do jobs for us, such as drive trains, keep us all safe on those trains, and provide the necessary ancillary staff for the railway network, is I think a sensible use of government funds.

The reason why governments in principle do not want to provide services, is that there are forces who do not want to pay tax. The people who have much, would rather that the people who have little have even less. This is further evidenced by the fact that wage theft is pretty much rampant all over the world and slavery doesn't exist any more, only because people had to fight for the right not to be held as chattel goods; sometimes through the payment of their blood on battlefields. The people who would prefer that government is run like business, act as if they have no responsibility to society whatsoever. Those people are currently in charge of the NSW State Government.

I also agree with the notion from the RTBU that their industrial action means that they are not driving foreign built trains today. Again, it is good that they government pays people to provide goods and services; and in this case the goods in question are club goods that we all share. I find it criminally stupid that we buy trains from overseas. 

Firstly that the NSW State Government thinks so very little of the people of NSW that it would prefer to spend money overseas and employ people in other countries, than it would to pay people within its own borders. A parent doesn't kick their child in the face and give that child's dinner to the next door neighbour's children; but the NSW State Government certainly does.

Secondly it says that the NSW State Government in its pursuit of reducing its costs, would rather refuse to train the people living in its own borders and prefer to buy things on the cheap. This says that it doesn't even think that the people of NSW are worth investing in, for the future either. 

The trains which are being operated on the network today are the remaining K-Sets which were being built until 1985 and the Tangara sets which were built from 1987 until 1995. That means that for 26 years, or a generation of people, governments on both side the aisle have thought so very little of the people of NSW that they chose to employ nobody in the state to build our trains. 

I really really really like the idea of today's industrial action, it manages to strike a bell in the morning and afternoon peak periods but because we are still in a pandemic, it's not incredibly disruptive. It has been chosen deliberately to say something about where we choose to buy our trains from. Perhaps elegantly (insofar as much as industrial action can be elegant) this is the people whose jobs are directly affected, making use of the voice that they have and speaking. If there is no voice willing to speak for you, then you'd best learn how to yell.

December 13, 2021

Horse 2945 - Villain Defeats Villain For The 2021 F1 World Championship

Max Verstappen is the 2021 Formula One World Champion. Although this is not my ideal outcome for this year (I would have preferred Lewis Hamilton to win the title, claim his 8th World Championship and then retuire), I think that I am fine with this result. In some Formula One seasons you have drivers who are heroes and villains but in 2021 both Lewis and Max played the role of villains and did so in a spirit of maximum spite.




2021 saw Lewis Hamilton, the consummate professional and practically complete grand prix driver, get knocked off the top by Max Verstappen who effectively employed bluster and bravado to good effect. Both drivers are incredibly skilled, both drivers are in very good equipment, and the dog fight back and forth throughout the whole season showed that both drivers refused to lose if they could help it. This season had shades of 2007 about it, where Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso traded blows, with both of those two ultimately failing as Kimi Raikkonnen snatched the championship away for Ferrari. Fittingly, Kimi Raikkonen's last Grand Prix was also at the Abu Dhabi GP where this championship title was decided. 

Some say that it is wrong to compare drivers across eras who ran in vastly different equipment and circumstances but there is no doubt about it, Lewis Hamilton is the greatest Formula One driver of all time. In retrospect, Michael Schumacher who is the other 7-time world champion, scored one of those titles by deliberately taking out his opponent. Hamilton is not without his share of controversy but I do not think that he has actually crossed the line into culpability. Knavery? Yes but not culpability. For Max Verstappen to win this championship on the last lap of the last grand prix of the season, smacks of result engineering to me but it still comes in the context of a very very long season.

The 2021 season can be highlighted by 4 key Grands Prix.

The Belgian GP which lasted all of two laps, was quite frankly a farcical affair which had the two title contenders  taken each other out at the Yas Marina Circuit, would have actually given the championship to Verstappen. That race, started under the safety car and finished under it, had half points awarded because it hadn't gone the full race distance but was given full status as a Grand Prix win; which would have been the thing to split the difference if the point scores had been level.

The Italian GP in which the two title contenders actually did take each other out, proved that Verstappen was prepared to do literally anything if he saw some advantage in doing so and that Hamilton was also prepared to allow no quarter given.

The Saudi Arabian GP was an administrative nonsense; with a series of idiotic steward's decisions; after the race went under safety car conditions several times and both Lewis and Max forced each other off the track and both repeatedly exceeded the track limits. Max's attempted redress which was basically a brake check on Lewis, saw Lewis plough into the back of Max's car and break the front end plate on the wing of his Mercedes. Max's five second time penalty for exceeding track limits, proved to be a worthless penalty in the end.

The Abu Dhabi GP which had that late race safety car, created a one lap shootout after the steward's decided to allow lapped cars to go through. This is not how procedure is done under any other circumstance and it brought Max to the rear of Lewis' car. This was a made for TV moment which is more akin to the purely artificial finish of a NASCAR race; whose organisation openly has little regard for normality.

Those four highlights by magnesium burning brighter than the rest of the season, have outshone the fact that we had Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes-Benz which has fallen off the very top of the mountain and Max Verstappen who was probably in a better car but who isn't as good a driver. Those two things combined probably left us with two driver/car combinations which were separated by less than the width of a cigarette paper.

I do not think that motor racing fans can complain that much about this season. We had two drivers both going at it; with a result that went down to the wire. We had other winners this year who made their contribution. We even had comedy numpty (and decidedly racist fool) Nikita Maze🅱️pin who repeatedly proved that he didn't deserve to be in Formula One but had sufficient funds to buy a ride.

I think that I am fine with Max Verstappen being the 2021 World Champion, despite and maybe in spite of the fact that I do not like him. In the grand narrative of Formula One, that now sets him up to be knocked off the top pedestal, either by Lewis Hamilton who will probably want revenge, or by someone else who will be a dark horse and come in from the outside. That can either be Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull, George Russell who will be joining Mercedes and replacing Valtteri Bottas, or maybe one of the Ferraris or McLarens. I do not think that Alpine, Alfa Romeo or Aston Martin are good enough to challenge for the World Championship but they may pop up for the odd GP win in 2022.

December 09, 2021

Horse 2944 - DOOMED! - England 147 All Out, And The Ship Is Already Tanking

 0, 11, 11, 29, 60, 112, 118, 122, 144, 147 ao.

This strange series of numbers to the untrained eye looks like it might be a number sequence of significance. To the student of sport and of Test Cricket in particular, this string of 10 numbers is the fall of wickets of the England team on Day One of the First Test at the Gabba. To an England fan, this string of numbers is the first tolling of the bells of doom.

When Mitchell Starc took the wicket of Rory Burns, with the very first delivery of the series and by bowling him out, the pendulum could have begun to swing in one of two ways: either this was an anomaly and England would gloriously cruise to a massive target, or this would be the predicate for a horrible day's play. What we saw was the latter.

You would think that as an England fan that I would be devastated at this horrid turn of events but then I remember that I am an England fan and that watching England continuously innovate by finding new and different ways to disappoint and infuriate its fans, is par for the course. I have seen England sides get driven around dust bowls in India, get bashed silly by West Indies sides whose players have more flair in their little finger than the entire England squad, and watched English teams drag themselves around the wide brown land of Australia as though they'd been sent to suffer punishment just as the nation had sent prisoners of Mother England to Australia 233 years ago. This is not a new experience.

Not even Joe Root, the one on whom so much of the pressure and burden of expectation sits, could muster anything more than a duck egg. It was the fall of the 6th wicket and the 52 run stand which offered the slightest amount of resistance. The parochial Australian crowd almost cheered cheers of consolation when Buttler and Pope managed to find the boundary occasionally but really, that was about the only highlight in this otherwise morbid innings.

England surprisingly looked to have no answers to the bowling attack of Starc, Hazelwood, and Pat Cummins who spent most of the afternoon on autopilot en route to 5/38, sending the ball from centre to a width and a half outside the off-stump in a fairly unimaginative bowling display. Why would they need to invent anything? It was obvious that on this green-top there was less out there for the batters than for vegetarians at a pig spitroast. Abject tosh took wickets; so why try harder? This is the point that I would normally say that I expect England to know how to play cricket on a green-top but given that they also no how to play badly on a green-top, this is nothing remarkable. Australia is nothing special, England can lose to anyone in the world.

About the only saving grace for the day was that God (who by the way is English, otherwise why did he give the words of the Bible in pre-Commonwealth English to Shakespeare, amen) cracked the irrits and decided to chuck down a few thunderbolts. England all out for 147 was more exciting than watching paint dry but not quite as exciting as waiting for it to peel and I suspect that He had to go watch a paint peeling festival somewhere. Had the Aussies taken willow to leather, the score at the end of the day could have very well been Eng 147 and Australia 220 without loss.

As I sit on a train which crawls through Western Sydney in a rain storm where visibility is less than a hundred yards, I can see with perfect clarity that what we witnessed on Day One might very well be as good as it gets. Jimmy Anderson was seen on Instragramgramtwitbook (I'm down wit da kids, yo) merrily jaunting about Queen Street and Stuart Broad did start the match either. About the best that we can hope for is that in four years' time, England might be good enough to trouble the Australians but this has all the makings of being something like the Mike Atherton side of 1994. 

I wager at this point, it scarcely matters where the 5th Test after being cancelled from being held at Perth ends up at. By that stage Australia will be 4-0 up in the series unless rain saves England from a fate worse than... well... sorry, but as an England fan, there is not fate worse than being an England fan. What else can you throw at us? We know the score. We've seen it all before.

December 08, 2021

Horse 2943 - No, Actually. Penny Wong Could Be Prime Minster From The Senate (Section 64)

The completely unsupported legend of how Issac Newton got the insipiration to formulate the theory and laws of gravity is that he was sitting under an apple tree and while he was musing about something else, an apple fell off the tree and them struck him in the head. I have no idea how much of the legend that I have gotten wrong and nor do I particularly care all that much because the whole event almost certainly never happened. It is a useful story though.

When you are faced with a conundrum of thought, sometimes it is helpful to shake the tree of knowledge and see what kind of leaves and maybe apples fall out. Of course sometimes you might also be liable to get squirrel poop and or other unpleasant liquids fall upon you, so maybe you should think about getting an umbrella for your analogy. 

I have made the comment on a number of occasions now that I think that the best possible Prime Minister that Australia could have at the moment is Penny Wong. Ms Wong has a surfeit of competence as well as a calmness which we need from the head of executive government. On top of this, I would like to see Penny Wong as Prime Minister from the Senate because that chamber as the house of review, tends to carry itself with a little bit more decorum.

If you make such a comment though, invariably people will tell you that that's impossible because you can not be Prime Minister from the Senate and then go on a tangent and the entire train of thought is an express train to nonsense land. I know what I meant. I know what I said. I already knew that it's fine and because I have bothered to read the rules, I can prove it.

Every Constitution for a corporate entity, be it a sporting club, book group, church, corporation, nation state et cetera, is the set of rules which lay out how you make rules and policy. The various powers which that entity is enabled to do and the various offices which are empowered to be able to carry out policy are usually defined within the bounds of the constitution and the Constitution Of The Commonwealth Of Australia is no different. There are entire chapters defining the roles of the Governor-General, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Powers that all of these have, how you change the Constitution, where the Constitution applies, how it interacts with the existing body of law and other relevant jurisdictions and so on.

What the Constitution does not do (and in my opinion should not do) is define what, how, or even if there needs to be a Prime Minister. 

Literally nowhere in the document of the Constitution will you find any mention of the Prime Minister and because you will find no mention of the office, there isn't really anything to limit where the person to fill that office can come from. Immediately we move into that ethereal place called convention and truth be told, convention lasts exactly as long as it does until it doesn't. I would have thought that it should be convention for the Prime Minister not to go on holiday to a tropical island not in the country when half the country is on fire; I would have though that it should be convention for cabinet minister not to question a body with reasonable powers to investigate corruption; I would have though that it should be convention for a Prime Minister to at least make some attempt to care about the entire general population during a global pandemic and take reasonable action to secure a vaccine supply in a timely manner but clearly none of those things are subject to convention; so I fail to see what I should care an iota about a convention for a thing which isn't even contained within the Constitution.

There is a directive contained within the Constitution about the rules for appointing Ministers of State; so if we want to accept that the Prime Minister as the head of executive government is Minister Without Portfolio, then it behooves us to actually bother to read the relevant section of law:

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter2#chapter-02_64

64. Ministers of State

The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

Ministers to sit in Parliament

After the first general election no Minister of State shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

- Section 64, Constitution of Australia Act (1900).

Take note. A Minister of State is expressly appointed by the Governor-General and at "the pleasure of the Governor-General". If you think that sounds like a lot of power to place in the hands of the Governor-General, then you would be right, it is. The Governor-General in the Australian Constitution is according to law a kind of hemi-semi-demigod who has massive powers to pretty much do whatever the heck they like and hire and fire people at will. It's not even entirely sure if the Governor-General, although named as the Queen's (King's) Representative, is answerable to the monarch or not and Section 64 leaves us with some very very strange implications.

Inside Section 64 you will find virtually no limits or direction on who the Governor-General can appoint to the role of Minister of State. The only limit is that such a person shall attain a seat in the Senate or the House of Representatives within three months. With no limit as to whom the Governor-General can appoint, this is where we can start shaking the tree of knowledge violently and see what falls out.

The Governor-General can appoint Vladimir Putin, Jacinda Ardern, Xi Jingping, Jamie Whincup, Martin Skrtel, Sir Donald Bradman, Chuck Norris, Kim Kardashian, Broken Hill City Council, Aslan, Captain James T Kirk, the entire Andromeda Galaxy... there is nothing within the text of Section 64 which puts any kind of limit; neither citizenship, nor being living or dead, nor being real or imaginary, nor being singular or corporate, nor even being a person or not, on who the Governor-General can appoint to be a Minister of State. If the text of the Constitution doesn't say a thing, then it doesn't say a thing.

The firing of the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on the 11th of November 1975, is perhaps the only time in Australian political history when anyone even remotely remembers anything at all about the office of the Governor-General. The Whitlam Government had failed to pass a budget and six months after the bill had been introduced to the House of Representatives, the Governor-General Sir John Kerr took away his pleasure and appointed Malcolm Fraser. Was that legal? Absolutely. Actually, the text of Section 64 tells us that the pleasure of the Governor-General is the only requirement that someone be appointed to the position of Minister of State. The Governor-General was entirely within his Section 64 powers to fire the Prime Minister.

Likewise when the former Prime Minister Harold Holt wandered off into the sea at Portsea in 1966 (the United States has Presidents assassinated; Australia merely loses Prime Ministers), the leader of the National Party John McEwen was hurriedly made the next Prime Minister (for 22 days) and then while the Liberal Party sorted out its internal succession plan, John Gorton while in the Senate was made the next Prime Minister. Australia has already had a Prime Minister from the Senate. He then resigned his seat in the Senate to contest the newly vacated seat in the House of Representatives (and won it) but being in the House of Representatives is only a secondary condition as he was already in the Senate. Being in the House as opposed to the Senate was a matter of political theatre and not a constitutional requirement. For 22 days Australia had a Prime Minister in the Senate. For 23 days, Australia had a Prime Minister with no seat in any chamber at all and it was fine. Again we move back into the realm of convention; which I've already established is utterly worthless. 

The truth is that having Ministers of State in the Senate is ridiculously normal and boring. The mechanics of Westminster Parliaments is that they do not care about where Ministers have their seats. The mother of all parliaments at Westminster herself, had quite a few Prime Ministers sitting in the House of Lords. 

The Constitution doesn't specify if there even needs to be a Prime Minister. It could be possible to imagine a duumvirate, triumvirate, or an actual cabinet of equals and have the role, or even not have the role, dispersed. Since we've decided to burn all of the other norms and conventions of the job, why not remove that one last plank and rebuild the stature and worthiness of the job?

Having answered every single constitutional objection that is possible, the only objection that can be made about having Penny Wong as Prime Minister comes down the personal preference. Forgive my naivety but I want to see this country governed well, I want to see this country governed by someone who is competent to do the job, and more importantly I want this country to be governed by someone who paradoxically doesn't want the job. I want the best person for the job to do the best job.

Of course having said all of this, the actual chances of this happening are nil. Politics is the art of the expedient and the art of achieving the possible. I'm just tree shaking.

December 07, 2021

Horse 2942 - Freedumb For What?

Before I begin this proper, I need to define my terms. We can take it as a truth that there are people with varying degrees of intelligence, just as there are people with varying degrees of spatial awareness or with differing musical or emotional ability, just as there are people of varying degrees of strength. I absolutely do not want to frame this as having anything to do with the innate physical capacities of people; nor do I wish to make any kind of value judgement on this same subject.

The term which I will repeatedly use, is the concept of 'stupidity'. That is, decisions taken by an apparently rational actor with agency, who is capable of selecting something based upon the available information to them and then deliberately arriving at horrible choices. The reason why I make that distinction is that a person of lesser intelligence is still capable of being kind, helpful, rational and noble. The stupid person is also capable of being kind, helpful, rational and noble and then chooses not to be.

I think that there is a distinction in category between someone who is misinformed but well meaning and someone who is ill-informed and ill-meaning. The former can be convinced of what is true and even corrected through sound reasoning. The latter, convinced of their own reasoning, can not be convinced of the truth or corrected through sound reasoning. They have rejected reality and substituted their own and until they've have paid for their personal truth that they have purchased with lies, they are like castaways who are alone under stormy skies. Or rather, not alone, but often in community with others who also have purchased that same unreal reality.

One of the counterfeit pieces of currency which is flashed around by the showmen who want to flog a miracle snake oil, is the word "freedom". Of itself, freedom is a useful concept because it says that an individual is free to do what they wish. Unfortunately, if freedom is possessed by a stupid person who is unencumbered by the thought process, then the results are equally as stupid. One of the base assumptions in economics is that the actors in the economy are held to be rational; I have serious doubts about this most of the time. Most people are about as rational as the inverse distance away from their last meal. Judges for instance, are more likely to hand down guilty verdicts in the half hour before lunch than the half hour after it. Freedom, in my not very well paid opinion, should be tempered with the sensible questions of: freedom to do what? freedom for what? etc.

I would like to say that people in the 21st Century who have access to practically the entire world of knowledge in the palm of their hand, are somehow better at discerning that which is true, proper, just, kind and/or rational but sadly, that is not the case. It very much appears that people in the 21st Century can be just as easily led down stupid highways than in previous centuries. I find it more than a little ironic that the Englightment was fuelled by coffee and came after the gin craze, if we want to call what we are living through now the "Unenlightenment", it is also in part fuelled by caffeine. Monster Energy drink gives people the energy to do dumb things faster and turn them into monsters. Red Bull gives people wings and they can fly right into the side of a building. Freedom? Freedom to do what? Freedom for what?

As usual, because the centre of the universe is 19mm behind the corneas of the individual who makes the observation, that means that the central driver for freedom exercised, is selfishness. Selfishness might result in a self-organising system but all it guarantees is that whoever can apply the most brute force, either of will or of physical violence, ends up winning. If that's the end point, then that in reality is only 'freedom' for a select few and deep unpleasantness for the powerless, the vulnerable, the weak, the kind, the generous, the noble and the quiet. 

One of the central themes of the rolling series of anti-vax protests in Melbourne is the claim of a glib notion of "freedom". Presumably these people want the freedom to do and go as they please with no regard for the welfare of anybody else and the fact that they haven't been allowed to do exactly that, in the middle of a global pandemic where people have been dying, makes them sad. Avoiding sadness isn't exactly the highest and noblest driver of what is good or best for either one's self, or others, or others in Commonwealth. During the last great pandemic, the influenza pandemic of 1918-20, newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Argus, The Truth, The Sun etc, ram adverts for cocaine and heroin; which were still legal for the general public. I am sure that those things also reduced immediate sadness but would do absolutely nothing to address the influenza problem. Avoiding sadness without addressing underlying problems as a matter of policy, is stupidity in action.

I guess that I understand that sadness of an immediate loss of circumstance is unpleasant but being blown about on the wind and waves of emotion, is hardly a sensible method of determining policy. Especially in Melbourne, there have been political rallies which have on occasion demanded the murder of the Premier of Victoria and this has been promoted, nay even defended by sections of the media, as the people "taking back control" (whatever that's supposed to mean), and people marching for vague notions of freedom and liberty. It must be said that I am probably more well read in political philosophy than your average freedom rally attendee and while I agree with the notion that there are places and appropriate times for speech and action, I absolutely refuse to concede the point that any freedom and/or liberty either is or even should be absolute. 

If anything, the actions of the protesters are pushing me towards the notion that individual liberty and freedom when pursued as a directionless idol, are not only counterproductive to the notion of liberty itself but actively making me feel sad and angry at them. Based upon the logic being employed by the protesters (or the complete lack thereof), then my feelings are sufficiently good enough to decree that all of them should be held under house arrest. 'Ahah' you will say, that's stupid. 'Ahah' I will agree, congratulations for arriving at the same conclusion that I came to. Facts do not care about feelings and policy which is only designed to make people feel good is stupidity in action.

In general the assumption at law is that people are free to do whatever they like as long as it doesn't impinge on the liberty of someone else. This assumption must stem from the position that people are made of crystal spheres and that as long as the crystal spheres never touch each other, then all is right with the world. I think that this is a stupid assumption. The kosmos is made of loads of interconnected systems; most of which are designed to operate as seamlessly and as silently as possible. If you can not tell how something arrived at a position but that thing is sufficiently complex enough, then the underlying systems which have brought it there are sufficiently well enough designed. If you demand 'freedom' but have no intention other than to break complex systems, with no idea or design of what you are going to replace them with, then this is also stupidity in action.

What then is the United Australia Party demanding with its glib yell for 'freedom'? To be honest I have no idea. They haven't told us what they want it for. Freedom to do what? Freedom for what? I too can yell 'freedom freedom freedom' into the void but it is meaningless unless it is directed at some purpose. The United Australia Party with their series of adverts both in the wild and radio, tv and print, makes no claim about what they want freedom for, or what to do with it when they've got it, or what they want freedom from. I can't even work through the chain of events that would happen if they were to get and enact whatever their notion of 'freedom' is. Without articulating anything sensible, this is just one step above duckspeak. woohoo.

December 06, 2021

Horse 2941 - I Wouldn't Want The Right To Make Rights

Last week I was watching the opening monologue of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where in discussing Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organisation which has the potential to overturn the precedent set by Roe vs Wade that women in the United States have a right to get an abortion of a pregnancy, Mr Colbert made sport of the following comment:

One of the enduring features of comedy and especially satire, is to take exactly what your opponent has said and place that statement in a new light in order to either make a parody of itself, or to shine a light on the apparent internal logic failure or otherwise stupidity of the speaker. In selecting this particular quote, Mr Colbert painted Justice Clarence Thomas as a dunderhead and went on his merry comedic way. All of that is completely valid in the art of comedy and satire.

However, if you are trying to use a satirical comedy show as a source of news, you had best check yourself before you wreck yourself on the shore of misinformation. Comedy and satire can speak truths but they aren't inherently the best source of truthiness. If you place Justice Clarence Thomas' statement back into the stream of discussion, what you find is that he is in fact asking a very serious question:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf

JUSTICE THOMAS: General, would you specifically tell me -- specifically state what the right is? Is it specifically abortion? Is it liberty? Is it autonomy? Is it privacy?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: The right is grounded in the liberty component of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Thomas, but I think that it promotes interest in autonomy, bodily integrity, liberty, and equality. And I do think that it is specifically the right to abortion here, the right of a woman to be able to control, without the state forcing her to continue a pregnancy, whether to carry that baby to term.

JUSTICE THOMAS: I understand we're talking about abortion here, but what is confusing is that we -- if we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what we're talking about. If we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what we're talking about because it's written. It's there. What specifically is the right here that we're talking about?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: Well, Justice Thomas, I think that the Court in those other contexts with respect to those other amendments has had to articulate what the text means and the bounds of the constitutional guarantees, and it's done so through a variety of different tests that implement First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, Fourth Amendment rights. So I don't think that there is anything unprecedented or anomalous about the right that the Court articulated in Roe and Casey and the way that it implemented that right by defining the scope of the liberty interest by reference to viability and providing that that is the moment when the balance of interests tips and when the state can act to prohibit a woman from -- from getting an abortion based on its interest in protecting the fetal life at that point.

JUSTICE THOMAS: So the right specifically is abortion?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: It's the right of a woman prior to viability to control whether to continue with the pregnancy, yes.

JUSTICE THOMAS: Thank you. 

- Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, SCOTUS, 1st Dec 2021

In context, Justice Clarence Thomas is doing two things: firstly he is asking the claimants in the case to specifically define what it is that they are asking for because the Supreme Court which has the power to emphatically say what the law is, wants to make sure that the judgement will actually fit the terms and scope of the subject that the claimant is asking about and secondly, he is actually asking the claimant to be more precise about the claim, so that the work of the court in this decision is as limited as possible. In a rights case, although the Supreme Court has very large, sweeping, and wide ranging powers, it is also aware that is possesses the power of original jurisdiction and so by creating or denying a right, it wants to limit the terms of its decision as narrowly as possible, lest it start to interfere with other rights issues and even the operation of other law itself.

In other words, by probing and asking and questioning for the claimants to be very specific about what they are asking the court to do, Justice Clarence Thomas is being quite deliberate about dispensing the power that the court has. Rather than being a dunderhead, Justice Thomas is trying to be precise in an area of law which is very very blunt.

Immediately we run into the obvious problem that I think that the whole area of giving the court the ability to determine rights are, is. Suppose that I was on the court. I personally think that in general that there shouldn't be a right to abortion in most except on grounds that it is likely to endanger the life of the mother and in examples of rape et cetera. Immediately you're likely to think that my opinion is either noble or monstrous. 

In general I do not like the right to bear arms, or have an abortion, or the right to die through euthanasia because I see that the right to life of someone is very likely to be impinged and someone's life is destroyed through the actions of someone else. Especially with the right to abortion if it exists, then at some point you have to declare someone as an unperson and to be honest, as I have no idea where that point actually is (due to the paradox of the pile of beans), then I err on the side that I and in fact nobody else is qualified to make such a decision sensibly. I think that abortions should be safe and exceedingly rare but not generally legal. 

Before you declare me to be a monster, remember, that I come from an equally vexing and challenging place where different people's rights are competing with each other (namely the mother and child). That takes you to a very very long thought process which looks at a whole range of issues such as bodily autonomy, vulnerability, responsibility issues and what not and more than likely, we will arrive at different conclusions. I am also informed by faith as well as other documents like the Declaration of the Rights of The Child, which you are free to accept or reject.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

Bearing in mind that, as indicated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth",

- Preamble, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20th Nov 1989

Let's assume that you disagree with me and think that my opinion is monstrous (I think that's a fair assumption for a lot of people). Do you want me to be in charge of making such a decision? I would wager, no. Actually, I would wager that quiet vehemently "no" and you will even go so far as to spit in my face to make the point. If "no", then I should really be in charge of making a rights decision like this? If not me, then I will immediately ask, on what basis should a court of 9 be allowed to make such a decision? 

The method of selecting those 9 people is by the nomination of the President (which is a political position) which is then agreed to or not agreed to with the advice and consent of the Senate (which is made up of 50 political positions). Is that sensible? Should the ability to make and decide what rights exist, be given over to an entirely political process?

I will argue that every right, which is the ability to do something at law or the privilege of having something recognised at law or a benefit conferred on someone by the law, is always going to be a political process and second to that, I absolutely hate the idea of a Bill of Rights.

The United States ran into this problem at the outset, and in fact, Thomas Jefferson who famously wrote the Declaration of Independence, expressed his grave concern about including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution to James Madison. It is Madison and Hamilton who are mostly responsible for laying out the three-ring circus that is the United States Constitution and I think that they actually did an awful job. Not only do I think that the instrument of government by which the United States is awful but I think that history has proven me right by virtue of the fact that it has been copied by exactly zero other countries.

Jefferson had this to say:

https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison

Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.—It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only.

- Thomas Jefferson, to James Madison, 6th Sep 1789

Again in context, Jefferson argues that rights, whatever they happen to be, should be the domain of the living rather than being a tombstone of the dead, around which the living are tied to via a rope around the neck. Thomas Jefferson couldn't have foreseen the right to health care, the right to education, the right to reasonable terms of employment and working conditions, and given that he lived in an almost pre-industrial and very much agricultural nation, then the right to abortion wouldn't have even been imagined. Also, the country which he was writing in, was in part predicated by rich people agitating the general public for the right to keep and retain slaves. The United States was literally started because of a demand for the right to vote (No Taxation Without Representation) but where the Coercive/Intolerable/Punitive Acts were in part motivated by the colonies' bucking on the subject of slavery (see Somerset's Case (1772), and later Knight v Wedderburn (1777)).

If I shouldn't be allowed to decide what rights exist, and presumably a political process shouldn't be allowed to decide what rights exist, and parliaments shouldn't be allowed to decide what rights exist, then I ask upon what basis does anyone think that a Bill Of Rights is a good idea? 

Like Jefferson (who by the way owned and kept slaves and more than likely had an affair with one whilst in the office of the President), I hate the idea of a Bill Of Rights for the same reason. I very much think that some rights can and will exist through a process of discovery (such as the right to live in a clean and viable environment) and that some rights which used to exist in the past are absolutely not appropriate for today (such as the right to bear arms). I hate the idea that rights should become crystallised and never ever subject to review. 

I agree with Jefferson that rights should belong to the land of the living and to that end, the only sensible and permanent right which anyone will logically agree upon is the right to free speech but even that should come with limits surrounding defamation, racism, sedition, incitement and the harm that it is likely to do to others if exercised. The 1st Amendment to the Constitution gives me the right to tell you that the 2nd Amendment is horrible and that the only amendment that I actually like is the 10th Amendment.

The problem with writing fixed rights into a constitution is that as a constitution is the set of rules by which other laws are made, the safeguards which are invariably written into a constitution makes it difficult to remove or expand rights. If you carve a set of rules into a very big rock, then convincing anyone to carve new rules into the rock is difficult. Convincing anyone to deface the rock is difficult. Getting enough people to use their efforts to move the rock, especially when other people want to push it in the other direction is difficult.

In my country of Australia, the framers of our Constitution, also faced this dilemma and deliberately did not include a Bill Of Rights for this very same reason. Had they done so, then Australia might very well be in a similar predicament to the United States, where no right to health care and/or education exists because there are people who prefer that not to be the case.

Jefferson and Hamilton both came to this conclusion and the only reason why the United States has a Bill Of Rights, is not because of the imagined wisdom of the forefathers but because the people who were arguing in sweaty basements (and who were all men) were arguing on behalf of their own little state who were in very real danger of being swamped in a wave of Federalism. The United States might very well tell itself that it was conceived in liberty but when it came time to write the rules which determine how you write rules, it was carried in a spirit of knavery and wingnuttery. I imagine that there were lots and lots of cuss words thrown about and that hatred and enmity ran hot - remember: the Vice-President shot and killed the former Secretary to the Treasury in a duel; using the very power conferred to him via the 2nd Amendment.

From the outset, Thomas Jefferson, who by the way wrote that he held certain truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal but proved that he thought that this was a lie by owning other people as chattel goods, conceded that the constitution should be a contestable document. Already within his lifetime the right to own other people or not to be owned as chattel goods was being contested and by demonstration, it took a lot of other people to die before his entire generation got out of the way. It took the bloodiest war that the United States has ever fought, to finally settle the matter.

All of this generally goes on to show that rights, where they do exist, belong to the domain of the living and that as society changes and decides for itself what rights to confer upon itself (and what rights are no longer appropriate), that the idea of a fixed Bill of Rights as handed down by forefathers with imagined god-like status, is monumentally stupid. There should be no final victory and no final defeat and no final statement on what rights do and do not exist. 

So now what? In my perfect world (and having successfully infuriated everyone across the authoritarian/progressive political spectrum) rights should always be up for debate. I know that I am so incompetent to be able to decide most of these issues that I should not be given the power to do so. I would submit therefore, that every member in society generally, who has probably thought about issues like this, to a degree less than I have, is also as equally incompetent as I and should also not generally be trusted in making a decision such as this. The problem is that because each of us are selfish individuals who shouldn't be given the power to make and confer rights or destroy and remove, we live inside a paradox where someone at some point is forced to by virtue of their job to do so. Say what you like about Justice Clarence Thomas, I think that in cases like this that people like him have a truly awful job and I certainly wouldn't want to do it.