Horse 2812 - What Is A Sentence? (Also Yoda)

What Is A Sentence?

This sounds like a daft question because in the process of asking what a sentence is, you have to use a sentence to do so (yes, a question is a sentence). The ontological question of what a sentence is not only an exercise in semantics but is also a meta-exercise in semantics; with it being concerned with itself. Formal Semantics which is the the branch of linguistics and logic which is concerned with meaning, is distinct from Lexical Semantics which is more concerned with how a word is used in context and how it fits into the contextual relations around it. 

Put simply a sentence is a textual unit consisting of one or more words that are grammatically linked. That's it. That might sound strange that you can have a sentence consisting of only one word but if that word by itself conveys enough meaning to imply a clause, even if it is not explicit, then it is a sentence. Very simple phrases can also be sentences, provided they also convey enough meaning to imply a clause.

What is a Clause? A clause is that part of a sentence that constitutes a predicate. What is a Predicate? A predicate is that unit of speech which says that a thing is doing something. Note that a predicate is functionally different to a verb which is a "doing something" word and a verb may in fact act as the predicate but a predicate in a sentence may include adjectives, prepositions and even adverb.

Of course you can not have a predicate which says that a thing is doing something unless there is a subject, that there is indeed a thing that is doing something. Subjects are usually nouns (either common, proper) though they can also be adverbs.

Therein lies all the information you need to answer the question of what a sentence is. Since a sentence is a textual unit which implies a clause and a clause consists of subject and a predicate, then a sentence is a textual unit which implies a subject and a predicate.

Let me give you an example of a complete sentence which contains neither a verb or a noun but which implies both and also conveys enough meaning to imply a clause. Since I like the sport of cricket, this is one of my favourite examples:

How many balls are left in the over?

Two.

That one word "two" in this case is a cardinal adjective. While "two" is a noun which is a number, it is being used in this case as a description (that is an adjective) of a subject. The subject "How many balls" contains a noun (balls) and an adjective. The verb clause "are left" contains the second-person singular and plural form of the verb "to be" as well as the verb "left" which means to let remain or have remaining behind after going.

That one word "two" by itself is implying the entirety of "there are two balls are left in the over"; which is a standard subject-verb clause which is declarative (that is, it is making a declaration and a claim about a thing), and as such it is a sentence. 

It must be said that our magnificent bastard tongue of English is either a gloriously stupidly easy language to learn because the only rule which holds hard and fast is that "every sentence contains a verb" (which is almost a tautology because a sentence must imply a clause) or it is a notoriously difficult language to learn because there is only one rule and that means that you get no help at all. It seems counter-intuitive to me that Germanic languages which have almost no rules would produce so many cultures of people who are sticklers for rules.

If all of that fails, then you can just remember the chorus to The Tale of Mr. Morton.

Mister Morton is the subject of the

Sentence and what the predicate says,

He does

Aside:

Because English is such a louche language when it comes to rules (I'll even start this sentence with "because" because I jolly well can; so there), it means that we can understand people who we think are butchering the language with relative ease, like Yoda.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to Suffering.

Why does anyone assume, given all that we know about Yoda who is very obviously speaking in a second language, that his most famous statements are grammatically correct? This is the same person whose regular subject order clauses generally messed up are. Occult health and safety officer should he be not. 

What would happen if you pass Yoda's statements through some kind of algorithm which could generate the order in which they would become more Yoda-y? If you ran Yoda's statements through the algorithm multiple times, would you end up in a weird kind of nonsense gobbledegook which is then unparseable? Moreover, is it possible to run Yoda's statements through the algorithm backwards and arrive at the proper original meaning of what he meant to say?

If the statement is exactly backwards then you get:

Suffering leads to Hate. Hate leads to Anger. Anger leads to Fear.

All of this seems equally valid and as an aphorism, equally vapid. 

I note that the end point of Yoda's arc, ends up with him talking to Luke Skywalker on a planet with weird mountain outcrops and he decides to burn all of the Jedis' writings to the ground. It isn't actually said but maybe Yoda realises that the Jedi religion is rubbish.

If only he'd stopped at the beginning and decided that if suffering leads to hate, then maybe they should have eliminated suffering in the galaxy. I don't know, maybe the Galactic Senate could have done something about enacting Universal Universal Healthcare, finding a cure for cancer, doing something about pollution and recycling instead of razing planets and moving on; instead of flying about the place and waving colourful laser swords like a bunch of ten year old children.

Horse 2811 - Brady Isn't The GOAT At All

 Humans are brilliant pattern finding machines. When it comes to finding patterns and associations, were so good at it that we'll find patterns when there aren't even any there. In addition to being pattern finding machines we are also excellent classifiers and superlative finding machines. Give us a list of stuff and we'll rank them with both sensible and insensible ranking systems. 

When Tom Brady won his seventh Superbowl, American media was prepared to declare Tom Brady as the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) of American Football. The hype train had so many people jump on board that Twitter was awash with the declaration that Tom Brady was the GOAT of all sports. However, even as a seven times Champion, that simply just doesn't hold up to any major scrutiny.

Owing to the insular nature of American media, sports coverage tends to look inside but not that much further outside America. 

If there is a GOAT of all sports, then people like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Péle, Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods all have pretty good cases for being the GOAT but even Michael Jordan whose fame extended well outside the realm of basketball still doesn't make it close to the top of any list that I might generate¹. You could make claims that people like Martina Navratilova, Margaret Court, Steffi Graf or Serena Williams who won an open while pregnant have a pretty good shot at being the GOAT. They also all have longer careers and have won more important titles than Tom Brady.

If I think about who I'd consider as the GOAT, then the choices that I'd make would baffle most of these commentators I suspect. Tom Brady wouldn't make my list at all.

To wit:

Jackie Stewart only won the Formula One World Championship three times. That puts him equal sixth on the list of World Championship winners. Already it is obvious that I do not think that the title of GOAT is dependent upon mere statistical analysis.

...

Jackie Stewart gave the game away after winning his third championship; in a season which also included the death of his Tyrell team mate and friend Françoise Cevert. He explains in his autobiography that at that particular time, motor racing drivers were being killed at a rate of about one a fortnight and rather than let this continue, he was going to do something about it.

Jackie Stewart was then instrumental in things like track design, having adequate run off areas, adequate crash fencing, changing safety regulation to include adequate fire marshalls, seat belts, position and design of fuel tanks etc. It is one thing to win championships but quite another to go out and make changes to the sport so that paid professionals and the spectators who watch them, get to go home at the end of the day; instead of being wheeled away in a body back, to be buried in the ground.

Jackie Stewart's off the racetrack in championing safety is a very big reason why Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton won seven championships and weren't dead within a decade. Motor racing is still dangerous but at least we're pointing to the deaths of Roland Ratzenbgerger, Aryton Senna² and Jules Bianchi as being three in 30 years and not three in three months.

Also, as motor racing tends to lead the development of motor cars, although the adoption of things like seat belts happened before Formula One adopted them, the idea that cars should be crash worthy and that we should think more about road furniture, is the reason why many more people out here in the real world go on to live boring lives instead of being wiped out in motor accidents. Jackie Stewart in championing safety went out and partly changed a culture.

...

In terms of number of standard deviations above the mean, Don Bradman is statistically the best sportsperson across all sport. With a Test Average of 99.94 in comparison with the nerest who is in the low 60s. Bradman was given a knighthood for his contribution to sport but that's still not enough for me. I have a better reason why he is the greatest sports person of all time.

When Bradman was an administrator for the Australian Cricket Board, he was able to place sufficiently enough pressure on the board to stop Australia from touring South Africa because of the very public reason of Apartheid.

"We will not play them [South Africa] until they choose a team on a non-racist basis."

- Don Bradman, 1971

The next time that someone wants to tell you that sport isn't political, tell them that they are incredibly myopic, small minded and ignorant of history, for one of the people whom Nelson Mandela credited with making the rest of the world aware, was Don Bradman. It is one thing to be statistically the best sports person of all time; it is quite another to change the world for the better using the power that you gained because of it.

...

When it comes to the greatest team of all time, then nothing comes close to the New York Yacht Club. When Real Madrid won La Decima, which was the 10th time that they'd won the European Cup, that was pretty impressive. The St George Dragons won eleven championships in a row; which I think might be a record in most team sports. The New York Yacht Club won the 100 Guineas Cup, renamed it the America's Cup after the yacht which first won it; then went on a winning streak of 132 years.

Challengers from a bunch of nations tried from 1851 until 1983 when the Fremantle Yacht Club threw sufficiently enough money and technology at the sport of sailing to steal the cup away. Nobody in the world was alive when America won the 100 Guineas Cup and still alive to see Australia II win the cup. Colourful businessman Alan Bond managed to get the nation of Australia to care about sailing for a while and that's pretty impressive in itself.

...

I am sure that Tom Brady is very successful but he can't very well be the GOAT if I hadn't even heard of him outside of a once a year mention and even then only because he shares a name with a YouTube journalist that I like. I have never seen a Brady shirt but I have seen people walking around in a Jordan 23 basketball kit, 20 years after he stopped playing.

I think that it is one thing to be statistically brilliant but if nobody outside of the sport cares, then what's the point. Being the one who gets to put your flag on top of the hill of sport, still only puts you on top of a rather smallish hill. However, if you go out and change the world, then that's where greatness actually resides. 

¹The greatest basketball player of all time is probably Chuck Taylor; who never played professionally. His hawking of shoes is probably a bigger contributing factor to the popularity of that sport, well beyond even that of Michael Jordan. 

²Aryton Senna might have deliberately run into Alain Prost at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix; after previously having Mansell earlier that year. Aryton Senna actually did deliberately run into the back of Alain Prost at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix after having announced that he "can't be held responsible for my actions" at the drivers' briefing meeting before the race. If you go out and deliberately have the intent of taking out your rival, then that doesn't make you a GOAT but a knave.

Horse 2810 - Facebook v Australia (actually News Corp.)

 In a move that sent ripples through the media yesterday, Facebook announced that it was going to put an outright blanket ban on all Australian news sites and links to those news sites being posted on its platform. This was in response to the Federal Government threatening to charge Facebook fees, or to make Facebook pay royalties to Australian companies for the content which they had effectively been freebooting for years - and yes, if 'freebooting' sounds like a ye olde piratey word, it's because it arrrre!

What I find rather interesting about this is the assumption of people that I would be annoyed at a private corporation exacting private power over what they perceive to be a public service (which it isn't). Those same people have also posted things on their pages, demanding either the defunding of the ABC; so I am not sure exactly what they think that a public service is for or what it is.

Facebook is a private entity which is operating what amounts to a private boarding house online. As the landlord, they have to the right to say who stays in their premises; subject to various laws to do with discrimination etc. In a kosmos where everyone is trying to claim the right to do something in all directions, it is easy to forget that it is very hard to force someone else to provide the necessary means to look after your rights.

Granted that the Australian Government definitely does have a moral right to charge Facebook an adequate amount of taxation based upon the monetary benefit and profits that they derive in Australia (which Facebook definitely tries to avoid and in bad faith) but the current Morrison Government is very obviously acting on behalf of their masters at News Corporation who have demanded that they are entitled to the proceeds of that taxation. 

Facebook putting up a wall and telling people that they are not allowed inside, looks similar to but not exactly congruous to News Corporation who also put up a paywall and charge people who want to play inside. As a consumer it appears to me to be one amoral anational fascist champion versus another amoral anational fascist champion. Forgive me if I don't care who wins.

Truth be told, I am fine with Facebook operating like a knave, in the light of the current Liberal Government passing legislation and running a screen for their masters at News Corporation. This whole argument is like a couple of drunk men arguing in the apartment above. For the most part I don't really care about the argument and in all honesty, I wish that they'd both move out and leave. 

I live in a weird point in time where almost the entirety of print newspapers in Australia are owned by just three groups: News Corporation, Nine Entertainment Co. and SevenWest Media. As far as television goes, as I do not have an aerial that works, then Channels 7, 9, and 10 are practically dead to me. That means that I get the majority of my Australian news either from the ABC or SBS, or from the Sydney Morning Herald. 

From an absolutely selfish perspective, Facebook's ban on Australian news sites is entirely unremarkable to me. As I do not get my news via Facebook, their ban is of zero consequence to me. As for the argument that it somehow hurts Australian news gathering, I don't really see that as an issue. Companies like News Corporation who have already pared back their news desks to the bone, and commercial television networks that do very little actual news gathering, probably won't miss the incidental traffic that Facebook may have sent to them. Companies like the ABC and SBS who are real news gathering organisations and who go to the effort of sending out gumshoe reporters to gather the news (how novel) are not bound by the profit motive and as such the loss of Facebook is largely irrelevant.

The other issue is that people who only ever got their news via Facebook, are probably not that actually engaged with the news and are probably more likely to share untruths and falsehoods, either unwittingly or knowingly (let's hear it for mass sweeping generalisations).

What the actions of Facebook do demonstrate is that they could have done something about fake news, deliberate misinformation, and the publication of hate speech on their platform if they wanted to. It took an invasion of the US Capitol Building for Twitter to permanently ban Donald Trump but Facebook have seemed rather acquiescent to people organising such things and in the past they have only bowed to pressure after there have been beheadings on Facebook Live and they had to be told off by the New Zealand Government while the live streaming of the massacre of more than 50 people went on. Death and destruction are fine on Facebook but the second that a government tries to make them pay for the news that they freeboot, that's a different story.

On the other hand, this couldn't have come at a more fortuitous time for the Federal Government as it scrambles to run a deflection after an alleged rape happened within the walls of the parliament building. The incoherent argument that Facebook is evil, is a very welcome distraction and News Corporation is a very friendly partner in the cover up.

As for my experience on Facebook, as a user my algorithmically curated corner of it has been vastly improved; almost immediately. I don't have people sharing Sky News videos and I don't have people sharing videos from the Herald-Sun or Daily Telegraph. It is lovely.

I will continue to get my news from the ABC, SBS, the BBC, NPR, DW, NHK, the Sydney Morning Herald (in dead tree form), Pravda, and Xinhua. The latter two are somewhat odd but what's really odd is that Xinhua is often more truthful than what is on Sky News. The best journalism that we get in Australia is still AM and PM on ABC Radio National (576AM in Sydney) because the ABC still pays people properly to do that one really weird thing that News Corporation doesn't like doing: actual journalism. The ABC is still on the radio and online at the ABC's website; so it's not like I've lost anything at all.

Horse 2809 - Name 8 Digits

 If there is one thing that I have learnt during my lifetime that has repeatedly made itself known, it is that everyone is terrible and selfish; without exception. That fact is the basis of many religions, it is the base assumption of economics, and it is the reason why the entire of criminal law exists.

Maybe you'd like a breakdown:

- 88% of people are terrible.

- 11% of people are truly evil.

-1% is either a correctional or rounding error (though some hospice care nurses may be here).

I do not wish to write a piece about the universal terribleness of people (even though I could easily write several thousand words on the subject) however it is a useful plank to build the frame of this house from. Also be aware that I am included in the 88% of people who are terrible and that if I was in the 11% of people who are truly evil, I wouldn't tell you about it. Neither would you.

The members and users of social media platforms are composed almost entirely of terrible and selfish people and they also include the people who are truly evil.  The actual composition of the membership of those platforms differs from platform to platform though. Facebook is composed of slightly older people who have learned that the world is made up of terrible people but at least they're trying to get by. Tik Tok is made up of terrible people who don't yet know that they are terrible and are trying to be cool.

Twitter and Parler on the other hand, are made up of terrible people who are slightly more concerned with the way that the world works and with the news. Parler appears to be a magnet for right-wing authoritarian people who have decided that if the world is full of terrible people, then they have no problem with weaponsing selfishness to achieve their terrible and evil ends.

If Facebook is the lunch room of media platforms, then Twitter is the town square. We tend not to have places of public oratory and places where people stand on actual soapboxes any more; so Facebook and Twitter tend to function as those places online.

However, Twitter in particular because it is a short messaging service which operates like the old Usenet global spaces, has an exceptionally low barrier to entry and so you end up with the rather strange phenomenon of Name 8 Digits accounts. Name 8 Digits accounts (because I can't think of a better name) come with the handle in the form of a Name followed by 8 digits. I am currently on a train as I write this; so to generate an example, I will take the name of the first street sign that I see followed by the first 8 digits that I see: Charlotte 89500125. BAM!

The excuse often given as to why people have Name 8 Digits account is that that is the default format that Twitter generates. The problem with that excuse is that is instantly gives away the fact that the user cares so little about the account that they can not even bothered to change the default handle. This is further compounded by the issue that many Twitter accounts are merely fake accounts with computer generated handles. 

The obvious question which arises is 'why would anyone want a Name 8 Digits account?'. Social media along with being a platform where terrible people have terrible and inane conversations, is also a tremendous place for generating both outrage and weaponsing that outrage to achieve terrible and evil ends. You can achieve those terrible and evil ends more effectively through brute force of numbers by creating Twitter bots. In reality though, most of those are human-machine hybrids where there is a meatbag human behind the accounts that controls the machine but much of the activity is automated anyway. When trends are being analysed, automating the process to generate the trends, for the ends of influencing popular opinion and public policy, seems like a logical if sinister (read: terrible and selfish) outcome. Remember, if the world is full of terrible people, then they have no problem with weaponsing selfishness to achieve their terrible and evil ends.

What makes Name 8 Digits accounts different to most other accounts, is that they are almost exclusively operated as accounts for the transmission of deliberately outrageous posts, or more often than not purely for hurling abuse at public figures who are mainly women. While they aren't 100% authoritarian and economically right-wing in nature, progressive politics doesn't tend to operate Name 8 Digits accounts, and economically left-wing and socialist politics don't either.

If you call out a Name 8 Digits account, they are more than likely to do nothing because the person at the other end is operating lots of them in an opinion farm, or directly hurl abuse at you, or will be genuinely bewildered. What this says to me is that Name 8 Digits accounts are either burner accounts or people working in a troll farm. If they work in an opinion farm, they probably don't have a lot of thought beyond the script which is in front of them. If their account is purely for the generation of abuse, then simply reflecting said abuse with the statement that it is exactly that, is usually enough to stop them dead in their tracks

I write this as someone whose handle on various accounts is Rollo75; which on the face of it looks incredibly hypocritical. I will point out though that I have used that handle since before Eternal September and have played with that as a kit number in football and in other various online games where you need a number. I very much doubt that you would use a number with 8 digits for anything that you weren't forced to. 

I actually do remember a time day in the early days of Twitter when it was mainly populated by journalists and people interested in the news. Politics wasn't any nicer but at least back then Twitter wasn't populated by semi-automated traffic. Despite this, the platform is still perfect for well placed bon-mots and witticisms; even if the Name 8 Digits accounts exist.

Horse 2808 - Impeachment And Conviction Is Reasonable

I haven't written very much about the second impeachment trial of former President Donald J Trump because it very much feels like a fool's errand. Right from the get go there was a vote taken on the floor of the Senate about the Constitutionality of whether or not he could be impeached after leaving office, which is such a stupid assertion that had it actually passed, it would have permanently damaged an already idiotic system of government.

An impeachment is merely the formulation of a set of charges to deal with the removal of office of someone, or the disqualification of someone. Had the Senate decided that it didn't have the jurisdiction to deal with an impeachment after someone had left or been removed from office, then it would have voluntarily destroyed one of its powers; and over that? 

Setting that aside, I haven't written very much about this because there is a much larger question that has been raised here and that has to do with what actually is impeachable and what is actually convictable. 

It has been said (and I first heard this from PBS Newshour Correspondent Mark Shields) that when it comes to the Presidential candidate, the Democrats fall in love and the Republicans fall in line. We've now seen the limits of this aphorism break as sections of Republican supporters not only fell in line but also tell in love with Donald Trump. Remember he actually said that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue in New York City and shoot someone and still not lose any votes. Not only does it appear that some supporters fell in line with that rhetoric but they also fell in love with it and were prepared to destroy democracy to carry out the orders of their true love.

Evidence has been presented in the Senate, which includes the Tweets and the speech to a rally on the morning of January 6th by none other than Donald Trump that he would walk with his supporters as they marched on the Capitol Building to fight. Evidence has also been presented front various pieces of video footage that his supporters intended to "hang Mike Pence", "put a ****ing bullet through Nancy Pelosi's brain", and that in addition to malicious damage throughout the Capitol Building they actually got to the other side of a locked door from actually carrying that out; all "on the orders of the President".

Considering that the House has the power of Impeachment as laid out in the US Constitution and the Senate has both the power to try Impeachments and the power to remove someone from office and to disqualify someone from future office; I really do not understand why the people who were within the same building which was being attacked and in which people were being injured and killed and where the mob intended to kill various members of the body voting within that building, should want to voluntarily give up the power to disqualify someone from future office. 

I will admit that I do not live in the United States and so all of this is only just an appalling academic exercise as far as I am directly concerned (albeit one with the possible consequences of sending my country to war yet again) but as I live in a country that has what is known as a Westminster tradition, there are many standard legal tests for things which are accepted as normal legal precedent which simply do not apply in the United States; and one of those is testing the opinion of 'The Man On The Clapham Omnibus'.

The Man On The Clapham Omnibus (sometimes called 'The Man On The Bondi Tram' in Sydney) is a theoretical ordinary person. The Man On The Clapham Omnibus is reasonably educated and is supposed to represent the opinion at law of whether a thing is reasonably likely to have happened, or whether a reasonable person is reasonably likely to conclude something.

This test doesn't exist in the United States as far as I can tell but if you apply the test of the opinion of The Man On The Clapham Omnibus as to whether or not they would conclude that Donald Trump was reasonably likely to have incited violence (which is in fact the only charge being made by the second impeachment), then I do not know how The Man On The Clapham Omnibus would reasonably conclude that he didn't. 

Given that the mechanism for impeachment, conviction, removal, and disqualification for government offices in the United States is purely a political one (let's not pretend that it's anything but), then the basic legal test which exists in Westminster traditions would never be applied even if it could have been. Immediately it highlights the internal stupidity of the governmental system because from the outset, the system itself destroys any notion that there even can be a test for reasonableness and it answers the question of what actually is impeachable and what is actually convictable by assignor it to nothing more than the mob. 

When Senator Ted Cruz stood up and said that this is "nothing more than a show trial", he may actually be speaking more truth than he thinks he is. If this really isn't either an impeachable or convictable offence because a reasonableness test is refused to be applied, then you have to conclude that the supporters of Donald Trump are not reasonable and will allow an incitement to violence as acceptable.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I would take Senator Ted Cruz's statement that this is "nothing more than a show trial" at face value and proceed on that basis. It seems to me that if a purely political process refuses to make a conviction then the appropriate place for this is a criminal court. In a criminal court you would take the basic question of whether or not statements were likely to have been reasonably concluded to be an incitement to violence by simply presenting as evidence, the testimonies of the people who actually concluded Donald Trump's statements as an incitement to violence and then acted because that's insanely easy to prove under DC law:

https://code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/22-1322.html

§ 22–1322. Rioting or inciting to riot.

(c) Whoever willfully incites or urges other persons to engage in a riot shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 180 days or a fine of not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01, or both.

(d) If in the course and as a result of a riot a person suffers serious bodily harm or there is property damage in excess of $5,000, every person who willfully incited or urged others to engage in the riot shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 10 years or a fine of not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01, or both.

Was it a riot?  If a 'riot' is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd, then not only can The Man On The Clapham Omnibus conclude that it was but even Blind Freddy can see that.

Horse 2807 - Is “Opinion” Doing More Harm Than Good? (My Attempt To Answer This)

 Last week's episode of The Minefield on ABC Radio National was mainly about the rise of opinion writing in newspapers and about whether or not it is ultimately bad for public discourse and by extension, democracy. It is well worth your effort to listen to for an hour but not necessary for this piece. A link is included in the footnotes below¹.

It has to be said that the internet has in many ways changed the media landscape but in many fundamental ways, has not. In a little under 30 years, the internet went from being text only, to including sounds and then podcast and streaming radio, to also doing likewise for video. Naturally as audiences changed their sites of attention, advertisers also changed their sites of advertising; which in turn dried up a lot of the source of revenues for previous media empires built upon print, radio, and television. However, what should be stated is that the resistance to new media stealing away revenue sources, is not a new problem at all and was repeated exactly when radio started taking revenues away from print, and when television started taking revenues away from radio.

In Australia the most famous and long running battle has been between News Corporation and the ABC, when in 1932 Sir Keith Murdoch objected to the ABC even having a news desk, and then successfully managed to bully the government into preventing radio from having news bulletins before 0745 in the morning. Similar fights happened over television and then the internet.

What does any of this have to do with opinion writing though? The simple fact of the matter is that the production of any media content, requires at least some amount of work. The most stellar example of this is the list of credits at the end of a movie, where you have a massive list of people who did the work to get the story to the screen. That's also true but to a lesser amount of people for television, radio and print.

It probably is also obvious that the collection, analysis and production of news, also requires an amount of work. The unique thing about the news, as opposed to opinion pieces, is that they require gumshoe reporters out in the field to collect and produce the pieces which eventually go to print and air.

However, with falling revenues because of falling rates of advertising which is predicated on falling audiences, the number of people employed professionally to actually go out and collect the news has also fallen². Moreover it has fallen so much that in Australia, virtually the entirety of regional news print media has been culled (save for a few independent newspapers) and in turn, the number of people who are actually collecting and recording the news for publication has also fallen.

This is naturally going to have an effect on the composition of the newspapers, radio and television which is left. Overall the number of pages in newspapers has fallen due to the lack of a need to print adverts but it is also true that the number of news pieces has also fallen; with much content now being purchased from outside sources such as the Associated Press.

The dilemma then is what a newspaper, radio station, or television station fills up its space with. The cheapest kind of filler, relative to the expense of producing it is opinion.

News Corporation has long since determined that it gets the best revenue to expense ratio by producing opinion which is designed to cause outrage. While the old adage "if it bleeds, it leads" still rings true, when you are the one doing the punching, then you can keep on producing pain and blood and shaping the opinions of the audience to make them believe that those people deserve it, more or less forever.

News Corporation has such an extremely limited number of people on the team, who it can rotate through the positions in both print and on Sky News, to the point where the actual collection of news is almost a sideshow.

Nine Entertainment Co. is slowly moving towards this model but has the pesky problem of the remnants of Fairfax Ltd newspapers still being a legacy piece. Seven West Media is also following a similar path; and Ten is... sort of always doomed. 

They all resent and hate the ABC and SBS, who actually bother to maintain and keep regional news offices and in the case of News Corporation, it has spent 90 years fighting the existence of the ABC. 

The thing about opinion as a commodity for consumption is that not only can it be produced with little to no acknowledgement that the world that waits outside exists, it's that it is by its very nature unfalsifiable. You can not say to someone that their opinion isn't real because it is impossible to fact check the internal beliefs of someone. 

It is possible to fact check a weather reporter who tells you that it is raining by going out and looking to see if it is raining or not. Admittedly virtually every issue which exists is more complex than the weather but the point is still useful. It is impossible to fact check an opinion reporter who tells you that the rain is awful and that you should also hate the rain. You can not say to the weather opinion reporter that their opinion is wrong because they are the one who invented their own opinion.

It probably also goes without saying that as someone who is neither a journalist, nor employed in that capacity, nor someone who has the ability to collect news as it happens, I am very much an opinion writer. Although you will find footnotes peppered throughout these pieces going back over many years, you should treat everything that I have to say with skepticism. 

News media which is dominated by opinion rather than fact because it is cheaper to produce, also tends towards the promotion of that opinion as a means for political action.

Every piece of media ever published has a base intent for action in its audiences. Pure fiction is designed to entertain and emote. Beyond that, news and opinion pieces are designed either to impart information about the world or to make you see the world a little differently; to that end all media is political, all media is spiritual, all media is emotive, all media has some base purpose. 

As opinion contains and promotes the biases of the people who generated it, it is by nature not news.

When not news is dressed up and made to walk around in the clothing of news and indeed facts, that portion of the audience which does not bother to check the truthiness of it, ends up wearing those clothes for themselves; even if it actively works against their own interests. If newspapers have designated enemies, then there are political reasons for designating those enemies and given that the capacity for human selfishness knows no satiety, then it becomes very easy to make the case that opinion writing is really just part of a concerted marketing campaign to make people buy the ideas, ideals, and opinions of the people selling them. 

Is that bad for public discourse? Of itself, no. Is it bad for democracy? Again of itself, no. Are the ideas being sold bad for public discourse and democracy? Very possibly. The objective measure would be how they either expand peoples' freedoms and conditions and/or how peoples' lives are improved. 

An organisation like News Corporation which deliberately tries to smash public services and peoples' wages and conditions through the promotion of repeatedly stupid and banal opinion writing, and in some cases has actively tried to dismantle the franchise, is not only bad for public discourse and democracy but is also bad for the well being of society itself...

...in my not very well paid opinion.

¹https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/theminefield/is-“opinion”-doing-more-harm-than-good/13117292

²https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/01/news-corp-to-suspend-print-editions-of-60-local-newspapers-as-advertising-revenue-slumps

Horse 2806 - The 7 of Bananas

It must be said that I really like playing games. Sport, field games, board games: I just love games. Games have obvious objectives and obvious sets of rules; which together make it obvious when you win. They also create a rare environment where within the confines of the game at least, perfection is possible. The rest of the world is far from perfect and together we've made a pretty good job of messing it up royally but inside a game, unless the game is so badly designed that it doesn't work, then all of our messing up simply disappears within the confines of the game. 

The thing about games and models generally, is that if you strip things down to the fewest number of components, then what you end up with is a truth which is unobscured. 

Possibly the purest of all games are card games because they resolve to logic and chance. Games like football which have very few components resolve to physical agility and ability but card games and games like chess, only have rules and logic to define them. They are like playing football but only having the laws of the game. 

Contained within the material of card games are a microcosm of societal prejudices. Those things are also worth questioning and some games like Rook and Uno even go so far as to strip away those societal prejudices and cultural overlay so that all that you get are colours and numbers.

In card games where the rank of the cards is equal (think of games like Rummy or Uno), then the rank of the cards serves only as a directional element; for instance, there is no inherent reason why a King is better than 4 in a game of Rummy. However in trick taking card games such as Bridge or 500, or games like Poker where the rank of the cards is highly important, then it follows that the more powerful cards are more highly sought, except perhaps in a hand like Misère in 500 where the order is reversed.

In a standard deck of playing cards there are 13 ranks and depending on what the game is, the power of those ranks is different and even within the confines of some card games, that might also be subject to change.

In Bridge the ranks of the cards run from A-2. In 500, they also rank from A-2 except in the suit of trumps where the Joker outranks all, then the two Bowers, then A-2 (minus the Jack of trumps which has become the Right Bower). 

I personally think that this is crazy-bananas-absurd. For a start, I do not know why an Ace outranks a King in most circumstances and I find it even more crazy-bananas-absurd that in 500, the ranks of the cards go Joker, +Jack, -Jack, Ace, and then King. What sort of poor kingdom is it where the King is only the fifth most important person? I am prepared to accept that an Ace might be that suit's flag or god, wherein even the King realises that he is subject to the laws of the land but when you have Bowers rising up and taking charge and following after some Joker whose only qualification is that he's handing out promises like candy, then you really do not live in a very good country. In fact, you live in a country led by a clown; where the whole world is afraid of you and thinks that you are a crazy-bananas-absurd joke which isn't even funny.

In all of these card games where rank is important, the teeming majority of cards who are reduced to nothing more than being a number, are for the most part, unloved. In a K-A order, the 7 is bang in the middle as the 7th most powerful card. In a A-2 order, it is reduced to being the 8th most powerful card. In a 500 hand where trumps have been called, it gets reduced even further down the order of power to being only the 11th most important card. The poor 7 is nothing more than a number which is called upon in a coalition of the weak to bolster the power of the clown in charge.

Almost never does the 7 take a trick and when it does, it is because everything above it has already done so. Roughly only a quarter of the time is it part of the coalition in charge and the clown at the very top only ever seems to care when there is a bidding war and an election to find out who will be the special ones.

I want to stand up for the 7. I want to make it throw off its suit and adopt the colours which truly reflects reality. In a crazy-bananas-absurd system which is beyond a joke, the various Kings, Queens, Aces and Jacks who are always running the show, could in theory be overthrown at an instant if the ones who are only ever reduced to being a number, all banded together. 36 of 53 is 67%; which is easily more than a majority. The 7 of Bananas knows that the entire game is rigged against it and refuses to wear the colours of the red/black divide which has plagued these games for too long.

Of course that does immediately present the problem that if everything is bananas, then anarchy reigns and the whole game is ruined. Maybe if the cards were to throw off their suits and ranks then they'd be happier but as Rook and Uno prove, even after that has happened, there are still things that nobody wants to be on the end of and there are cards of black suits with the power of immense punishment.

Maybe that's the underlying lesson that card games should teach us. It doesn't matter what the rules of the game actually are, there is an implication that they will be enforced and by someone who has the ability to exact that force. That's kind of why the world is messed up. Everyone wants a say in how the rules are written but it mostly falls to whomever can muster the most force. Objectively, that makes for a worse game.