Horse 2838 - Unlimited Wolves

The first fact that you need to know with regard to this post is that when you live in a world of numbers, there comes a point in some days when they appear to dance around the page like agents of chaos. Sometimes you find occasional nuggets of whimsy such as palindromes, repdigits, or numbers that have other meanings like dates but in general, simple arithmetic of great strings of numbers is mind numbingly dull.

The second fact that you need to know is that earlier this year, there was a period of flash flooding that caused the Hawkesbury River to break its banks and this meant that people have had to rebuild and make claims on their insurance.

One of our clients has a property on the banks of the Hawkesbury River at Colo. When the flood waters rose, they flooded two of their sheds from floor to ceiling and they lost about a dozen sheep and two utes. They also lost the entire contents of the sheds due to water damage and this will take time before they realise the full extent of what that damage actually is.

In the last set of quarterly accounts, we came across some truly bizarre entries, where the client has written down stuff but not even the greatest of handwriting experts would have the slightest bit of a clue as to what the heck it says.

There is a line of narration in a green ten column account book which we think reads:

26/3 Unlimited... Wolves - Flood repairs. $1498.50

Presumably flood repairs means the expenses incurred in repairing the damage caused by the flood. It is nonsensical to assume that someone wants to repair a flood. The only way that I can think that one would repair a flood is by adding more water. Surely the name for a damaged flood is 'normal' or in extreme cases 'a drought'. 

However "Unlimited Wolves" is also strange. I do not know why one would need to buy unlimited wolves, nor how one would procure an unlimited number of wolves for any price let alone $1498.50

The question of why one needs unlimited wolves is itself baffling. My boss offered up a semi-plausible explanation:

"if you had unlimited wolves, you could just use their absorbent properties to soak up flood waters "

- My Boss, 29th Apr 2021

I consulted an expert on this subject and they arrived at an interesting conclusion.

"Wolves don't have absorption properties

They're just big dogs that go AAAWOOOOOO"

- Expert, 29th Apr 2021

"Have you ever tried mopping up flood waters with unlimited wolves? I bet you have not."

- Me, 29th Apr 2021

"I have not as wolves are neither absorbent, nor friendly to Australia's ecosystem. 

You cannot import wolves for flood purposes, let alone unlimited wolves.

In conclusion: what the ****"

- Expert, 29th Apr 2021

This is an apt conclusion to a baffling problem that we have and it opens up all kinds of enquiry. 

- What exactly are the rules behind importing wolves? If you can not import one, then you can not import unlimited wolves.

- How absorbent are wolves?

I will take it as unchallenged fact that unlimited wolves are not friendly to Australia's ecosystem but given our history with rabbits, lantana, and cane toads, that seems like an issue that we've already decided that we don't care about as a nation.

Also, unlimited wolves within a very small space has the ability to create a black hole. This blog has previously asked about the possibility of a lion based black hole¹; so the idea of an unlimited wolves black hole is not entirely alien. This then opens up the question of who would win in a fight - a lion black hole or an unlimited wolves black hole? The answer is nobody. Even if the two black holes melded and achieved some kind of melded unlimited wolves/lions consciousness, it would be a very bitey and fighty consciousness; which would probably also go AAAWOOOOOO².

Wolves are not considered as legal pets in Australia; which means that under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) only organisations that are open to the general public for the primary exhibition of wildlife, ie. zoos and wildlife parks, can apply to import or export CITES species and Australian native species. You can not for instance import an elephant, even if it is a working elephant.

You are allowed to import Goats, Sheep, Deer (which includes Elk and Moose), Horses (which curiously includes Zebra), Bovines (cows, bison, yaks, etc). under livestock provisions but they fall under the authority of the Department of Agriculture.

Having said all of that, you don't actually need to import any wolves as the full trinomial name of the Australian Dingo is Canis Lupus Dingo. Not only do you not have to import dingoes because they are already here, New South Wales is one of only two states where people can keep pet dingoes without any permit. If we can keep dingoes without a permit and do not need to import them, then unlimited wolves is completely legal.

In answering the second issue raised by my expert that wolves are nor absorbent, there is in fact an empirical standard for measuring absorption. 

ISO 20158:2018 is entitled "Textiles — Determination of water absorption time and water absorption capacity of textile fabrics". A textile is a flexible material made by creating an interlocking network of yarns or threads and the hairy coat of a wolf certainly fits this definition. I am reliably informed that a hair in good condition can absorb more than 30% of its own weight of water. 

This is where maths comes in. A 20kg dingo will have roughly 0.5kg of hair. That 0.5kg of hair will be able to hold about 150mL of water at saturation. The flood waters which caused the Hawkesbury River to break its banks were 57,000 megalitres of water per day for four days; giving us 228,000 megalitres in all. That means that you only need 1,520,000,000,000 dingoes to clean up the flood waters. For $1498.50, getting more than 1.5 trillion dingoes seems like amazing value to me.

In the end, all of this turned out to be very disappointing because when another email came through with the relevant invoices, it was for a company called "Unanderra Walls" and not "Unlimited Wolves". Most of the invoice from Unanderra Walls had to do with the installation and painting of plasterboard walls and wasn't even remotely wolf related. In an instant, we went from the possibility of unlimited wolves and water absorption, to zero wolves.

How boring.

No AAAWOOOOOO.

¹Please see Horse 2827 - Questions 4 & 5 https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2021/04/horse-2827-holiday-fun-quiz-pull-out.html

²Although seeing as light itself can not escape a black hole, sound would also not escape either; irrespective of whether or not there is a medium for it to travel through.

Horse 2837 - The European Super League Is Unfettered Knavery

At just after half past midnight on Monday morning UK time, an announcement was made that a new football competition called the European Super League was going to have 12 clubs as foundation members, with six of them being from England; and that they would be playing on a Wednesday night, in direct competition with the European Champions League and the Europa League. 

Now the idea of such a thing has arisen before and usually it was used as a threat by the richest clubs in Europe that if they weren't given increasingly larger slices of the football pie, that they would pack up and leave. It seems that the past 15 months of this pandemic have finally convinced the clubs that at the end of the day when gate sales aren't as critical as they once were, that selling the game on television to a worldwide audience is where best business decisions are made. As far as business is concerned, they are probably right. As far as what this means for football, it is as if they have taken a century and a half of tradition and decided to burn it publicly. Football to the bankers and marketers is nothing more than a commodity to be packaged up and sold and the fans are nothing more than customers. Whatever tradition, legend, community, and grand story might have been told, has now in part been thrown into the fire and burned on the altar of the holy god Dollar, praise be.

This kind of thing isn't new to football. The very invention of the Premier League itself was the result of the owners of London Weekend Television (a former ITV company), BSkyB (aka News Corp), and Lord Sugar, who saw the potential of putting live football on the telly and charging subscribers loadsa money for it. That has meant that the last first division game of football to be shown live on terrestrial free to air television, was shown in 1991. 

This new Wednesday Television Cup Cup Cuppity Cup (European Super League), starts off with as much tradition as a plastic bag. As such, it pretty much gained the instant ire of lots of fans who correctly judged that just like a plastic bag, they too were being thrown out like rubbish.

The idea had apparently been kicking about since at least before 2008 and had previously been used as a threat. When you have backers like Fenway Sports Group, JP Morgan, the Agnelli Group, as well as a few oligarchs and billionaires from Russia and Qatar, they look at football not as a sport but as a business. When the pandemic started and they saw revenues fall and began to think that they could do without the fans, the monied interests have obviously met and discussed plans in secret; not even pretending to consult the very people who built the things they now own.

For a club like Barçelona who is carrying more than a billion Euros in debt, management has seen the giant chunk of money being waved about and has made a choice. Liverpool which is owned by Fenway Sports Group, has obviously decided that it can simply dictate terms of service because an American franchise model of team ownership has no problem with uprooting a team and plonking it somewhere else. Capital which already doesn't care about borders, place, and tradition, also has no problem with uprooting a team and plonking it into an unconnected and completely independent system.

From best as I can determine, the plan either involves running a new competition running alongside the European Champions League but with the twelve founding members being given permanent status. This by its nature is exclusionary and naturally UEFA, FIFA, and the various FAs in Europe are furious. It also destroys the principle that the best clubs should fight their way into a competition on the basis of merit. Like so many fans across the world, I scarcely see any value in a competition where simply having more money entitles you to a place but actually being good does not.

It doesn't surprise me that the three clubs in Italy and the three clubs of Spain have decided to chase filthy lucre after having poisoned the well in their own domestic competitions. It also does not surprise me that Liverpool which is owned by Fenway Sports Group or Manchester United which is owned by the Glazer family would either. Nor does it surprise me that Chelsea and Manchester City whose billionaire owners are temporary jobbers would show no allegiance to tradition or their fans. What does surprise me is why Arsenal who are have reverted to an embodiment of mediocrity decided to join, and it also surprises me that Tottenham Hotspur was asked in the first place. Why would Spurs sign up for a Wednesday Television Cup with no tradition and which they will perpetually come 12th in?

If I was in charge of the English FA, then my punishment would be swift and brutal. Already I'd have docked the 'big six' clubs all of their points. This would immediately invalidate them from European competition. Furthermore, I'd relegate all six to the Football Conference, which is the fifth tier of English football; then apply the normal promotion rules. It would take three years for them to get back out but that's not exactly a problem.

The next thing that I'd do is have six clubs promoted upwards from the Championship and likewise six clubs promoted upwards from League One, League Two, and the Conference. 

There are massive residual questions surrounding contracts with broadcasters such as Sky Sports but quite frankly, they can deal with the big six who are responsible for this. None of the other 14 clubs in the Premier League should be held responsible, none of the other 72 clubs in the FA should be held responsible, and to be honest if the 'big six' are swimming in billions of Euros then I can not even begin to feel the slightest bit sorry for them.

The people who I do feel sorry for are the players, coaching staff, managers, ground staff, and all of the office staff. This nutbaggery has happened at a level way way above their heads and as employees who are being blown about by the vicissitudes of fate, they can hardly be held responsible. I can understand Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp's decision to stay even though he has already publicly stated that he personally hates the idea because even he still needs a job. This is an awful position to be involuntarily placed into. 

The decision about what to do with the 'big six' lies with the other 14 clubs of the Premier League, the English FA, and UEFA. Yes, this looks like the owners of giant pots of capital arguing with each other and this looks like several seasons of a drama being packed into a week but ultimately the story of football has done and always will rest with the fans. Sitting behind all of this is the cautionary tale of Wimbledon FC whose owners merely uprooted the club and plonked it in Milton Keynes. What followed was a revolt by the fans, who set up their own phoenix club which rose out of the ashes and now sits seven divisions above where the new club started. AFC Wimbledon started out with having trials on Wimbledon Common, and is now in a new home in the New Plough Lane stadium; whereas the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes has never again ascended to the heights of the former Wimbledon FC, despite starting out with all the assets of the previous club.

My hope is that this whole thing collapses in a giant embarrassing heap before it even begins. My other hope is that the FA makes the 'big six' suffer some kind of very public shame for this. If the clubs voluntarily back out because they've come to some sense of sensibility then I still think that they should have their European competition places taken away but I wouldn't relegate them. 

Should Liverpool enter the new Wednesday Television Cup then I will in principle refuse to care about it. If they actually leave English football, then I don't actually see the point of caring about then any more. 

Remember that warning by Tinkerbell? "If you don't believe in fairies, then they all die." If a similar phoenix club (called Anfield FC and playing out of Edinburgh Park) was started, then just like the jilted and injured fans of AFC Wimbledon or FC United Of Manchester, if the club doesn't believe in us then we won't believe in it. 

Horse 2836 - Sovereign Citizen (or Peace and Harmony Through Violence)

 A client of ours who is a QC, asked me what I think of the concept of a "sovereign citizen"; following on from a newspaper article in the West Australian.

I should point out that this is not in principle a legal question. What it is, is a philosophical question; which has at its heart the conundrum of why law is.

https://thewest.com.au/news/court-justice/phoebe-lee-bennett-slammed-by-magistrate-for-sovereign-citizen-claim-after-being-caught-speeding-ng-b881845942z

A Dunsborough teenager caught speeding on Bussell Highway has been lambasted by a magistrate for "wasting the court's time after claiming she did not consent to the charges as a sovereign citizen.

Phoebe Lee Bennett appeared in Busselton Magistrate's Court this week charged with exceeding the speed limit by more than 10km/h. It is alleged the 18-year-old, above was driving 127km/h in a 110km/h zone on the highway in December, a charge which usually involves a simple $200 fine.

When asked to confirm her identity and whether she understood the charge. Ms Bennett said: "I answer to the name Phoebe of the Bennett family ... I do not consent to the contract as a sovereign citizen."

Taking her answer as a not guilty plea and listing her matter for trial next week, Magistrate Andrew Maughan slammed her freeman sovereign citizen movement as misguided and uninformed.

"Let me give you a quick legal lesson -the nonsense you have just spilled has been considered by the highest court in this country and the highest courts in other countries -it will get you nowhere," he said.

"You are simply wasting your time and wasting this court's time if you're going to rely upon possible conditional argument whether this court has jurisdiction to deal with this matter or not."

Continuing her stance, when the matter was set for trial Ms Bennett asked Mr Maughan if he was asking her to leave, saying if she left the matter would be final.

Unimpressed, Mr Maughan told her should she not attend her trial, it would proceed in her absence, likely resulting in a criminal charge.

Fuelled in part by online sub-cultures, followers of the freeman sovereign citizens movement believe they are only bound by laws if they verbally consent.

- The West Australian, 16th Apr 2021

As someone who has been around the law courts in some capacity over the past 20 years, I have seen the argument of the so-called sovereign citizen before. It started to gain traction after the TEA Party movement kicked off in the United States in 2010 and has become like a rolling snowball of silliness, especially as it has gained more momentum over the past few years. It has probably been helped by the fracturing in confidence of institutions as conspiracy theories have also stated to become a rolling snowball of silliness.

The idea that a citizen is sovereign though, is almost absolute inveterate nonsense. The reason why I say almost, is that there is in fact a set of circumstances where an individual can make a legitimate claim on sovereignty.

Sovereignty in the broadest possible sense is some person, which is either real, corporate, or intangible, who is in possession of the highest power or who is completely independent. Since we are working within the realm of law and law is nothing more than a set of rules and regulations and the ability to enforce said rules and regulations, then the seat of sovereign power is said to lie with or is vested with the abstract concept of "the people" as corporate entity in some countries, and with a ruler in others. 

Sovereignty and the force of law, has been since the beginning of time, been made and enforced through the threat of violence. 

Looking at the stories of various religions: Yahweh kicks Adam and Eve out of Eden for violating the law, the Jade Emperor kicks the Monkey King out of Heaven and imprisons him in a rock for bringing disorder to Heaven, Greek and Roman mythology is replete with gods being disorderly and being booted from of heaven. In all of this, there is the acknowledgement that law invariably comes as the result of some prime authority having the ability to rightfully enforce order.

The earliest law code that immediately springs to mind is the Code Of Hammurabi; which itself assumes that Hammurabi as someone who is able to command the greatest amount of force, is king. And so it goes.

If you want to be king, you have to be able to command the greatest amount of violent force. The idea of democracy lies in the idea that the great multitude of the demos if provoked, will eventually rise up and kill the tiny majority in charge. This is the reason why military coups actually work.

In English law, the long shadow of history involves various kings being killed (including one having his head removed), and the great multitude of the demos gradually finding their way into power, through entering parliaments. What is a parliament? If is a council of members who have the ability to make laws; which are backed by the threat of violence from the state.

The current string of parliaments which Western Australia and indeed the Commonwealth are part of, follow on from Charles I succumbing to violence and having his head removed and then having a new king installed who is also subject to the great constitution of laws.

The formal document which defines how to make laws, is itself a law. I know that this is going to sound like a piece of inglorious circular logic but it requires a piece of self-referential circular logic to describe this piece of inglorious circular logic. Here it goes:

The thing that tells you that you need to follow the law, is the piece of law that tells you that you need to follow the law.

To wit:

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s5.html

This Act, and all laws made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth under the Constitution, shall be binding on the courts, judges, and people of every State and of every part of the Commonwealth, notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State; and the laws of the Commonwealth shall be in force on all British ships, the Queen's ships of war excepted, whose first port of clearance and whose port of destination are in the Commonwealth.

- Clause 5, Operation of the Constitution and laws, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)

Similar provisions exist in the Constitution Act (1902) of the state of New South Wales where I live and the Constitution Act (1889) in the state of Western Australia where this young lady lives.

The basic principle of the law binding the citizenry because the law binds the citizenry, is unbelievably bootstrappy and reminds me of that section in the Adventures of Baron von Munchausen where he gets stuck in a swamp and pulls himself out by pulling upwards on his own hair.

If Ms Bennett wants to claim that she is sovereign is almost absolute inveterate nonsense but not quite. The claim that she could be sovereign is actually enforceable but it would mean that she would need to raise her own independent threat of violence. In short, I am suggesting that if Ms Bennett wants to claim that she is sovereign, then she should mount a military coup. I do not know exactly how capable she is of doing that but in days of yore, it simply meant raising an army of people armed with swords and clubs. I suspect that in the 21st century, she may need to find a much larger show of force than mere swordsticks. Last century we collectively expended the lives of more than half a billion people in sending nation states to display the answer to that question.

The statement by Ms Bennett: "I do not consent to the contract as a sovereign citizen." is an interesting but highly flawed line of argument. In principle the law doesn't care if you consent to it or not. There is no right at law, not to follow the law. Nor should there be.

As for the question of if a contract exists, it doesn't either. You simply do not enter into a contract with the state. The state's claim as first holder of violence, can actually only relinquish that claim via a subsequent claim as the holder of violence. That either happens through peaceful transition where violence is held back or through violence itself. 

This probably helps to explain why the embodiment of Justice is always shown as not only being blind and carrying a set of balances but also wielding a sword.

Of course it makes sense that someone travelling on a public road, in a machine which is capable of killing people, should be subject to the rules of the road. Presumably Ms Bennett has both a driver's licence and has registered her motor vehicle; which means that she already knows that she is subject to the law. Surely if she truly believed that she is a sovereign citizen then she should have refused to

The Lion is the King of the Beasts because the Lion can command the most violence. The Lion has the ability and means to tear all of the other animals to pieces. If Ms Bennett wants to be the sovereign, she has to fight the lion of the state.

Horse 2835 - I Don't Want Any Updates, Ever

 People think that just because I am capable of using technology well, that I am some kind of technological wizard. I am a wizard insofar as much as I can get it to do what I want but when it comes to tracking down problems that I do not understand, there are proper experts who are magnitudes smarter than I. To me, a lot of the back end of both software and hardware, could all be filled with sandshoes, string, sweeties, goblins, chewing gum, and sawdust, and I would be none the wiser. I think that the most powerful magic words in all of the universe are:

- I don't know

- Please help me

- I love you

When deployed appropriately, they are an admission that one is acutely aware of one's own limitations, and that people and things contain multitudes that are impossible to understand. 

On the other hand, I do not particularly like it when the boffins, beautiful nerds, and technicians, start tinkering with things that I use.

When I buy a thing I expect it to work. The very old IBM slogan used to be: "Machines should work; people should think." The reason for this is that when machines just work, that frees up people to do the thinking. If machines don't work, then the only thinking that people are allowed to do, is thinking about how to fix the machines. Moreover, when I buy a thing, I expect it to work. Not only is that a tautology, it is a tautology. A machine should work in the sense that it is capable of doing the job for which it was intended. A machine should work in the sense that it should do the job for which it was intended.

As I sit here tapping away on the keyboard of my tablet, I am simultaneously amazed that I can tap away on a magical device from the future and annoyed that the boffins, beautiful nerds, and technicians think that it needs improvement.

I do not care.

There is an app on this device called Play Music, which is part of the Google suite of software. I am already annoyed that I can not remove the components of the suite that are taking up valuable space on this device but the boffins, beautiful nerds and technicians at Google think it important that all of the components are constantly updated.

I have reached a point in the Google update cycle where the system wants me to update things which then demand that I am connected to the internet or else they will not work at all. I have found that by reverting to the factory settings, that is the versions of the apps that were shipped with this device, that they then demand to connect with the services at Google but will then display an error message which once one has pressed "OK" then allows you straight into the app.

The machine basically admits to me that when it came directly out of the factory that it did in fact work. I am fine with that. If the machine works, then I do not have to think about it. If it gives me a bunch of updates, which at this point amounts to several years' worth of them, then the machine fills up all of the space that it possibly can, demands to be connected to the internet, and then ceases to work.

I mean to ask this in the most contrarian tones possible, as a frustrated end user: why exactly would I want to buy a thing which does not work? Moreover, why do the people at Google think that I want any update at all when my device worked perfectly reasonably when it left the factory?

"Security" they may plead. Again, if I do not want, nay need my device to be connected to the internet, then I do not understand why or how security is an issue. It seems to me that the only security risk posed here, is as a direct result of the boffins, beautiful nerds and technicians, demanding that the device asks for constant updates, presumably just so that it can demand more updates.

Do not think that I am a Luddite either. I quite like having machines that do amazing things. I have within my hands, a faceless window through which I can look at the world's knowledge, billions of hours of television and radio, and control other machines. It is just that I expect my machines to work.

My microwave oven has a QA sticker on the back, from 1977. When I operate a toaster, I do not expect or need it to download updates to tell it how does better internet toast (though if it could download ham and cheese, that would be excellent). If I am hurtling down the motorway at 70mph or whizzing above out heads at 500mph in a flying people pipe, then having a machine download updates and then refusing to work, would be disastrous. Admittedly, my device isn't mission critical to the survival of people's lives but it is not so inconsequential that it not working due to it demanding to be connected to the internet does not go unnoticed. 

I am beginning to suspect that the boffins, beautiful nerds and technicians just like playing with all of the sandshoes, string, sweeties, goblins, chewing gum and sawdust, that lives inside this device. I will openly admit that I am not technological wizard and do not understand why or how this device works and I do not care. I don't know. Please help me. I love you. You are not helping when you make a machine which used to work, not work. If my machine stops working, then the only thinking that I am allowed to do, is thinking about how to fix the machines. When I buy a thing, I expect it to work. I don't want to think about it.

Horse 2834 - Someone Is Making An SUV Which Is Actually U And Might Be S

This publication has long lamented the rise of the decidedly uncool and improperly named SUV. An SUV fails in a full two thirds of its named purpose by never being used either in sport or being sporty, and because they're often jacked up versions of what should be either a station wagon or a hatchback they also fail at usable utility. About the only reasonable and reliable thing that you can say about them, is that they are in fact a vehicle.

Therein lies why they are uncool. In being all things to all people, they cease to be anything exciting. Not even a Porsche badge in the case of the Cayenne or a Lamborghini badge in the case of the Urus can save them from a fate worse than a fate worse than death, which is uncoolness and rolling boringness. Now while I'm not exactly the most reliable witness as to what is and isn't cool, if I'm suggesting that a thing isn't cool, then you can bet that the cool people definitely don't think that it is.

Imagine then my spark of joy this week when Hyundai announced that they intended to bring to Australia, their Santa Cruz Utility; which is not only a utility but looks pretty cool as well.

I have it on reasonably reliable authority (that is that I heard it off a car dealer who heard it off of someone who heard it down at the pub) that the Hyundai Santa Cruz will be powered by the 2.5L four potter that is found in the Sonata. Okay, that doesn't exactly set the world on fire but the fact that they intend to build this as a unibody car and not a truck on rail frame, says to me that the people at Hyundai have determined that the people who are the most likely to buy this thing don't actually need a serious truck and want that most elusive of qualities, fun. The four door cab with the wee winky tray bed is also a tacit admission that the people who are likely to buy this thing are most likely to be hauling air in the back, most of the time. There's nothing wrong in principle to admitting the truth and designing a thing accordingly.

Am I likely to buy one? Initially, no. Am I likely to dream dreams about buying one? Absolutely. Right there is half of the answer to making a thing cool. Remember, all men without exception are merely big versions of our former smaller selves. We're born with a finger up our nose and then we get taller. If you can build a car which sells to the ten year old still within us, then you'll sell loads.

They could in theory make this way cooler. Hyundai have a 4.6L to 5.4L family of V8 engines called Tau. I bet that if they initially built a 350bhp V8 version of the Santa Cruz in both two door and four door versions, then they'd have an instant classic on their hands. It'd be even better if they took it to Bathurst to race in the 6 Hour, 12 Hour, or if they were prepared to throw a bit more money at the project, a V8 Supercars challenge. Imagine what that would do for the profile of the vehicle. 

Plus, it would mean that it would actually be an SUV according to 100% of the three letter acronym. Moreover, instead of just being another people carrier for carrying groceries and sprogs around in, it would be cool and fun. 

Horse 2833 - 28 Years' Later Saiman's Goal Still Stands As The "Ten Point" Standard Of Perfection

I am 42 years old; which means that whatever sporting prowess that I might have had at the peak of my powers is slowly fading away, as eventually so will I. I am in Jaques's fifth age from "As You Like It" by the Bard in 1599; which means that my bank-grey carpet eyes are severe my beard of formal cut and that I am probably full of wise saws and modern instances (though equally likely to be full of what VP Biden called 'a bunch of stuff' in 2012) and so I play my part. I will eventually pass into second childishness and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything; when I will again rejoin the dust when the wind will pass over me, and I will be gone and my place will remember me not.

While my eyes begin to fail and the light within me which once burned so brightly suddenly begins to burn pale, there still exists within me a stupid desire to go on playing games and sport. I play indoor football on a fortnightly basis, where the stakes are nil but the players play on for the higher ideals of fun and for the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Even though I am bad (and would be rated around about 25 in the game FIFA) because I know that I am bad I have a keener sense of what I can and can not do on the pitch. As football is a team sport, that also means using what little abilities that I have to produce preferable outcomes. That also means that because football requires performing similar actions repeatedly, even the worst player can produce occasional flashes of brilliance due to the law of large numbers.

However before I tell of the story of what happened on Tuesday night, I wish to tell of another story which makes this look utterly feeble.

In a Year 9 PE Class we were playing a game of indoor football in the school's gymnasium. One of the features of the school's gym is that the basketball hoops and backboards are cable stayed and can be pushed back to lie against the walls at either end. Most of the time, they were left out and as such, they hung over the ends of the baselines; to where a regulation position for the hoops should be. On this particular afternoon, the basketball hoops and backboards were left out and the goals for the game of indoor football were set up, so that the pitch was defined by the basketball lines.

I was standing in the Left Back position (because even as a 15 year old, my natural tendencies were to stand behind the play and then cut off any attackers coming through) and my friends Saiman and Denis were playing in central defence. As Saiman was a relatively smallish chap and an opposition play had come through to barrel in on him and steal a cheap goal, someone on our side told him to thump it up field which he dutifully did.

Saiman's thump up field, which was kicked from possibly no further away than three feet from the baseline, was the truest and straightest kick in the history of ever. It was so true and straight that it drew a perfect centre line strike, sailed through the basketball hoop at the other end of the court, and because it had the deftest amount of topspin on it, it landed and then with one perfectly dead bounce, rolled the remaining six inches at the other end for a goal.

Strike. Sail. Swish (nothing but net). Plop. Spin. Goal.

Sports and games are one of the very few areas in life where it is possible for very brief periods to obtain perfection. By my reckoning that was a 28 yard strike, into a goal which can not have been anymore than about 6ft tall by possibly 8ft wide. Not even Ronaldinho's free kick against England in the 2002 World Cup from 35 yards out had this degree of precision and perfection. Moments of perfection on the sporting field are so rare that they end up being named with a special label. Shane Warne's "Ball of the Century" to dismiss Mike Gatting for 4 at Old Trafford in the 1st Test of the 1993 Ashes springs to mind; as does Greg Murphy's "Lap of the Gods" at Bathurst in 2003. Eric Cantona's 85th minute strike to give Manchester United an FA Cup victory in 1996 has remained in my memory to this day, and then there's moments like Nadia Comăneci's performance at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow which actually did score perfect 10's across the board.

Legendary sporting careers are built upon genuine skill and talent and while that's worth its own accolades, that's still based upon being better than everyone else consistently. Moments of perfection are like flashes that care not for ability or talent and will visit when the exact moments of circumstance line up perfectly. That still needs some initiative to pull it off but those fleeting moments of perfection are no respecter of people. They visit whom they will.

There is always some element of luck involved with any goal because the world is a complex system and the opposition is always against you but even if that is true, Saiman's goal which then took on legendary status and got the nickname of the "ten pointer" burned itself in my memory. To date, I still think that I witnessed the single greatest moment in sport that I have ever seen to this day in that gymnasium. 

Fast forward 28 years and on Tuesday night, in a game of indoor football in an indoor cricket/netball/football venue from an almost dead ball situation, I spotted my team mate JJ at the other end of the field and sent a deliberately flighted chip pass over the heads of everyone; to where he dutifully tapped in a goal. I stress that I didn't score a goal; nor did I come anything close to Saiman's "ten pointer" but that chip pass landed on a sixpence within where I wanted it to be and JJ's tap in proved that my sense of what I can and can not do on the pitch is still excellent but it is still not as perfect as Saiman's goal from 28 years ago.

Horse 2832 - Facebook And The Lesson Of The Big Dumb Billboard

A friend of mine on Facebook recently posted this:

Has anyone noticed: the newsfeed is full of pages and page suggestions.  No content from friends.  Very obvious, I am the product being sold to Facebook advertisers.  But will any friend even see this post?

This highlights the central bargain that all of Facebook's users make with the platform. It is a point so incredibly obvious that it often daren't be said but Facebook is a privately run business and like all privately run businesses, it exists to return profits to its owners. My friend being intensely aware of this, is also aware of that bargain, where we trade data for derived utility. 

While I might joke that I am a robot, let me assure you that I am at least able to pass the Turing Test because I can understand the problem and provide semi sensible transformations of that understanding. Humans as I understand them are bags of meat, held upright with a skeleton of calcium stone like structures, then topped with a thinking muscle which is a bag of sawdust, plaster, and salty water; with the whole thing being infused with consciousness, morality, and a swag of desires which includes wishes for pleasure, connection and community.

I do not think that Facebook is unique in wanting to be the vehicle by which I am the product being sold to advertisers. Indeed as someone who has watched motor racing since being a small child, I have been highly aware that not only was I interested in watching motor racing but that advertisers were also interested in me watching. When you have a hideously expensive sport which some would argue is intrinsically pointless (this warrants a post all to itself) then to find a way of funding such hideously expensive nonsense, racing teams and scuderias have hawked their colour schemes and identities to fit the will of advertisers since about the 1960s. Teams in other sports don't really have the luxury of selling the entire colour scheme of their uniforms. Liverpool FC will always be red. The Sydney Swans will always be red and white. Hawthorn will always be poo brown and wee yellow. Australia will always be green and gold or gold and green. New Zealand should be all black (which is the reason why their flag referendum in 2016 failed: they put up the wrong colours for a vote). 

Probably the ur-example of this is when Team Lotus sold out their British Racing Green for the red and gold trim of Golf Leaf Tobacco. At the other end of this extreme is what happens in NASCAR when in theory a car could sport 36 different colour schemes in a season depending on who was stumping up the cash.

Advertising in motor racing is for want of a better word 'dumb'. Granted that everyone who is watching a motor race already broadly shares the general profile of someone watching a motor race but what is basically a 200mph caravan of moving billboards, can not react to the individual desires of individual capricious viewers. Those big dumb 200mph caravan of moving billboards, have been used to advertise automotive products, cigarettes and alcohol, confectionary and lollies, washing powder, various kinds tinned meat, fast food products, plumbling services, electronic goods and white goods, and a host of other things all vying for a chance to have some of the dollarpounds in people's wallets.

Facebook on the other hand, starts off with some base data from every single user and using the metadata of people's activity, then tries to work out which advertisements are likely to sell stuff to individual users using smarter systems than just a big dumb billboard.

Facebook correctly has determined that I am a male who is aged roughly about 40 years old and therefore is likely to be in command of sizeable buying power. They have also correctly determined that because I like motor racing that I am likely to buy automotive things. What Facebook doesn't seem to understand though is that I already have a car and intend to keep it because I like it. The 'I've already got one' problem is a death knell for advertisers because they can throw omnicash at the problem and it ain't gonna make a lick of difference. Facebook and their network of suggestions keeps on wanting to sell me motor cars and trucks but seeing as my needs are already satisfied, I am not in the market for a new one. 

On that note, big dumb advertising is highly likely to influence my decision to buy a very big thing in the long run. As a meatbag human, I am also an irrationally tribal individual. My broad preference if I am going to drop eons of coins on the table, is to buy a big thing with a blue oval on the front. Henry's lads have spent a great deal of time trying to convince me that their ton and a half of metal is better than someone else's and they've done that through the hideously expensive sport of motor racing.

My friend's problem as an end user and therefore the product which is being sold to advertisers is that human end users do not have the automated attention spans that the Facebook algorithm seems to think that people have. If both the advertising algorithms and the users were automated, then you could design a fully independent luxury selling system which would fulfill both the desires of selling and buying algorithms perfectly. Meatbag humans who have buying power, have imperfect and internally complex buying algorithms which even they themselves aren't always privy to. What we do know is that at some point, the meatbag human end user gets bored, or annoyed, or repulsed; which means that they can be dissuaded from buying whatever it is that is being bought and sold to them and that includes their attention.

This is the base dilemma. Facebook's users keep on using it because they perceive that they derive some kind of benefit from it. The people who own Facebook see the users as meatbag humans whose attention can be sold to advertisers. Advertisers want to buy people's attention because they then want to sell goods and services. The very act of putting advertising in front of meatbag humans is itself internally destàructive to their attention. If you destroy people's attention to something, they leave and it is therefore functionally impossible to advertise something to them any more.

People became users of Facebook because of their desire for connection and community. Facebook had better learn that if they destroy the thing they created, people will go elsewhere for connection and community. Individual users will use their own internal smarter systems than simply deferring to Facebook as a big dumb billboard.

Horse 2831 - THE PEOPLE v BANANA (on pizza) [2021] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v BANANA (on pizza) [2021] - Judgement

H2831/1

It has come to this fake internet court's attention that in Sweden there exists a banana pizza which is invariably known as a 'Tropicana' Pizza. 

Now while a precedent that commenting about television shows and movies that one has not seen should be adhered to by way of guideline, there are instances where commenting about things that one has not experienced is not only acceptable but necessary. For instance, one does not need to have committed murder to know that committing murder is terrible. Now while this particular crime is not in the same category or class as committing murder, it is still heinous enough to warrant being brought before a fake internet court with no actual jurisdiction whatsoever. As this is a case of both maximum irrelevance and minimum importance, this court is most suited to judgement of this kind of case.

Before judgement is pronounced, this court would like to thank our learned friends and esteemed colleagues, Pete Tsar acting as counsel for The People and Marsha Mellow who acted as counsel for the defence.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

The most common recipe which had to be researched and then which this court has taken as material for judgement is as follows:

- pizza sauce

- 2 ripe bananas

- curry powder

- ham

- grated cheese

In a previously decided case of The People vs Pineapple (H2228/1), it was established that Pineapple has no business being on pizza. As this court regards precedent as a guiding example to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances, then this similar case should be decided in that light.

The only reason that Pineapple has forced its way onto pizza, is through deception and this example appears to be Pineapple's friend Banana, engaging in a similar deception.

While this court completely approves of banana in curry because curry is perfectly amenable to accepting banana, raisins, apricot etc. and will even accept plantain, putting banana on a pizza is a whole other ball game. 

Pineapple already doesn't belong on a pizza and only finds its way on there because of a very particular edge case, where a Greek man in an Italian restaurant in Canada was able to convince Canadians that this was a Hawaiian thing. The audacity and sheer cheek of this deserves to be congratulated, even though it belongs in that same circle of hell where people are forced to walk around in circles in a frozen forest forever. 

This isn't helping your cause, Banana. If A = B and B = C, then A = C. However if A ≠ B and B ≠ C, it doesn't follow that A ≠ C. Two of the three could still be equal, or none of them could be equal. Pineapple already does not belong on a pizza; that is already a crime. One does not justify committing a crime by going out and committing a worse one. I am sorry Banana but in this criminal conspiracy you have merely added to this knavish web with ever more increasing knavishness. You're not fooling anyone, Banana. Stop it.

Final Judgement:

Banana, you are guilty of both conspiracy and deception. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no business being on a pizza, we order you to cease, desist and stop this egregious pretense. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalities will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is.

Curry, you are fine with being on a pizza. As a savoury family, we welcome you along with kebab, cheeseburger, barbeque, Cajun, and a host of other flavour family groups. You have proven that you can work well and play nicely with pizza. 

However Curry, you are indeed guilty of being a co-conspirator with Banana but you appear to have been coerced against your will. You are not guilty and are free to go but you should walk away from this fake internet court having taken away a valuable lesson. There will be no conviction handed down or recorded today but be warned that just because you have escaped, doesn't mean that this is not a crime or that this is excusable. Please do not appear beforehand this court again because if there is a next time, this court may not be so lenient.

As for you Pineapple, you're still in trouble. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H2831/1 - Ed)

Horse 2830 - Stormtroopers v Redshirts

 It's weird to think about but the first television series of Star Trek is fast approaching 60 years old. The ecidedly optimistic space sci-fi series was made before the first Apollo missions landed on the moon and in that weird window of time before everyone realised that we've damaged our own spaceship quite a lot. The first Star Wars movie on the other hand, which at the time was simply known as Star Wars, came after the Apollo program had ended and after Skylab had failed to capture the public imagination. In fact, Star Wars sits in a particular space in time after the 1970s oil crisis and just before peak wages. Star Wars is decidedly not optimistic and presents quite different view from the shiny world presented by Star Trek a decade earlier.

Wrapped up within the mythos of these two space sci-fi series is the the very nerdy question of who would win in a fight: Stormtroopers or Redshirts. I think that this is practically a foregone conclusion but I'll lay out the case anyway, in keeping with the parameters of the question that I was given.

Stormtroopers:

These Imperial Soldiers are equipped with laser blasters and some kind of armour. The running joke is that Stormtroopers always miss their targets.

Redshirts:

These Starfleet crew members are equipped with phasers which can be set to 'kill' but their only form of protection are the polyblend red shirts that they are wearing. The running joke is that Redshirts always die.

...

In principle this looks like the opposite of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object; which should result in the mutual annihilation of both since the work expended has to do something. The difference here is that it looks like we have an ineffective force versus an impossibly easy to move object; and since the ineffective force is in theory unable to act, then the results are ambiguous. Mathematically speaking, the thought experiment on the face of it is supposed to be 0/0 as opposed to ∞/∞.

Except that it's simply not true.

Quite evidently, Stormtroopers are more capable than zero. If the galaxy was obtained by and maintained by the active use of force, then the base assumption that Stormtroopers always miss must be faulty. They are often seen killing people and talking people hostage; which means that our assumption simply isn't true. In a numerically equal fight, trained soldiers with proper weapons would easily destroy a crew of essentially untrained civilians who are forced to make do with vastly inferior equipment. A Stormtrooper's blaster blast versus a polyblend red shirt can only end in the death of the Redshirt. A Redshirt's phaser shot against the armor of an Imperial Stormtrooper, would do three quarters of five fifths of diddly squat.

Even if you allow for the assumption that Stormtroopers genuinely are terrible at aiming, then I submit my ability to score goals on the football field. I notoriously do not own shooting boots and have boots made for passing and stealing (I am a defender) but even I have scored occasionally. The reason for this is the phenomenon known as the law of large numbers which says that if you repeat something often enough, then eventually you will get the result that you are looking for through sheer brute force. Even playing football as a pick up game in indoor, while other players consistently score six or seven, I have occasionally picked up a brace or a hat-trick. If it was a hundred Stormtroopers firing off all at once, then even in a chaotic firefight, they are still more likely to take out a hideously underdefended and underweaponed opponent in comparison. While one might not be able to hit a barn door with a bucket of water, if you throw sufficiently large enough numbers of barn doors then you should be able to do damage to an unfortunate bucket of water. 

I already think that Star Wars is rebel propaganda which is told by unreliable narrators. If the framing device of Star Trek is the diaries of Captain James T Kirk, who by the way can't really be bothered to remember half of the names of his crew, then Star Trek is probably also an equally unreliable narrative. As it is, not remembering the names of expendable crew, leads me to believe that he has little to no faith in them winning in a fight. In contrast, you don't kit out literally thousands and thousands of soldiers with the instruments to kill people if you do not intend for them to use them. From a propaganda standpoint, the fact that Star Wars does have the added tagline of "A New Hope" implies that previously there wasn't very much hope to be had. Even from an unreliable narrator standpoint this still implicit that Stormtroopers are to be feared.

I just do not see how Redshirts win this fight with any given set of conditions. I think that no matter which way you look at it, Stormtroopers always win. Certainly if the USS Enterprise accidentally wandered into any space fleet battle, it would be destroyed. It is only equipped with minimal torpedo cover whereas any Imperial Fighter has more armaments.

Sorry, sorry, Captain Kirk,

All you have are fireworks.

And as you crash out of the sky,

99 Luftballoons go by.

Horse 2829 - Modulation... Meanwhile Back.

 Adam Neely, owner of a Youtube channel of the same name¹, asked a question on Twitter which is ludicrously simple to ask but incredibly difficult to answer.

It was thus:

Fav modulations?

- @its_adamneely, 7th Apr 2021²

To answer this, you need to know what a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fUin music is. The short answer is that modulation is a change from one tonality, which can either be a tonic change or a tonal centre change, to another tonality. The usual method and reason for doing this is a key change which is used to build a crescendo at the end of a piece of music, or as a device within the music itself as a marker between the various parts (like the chorus, verse, coda etc). 

Get it? Got it? Good.

Let me submit "Penny Lane" by the Beatles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU

According to Wikipedia, that great font of all knowledge, "Penny Lane" begins in the key of B major. I tried to think about this in B major and to be honest, I can not wrap my head around any of the chords in this song if this is the case. Since I am rubbish at music, then what I think as the tonal centre of this song is actually a whole step below in A. If Penny Lane is in A major then as far as I understand it, it makes more sense.

Verse:

A, F#m, Bm, E7.

(I vi ii V)

I vi ii V looks incredibly normal and is what we call the Doo-wop changes. Doo-wop songs include "Get A Job" by the Silhouettes, "Blue Moon" by The Marcels, and "Earth Angel" by Marvin Berry & The Starlighters.

Doo-wop changes work well in music because they have what's know as a walking bass; which in 4/4 time means that you get a nice steady kind of beat (hence the term 'walking'). They are as boring as get out for drummers and bass players; which probably might explain why Paul McCartney was able to write so many songs. He could basically goof off while John and George did the difficult work of playing music.

What's interesting but not surprising is that an identical walking bass line to what is used in Penny Lane is also used in several beds for the television series Thomas The Tank Engine. I very much doubt that Paul McCartney had any input to the soundtrack of that series but as it was narrated by Ringo Starr, there is at least a connection there.

If the verse is in A major, then the Chorus changes to something that I don't even understand.

Chorus:

G, Bm, C... E7?

(I iii IV ... E7 is doing what?)

I have no idea what the function of E7 is in G. E minor would be the vi chord but E7?

In the verses, I starts off. vi and ii what to take you somewhere and V wants to resolve back to the I chord; which happens at the beginning of the next bar. As a four chord loop, it works very well.

In the chorus though, we have a I chord as the tonal centre, a iii chord which is a mediant chord and is very weak pre-dominant which means that it wants to point to somewhere else. The IV chord which is a subdominant chord (think of a V chord but in the other direction) and this E7 doing... something that I don't even recognise. If it has a function then I simply do not know what it is, except to act as a pointer.

Wikipedia thinks that the E7 acts as a "IV chord in the preceding B key and a V in the looming A key" except that that analysis makes sense if the two keys are B and A but then literally none of the chord changes do. 

If the verse is in B then the Doo-wop changes should read:

B, G#m, C#m, F#

(I vi ii V) 

Except that's not being played at all. If the verse is in B then F# as the fifth should be the place that directs you to go back to the I chord, except that last chord is very obviously lower. Likewise, if the chorus is in A, then E7 is obviously the V chord (dominant seventh) but again, I find it ridiculous that you can play a thing in a key without ever playing the I chord of that key as by definition, the I chord defines the key you are playing in.

Both the verses and choruses are terminated by a coda with the lyrics of 'meanwhile back'. This sequence of notes can be played in any chord that you like and even in the wrong key for this song because what it's doing is a simple chromatic turnaround. These three notes are of the form iii-ii-I which as it ends on a I chord is always resolved. One of the reasons why Penny Lane is able to carry off modulation so effectively is that in having the terminating codas resolve, McCartney is then able to play whatever he likes and the chords won't go wrong (because it's not a northern song)

I think it nonsense that you can have a song played in a key with none of the chords in that key being played in the song. That's why I find this song so interesting as far as modulation goes. The whole song defies sensible analysis in the key that it's purported to be in and if it is reported in a key which is a whole step down, then it has a chord which belongs nowhere and still works.

¹https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely/videos

²https://twitter.com/its_adamneely/status/1379642628686364672 

Horse 2828 - Why I Do Not Like The Australian Christian Lobby

There is going to be a chap from the Australian Christian Lobby on ABC1's QandA this week and I was asked what I think of the organisation. 

I absolutely know that in many conversations about politics, I confuse people because I do not fit into people's assumptions of what they think that my political standpoint is. I tend towards the economic left, which would make me a socialist but not an authoritarian communist; I sit roughly in the middle of the authoritarian/libertarian axis, which makes both ends confused; and when it comes to the issue of religion and the state, I absolutely think that people's opinions that are expressed should reflect their religious beliefs and I also think that the state and religion should stay unmeshed. To that end, I do not like the Australian Christian Lobby.

I do not like the Australian Christian Lobby because I simply do not believe that they are what they say they are. 

Politics is the art of the negotiation and enactment of policy. Policy is the statement of what you intend to do. On the face of it, the Australian Christian Lobby should be about the enactment of policy of things that Christians care about. In a pluralistic secular society, which is simultaneously multi religious, areligious, and irreligious, the enactment of laws with regards to explicitly moral ends are not only impossible but downright dangerous. If one of the base assumptions of Christianity is that everyone is terrible (which is not that difficult to prove by demonstration), then giving people the ability to make laws on the basis of some moral standing can only result in the weaponisation of morality and the rank hypocrisy of people purporting to hold up that moral standard. The old proverb that it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel is exactly backwards when you consider that there were no good apples in the barrel to begin with.

Possibly by accident Australia chose to invent its own political culture but by about the mid 1920s we reverted to looking a bit British and then from the 1950s onwards we staunchly refused to invent a truly unique cultural environment; instead choosing to import our culture and opinions from the United States. To that end, in America which has remained oddly religious, there has been a very deliberate cultivation of Christians as a voting bloc for the express purpose of the maintenance of power. Christians in America it seems, are just as easily duped into voting for awful people as the people of Germany were back in the 1930s; just as long as a few magic hot button words are bandied around. 

In America, provided you can yell words like 'abortion' and 'gay marriage' often enough, then 35% of the electorate will vote for literally anyone. The Australian Christian Lobby was founded in 1995 and way after the Moral Majority in the United States had already pioneered the art of political engineering. As far as I can tell the Australian Christian Lobby appears to be operating from that same playbook because we are being culturally primed by broadly the same media sources.

The absolute earliest mention that I could find about them in the media, was from a 1995 article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

A Christian lobby group plans to poll all candidates in the next Federal election on morals issues, setting the scene for an American-style debate on abortion, euthanasia, pornography and homosexuality.

The Australian Christian Coalition (ACC) said it would widely publish the results of the questionnaire - a method commonly used by Christian Right activists in the United States to weed out candidates considered unacceptable.

There is a massive pendulum swing under way, which will sweep the anti-family forces away and those candidates who ignore this swing do so at their electoral peril," he said.

(The ACC's president,) Mr John Gagliardi, said the group was composed of "decent Australians who have simply had enough of noisy, dangerous minority lobbies ... foisting anti-family, trendy philosophies on the rest of the country".

- Jodie Brough, Sydney Morning Herald, 2nd Nov 1995

From the outset, it looks like the Australian Christian Coalition which then became the Australian Christian Lobby explicitly ran the same lines of political rhetoric. Perhaps that's not surprising as John Gagliardi was a former editor the Telegraph in Brisbane (which was the afternoon tabloid); then the editor of the Townsville Bulletin; then Chief of Staff of National Nine TV News.

While I do not have an in principle objection to a right-wing lobby group trying to influence politics for its ends, if from the beginning you have a former News Corp editor running a political lobby group, then please forgive me if I do not think that it appears to be very Christian in character.

I would hope that Christians are concerned about the same things that that Christ chap was concerned about. Since morality and things of a spiritual nature are best contested in people's hearts and minds, then the enactment of public policy should consign itself to the things that the state should be concerned about. On that front, both Christ and secular government have in interest in the welfare of people. Jesus was deeply concerned about the poor, widows, the sick, people from different religious backgrounds and cultures, and about demonstrating practical care for people. The thing is that I simply do not see that the Australian Christian Lobby even cares enough to bat an eyelid when it comes to these issues. I have never heard them speak out about our shameful treatment of refugees, I have never heard them speak about the subject of things like healthcare or homelessness, and when it comes to issues such as inequality, injustice, and inequalities which the Commonwealth has exacted and continues to exact, they are complicitly silent. In those respects, they appear not to be either able or willing to do the job that the name of their organisation suggests.

This makes me ask the question of what the Australian Christian Lobby is actually for, since it is demonstrably not about lobbying for the things that Christians should be concerned about. My suspicion is that it is not about lobbying governments but is about lobbying Christians; who can be led in places that they wouldn't normally go. The end point is not about influencing government to enact Christian principles (because in 25 years I just do not see the evidence that that has happened) but rather yelling a few magic words to make Christians vote in a certain way.

It is very easy to fleece a flock if you've pulled the wool over their eyes.

Horse 2827 - The Holiday Fun Quiz Pull-Out Section

A lot of you (and by a lot I mean one person on Facebook) wanted to know if The Horse has ever published any sub sections. That would imply that The Horse as a semi legitimate (rather than a mostly illogical) publication has subsections that can be removed, as though it were a newspaper. Owing to the nature of the internet, that's somewhat difficult but in its stead I present...

The Horse 2021 Fun Quiz.

Q1. Which is the best Lord?
a) of the Rings
b) of the Flies
c) of the Dance
d) North


Q2. Why is mother superior?


Q3. Match the Seven Dwarfs to the correct Sin?
a) wrath
b) sloth
c) envy
d) pride
e) lust
f) greed
g) gluttony
A) Sleepy
B) Sneezy
C) Bashful
D) Dopey
E) Happy
F) Grumpy
G) Doc


Q4.Who would win in a fight?
a) a nonillion lions
b) the sun
c) The Public Disorder Act 1846
d) Martin Skrtel armed with a pea


Q5. Assuming that you are stuck in a locked room with armed secret agents who have the power to kill you and literally anything you told them they would instantly believe, what outlandish thing world you try to convince them of?


Q6. Which is the best General?
a) Pants
b) Strike
c) Electric
d) Disorder


Q7. Which would be easier to sell to consumers?
a) pizza flavoured ice cream
b) bacon flavoured cola
c) fried chicken scented deodorant
d) marshmallow steak marinade


Q8. Who would win a TV political debate between:
a) Fat Cat
b) Prime Possum
c) NBN Big Dog
d) Humphrey B Bear


Q9. How many is too many?


Q10. If you were suddenly turned into a superhero, which superpower do you most want?
a) flight
b) telekinesis
c) x-ray vision
d) the Soviet Union


Q11. With reference to question 5, how many lions would you need to create a sufficiently large mass of lions that would produce its own event horizon and thus black hole?


Q12. What in?
a) tarnation
b) holleration
c) hateration
d) damnation


Q13. What is the weirdest?
a) cow on a train
b) snakes on a plane
c) horse in a hospital
d) goat in a library


Q14. Would you violate Anti-Discrimination laws if it meant not employing a Dracula?


Q15. If Eugene Cernan had left a bacon sandwich on the moon, di you think that it would be safe to eat more than 50 years later?
Q15a. If given the opportunity to eat said bacon sandwich, would you?


Q16. What is responsible for the world's biggest blockages?
a) cholesterol
b) Mitch McConnell
c) Ever Given
d) Barbie heads


Q17. Are you ready to rock?


Q18. I said, are you ready to rock?


Q19. Which weighs more?
a) a ton of bricks
b) a ton to feathers
c) a ton of lies
d) expectations


Q20. What do these TLAs stand for?
a) KFC
b) ATM
c) Thomas Leonard Andersson
d) EMI


Q21. What won't Thomas Leonard Andersson stand for?
a) this
b) shoddy customer service
c) parliament
d) the national anthem


Q22. Which is the best Martin?
a) Doctor
b) House
c) Chuzzlewit
d) Place


Q23. What do you think should have happened to?
a) Edwin Drood
b) The Likely Lads
c) predictability
d) Fingle Blunt


Q24. What should be the next state added to Australia?
a) Northern Territory
b) New England
c) Northern Queensland
d) Confusion


Q25. Which shape has the most sides?
a) Pentagon
b) Hexagon
c) Oregon
d) Kentagon


Q26. Revenge...
a) of the Nerds
b) of the Sith
c) of Montezuma
d) is a dish served cold.


Q27. Que Sera Sera...
a) whatever will be will be
b) plain and tall
c) Lee
d) boing boing ding ding llama llama boing boing ding ding


Q28a. Why does it always rain on me?
Q28b. Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?


Q29. What is my favourite number?
a) 12
b) π
c) 'You'll Never Walk Alone' from Rogers and Hammerstein's 'Carousel'
d) 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3


Q30. Who put the bomp in the bomp she-bomp she-bomp?


Q31. What is the best fruit?
a) the fruit of the loom
b) the fruits of labour
c) the fruits of the spirit
d) a Banana Republic


Q32. Who let the dogs out?


Q33. Why is a raven like a writing desk?


Q34a. Do you think that the Pope should be allowed to issue Papal Bulls?
Q34b. What about other livestock?


Q35. Do you prefer Charles I as a...
a) mad king
b) bad king
c) sad king
d) dead king
e) Chun King


Q36. The best moves are the ones that...
a) are made with grace
b) zugzwang the opponent
c) move like Jagger
d) happen with a ute


Q37. Is this the way to Amarillo?


Q38. Which is the best can?
a) aluminium can
b) tin can
c) Mexican
d) Yes we can


Q39. Which tribe would win in a fight?
a) Israelite
b) Hittite
c) Dynamite
d) Vegemite


Q40. Who is the best Tim?
a) the Enchanter
b) the Tool Man
c) Berners-Lee
d) Tam


Do the quiz and mail it to yourself. When you get it back in the post, mark it anyway you like.


How did you do?


40/40 - Excellent. You may now practice either medicine in a court of law, or practice law in an operating theatre.
35-39/40 - Good. You may now command an unholy kitten army of the night and are now allowed to conduct raids upon Bronze Age civilizations.
20-34/40 - Okay. You may now make toast.
0-19/40 - Bad. You must review and take the quiz again in three months' time.
Less than 0/40 - Amazing. Honesty is your most lovely quality and you are now allowed to be the Premier of your State Government.

Horse 2826 - White People Hot

 There is a take-away shop in Neutral Bay and next to where the B1 bus stops, that sells Bahn Mi. I have not yet gone in but I have stopped outside enough to read that on their menu boards they have the following chart:

**** Very Hot

*** Hot

** Medium

* Mild

0 White People

As I am a straight white male and therefore the comprehensive winner of history for the last 1000+ years, I am not even the slightest bit offended by this. Is this racist? Probably. Does it matter? Absolutely not; because gentle mocking pushing upwards is quite tame compared with everything that people that look like me have done. On a scale of 1 to Genocide, this barely rates more than an amused titter. 

But it got me thinking - where did the myth of white people not liking spicy food come from? Because it doesn't really square with my general reading of history.

Imagine that you are European in the 14th century. Your total food choices are a few kinds of fruit, grains such as wheat and barley, and other things like hops and cloves; from which the basis of beer and other concoctable comestibles might converge. Even if you are Queen Isabella, King Louis the Nth, or Pope Pius Innocent Totally Not Taking Bribes VII, the best that you can hope for by way of cuisine is boiling carrots for eight years. It is no exaggeration to say that Europeans headed out and crossed oceans for the headline purpose of finding a quick route to India and all of their lovely spices.

This is where my knowledge of history begins to fail me. Everyone in Europe gets access to lovely spices and suddenly the Enlightenment happens, science happens, theatre begins to flourish, and England which is supposedly the butt of everyone's jokes about bland food, acquires India through the cunning use of flags and guns and puts nine people in charge who are all called Clive or Dennis, and in response India invents ever hotter and hotter fishes as a joke upon their colonial thieving masters, that it metastasises to the point where Coronation Chicken, Lamb Vindaloo, and Chicken Tikka Masala are virtually the national dishes of Blighty. It is also worth mentioning that curried egg sandwiches and Keen's Mustard are also very British and that Hot English Mustard is the hottest of all mustards because of that same English demand for heat. It makes perfect sense if you live in a nation which is known for its rain. 

If I am the distillation of hundreds of generations of people who have been scientifically bred to live at the bottom of a peat bog and supposedly white people do not like spicy food, then my preference for million of Scoville units and to be keeled over with blood coming out of my eyes because the food is so hot, makes no sense given the myth.

Except...

Myths do not exist without some shred of truth at the centre around which a web of candy floss is spun. The myth of white people not liking spicy food, has origins in the early half of the nineteenth century and the beginnings of religious movements in the United States. America has always had sections of the community looking for performative puritanism and so we get various religious groups like the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers, and other assorted groups actively calling for bland food in the hope that it will calm the excitations of the spirit. Some famous anti-scoodily-wooping activists went into breakfast cereal production; which explains both the Quaker's Oats and Dr Kellogg's companies.

There are also other elements to this as well. The use of spice was seen in some parts as a thing that black people, that native American people, that Mexican people, and that people who do not look like leftover puritans look like. Racism permeates this particular aspect of life in America like any other; because identity politics that seeks to cast the other as xenos polis, often has a habit of drawing strange lines. Once you throw in the rise of the Temperance Movement and the period where synthetic drugs aren't regulated at all in what is known as "The Great Binge", then it is little wonder that a desire for supposedly clean, white, boring food emerges.

Indeed the most wonderous of the clean, white, boring food is the poster child for blandness. White Bread is totemic of the desire for clean, white, boring food. That stems from the fact that as the industrial age took off and people no longer knew who made their food, there was a temptation for industrial capitalists to cut costs and cut quality. With bread, that also meant cutting flour with other things like sawdust, plaster, chalk, alum and other adulterations. White Bread which begins to appear at the end of the nineteenth century on an industrial scale, is again a method of performative proof that the contents are clean, white, boring. 

This only accelerates with the First World War, the invention of longer lasting food and the need to ship it across many hundreds and thousands of miles and oceans; the general public begins to be trained to accept that clean, white, boring food is a sign of quality. The latter half of the twentieth century which is marked with white flight to suburbia, the widespread use of motor cars and the invention of supermarkets, only helps to create a desire for more processed foods. White, clean, boring food, then becomes a profit maximising instrument and in the stampede to sell stuff to the most number of people that means that spicy food which might offend people's palate, gets economically pushed out of the marketplace.

If all of this sounds incredibly Americentric, that's because it is. Although xenophobia exists across the world, the rubbing of 50odd nations side by side meant that Europeans always had a far more varied palate. Britain and her empire which breaks up after the Second World War also begins to import people and flavours from across the world. America which has always had the melting pot of people, has in fact always had the mixing bowl of flavours; so the myth of white people not liking spicy food isn't the result of flavours and spice not being available.

As a result of being separated from the rest of the world by two oceans, the United States was the only great power to have survived two world wars almost completely undisturbed internally. That put it in top spot to export both goods and services and culture after the wars. Its myth which is partly grounded in fact, then got exported as a cultural artefact, which without the context of two hundred years of internal oppression and slavery, then gets mapped onto other white people's history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. You don't need a lot of truth to spin a myth; it just has to have enough distilled truth to make it plausible. In that respect, the myth of white people not liking spicy food is itself a culturally processed story with all of the spice taken out. It is palatable to the most number of people and is therefore an apt demonstration of itself.

Aside:

I was sitting in Mosman Square with a bowl of Samyang 2x Spicy Hot Chicken pot noodle, recently. I was listening to the radio with some headphones in and had tears streaming down my face (just like Hochi on the packaging), when a Korean lady who was pushing a pram tapped me on the shoulder and wanted to know if I was okay. I explained that I was fine and that this flavour of pot noodle is phenomenally good, and thanked her for her kind concern and she told me that I was both "adventurous" and that my tears were "tears of happiness". I couldn't agree more.