Horse 3157 - Eudaimonia - Element IX - Patience

Beings who see themselves as the centre of the universe, both literally and figuratively, have a deep propensity for selfishness. This is a point which I will labour a lot because as a starting point, it's not only more solid than the rock of Gibraltar but the rock of the entire continent of Europe. Selfishness not only is the starting point for creatures who have needs and wants but the first motivation for having those needs and wants satisfied and in many cases the last motivation and the only logical endpoint of same.

The human being are unfortunately limited not only by space in that they can only occupy one at a moment but also time in that they can only occupy one moment at a moment. The natural outworking is that we have needs which are time dependent and will with the passage of time tend to become more urgent and wants which might not necessarily be time dependent but come crashing in louder and louder with the passage of time. "I need this" or "I want this" becomes louder and louder with the passage of time as 'eventually' becomes 'soon', as 'soon' becomes 'very soon', as 'very soon' becomes 'now', as 'now' becomes 'NOW', and as 'NOW' becomes 'YESTERDAY IF NOT SOONER'.

Patience then, is either the the discipline of perseverance through waiting through the passage of time, or the setting aside of an immediate desire to have one's needs and wants met immediately; so that 'NOW' becomes 'soon', and 'soon' becomes 'eventually', or possibly 'not at all'. Patience is the turning down of the volume of one's internal monologue to the point where it is not heard, or becomes a quiet whisper in the background.

Neither Aristotle or Plato thought that Patience was a virtue. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand argued that perseverance is a virtue, albeit a compound virtue which is dependent on other things such as temperance, and courage. I would argue that it is not a virtue at all but a practice and a discipline. The hint to this might be found in the Greek work μακροθυμεῖ - (makrothumei) which means to persevere, to be patient; from makros (increase) and thumos (spiritedness).

Patience has to be cultivated. Or itself, a self which is held inside a meatbag vessel which has needs and wants, would ordinarily demand to be fed now, and/or possibly constantly. Patience is related to things like delayed gratification, self-control and especially self-control over one's own impulses. Patience is if you will, akin to power deferred, or to the saving of hope for later.

We know what impatient people are like. Being impatient has a very marked tendency to demand to elevate the self above all others; so that our needs and wants are met now. Impatience places importance on the self, to the time exclusion of others. Impatience leaves the monster of the self, unchecked, unregulated, uncontrolled and unruly. Part of the job of the training of children to be proper members of society is to bind and chain the monster so that it eventually learns to hold itself in check. What is a 'monster' in botany? It is nothing more than a plant which through disease or injury has grown in an abnormal and usually uncontrolled manner until it no longer resembles the prototypical example of its kind. What is a 'monster' in literature? It is a creature which has grown in an abnormal and usually uncontrolled manner; often from the worst qualities within, such as peoples' fears and cruelties. Patience is very much about holding the monster of the self, still.

Having held the monster of the self still, patience as a moral practice is then turned to the discipline of the self's position within the environment and with other people; which also have needs and wants which can come crashing in louder and louder with the passage of time. We live in a world where things often do not work as we expect, or where tasks have to be done which are time dependent, or when people still act as people and are stupid, obnoxious and/or daft. Patience as the learned and cultivated discipline of perseverance through waiting through the passage of time, makes allowances for other people to act, or accepts that even within a time dependent environment with things all yelling 'NOW', including when those things are of vital importance, holds still.

The moral work here involves reframe the issue at hand. A thing which takes effort also takes thought to prize apart why the thing causes irritation. Maybe this requires the acceptance of a bad thing and even a horrible thing which is unavoidable. Pain, Death and Suffering are three cousins who all like to show up and while the physical effects of pain can be mitigated, the effects of the other two might not be able to be. Very rarely have people been able to make themselves not dead any more. Maybe this requires someone learning to be comfortable in the act of being uncomfortable.

The problem with moral discipline is that it takes effort. Almost similar to longsuffering, patience requires one to accept the circumstances or at very least to make the effort to tolerate them. Those circumstances often include people who are stupid, obnoxious and/or daft, and maybe even deliberately so. Patience is the waiting through without annoyance; without anger; without anxiousness, so that the thing has passed. You very much find that they most patient people have had to learn the skill and have produced patience as a moral product, moreso than patience being a mere by-product if temperament. I do not think that patience is a virtue but rather a quality which should be signalled and practiced.

Horse 3156 - Eudaimonia - Element VIII - Kindness

 Occasionally Horse receives correspondence to the editor, which petitions for things to be written. As I already write day and and night like I am running out of time, I am happy to entertain such requests; including if they are serious or silly. The world is already full of enough grief, malice, cruelty and sadness, that a little bit of silliness and even stupidity in the name of entertainment is fun. Last week I was asked to write some more pieces on Eudaimonia. Here then, is the first of a few:

Kindness

Kindness is not something which comes naturally to people. The art of doing something nice for someone else, is either difficult to do because of inertia or because of our own competing interest. The wall standing in front of kindness is in fact put there by ourselves a lot of the time. I have been here on planet Earth long enough to realise that there aren't any inherently good people. The fields of economics, law, religion and even behavioural science if they don't agree on some things will all generally concede the point that at very least, humans are pretty selfish. That inherent selfishness has a way of playing itself in a multitude of ways and arguably, the entirety of criminal law and a great deal of civil law, is either looking at the formal outplaying of that, as it relates to a set of agreed rules. Arguably, every bad thing which happens in the world is the result of accident, stupidity and most commonly of all, selfishness.

It is strange that I should visit this tenth element of Eudaimonia, with something which if humans are inherently selfish that they should find so difficult to carry out. The Greek word for Kindness is χρηστεύεται (chrēsteuetai), which is derived from chréstos; which means as you would expect "to be kind". Take note of the fact that chréstos is a verb; which means that this is a thing to be done. 

It probably surprises nobody that someone who is kind, or has a reputation for kindness, only accrues that reputation because they have been kind. As a verb, being kind is a quality which is performed and which is done. That might sound obvious to the point of banality but the fact that kindness consists of acts performed, is already the beginning of a state in which humans want to fight against their own nature. I almost suspect that kindness is not an action which is the default setting of humans but rather, something to be learned, something to be practiced, something to be perfected, and something which has to be continually performed.

Whether we like it or not, the centre of the observable universe is about 19mm behind people's corneas. I know that this is a fact that I keep on returning to but this is important. In order for anyone to perform kindness, there must be some other person to whom kindness can be performed to and on, and the acknowledgement that that other person exists. You will generally kind that in cases of extreme cruelty in which basic kindness is not extended, that this requires the moral gymnastics of firstly othering the other person and is then most effective when the other person is transformed into an unperson. 

In order to perform any act of kindness, one must admit the fact that one is not actually the centre of the universe. Kindness as a mostly voluntary action, therefore requires us to think of that other person as being worthy enough to have an action performed for. Before we even get to any action of kindness, we first have to either break or suppress our own internal drive for selfishness. As performing kindness requires some other person and we esteem that person worthy enough, then that must by inference shift our attention away from our own desires and wants to be able to do so. It then requires that we expend something valuable to us; be it time, money, attention, care, or a combination of all of the above.

Here's the rub as to why kindness is such a hard thing to carry out. Our close bonds such as family and friends, pull on our attention constantly. We like those people. Even then though, showing kindness to the people that we like and love, is still going to require of us an expense of time, money, attention or care. Showing kindness to people we don't know and/or don't like is far harder because not only does that require of us the moral work of being unselfish but it also demands of us the same expense as before and possibly even more. People that we don't know and/or don't like, are going to draw from us a larger amount of internal moral effort, even though the amount of time, money, attention or care expended might actually be identical.

Giving someone your attention, or time, or care, or money, especially to those whom we already deem either unlovable or unworthy, is a more difficult moral work than it would be otherwise. Giving anything, even for purely altruistic reasons, still makes us do a mental calculation for return on investment; in terms of expected happiness, expected fame and fanfare and presumably for those people who think that the universe keeps score via karma or some equivalent, expected attention, or time, or care, or money in return. The problem with acts of kindness, is that the nominal return on investment is likely too be zero in most cases. Especially in cases of people whom we either don't know and/or don't like, they may not even acknowledge that we did anything for them at all. 

In some respect, kindness is an outworking of what the Greeks called philos in some capacity. Kindness and the act of demonstrating it, which has already deemed that other people are worth demonstrating it to, ultimately boils down to considering the other person worthy of love and then doing that love to and/or for them. I have a suspicion though, that kindness is more likely to be the moral product of discipline which goes to the effort of imagining others as complex and worthy. That in itself is already difficult enough; to then make the expense of attention, or time, or care, or money, is harder.

Horse 3155 - Wander No More, Lad - Can't Catch 'Em All.

 "I want to be very best, like no-one ever was.

To catch them is my real test; to train them is my cause.

I will travel across the land searching far and wide.

Each Pokemon to understand, the power that's inside."

The video game, card game, and anime series of Pokemon, is essentially the story of a strange dystopia wherein a whole world finds it acceptable to take the entirety of the animal kingdom and turn it into some kind of elaborate rock/scissors/paper beast baiting tournament. It is never explained what kind of circumstances arose to cause this state of affairs, or even why people find animal baiting interesting but not once does anyone question the moral fitness of making animals fight (possibly against their will). The nearest equivalent that I can think of Pokemon in real life, is nature, where the beasts to battle it out for supremacy and the ultimate prize of eating each other. Taken to its logical conclusion, the winner of Pokemon in the natural world is not the Lion, Tiger, Shark, or Bear (which are all apex predators) and it is not even Humans which have beaten all comers but Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra and Gamera who as the four legendary monsters of the real world, have won.

It came across my radar that the next series of the anime Pokemon will no longer feature Ash Ketchum as the main protagonist. This makes sense. If we assume that Ash was 10 years old in the very first series back in 1998, then he would have had to have been born in 1988 and thus be 35 years old today. Television show timelines if they aren't periodically rebooted, end up like The Simpsons, which is officially supposed to be stuck in 1992, even though the world has moved on several times over. In universe, Ash Ketchum has an electronic device called a Pokedex; which would have been based on something like a Palm Pilot. 25 years' later though, 10 year old children are now running around with Mobile Phones that are so tricked up that they can watch movies on them, browse the internet, and make phone calls; which is something unheard of in 1998. 

It makes sense that after 25 years, Ash's story should either come to a narrative end or move on. Keeping him 10 years old forever takes the series into weird places that have to be constantly retconned. 

As a counterpoint, a successful example of a series rebooting is Dennis The Menace which is up to its fourth Dennis. The implication is that the previous Dennises (Denii?) become the father of the next Dennis. This explains quite nicely why previous iterations of Dennis' Dad have been bald and why the current Dennis' Dad is not. Current iterations of Dennis do get new technology and there have even been meta-discussions in the comic strip about previous Denii being uncool and out of it. Some things never change though, as all iterations of Dennis carry a slingshot and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rocks.

Rebooting the Pokemon anime series so that it has a new protagonist makes a lot of sense. The world which has been built across multiple generations of the game, is vastly more expansive then the mere sandbox world of 151 Pokemon of that this game and series. With the number of Pokemon almost reaching a thousand and the various games having opened up the idea that various regions are almost nation like, having Ash Ketchum who should have grown up and moved on by now, finally doing so, is a fitting conclusion and end point. As it is, the default protagonist in the Nintendo games has been rebooted several times over; often playing back into the anime series as new characters.

One thing that is never really addressed and is actually a little bit sad though, is that the real tragedy of the Pokemon saga to date is that Ash Ketchum is the product of a broken home. His father has abandoned the family and his mother who is seeking to have an affair with Professor Oak, abandons her child to the world. Ash spends years as a wandering child, which is surely a case of both child abandonment and endangerment, and while he does meet some kindly people along the way, the world within Pokemon seems to be strangely fine with this set of circumstances. I suppose that a world which has determined that beast baiting is morally acceptable, is also fine with subjecting children to that same sort of moral circumstances. It even makes me wonder if in the world of Pokemon, whether or not parents will abandon children on hillsides as is supposedly reported that they did in ancient Sparta.

Nobody ever asks Mrs Ketchum why her son lives the life of an itinerant wanderel, who engages in what amounts to animal baiting for sport. Nobody ever asks why Professor Oak has engaged with this conspiracy with intent to abandon and endanger a child. Ash Ketchum does meet some friends along the way and they do in fact travel with him for a while but they eventually leave and lead lives of their own. Brock eventually forms a family and gets his dream job of being a registered breeder. Misty returns to running the Gym in her home town. Tracy Sketchitt just kind of leaves. Klikitt who had dreams of being a photojournalist is probably a victim of the modern news media reorganisation.

When the reboot of the series happens with new protagonists, the world itself won't have attempted to wrestle with these issues and while Ash Ketchum whom we can assume was born in 1988, is likely an adult, the story of him working through personal trauma and other issues such as apparent illiteracy and total lack of education, will also never be addressed. There are lots of people with gainful employment in the series but for poor old Ash who doesn't seem to have any portable skills, he seems to live a hand to mouth existence; living off of the prize money which he can gain from Pokemon beast baiting.

From what I can determine, the new protagonists will exist in a world which has moved on from Gen-1 to about Gen-8. Next Generation Pokemon Trainers (of which Ash Ketchum was one), now have registration numbers and presumably proper employment contracts within the world. Also, it appears that in the upcoming rebooted series, Ash Ketchum will still exist in some capacity; possibly as a parent to whomever the next wandrel child will be. If this is true, then the cycle of neglectful parenting has perpetuated; which is the saddest story of all.

Aside:

Ash Ketchum in 25 years of the anime series, managed to capture just 77 Pokemon; of which 30 were Tauros. This means that he caught on average, a little over 3 per year and if you adjust for the number of different kinds, it falls back to just 2 per year. 

He did a bad job at catching them all. 48/1015 = 4.7%

Horse 3154 - $368bn? We're Not Supposed To Think About It. It's Sub-Conscious.

The Albanese Government in a completely expected move, has decided to drop $368bn of coin on American and British built nuclear submarines (with some assembled in Australia) as part of the AUKUS defence arrangement, in a wave of fanfare and pomp at San Diego. After having committed monies to paying for zero nuclear submarines under the previous Morrison Government, the Albanese Government has decided that paying a slightly more absurd amount of money for some nuclear submarines is a better deal.

The reason given for this is that the government says that it wants the capability to defend Australia's trade routes. The rhetoric being spewed forth from the rightwing trashmedia is that Australia should fear China who will absolutely invade us tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then next week. Australia is prepared to take on this threat of invasion by having these submarines battle ready by 2030. The reason given for wanting these submarine immediately becomes a nonsense when you consider that Australia's biggest trading partner is China. This means that Australia wants to defend its trade routes against China, while at the same time its biggest trading partner is China.

The rule of the schoolyard says that you should try and make friends with the biggest bully, if for no other reason than they will not bully you. Australia who is a very small kid in the world schoolyard, is insistent of giving its lunch money to its old friends America and Britain, in the hope that they will protect it against China; whom they say is the biggest bully. This is despite the fact that China has never even so much as raised a hand to us, and both America and Britain are very very far away. This is also despite the fact that America and Britain were both the originators of a war based on actual lies; which demonstrates that if there are any bullies, it is them. Meanwhile, the only time that Australia ever called for America's help, which was during the East Timorese crisis of 2006, America gave us exactly zero help; which demonstrates that they can and will drop us like plate of cold sick at the first opportunity. 

If you had been watching Sky News Australia on the 14th of March when the announcement was being made that we were buying submarines, you would have seen the news during the middle of the day extolling the need to buy nuclear submarines and saying that this was an Australian triumph but in the evening, Peta Credlin then went on to say that nuclear submarines were a hideous waste of money. "Spud" Dutton appeared several times throughout the day, saying that he pay for these submarines via tax cuts (in defiance to the laws of simple arithmetic) and cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. What a top idea. If we're going to start a war with China, we may as well start by attacking vulnerable and needy Australians. People with specific medical needs are very obviously commie Chinese pinkos. 

As expected, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, Sky News and the rest of the News Corp empire who have admitted under oath in the US Supreme Court that they openly lie for profit, are joined by the howling chorus of idiots at the Sydney Morning Herald, Nine Ent Co, and Seven West Media; singing from the same song sheet which has been distributed by the same kinds of people who stand to profit from this largesse of public monies. I note that Xinhua for its part has made exactly zero comments on the AUKUS arrangements surrounding submarines. Quite rightly this doesn't even so much as register a titter in the Chinese popular press, although given that Xinhua is a state broadcaster is like looking at a Pepper's Ghost trick, perhaps that should be expected.

This does highlight the moral bankruptcy at the heart of this policy. Governments have the ability to spend the public coin on pretty well much anything within their remit and defence is certainly within the remit of the Commonwealth. A person once wiser that I once said that "where your treasure is, there your heart will lie also" and the spending of public coin on the toys of war is a practical demonstration of where the heart of politics lies. Nevermind exactly how the faith and credit of the nation is spent to produce the coin to buy these things but when we have a brewing housing crisis, wages falling in real terms, and cost pushed inflation which is caused by cynical price gouging by very big firms, then spending public coin on submarines of all things seems very much like a personal slight against the poor and vulnerable. Keep warm and well fed, you dirty plebs!

This $368bn isn't really expansionary investment in the economy, in the way that health care, education, or direct subsidy payments to industries that employ people are, as the number of actual jobs created from this will be minimal. Mr Albanese spruiked that 3500 jobs would be created in Australia; which is not even 5% of the number of jobs that a similar magnitude of public coin would have bought in the motor industry. We absolutely could not afford to build cars in Australia but we absolutely must pay protection money to some of the biggest bullies in the schoolyard for reasons which are nonsensical on inspection.

If you even think about this in a hyper-caffeinated testosterone rage-fuelled state for a minute, then it stands to reason that if Australia were to be invaded, then we'd want planes and tanks and guns and soldiers. We are not buying those things. No. Australia is buying submarines; which has about as much credibility in logic as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. We may as well be spending public coin on a skyscraper made of Paddle Pop sticks, or a 10 kilometre wide magnifying glass, or a 507-storey escalator to nowhere, for all the net good it will do us. We must be seen to be doing something; this is something; therefore we must do this. As long as spend public coin on war toys, we can feel better, yeah?

Horse 3153 - The 2023 NSW State Election - Eh? Who Knows?

With the parliament dissolved and the election only a few weeks away, the 2023 New South Wales Festival Of The Vote: The Bout To Knock The Other Out has begun in earnest. Current incumbent Dom Perrotet has kicked off his campaign with a proposal to bribe parents to the tune of $400 per year every year, if parents put aside money into a savings fun for their kids. This sounds like a great plan until you consider that very poor families who live from payday to payday will likely never get any of it, and that Mr Perrotet's own family stands to gain $50,400 by my calculation. Charity begins at home - his home. To those who have, more shall be given but to those who have not, they will be given nothing. This is the Matthew Principle in full swing. Meanwhile Chris Minns and the Labor Party have decided to adopt the policy of not saying anything at all and not being the Liberal Party. Given that two of the four Premiers who have served since Labor last held office in NSW have been referred to the ICAC, then this might be a policy of pure genius.

However is simply existing, enough to swing the electorate? To be honest, I have no idea. Given that the pandemic is still in pretty recent memory, and former Premier Gladys Berejiklian's referral to the ICAC will likely not be reported in full until after the election, I do not know how either of those will affect the intentions of the good an decent people of New South Wales. My sense of not knowing is amplified by a complete lack of silence from rural print media which no longer exists. It used to be that you could gauge the intent of people in that great expanse that we call "not Sydney" by reading through the local newspapers. That is now impossible.

The cold, hard, mechanical facts of the election are as follows. There are 93 seats in the NSW Legislative Assembly; which means that 47 are needed to form government. The Liberal and National Parties have since the 2019 Election held 48 seats; which has meant that in order to pass legislation, they needed everyone on the floor of the chamber. Fortunately, that's really easy considering that the NSW Parliament Building is so incredibly cramped and small that apart from running up stairs from their respective offices, nowhere in the premises is any more than 3 minutes from anywhere else. 

To get to 47 seats though, the Labor Party will have to take an additional 11 seats, to the 36 that it already holds, if it wants to win government. It could in theory take them from any of the 9 independents but given that all of them are likely to hold, then flipping them from the Liberal/National government is the only realistic way that Labor will take the keys to the kingdom for the next four years.

The 11 seats most likely to flip, are in order of most marginal to safest are:

East Hills

Upper Hunter

Penrith

Goulburn

Willoughby

Tweed

Winston Hills

Holsworthy

Riverstone

Parramatta

Oatley

Oatley was won at a margin of 6.8% on the 2PP basis at the 2019 Election; which means that realistically, there needs to be a 7% swing towards Labour if they are to take government in their own right. 7% in Australian politics at any level is not impossible but it is unlikely. Of those 11 seats, 6 of them are in Western Sydney; which means that for the first time in possibly a long time, the Liberal Party and the media companies will have to cencede the fact that Western Sydney actually exists. 

The demographics of Sydney which is distinct from the rest of NSW is such that there are a collection of very rich and very staunchly Liberal voting electorates along the coast. What we've seen over the last few Federal election cycles is that when the people get so fantastically rich that they have all possible needs met and more, that they may be pushed towards uncontrolled Independents. There is a big collection of electorates which always will vote Labor. Then there is a ring of seats which blink with either colour, depending on which way the wind blows.

I also have no idea how much immediate recency bias plays into this. If there is some catastrophic train failure in the week before the election, then the people of Sydney who by themselves have the power to make and unmake state governments, may decide to do that. It hasn't explicitly been brought up but the threat of privatisation of the railways, is always lurking in the background. I find it interesting that even with the privatisation of the buses, this has made zero difference to voting intentions in staunchly blue seats. 

What I do not know is if the 11 seats listed above, which sit inside that 7% swing threshold, have stable voting patterns. Willoughby would likely revert to being a Liberal seat under most circumstances but given that it was their MP who was Premier and referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, there might be pent up anger there. Upper Hunter is confusing as the electorate might either reflect wishes of a decidedly working class mining demographic or a semi-agrarian bloc who might vote National. Tweed is unknowable. Tweed is quickly becoming a place where old and rich people retire to because they want to be on the Gold Coast but it also has poorer people who have been priced out of living in Brisbane; then you add in the further complication that it is a border electorate and I've got not idea.

My suspicion is that the Liberal/National Coalition will not hold government. What I have no idea about is if sufficiently enough of the electorate across the state is going to run across the aeroplane and make it lurch in the other direction. Queensland with its single chamber, does this a lot. It is also highly likely that the Labor Party will flip some seats and we'd be left with a blue and red bloc with about 44 seats each. This whole election might then rest on the decisions of a few kingmakers who then get to decide who to hand the keys of government to. If that happens, then get prepared for the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald to get as close to slander as they possibly can, to pressure them into choosing the Coalition. As it is, the right-wing trashmedia already hates "the Teals".

47 - seats for government

11 - seats need to be flipped

7% - swing

Those are the key numbers. That's what this election hinges on.

Horse 3152 - Blood On The Pavement

After church last Sunday I noticed an unusual amount of dried blood on the pavement¹ out the front. Now this being Doonside which is in the western part of Blacktown Council which is already in Western Sydney, I supposed that the only way that you could get that much blood on the pavement would be if you had a pair of drunkards fighting or someone coming to sudden unpleasantness after falling off a bicycle or other some such. In Doonside though, I think that the former is more likely that the latter. The difference between drunkards fighting in Blacktown as opposed to drunkards fighting in Bondi, or Kings Cross, or Vaucluse, or Cremorne, is that drunkards fighting in Blacktown are just animals whereas drunkards fighting in Cremorne are genetlemen engaging in fisticuffs after celebratory feremented vegetable product imbibing - Hurrah!

Evaporated blood on the pavement left behind a residue² and this particular set of circumstances sent my mind spinning into examining the components. "What are you thinking about?" asked Mrs R. after lunch; as I was obviously wistfully lost in thought.

"I wonder what temperature human blood boils at."

Oh.

(Life Lesson: Never ask someone¹ what they are thinking about unless you are prepared to hear something completely hatstand bonkers.)

Human blood is a hideously complex substance which is made up of several component parts, of varying densities and varying volatility. The fact that there was dried blood on the pavement², is evidence that the atmosphere and the sun have been doing work on this patch, to drive off the more volatile components. Water and alcohol are likely the lighter and more volatile components and seeing as the sun is a relentless energy dumping machine, the energy to drive off those components was amply supplied. All that was left was the more solid residue, devoid of water.

To the issue at hand - Why would I wonder what temperature human blood boils at?

Human blood is mostly chemically made up of water. It turns out that most of the fluids in the human body with the exception of stomach acid are also mostly chemically made up of water. Human blood has a freezing point of about -3°C and a boiling point of about 104°C. This is keeping in line with most broadly salty liquids such as seawater. I have heard it said that as humans are about 60% water, then that means that we have a kind of sea within. 

Given that the human body is roughly about 60% water, then it should be chemically possibly to liquify a human body to the point that it could then be boiled. For a 60kg human, you're going to need a particularly large boiling flask; which you might be able to order from either Krupps or Brand. Assuming that you could pulp and liquify a human body, this has some interesting results.

If we take our 60kg drunkard and assume that they are about 60% water, then that they are about 36kg of liquid. If you were to boil off all of the liquid at about 110°C, you could then re-condense the resultant gas into another flask. If you then take that resultant liquid and heat that to 90°C, then what will happen is that alcohol which boils at 78°C, will be driven off as a gas. You can then re-condense that resultant gas into another flask. Hopefully, the contents of that flask should be roughly similar to neat alcohol, because it is the most volatile of all of the liquids which might be present. 

I should point out at this juncture that technically what we have are two stills; which are illegal in the state of NSW for the purposes of making alcohol unless under production licence. I should also point out at this juncture that boiling humans for the purposes of extracting alcohol is not only morally repugnant but also highly inefficient.

As it is, humans just like every living thing are mostly made of four elements; being Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen. Sugars and Alcohols are fancy longer chain combinations of mostly Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. This helps to explain why the chemicals within living things interact so well. On top this, it also helps to explain why we can drive off liquids from living things so easily. We actually perform this experiment without the equipment on regular basis when we cremate dead people. Cremation is an uncontrolled process of driving off all of the liquids and then oxidising the solid parts which remain. We have also actually perform this experiment twice in two uncrontrolled events in which some Japanese people were instantly vaporised and oxidised.

Now I have no idea how congruent Blood Alcohol Level is to the total amount of liquid in the human body but to make the maths simple, 0.1% which is double the legal BAC for driving, should give you approximately 36mL of neat alcohol. When you think about it, this seems about right as this amount is about 3 standard drinks. Thus, using the power of science and throwing morality and dignity to the kerb, it is possible to distill the chemical which may have likely helped cause this.

Looking at blood on the pavement not only made me wonder about the circumstances² which led to it being there, but also led me to wonder about my own mortality. At some point I will likely die and my useless corpse cremated. I too will leave behind a small pile of residue. Actually, when the skies begin to burn with a great noise and the elements melt with the heat of an insane nuclear fire, then the earth also and the everything contained that are therein will also be burned up and probably not even leave behind a small pile of residue.

What have we learned?

1 - blood on the pavement has a root cause.

2 - although you could extract alcohol from a dead human, it's not efficient or advisable to do so.

3 - never ever ask someone what they are thinking if they are lost in thought. The answer will invariably turn to a sense of mortality and the fact that everyone and everything will die.

Memento Mori.

¹I have it on somewhat decent authority that the likelihood of a woman thinking about absolute nonsense gibberish schnibity-nibity-schnik-nuck-neigh³ is far far far less as they possess brains which make connections from everything useful to everything useful. Men on the other hand are more likely to invent pointless schemes and systems which are as impractical as building Concorde out of cheese slices.

²passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood

³Steady watch me navigate. Ah ha ha ha ha ha

Horse 3151 - The New Rubbish Reality TV Show - "The Leftovers"

It must be said that being Leader of the Opposition in Australia is the best training ground for eventually being the Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition is a position without real power but which is authorised to get access to the central documents of power. Indeed the Shadow Cabinet in order to do its jobs of holding the government of the day to account and to formulate policy of its own such that it will win government one day, needs those central documents of power.

However, being Leader of the Opposition in Australia is also a hiding to nothing. Sure, they get to play the role of thesp by standing opposite the dispatch box and yell all kinds of barbs and jibes at the government but at the same time, standing as the vanguard facing the enemy without also makes one vulnerable to the enemy within. For all the spears and pikes facing outwards, there are an equal number pointed at the Leader of the Opposition. The best way to stab someone in the back is to get behind them.

So therefore it does not surprise me that this week there have been rumours of yet another spill in the Liberal Party. Monday's edition of The Australian had a front page infobox which declared that Mr Dutton had a net approval rating of minus eleven. When the sponsor of the football team starts calling for a change in captain, especially when that sponsor is a multi-million televisionaire, you know you are in trouble.

Tony Abbott who is like a toxic frog, leaked so much poison into the party that even he eventually had to be removed. Mr Abbott has now gone home to his natural environment at the IPA which exists purely to create and spread poison. The Liberal Party then in a strange set of circumstance had a fit of competency and decided to install Malcolm Turnbull who eventually had to go precisely because he had that most evil of things, a conscience. He was then replaced by serial knave Scott Morrison who had a unique blend of incompetency and cruelty. Mr Morrison demonstrated both of these things with immigration and border policy, health policy during the height of the pandemic, before it came to light that he then tried to secretly add actual fascism by being secretly installed as Minister for many many things.

The 2022 election happened and suddenly the Liberal Party found themselves in opposition, only because they spent their time in government by forgetting that they were in government, and abrogating practically every responsibility that they had. After the election and with the party in disarray, the weirdest leadership competition which I have ever seen, installed Peter "Spud" Dutton as Leader of the Opposition; as the only logical choice in a talent puddle rather than a pool. This is like an episode of BBC Radio 4's "The Unbelievable Truth" in which Peter Dutton won with an unassailable score of -3.

The problem is that even though he started with a score of -3, "Spud" Dutton has done the amazing magic trick of becoming even more unpopular. Even with the full backing of News Corp's The Australia, Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun, Courier Mail (the Adelaide Advertiser doesn't count), the horking borking sqawking dorks at Sky News Australia, and the chorus of 2GB, 4BC, 3AW, 5AA and 6PR, along with Nine West Media playing along, Spud's campaign on superannuation has fallen as flat as a squashed butterfly underneath the 8-car express train of inevitability. 

On Monday, his tricky scare campaign failed to get a suspension of standing orders in Question Time. This caused visible disquiet in his performance from his own back benches and in a field of minuses, failing to do the simple transactional jobs in parliament, is another straw to add to the back to an already dead donkey.

The problem that the Liberal Party has is that in this current unreality TV series of "The Leftovers" in which all of the characters are unpopular, then in the event of a leadership spill, who is left to take over the leadership of the Liberal Party? It's not there's a great deal of talent on the front bench to choose from. Also, it's pretty obvious that the Liberal Party is firmly committed to the art of institutional misogyny. This means that they can't choose a woman as leader. By default... there's no obvious default. I mean they could choose Angus Taylor and he seems keen but to be perfectly honest, is he or in fact any of The Leftovers more trustworthy or likeable than Dutton?

If not Peter Dutton, then who? Sussan Ley as Deputy Leader of the Opposition? Sure, she has a handful of shadow portfolios but can they really sell her as likeable? The problem is that the obvious choices apart from Dutton are all Senators. Probably someone like Marise Payne, Janet Hume or even Michaelia Cash should be Leader of the Liberal Party but the nature of the game is that this is an adversarial business where one needs to square off against their opposite number. It would make sense for X to be the Leader Of The Opposition but only if the Labor Party did the sensible thing and made Penny Wong the Prime Minister from the Senate.

Who does that leave? Julian Leeser? Really? Maybe his greatest asset is that apart from political nerds and policy wonks, nobody knows who he is. Is that the best option? Burn any and all stumps and watch the greenery bud from the coppice? Or, and this is the most likely option, do you simply just ignore all rumours of a spill and accept the fact that even at minus eleven, Spud Dutton is still the best option.

Horse 3150 - Liverpool In Seventh Heaven

Liverpool 7 - Manchester United 0

Gakpo - 43', 50'

Núñez - 47', 75'

Salah - 66', 83'

Firmino - 88'

Even the word "thrashing" seems somewhat understated in the 7-nil victory of Liverpool over Manchester United. Usually when you speak of a seven-goal-thriller, the result is 4-3 and rarely 5-2 but in this case for all seven goals to be scored by one side, is a once a season result. Even though Manchester United have locked away this year's League Cup trophy, reputations and silverware are worthless in any given fixture and this match, a 7-nil result is downright embarrassing. Taken in the aggregate over the last five years, the score now reads Liverpool 36 - Manchester United 2.

Even if a season is abjectly hopeless and rubbish, there are some fixtures which by themselves can redeem a world of hurt. For Liverpool fans those four fixtures tend to be the two against Everton and the two against Manchester United. The first is the friendly derby between brothers and cousins; who live next door. The second is almost like a battle between the forces of goodness and light against the forces of darkness and stink. The first is a pillow fight in a bedroom. The second is the gentleman's art of knife fighting in a room made of steel plate. Even to this day, the one goal that haunts my dreams is the greatest player of my lifetime, Eric Cantona's strike in the 1996 FA Cup Final to get past a Pooh-like David James. This fixture however, will rank up there as sweetly as the 2005 Champions League Final; whereas that was for silverware, this was against Manchester United.

There is very very little to say about the opening twenty-five minutes. Both sides looked timid and scared of the opposition and Manchester United held the ball for extended periods of time in their own half and well away from the home side. They could make lightning passes of 30 and 40 yards because they had enough space to park an entire fleet of buses but by the same token, playing with the ball 80 yards away from the goal that you want to put the ball into, helps no-one.

Occasionally when they did lunge forward, they managed to look snarling and menacing and both Fernandes and Rashford should have opened the account. Before the half-time break, this match looked like a rather dour affair and the deadlock wasn't even broken until Cody Gakpo slotted home the pass from  Andy Robertson to put Liverpool 1-0 up. Before this both Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford had missed two perfectly reasonable chances each. What could have very easily been Liverpool 0 - Man United 4 at the break, was ruefully and impotently wasted.

After the half-time break, even just my page of notes tell a tale of devastation wrought from the stuff of nightmares.

47' - Dawrin Núñez header on the end of Harvey Elliott's cross with postage on it, is tapped by a hapless David de Gea.

50' - Mo Salah dazzles Lisandro Martinez to flick one out to Gakpo, who elegantly scored his brace.

66' - Man United attempted to break out of their own half; pressing as far as 30 yards out from Liverpool's goal line but this was duly inoculated and after a few crosses, Mo Salah struck one high and across De Gea.

75' - Dawrin Núñez pots home another header on the end of Jordan Henderson's cross.

83' - Salah in scrambling play, somehow broke out of the defence of two players and then broke two records with one goal. Salah became Liverpool's highest Premier League goalscorer, passing Robbie Fowler to score 129. This was also his 12th goal against Manchester United; making him the highest Liverpool goalscorer against them.

88' - Roberto Firmino drilled one home from inside the 6-yard box, to score Liverpool's seventh.

As Man United didn't score at all, this now becomes the biggest victory between these two sides; beating Liverpool's 7-1 in 1895/96.

This win now puts Liverpool 3 points behind Tottenham Hotspur but with a game in hand; which means that if they win that fixture, Liverpool are back in the hunt for a European Champions League place.

What I found unexplainable was that Manchester United always looked organised. Even as the score rolled on to 4, 5, and 6, they still managed to look composed albeit outclassed and outplayed. It was as if Liverpool, who'd forgotten who they were and had been absent for a lot of this season, suddenly remembered all at once and showed up with all of the intensity and firepower of a nuclear airstrike. Liverpool were a team at full song, playing in front of The Kop at full song, against a top-3 enemy (Everton is always No.1 but Man Utd and Leeds Utd sometimes swap).

Perhaps Man United must have thought that 5-0 at Old Trafford last season was awful but 7-0 at an absolutely ecstatic Anfield must truly be painful. This result will likely send two shock waves through football. Firstly at Old Trafford who despite scoring silverware now have to consider their Europa League match against Real Betis carefully. Secondly, Liverpool should take this as a chance to salvage a season; which includes trying to thump Real Madrid which they will need to do, to stay in the Champions League. If Jurgen Klopp wanted his side to rise to the occasion, then the Royal Liver Bird has certainly done so. 

Horse 3149 - Wendy Wants To Fight The Clown And The King

I have heard through the grapevine that the reputationally cheeky American burger chain Wendy's wants to have a tilt at the Australian market and chuck its hat in the ring. Speaking as someone who already laments the death of milk bars and local fish and chip shops because they made better, cheaper; bigger burgers than the burger joint run by a Clown and the other one run by King Nothing, I really do not understand why Wendy thinks she has a chance. I think that if Wendy wants to cut in on the Clown and The King, she's going to have her work cut out for her.

There are but 26 million people in Australia; which means that we're not even half the size of California in terms of population. A land this big with a population this small, ends up being rather fantastically rich if the metric of average wages is applied but then spends more than 20% of GDP in merely chasing after the mortgage ball and chaining people to the rent ball. When you also take into account that the economy is rapidly changing to the point the the number of service jobs which were available to kids are very quickly being replaced by machines, it means that the likely market of customers is shrinking in real time.

I can understand why executives in the United States might look at Australia as some kind of Cash Cow Utopia and wish that they could get hold of some of our sweet sweet money but the two nations are actually so sufficiently different in both employment and consumer culture that Australian retail ends up looking like a graveyard full of monuments to businesses that tried and died. Businesses that try and fail end up doing so because they fail to understand this land of bouncing rats, poison dirt, and consumers that turn out not to be immensely consumer driven.

If the rumour is true, than I think that Wendy's faces some interesting issues that it does not have to face in the United States; the most pressing of which is the employer/employee arrangement. Basically, Australia lives with the legacy of hard won conditions as a result of actually having stronger unions. We have pretty decent wages and conditions laws; which the United States doesn't really have.

The minimum wage as headlined by the US Department of Labor is $7.25/hr. There is kind of an exception where the minimum wage for tipped employees is a paltry $2.13/hr but this comes with the stipulation that the employer must make sure that the effective wage of their employee is still more than $2.13/hr. If an employee is able to collect more than $5.12/hr, then the employer does not have to pay them a penny more than the $2.13/hr for the minimum wage. I read as a supplementary document that it is estimated that the underpayment of minimum wage employees in the United States, amounts to about 40% of all wage employees and this rises to more than 75% for tipped employees.

There are entire issues related to the fact that the reason why tipping even exists in the United States is related to Jim Crow and the Reconstruction Period and that the United States still hasn't worked through its racist beginning. In short, the practice of tipping as a method of employers not paying their employees, is nothing short of evil and I hate it.

In Australia though, tipping is unheard of because employers pay their workers a pretty decent wage. This means that headline prices for things tend to be higher because employers are obligated to meet the actual costs of wages. The incredible cheapness of the statutory obligations that the United States enforces on its employees means that wages across the board end up being barely above poverty level in many service sectors; including retail food service. Wendy's will have to pay its Australian employees more than double that of their American ones and I do not know how their business model and range of margins is going to work. 

Now only are wages an unexploded land mine that Wendy's will have to navigate past, but they also have to break into a market with some well established players. On top of this, they may have to think about the legal problem in dealing with the ice cream/cake/donut/coffee shop which is also called Wendy's and which has been in Australia since ages ago. 

There are plenty of cautionary tales which litter Australia when it comes to fast food chains which have tried and failed. 

Taco Bell basically doesn't work as a concept in Australia because the wages which they need to pay to comply with the law, doesn't make any of their products sensible. Items in the United States can be sold for 99 cents but that basically is impossible in Australia. This means that Taco Bell charges prices comparable with Mad Mex and Guzman Y Guzman; both of which are of better quality.

Starbucks basically doesn't work as a concept in Australia because Australia already had a coffee culture grow up as the result of post-WW2 immigration. Greeks, Italians, Turkish, and now Iranians, Syrians and Lebanese people, all have different traditions and takes on what makes a good cup of coffee; every single one of which is better than what Starbucks is prepared to sell. On top of that, the legacy of post-WW2 immigration has meant that Australia has re-exported ideas about coffee to the rest of the world, with our no-nonsense flat white and different ways of making other kinds of coffee.

Krispy Kreme basically doesn't work as a concept in Australia because it is really hard to convince Australians that donuts and cake for breakfast, is in any way sensible. We already have excellent pastry shops as a result of Vietnamese migration and to be honest, they're excellent. Vietnam learnt the art of excellent bread making and pastry making as a result of the French and they have in every way, exceeded their former teachers in quality.

Little Caesar's didn't work as a in Australia because Australia already had pizza chains that were perfectly competent. Pizza Hut, Domino's, Eagle Boys (now defunct) as well as pizza being made by people who can also make kebabs, meant that Little Caesar's had no obvious point of differentiation and as such, couldn't ever establish any kind of market.

As it is, Domino's has learned the lesson the hard way that putting up its prices to meet inflation, has just meant that they now sell less pizza. The first things to go from people's spending in a time of inflationary pressure, is discretionary spending and as Domino's found out, a 40% increase in the cheapest of its items has resulted in a more than 40% drop in revenues. 

For the reasons above, I have no idea why Wendy's thinks that it can make a fist of it in Australia. Already McDonald's is beginning to show signs of weakness for the same reasons that Domino's did and if Wendy's wants to compete directly, they're going to have to charge similar prices. If not, they then face pitching themselves against gourmet burger joints and outside of the market ability of their customers to pay for things.