Horse 3405 - The Badness Of The US Constitution - 20A, 21A, 22A

Amendment XX.

SECTION 1

The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

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20A s1 is purely a matter of paperwork but it is worth noting.

In lieu of the United States having a proper Electoral Commission, the several states all ran elections on an ad hoc and haphazard basis. They also had control over the timing of sending Representatives and Senators to Washington. Clearly this needed to stop. The bad thing is that this took 146 years to sort out. This is madness.

All of 20A exists in the dark shadow of two very important events occurring in the "lame duck" period of the United States' electoral cycle.

Lincoln was elected in 1960 but had to wait until 1861 before he became President; during the intervening period, the Southern War Of Aggression and Rebellion In Pursuit Of Retaining Slavery had fermented and boiled over. Had Lincoln arrived as President earlier, he might not have inherited half a country. Likewise, Franklin Roosevelt won the 1932 election in the middle of the Great Depression and was unable to do anything until he finally assumed the office.

Every aspect of 20A is designed to bring the ability to make appointments and pass legislation, to the incoming Congress rather than the outgoing one. This is worth remembering by way of background as this baptises the whole of this Amendment.

SECTION 2

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

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If you remember, Art 1, Section 4 reads:

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be [on the first Monday in December,]* unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

This is by law appointing a different day.

The reason for this is that America got big; real big. In the time between Art 1 being written and 20A being passed, 35 states had been added to the Union. That meant a 260% increase in the amount of work that needed to be done to ensure the integrity of the elections (of which there were now 48). That takes time to sort out; it also gives time and space to be able to finalise any legal challenges that may have arisen in the mean time. 20A S2 is strangely sensible.

SECTION 3

If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

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The material difference between the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Australia, is that the position of Prime Minister is not named and so does not need a procedure of appointment written and although the position of Governor-General is named the method of appointment is not. Procedurally when the executive of the nation is both named and the manner of their appointment is also spelled out, there needs to be a set of instructions as to what to in the event of that person being permanently incapacitated. 

At this point in time, either through assassination or the horrid water quality of the White House, six Presidents had died in office. 20A was also kind of written and passed, side-eying Franklin D Roosevelt, with the open speculation that he would also die in office. He would eventually eventually.

SECTION 4

The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

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In conjunction with the opening sections of this Amendment, this is designed to bring that right of choice by the existing contingent election, to the incoming Congress rather than the outgoing one.

SECTION 5

Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

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We have a procedural statement.

Good. 

SECTION 6

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

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As 20A has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution, then 20A S6 is gloriously redundant... again.

Amendment XXI.

SECTION 1

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

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With the Great Depression in full-swing, possibly one of the most calculated and popular pieces of political theatre in American political history, was to give Americans their booze back. Of course ending the prohibition of alcohol did also mean that the United States Federal Government had a lovely source of taxation back in its hands again. Tax on alcohol is one of those things which is politically very easy to push through from a moral perspective as unlike prohibition itself which is coercive, a tax on alcohol is a purely voluntary tax. If you do not want to pay the tax, then do not buy alcohol. Simples.

SECTION 2

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

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Even when you have an amendment to the Constitution, you still get little weird pieces of redundancy which specifically needed to be spelled out for no other reason than someone in a long forgotten sub-committee had a tantrum. 

We have long established that the states have a 'republican form of government' (although there is never a good definition as to what the jinkies this is supposed to mean), but possibly in deference to the supremacy clause of Art 6, Clause 2, this reminder that state laws exist, even though this section materially did and does absolutely nothing, has been inserted. 

The best principle of writing law, if you happen to be a lawmaker, is to make the wording as simple as possible so as to close the door to any possible gaming of the words. 21A S2 need not have even existed.

SECTION 3

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

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As 21A has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution, then 21A S3 is gloriously redundant... again.

Amendment XXII.

SECTION 1

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

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Under literally zero compulsion, in 1796, George Washington decided that he was tired and announced that we would not be running for a third term as President. Even though there was no law on the books, for the next century and a half, nobody else attempted to run for a third term as President until Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. The United States was not in the Second World War but it was reasonably assumed that they might enter at some point and it was during that term which they did; and subsequently with FDR still at the helm in 1944 he easily walked into a fourth term in office.

Probably having the same guy in the White House for 12 years, infuriated the Republican Party and when Roosevelt died in 1945, and his successor Harry Truman took over, they were worried about him doing the same thing. 22A was passed by Congress in 1947; Truman won the 1948 Election; and 22A was ratified under the Presidency of Eisenhower. 

22A kind of hints at the almost realisation that the United States in placing the executive into the hands of the President with almost no oversight, is a bad idea. Hamilton's invention of this new form of government, which I think was so myopic that he never ever saw beyond Washington as President, is in many respects the same as making one person the monarch in all but name. Not even the government at Westminster, placed that much power into the hands of the King; with Parliament holding both the legislative and executive power. 

22A contains a sunset clause which basically applied to Truman only; probably with the expectation that he was going to be elected in his own right and it probably came as a shock when he was in 1948. 

22A holds that someone can't be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and if you assumed the position and took up more than half the term of someone else's, then that also counts. If we take 22A to the illogical end, not only could someone be elected on the under-part of the ticket as VP an unlimited number of times, but in theory someone could become President because someone else resigned or died an unlimited number of times. That's so much of an edge case that it is practically impossible.

SECTION 2

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

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As 22A has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution, then 21A S2 is gloriously redundant... again. Why do we keep on doing this? 

Horse 3404 - On Senator Lidia Thorpes (in)Famous Outburst

"You are not our king. You are not sovereign.

You are not our king. You are not sovereign.

You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us - our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist. This is not your land. This is not your land. You are not my king. You are not our king.

Fuck the colony. Fuck the colony. Fuck the colony."

- Senator Lidia Thorpe, to King Charles III

This outburst from Senator Lidia Thorpe to King Charles III, has made more of a pointed and directed statement than many many years of platitudes which meant well and did nothing, and undirected cries which have also done nothing. The immediate lie perpetrated by Sky News, Nine Ent Co., Seven West Media and the ABC, was that Senator Thorpe interrupted proceedings. We know that this is untrue because not only was the video there for all to see but the media demands that we reject the evidence of our own eyes and ears. The truth which is there for all to see, is that she waited until the official proceedings had concluded and waited for a quiet hush to descend upon the crown in the room. 

Yes, Senator Thorpe's comments were rude. However, as someone speaking on behalf of first peoples in Australia, rudeness is but a trifle in comparison to the directed genocide which happened in this country (starting at the charge rate of ninepence per head), the dispossession of land, and the trampling of original sovereignty which happened. If you have a problem with the word "fuck" but 9no problem with the systemic killing of people, then you are demonstrated ghoul whose moral compass was flushed down the toilet some time ago.

There are some interesting things of note about Senator Thorpe's outburst. The first thing is that she has a legal right to do this:

https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/bor16881wams2c2306/s5.html

Right to petition

That it is the right of the subjects to petition the King and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.

- Section 5, Bill of Rights Act 1688

When people tell you that we do not have a Bill of Rights in Australia, they are either ignorant or lying. We have at least the Bill of Rights 1688, the Scottish Claim of Right 1688, and various schedules in several pieces of legislation which includes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child; which are not just conventions which have been ratified but they have been accepted and passed as pieces of legislation at law. Under Section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act 1688, Senator Thorpe has the express right to petition the King. Although she may have used language from a vulgar tongue, the politeness or impoliteness of language pales into insignificance in comparison with the claims of genocide, dispossession and the trampling of original sovereignty which she is holding out.

However, the outburst contains a problem at law, which although directed at the right person, is materially untrue. That is the use of the word "you". Who is "you"? It should be apparent to all that Charles personally did not genocide anyone. He has not personally stolen anything. He has not personally destroyed the land. I do not know to what degree Senator Thorpe is personally blaming Charles for the actions of the people who came before him. 

This is where the lovely legal concept of The Crown comes in. The Crown is that legal person, which both contains and owns the state. The idea of a separate legal person is what underpins the entire of corporate law and the Crown is Corporation Sole. The Crown has one share. The Crown owns itself. The Crown can not sell its share. Charles is not the Crown but the King; which means that he is in fact the current occupier of the office which acts as agent for the Crown. There are loads of rules surrounding that office but it should be noted that Charles as King is actually separate from the Crown as legal entity. Perhaps the most stark demonstration of this in action, was when Parliament also acting as agents for the Crown appointed the High Court at Westminster Hall to indict Charles I for tyranny. When Charles I's head was separated from his body on Jan 30th 1649, although he ceased to be the agent for the Crown, the person of the Crown did not die with him.

The fact that a corporate person does not die when its shareholders do, should be immediately obvious to anyone who has ever owned shares in a listed company. BHP and the Commonwealth Bank do not die when their CEO dies. It should also be immediately obvious to anyone who has ever owned shares in a listed company that not only does the company outlive the shareholders but that a corporate person has all kinds of legal abilities including to sue and be sued, to own real and unreal property, to appoint agents, and to enter into contracts.

This is where  I do not know to what degree Senator Thorpe is personally blaming Charles for the actions of the people who came before him. If Senator Thorpe is directing her comments to Charles III as King acting as agent for the Crown, then "you" is correctly attributed but if not, then not. If incorrectly attributed, then Senator Thorpe has made the same mistake as the United States Declaration of Independence, which apart from stating many things which are materially untrue, attributes those things to the person of King George III with many "He has" statements.

This same mistake was repeatedly made and owned, either through ignorance or racism (or both) during the referendum on The Voice To Parliament when a repeated refrain by opponents was that they shouldn't be held responsible for what happened in the past. The Persons who should be held responsible are the persons of the Crowns of the several states and the persons of the Crowns of the Commonwealth. Just like we can and should hold other corporate persons responsible for the things that they have done and even sue them for damages, not only can we and should we hold the Crowns responsible for the things that they have done, but that may very well mean equitable restitution for damages. James Hardie was taken to the Dust Diseases Tribunal many times; especially over its actions in Wittenoom. 

As for Senator Thorpe's demand for a treaty, although there are opponents to this who claim that the Crown of the Commonwealth can not enter into treaties with its own people, the treaty making power never specifies this.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Practice_and_Procedure/Constitution/chapter2#chapter-02_61

The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.

- Section 61, Australian Constitution Act 1900

As part of the executive functions of the Governor-General per Section 61, the Crown of the Commonwealth can enter into treaties with literally anyone it jolly well wants to. Section 61 provides no direction nor disability as to whom or what the Crown can enter into treaties with.

The Crown of the Commonwealth can enter into treaties with its own people, and the various State Constitutions are such that they practically have plenary powers; which means that they can also enter into treaties with their own people. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a straight up liar.

I also find in interesting but not unexpected, that Senator Pauline Hanson as self-appointed spokesperson for the 1930s, not only claimed that Senator Thorpe should be removed from Parliament for taking either invalid oath and was therefore ineligible to sit in Parliament, but also claimed that First Peoples should count as a foreign power.

As for the first of those claims, that is for the High Court to decide (which I suspect will be thrown out as a vexatious case); but it does kind of invite speculation about whether or not any and all people who want Australia to become a republic are also ineligible to sit in Parliament.

The second of those claims if we take it at face value, actually concedes the point that if First Peoples should count as a foreign power, then a Treaty absolutely does need to be discussed and concluded. Senator Hanson by default admits that she represents a foreign hostile power; thus confirming every single one of Senator Thorpe's outbursts as a valid complaint.

Aside:

I personally think that we should retain the monarchy in Australia. Yes I will confess some liking for the very big community which is the Commonwealth but by itself, that's no reason to do anything. No, the reason why I think that we should retain the monarchy in Australia, is that the alternative which will we be given is one in which the Grand Poobah will be elected.

Whatever the replacement for the Governor-General is, the people of Australia will want to elect them. Whenever you elect someone, that automatically implies a mandate for that person to act. The problem is that I do not really want that person to act. As it stands, the only time that anyone can remember the Governor-General acting was in the sacking of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. The part that of that story which is frequently neglected is that Governor-General stayed on Rupert Murdoch's estate on the weekend of October 4th and 5th 1975. This happens to fall right in the middle of the duration of Kerr's letters to the Palace which begin on August 14th.

I have no doubt that as Kerr was by that stage, a drunkard, and a very weak minded individual, as evidenced by his blithering in the letters to the Palace, that his mind had been made up for him by either Rupert Murdoch or Malcolm Fraser.

The very obvious danger about electing that same position, is that instead of having someone unsure about their constitutional powers and being loath to used them, we will now have someone with powers defined and a mandate to use them. I can guarantee that those powers can and will be weaponised to sack future governments which have been duly elected by the people. I hate that.

Horse 3403 - The Stupid Car Pipe Just Makes The Scar Worse

Please explain a thing to me.

If I leave the office at 17:00 and get the first bus to the City, then it is entirely possible that I will arrive at Wynyard at 17:51. to get on a train to Blacktown and arrive at 16:29. It is 38 kilometres from Wynyard to Blacktown and exactly 7 kilometres from the bus stop at Spit Junction to the bus stop at Wynyard. Moving from Wynyard to Blacktown can be done at an average speed of 60km/h. Moving from Spit Junction to Wynyard is usually done at an average speed of less than 9km/h.

Yes, this is nonsense. Yes, this is stupid. But who to blame?

I blame the Lang, Bavin, Stevens, Mair, McKell, McGirr, Cahill, Heffron, Renshaw, Askin, Lewis, Willis, Wran, Unsworth, Greiner, Fahey, Carr, Iemma, Rees, Keneally, O'Farrell, Baird, Berejiklian, Perrottet, and now Minns Governments. I think that that qualifies as an unbiased opinion.

Way way way back in the 1920s when governments had the foresight to consider the possibility that there might possibly be a kosmos after they have left office, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened with way too many lanes for cars and provision for four railway tracks. When it was opened, two of those tracks were used by the new bright electric suburban trains and the other two of those tracks were used by trams which ran on proper heavy gauge railway. Wynyard Station which wasn't quite built to full operational intention, started out with six platforms; with 1 & 2 being used for Northern Beaches Trams, 3 & 4 by the North Shore line, and 5 & 6 by the Southern Line. 

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was intended to have those two tram lines eventually converted into full-on proper railway lines but a little thing called The Depression got in the way. Then a little thing called World War II got in the way. After WW2, the McGirr government in an act of utter stupidity, decided to hire Rayethon Corp as consultants, and what should have been a proper legacy was forever stolen from the good and fair people of New South Wales forever. The biggest tram network in the world, was destroyed and would finally disappear in 1961.

It was the McGirr and Cahill Governments, which finally decided to permanently scar the North Shore with the massive act of civic vandalism called the Warringah Expressway. Not only was a golf course, a small cathedral, several cinemas, and thousands upon thousands of residential houses destroyed, by the scar would continue to throb and throb for decades, before the  McGirr, Berejiklian Government decided to double down on the original act of stupidity by throwing many billions of dollars at an underwater Stupid Car Pipe. 

Although the maths are not identical, they are broadly similar for all things that flow. Water, Electricity, and Traffic, can all be described by flow rates, pressure, resistance to that flow, size of the pipes through which they flow, and the potential difference between two points within the system. If we apply the same terminology of electricity to traffic flow, then the story becomes a bit easier to tell.

The Berejiklian Government in a classic Monkey-See Monkey-Do set of politics, after privatising the ferries and the buses and which made them both worse, decided to reward her criminal friends who operate toll-roads like a bunch of licensed bandits, with yet another government built tollroad. What a top idea. After already having mucked up Epping Road with the M2, Parramatta Road with the M4 East, Victoria Road with the M8, Gladys in her peanutted wisdom decided to "upgrade" the  Warringah Expressway.

Now, you can improve the flow of stuff through the system, by increasing the size of the pipes which is what the underwater Stupid Car Pipe is intended to do but that is a very short-term solution and one which spending billions of dollars is almost a sunk-cost fallacy before the project was even started. The Gladys underwater Stupid Car Pipe might act as a Band-Aid over the throbbing scar that is the North Shore's traffic problems but it does nothing to reduce the potential difference between two points within the system.

If Voltage is the potential difference between two points within the system, and that is caused by the number of cars that want to drive on the road, then building more lanes does nothing to address the issue of what caused those cars in the first place. The way that you reduce the number of cars that want to drive on the road is by getting rid of the want.

Had the Northern Beaches had an Elevated Railway, or an Underground, then that would have taken maybe a hundred of thousands of cars off the road, because the people in those cars would have taken the train. As it currently stands, those people have no choice but to get in their cars which causes traffic, or to take the newly privatised and newly degraded bus service which also causes traffic.

And before you tell me that it's not technically possible to build an Underground Railway, let me remind you that the Gladys underwater Stupid Car Pipe is bigger than either the Sydney Metro which also goes underneath the harbour, or in fact the pipes which carry the Eastern Suburbs Railway.

For reasons that make no other sense to me, other than to enrich the pockets of a select few of Gladys' very tory friends, the underwater Stupid Car Pipe will be opened, will be a tollroad upon opening, will immediately fill to capacity because it doesn't solve the problem of what caused the traffic in the first place.

Horse 3402 - The Badness Of The US Constitution - 18A, 19A

Amendment XVIII.

SECTION 1

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

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NO BOOZE!

18A is probably one of the most famous Amendments to the United States' Constitution and while there have been reams of articles about the goodness and/or badness of the effect of the legislation, very little is written about the justification of the reasons why this needed to be passed.

The provisions of the National Prohibition Act upon any simple reading of the text would have already been constitutional and been perfectly amenable to 1A, Section 8, Clause 3: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". There would have been likely some discussion that regulating commerce among the several states may or may not have included the total prohibition and/or banning of something across state lines but given that the Narcotics Act 1915 did exactly what 18A intended to do but for harder drugs, then this is somewhat moot.

Almost since the end of Washington's Tenure as President in 1797, United States politics has been a permanent spiteful bunfight. Prohibition was an cross partisan bunfight, which found traction when the Anti-Saloon League and the Temperance Movement which also coupled with the Women's Suffrage Movement, was fiercely active; and then carried out their campaign with the background of anti-German sentiment. 

Religious fervour is a useful tool of the political classes in the United States because on a hideously consistent basis, political operatives have found that they can push church goers into all kinds of political positions relatively easily. Marry religious fervour with a dash of racism an voila, you now have a viable and vocal caucus who will voluntarily act as your foot soldiers. So then, armed with an active cross partisan caucus, shouldn't that be enough of a political tool to pass legislation?

Well yes, but that's not the point.

Yes, 18A is a political tool but it existed to make use of the badness of the Constitution itself. 

Until this point, although portions of the mechanics of the main body the Constitution had been changed by Amendment, there had been no Amendments repealed. It is notoriously difficult to get an Amendment passed (to the point where something like the Equal Rights Amendment has been languishing in limbo for 101 years); so much so that the Temperance Movement thought that if they could get an Amendment passed that it would be permanent because to undo it would require something which had never been done before.

The unspoken truth about 18A is that... it worked. It worked amazingly well. Crime fell. Admissions to hospitals as a result of injury fell. Admissions to hospitals as a result of diseases including cirrhosis fell. "But organised crime went up, didn't it?" I might hear you ask if this wasn't the medium of text. No. It did not. What happened was that organised crime became more visible and famous/infamous but that was because of things like radio and cinema, which meant that people could now see and hear stories en masse. Of course radio and cinema is going to tell sensational stories on the airwaves and on screen because that sells tickets and advertising space. What radio and cinema did not report is that things like domestic violence fell during prohibition because that's boring.

I'm not going to comment on the goodness or badness of alcohol, or even whether or not the federal government should or should not legislate on the morality of vice goods, but the existence of 18A very much confirms that the Constitution both shapes society and attitudes as does society shape it; and that coercive legislation works. 

SECTION 2

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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Oh der.

SECTION 3

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

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18A S3 is one of the few examples where the Amendment itself contains an expiry clause to render it null and void if in the event that it failed to be ratified. Now while this sounds like a good idea in theory, it is worth nothing that for 18A to even appear in the document it must have already been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States; so Section 3 was already an inoperative section before it even appeared in the Constitution.

Of itself that doesn't seem like much but it does confirm the view that unless a thing is explicitly stated within the text of the United States Constitution then it does not exist. There is no explicit right to vote. There is no explicit right to life. There is no explicit right to liberty. There is no explicit right to the pursuit of happiness. There is however, an explicit right to the instruments to be able to destroy those things at an instant. BANG.

Amendment XIX.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

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Just like 15A, the right to vote, still isn't explicitly granted in the positive sense here. Even after the passage of 19A, the right to vote was and still is denied to people for failure to pay a poll tax, or failure to have correct Voter ID, et cetera. Yet again, if legislation was properly designed, the right to vote would simply be granted but it isn't; therefore 19A and what follows, is still bad.

19A is bad legislation because it neither grants the right to vote as a positive right, nor grants equal rights to do other things on the basis of sex. 19A does one very specific thing and that very specific thing only.

19A also helps to prove the utterly glacial movement of the United States Constitution and why it is so incredibly terrible at actually being a living document. It took 131 years for women to be given the franchise in the United States; likewise the Equal Rights Amendment has been languishing in the waiting process for more than a century. What kind of rot is this? 19A by omission serves to prove that the citizens of the United States are not equal, and are not endowed by the nation state with the same inalienable rights. 

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Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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Oh der.

Horse 3401 - "Prince Charming" Coming To Cinemas... Why?

The Doily Torygraph is reporting this morning that The Mouse is working on an animated movie called "Prince Charming", with someone called Paul King overseeing the project. I saw this in the newspaper and immediately wanted to ask the classic question of "why?"

Why does this need to exist? Who is this for? Who is their intended audience?

Just like the world does not need another Joker movie, or The Penguin or Batman TV series, it does not need a Frozen 2, a Moana 2, or what this film is supposed to be; which is either a Sleeping Beauty 2 or Sleeping Beauty -1.

If we start out with the critique that the male gaze frames movies though the eyes of the heterosexual male viewer, and the lead male character, and the male creator of the film, then it logically follows that a "female gaze" is going to do the same job through the eyes of a heterosexual female viewer, lead female character, and female creator of the film.

The female gaze is about trying to represent women as subjects having agency; which is going to be in contrast to what is assumed to be the default position of a male character in that lead role. It will absolutely be true that a female filmmaker, or screenwriter, or director, is going to bring a different perspective and set of framing devices which are going to be different from a male view on that same subject and while that is good and proper, I kind of feel that the existence of a Prince Charming film is utterly pointless.

Why? Because of that very same question of "why?"

The three classic Disney Princesses of Snow White, Aurora and Cinderella, essentially exist to have something done to them in the story; with limited agency of their own, and the prince at the end comes along and saves them. Even as a man I can see that that is a rather vapid existence because it says that the women are not complete until they find a husband. It is as if they get one last semi-interesting story and then that's it: the story ends happily ever after.

While it is reasonable that a feminist critique should rage against this kind of story telling, it still doesn't explain why we need a Prince Charming movie. In a story such as Snow White, Sleeping and Cinderella, the Prince is basically an empty shell with no inner life whatsoever. He's so incredibly anonymous that he doesn't even have a proper name. What kind of name is "Prince Charming" anyway? It is the name that one would give to either an extremely fluffy or elegant cat. If the women in the classic Disney movies lead a vapid existence then the Princes in the movies lead so much a vapid existence that we can't even be bothered to name them. They exist purely as McGuffins. 

Just look at that vacant, vapid, empty, void of an expression.

Perhaps the entire appeal of Prince Charming is precisely because he is a brick. He is a blank slate upon which people are supposed to mentally write in their own wishes and desires. Here's the problem though. Yet again we come back to that very same question of "why?"

If Prince Charming is given a story where he goes out and does something amazing, then the film does not need to exist because that story has already been told. If Prince Charming is given a story where he is an idiot and needs to be saved by a competent woman, then the film does not need to exist because that story has already been told. If Prince Charming is given a story where he is broken and sad and can only be repaired by a kind woman, then the film does not need to exist because that story has already been told. Swap the genders, make it male, make it female, make it gay, make it asexual, I don't care, the film does not need to exist because that story has already been told.

Then the question becomes one of who the intended audience is: Who is this for? Do girls want to see a film about Prince Charming? Likely not. They want to see girls going out and doing amazing things. Do girls want to see a film about Prince Charming? Likely not, and even if they did, then that film does not need to exist because that story has already been told. 

At the kernel of my confusion and complaint about why there even needs to be a Prince Charming movie, is the unavoidable fact that he is ultimately not a character, or if he is one then he is at best an NPC in an RPG. Prince Charming does not exist to bring anything to the plot other than the golden winning "You Win" screen at the end of the film. He is the Jules Rimet trophy in the Football World Cup and nothing more. He is not. He does not need a film.

Horse 3400 - The Badness Of The US Constitution - 15A, 16A, 17A

Amendment XV.

SECTION 1

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

- 

15A which was passed in the wake of the wake of the Southern War Of Rebellion And Aggression For The Explicit Right To Keep And Retain Slavery, was passed during a very small window when the United States started to consider all men as being equal (but not women). Even after spending gallons upon gallons upon gallons for blood which is the coin of the battlefield, the racist elements of society which never went away, still actually feared the power of the ballot box because whomever could control legislatures can change the rules and take away their privilege and advantage. They did not want that then; they do not want that now.

Even after the passage of 15A, racist cussjacks found other methods to disenfranchise people whom they hated, almost immediately. Since race, colour, and servitude was no longer on the cards, other measures such as Voter ID, or literacy tests, or arcane enrollment procedures, et cetera, could be used and still are today.

Herein lies one of the central problems with the way that the United States Constitution works. As it consistently refuses to assign rights to the people, or the states, or the congress, in the positive sense, it immediately undermines itself by including exceptions and get out clauses. This is utterly putrid in terms of how you design legislation.

For a nation which is supposedly "a nation of laws" as John Adams said, the conception and framing of what people think are rights, is incredibly bad. The right of citizens to do a thing (a right is the legal ability to do a thing, own a thing, or have an interest in a thing at law) which "shall not be denied or abridged" on account of X, Y, and Z, can and will be denied or abridged by self-interested and knavish cussjacks on other accounts including P, Q, and R.

The right to vote, which isn't explicitly granted in the positive sense here, is also not explicitly granted in the positive sense later on in other places like 19A either. Even here in 1870, right to vote could be denied on the grounds of sex (and was), or failure to pay a poll tax, or failure to have correct Voter ID, et cetera. Two of those reasons have been explicitly ruled out as grounds to deny the vote by other amendments; with the other currently being actively pursued as a means to disenfranchise people. Other means are being explored, as evidenced with rumours and inklings in the upcoming presidential election, where the means to disenfranchise people by ignoring the ballot box entirely is being explored.

If legislation was properly designed, the right to vote would simply be granted but it isn't; therefore 15A and what follows, is still bad.

SECTION 2

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

- 

As with 13A, this section of 15A is functionally pointless. Remember, Article I, Section 8 already granted Congress the power to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper" to execute the powers contained within the Constitution; an amendment to the Constitution after being ratified by the states, is in fact contained within the Constitution.

Amendment XVI.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

- 

The note given is that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was modified by the 16A. Quite frankly I think that the whole existence of 16A is itself redundant as Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution already gave the Congress the "Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises". Income Tax is a tax. 

Actually to make the general sematic case, as Taxation is ultimately derived from the Latin "Taxo" which mean "I Pay", then of course the  "Power To lay and collect Taxes" is obvious; since taxation is just the process of destroying the dollars which have already been issued for the payment and provision of government provided goods and services in the first place.

The reason why 16A needed to be passed all, was because SCOTUS in Pollock v Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) ruled that in principle federal income tax was not unconstitutional, but that income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were direct taxes and thus had to be apportioned among the states on the basis of population; per Art 1, Section 9:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

- Art 1, Section 9 (repealed with 16A)

I think that 16A is redundant because of Art 1, Sec 8. SCOTUS who stole for itself the power to say what the law is in Marbury v Madison (1803) saw this; then made a really really stupid ruling which took 14 years to work its way through Congress and then a further 4 years to rattle its way through the ratification process, to undo what really should have never been done in the first place.

If the mechanics of operation of the Constitution is so incredibly awful that it takes a whole generation at minimum to lance legislative cancer, then this is bad law. When you have things like the Equal Rights Amendment which has never made it through the ratification process still languishing in limbo, then what's the point? There is a symbiotic relationship between law and culture, wherein law shapes culture and culture shapes law; and where you have the Constitution itself being so monumentally stupid that it takes literally a generation to do even the most basic things like taxation administration, then it is little wonder that the country went to war with itself. So much of US Law depends on the opinions of SCOTUS; which right from the get go was and still is a set of political appointments which act as a weapon. That's awful.

Amendment XVII.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

- 

17A finally got around to changing the Constitution so that the Senators from each State, were elected by the people thereof. What a novel idea.

At this point readers might be wondering why such a thing is even necessary because the very notion of representative democracy itself must my inference require the election of people sent to represent electorate/community/state/body politic at large. However this assumes that the thing in question is a representative democracy. The United States as envisaged, was not. 

The original text of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution before 17A read: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof".

This means that until 1913 not only did the people not vote for the President (and they still do not because the Electors in the Electoral College do that) but also the people not vote for the Senators as well (who then went into the calculation of the numbers to decide the Electors in the Electoral College.

This harkens back to the fact that the United States was not only started because of agitations by rich land owners who owned other people as chattel goods to get common folk to fight a war for them, but that the second attempt at a Constitution for National Government was intended to be anti-democratic. In this respect, the United States' Senate was intended to be as anti-democratic as the British House of Lords; which to this day still is not elected but appointed on the basis of semi-open corrupt patronage. This is not exactly something unknown to where I live as the New South Wales Legislative Council (the upper house) did not have open elections until 1984. 

When you further consider that the various Judges of the Supreme Court Of The United States are appointed by the President "and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" then until 1913 you had a nominally unelected body, making up the numbers to overlay a layer of abstraction from the electorate, to then appoint the judiciary. As designed, the system is a pus filled horrorshow and 17A only sets about correcting one aspect of it. 

-

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

- 

It makes sense that you should hold an election to replace someone who has either resigned, died, or been expelled. What doesn't really make sense is that the right to appoint, even on a temporary basis is handed to the various state legislatures. In practice this usually means appointment by the State Governor with the 'advice and consent' of the State Senate but it is still a poor practice. 17A Clause 2 is still the Constitution trying to retain the remnants of rule by diktat even though the world had moved on and direct election was already on the march. I of course say this with complete knowledge that where I live in NSW, we didn't even have elections of the Legislative Council (the Upper House) until 1978; which is very very classic tory in nature. 

One thing that 17A doesn't address because none of the United States Constitution ever wants to even look at this, is that owing to the almost religious belief that the states have a 'republican form of government' despite never actually defining what that is, it means that there are so very many provisions of law where the several states either remain responsible or have asserted responsibility for the various administrative functions of government. Consequently it is the states that conduct elections and it is the states who asset administrative control over them. 17A by operation merely confirms this principle and even when there are vacancies in the Senate, the states very much asset control and power over the elections of those Senators. 

Where I live in Australia, the Australian Electoral Commission conducts elections for our House and Senate with free and fierce independence; to the point that it is highly respected and is nobody's fool. The consequence of the operation of 17A in the United States is that just about every single election is run as if it was Amateur Hour at the local Service's Legion Club, and not only are they all conducted badly but they are likely open to corruption and public confidence in them is not great.

-

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

- 

While this grandfather clause sounds like it could in theory produce a case where someone would just hang around like a whiffy pongy spectre at a banquet, other provisions of the Constitution meant that in the worst possible scenario this would all become redundant within eight years. After such time, there would be no Senator who would still be there who was chosen before this was passed.

Horse 3399 - 2024 Bathurst 1000 Zs

The 2024 Bathurst 1000 has been won by Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood driving an Erebus Motorsport Camaro. This race was noteworthy for two things:

1 - this was the fastest running of the 1000km event; with the distance being covered in 5 hours, 58 minutes, 3 seconds; at an average speed of 167.62 km/h (104.15mph).

2 - this race had exactly 2 lead changes when Kostecki brought the Camaro into the pits on lap 27 and was passed by Will Brown, and the retook the lead on lap later when Will Brown brought his Camaro into the pits on lap 28. Basically apart from pit cycles, this was was decided on lap 1, and any and all intrigue evaporated from the race by about lap 3.

You could have literally had a nap on lap 3, for five hours, and then woken up to find the order unchanged and the almost six hour procession unaltered.

- Couldn't you go a Chiko Roll?

Well actually, yes you could. You could drive to the shops which are two hours away and come back and the running order would still be unchanged.

In terms of sheer number of laps led, this is only second to the Brock/Richards demolition of all and sundry in the 1979 running of the event when they were fastest on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Claimed Pole, Led Every Lap, Won the race, and when Brock claimed the lap record on the last lap. In this respect, Kostecki's winding out of the lead to no more than about 30 seconds, and not even claiming the fastest lap, looks incomplete as that honour went to Broc Feeney.

What did this six hour procession prove? Quite literally nothing that we already didn't know. Camaros finishing 1-2-3 merely further demonstrates that the advantage that the Camaro has over the Mustang remains baked in; and the processional nature of the race also further serve to demonstrate that the cars themselves by virtue of being faster and more competent than every iteration of top-flight touring car racing in Australia which had come before, are ironically worse.

The Supercars are basically a bespoke GT3-Minus category, which are reasonably heavy compared to a GT3 car, have a completely adequate and competent aero package, and a bound box of rules which is so tight that any advantage which exists is permanent. Results like we saw at the 2024 Bathurst 1000 are frequent, common, and worst of all, boring as all get out. If you had tuned into the race expecting to see an intriguing battle, then you wasted six hours. There wasn't one. What's worst of all is that thanks to the sunk-cost fallacy, we are stuck with this for the foreseeable future.

What the Supercars category demonstrates on a mind-numbly boring repeated basis is that although you can invent a category of motor racing which is fast, it doesn't work a jot for producing anything interesting to watch. Yes, Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood drove their Camaro the fastest, but even they knew that provided they could maintain any kind of gap over the car in front, they would win. Ho hum. Yawn. Crick. Roll over.

Motor Racing generally reached the point where being aero dependent was already known to be a killer of intrigue by about 1985. Aerodynamics as applied to a racing car is a fluid dynamics question; specifically about how you make the air flow around all of the parts and pieces and about how you generate downforce which is mostly a suck-pull force underneath either the wings or the car body itself. That's all fine and good until you put lots of cars into a line and you then invent the phenomenon of "dirty air".

A wing works best in still and undisturbed air. When you put many cars in a line, whilst it is true that the one in the front punches a hole in the air which the others then all follow through, the turbulence which trails off in three dimensions is not amenable to the wings and things of the cars which follow. This is exactly like the wake and the waves which follow after a ferry as it bluntly and rudely crashes across the harbour and creates an unpleasant ride for all of the wee ickle sailboats who then get chucked about in the waves of the wave. If you then multiply that in three dimensions, then that is what is happening to the cars which follow.

This then creates the dilemma that a car immediately following at close quarters, no longer has the aerodynamic grip of the car in front; so the driver will back off some distance to regain the aerodynamic grip that they want. By definition, a car which is following at an increased distance is not racing closely with the car in front. If you then multiply that by two dozen, then what you get is what we saw in the 2024 Bathurst 1000; with 24 cars nominally following each other at about 5 second intervals all day long. In fact, the interval between the Kostecki/Hazlewood Camaro and the Feeney/Whincup Camaro, hovered between about 7 and 15 seconds for most of the day.

What is awful is that we should expect this again and again and again, and we get it again and again and again. The organisers of the category have fallen for the fallacy hook, line, and sinker, that fast cars always equal good racing. They do not. Time and time again, we prove that the funnest racing to watch, is with the most rubbishy of cars. We have Hyundai Excel racing which is frantic. We have TCR which is cut an thrust racing at close quarters. Formula Ford with practically no aero is about slicing cars through the air and maximising drivers skill. Supercars racing is now purely about dialling in an advantage and nothing else.

The category could be fixed by throwing away the cars en-masse and actually re-inventing the rubbishy cars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when three-box sedans ruled the roads. They were designed to put families in, to get groceries, and occasionally do big road trips which included dirt roads. They were not designed from the outset to go motor racing. A rubbishy three-box sedan thing with practically no aero whatsoever and maybe enough horsepower to yell down a Valhalla war-hell-ride, is what the public actually would like to see, because the fastest cars in this category ever wasn't really the funnest of things to watch. It was okay but boringly forgettable. 

Horse 3398 - Australia's Part In Bombing Beirut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZO8-XXf0ek

Lebanese officials say 22 people have been killed and 117 others injured in Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut yesterday evening.

There was no warning issued before the strikes which hit residential buildings in two densely packed neighbourhoods in Bachoura - a small Shia area in the capital.

This is the third time Israel has launched air strikes on the city outside of the suburb of Dahieh, where it has struck repeatedly.

Media outlets, quoting security sources, suggest the apparent target, Wafiq Safa, survived. Safa is a high-ranking Hezbollah official and close ally of Hezbollah's former long-term leader Hassan Nasrallah. 

Neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah's media office have commented.

- BBC News, 11th Oct 2024/

Well I will.

Hamas, Hezbollah, the IDF, and Benjamin Netanyahu are all evil and I hate all of you. The quicker that all of these things are dismantled, that Netanyahu is exiled to the Marshall Islands, and the quicker that the endless cycle of death comes to an end, the better.

I will comment. My country has blood on its hands. We helped supply the bombs.

In a week which saw the Israeli Defence Force lobbing rockets and bombs at both Gaza and Lebanon, and which saw Sky News Australia's Sharri Markson meet with the co-morbid Psychopath and Sociopath In Chief, PM Benjamin Netanyahu (this man has no remorse for his actions, no empathy for the people that he has stated that he thinks are vermin, frequently displayed criminal tendencies, and whose moral compass was burnt to a crisp so long ago that he consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others), we have to come to the conclusion that not only is every single word coming out of both sides of parliament in Australia unreliable, but we are joyfully complicit in war crimes. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/11/us-made-munition-used-in-israeli-strike-on-central-beirut-shrapnel-shows

A US-made munition was used in a strike on central Beirut that killed 22 people and wounded 117, according to an analysis of shrapnel found by the Guardian at the scene of the attack.

The strike on Thursday night hit an apartment complex in the densely populated neighbourhood of Basta, levelling the apartment building and destroying cars and the interiors of nearby residences.

...

The Guardian found remnants of a US-manufactured joint direct attack munition (Jdam) in the rubble of the collapsed apartment building on Friday afternoon. Jdams are guidance kits built by the US aerospace company Boeing that attach to large “dumb bombs” ranging up to 2,000lbs (900kg), converting them into GPS-guided bombs.

The weapons remnant was verified by the crisis, conflict and arms division of Human Rights Watch and a former US military bomb technician.

“The bolt pattern, its position and the shape of the of the remnant are consistent with the tail fin of a US-made, Jdam, guidance kit for Mk80 series air-dropped munitions,” said Richard Weir, a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis, conflict and arms division, after viewing a photograph of the fragment. The Mk80 series encompasses three classes of bomb, the smallest of which is 500lbs and the largest is 2,000lbs.

- The Guardian, 11th Oct 2024

The whole Mark 80 class of dumb bombs (yes, even the IDF's propaganda which says that they were using smart bombs was a total lie), has been in use since 1946; and started to see active service in the Korean War. The current Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAMs) are  also relatively dumb bombs; which the IDF has been deploying on civilians who have been defending themselves with tents and thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and Prayers are nominally useless against JDAMs, which is handy for the IDF as they continue to pummel the every loving cuss out of ordinary people until the streets flow with so much blood that Benny gets to have a chuckle.

Meanwhile, if you do even the most basic of perfunctory research, you find that Australia has played its part in the ongoing genocide of civilians like the pathetic little lap-dog that we are.

https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/australias-ferra-to-continue-jdam-er-wing-kit-production-work-on-powered-jdam/155505.article

Boeing and Australia’s Ferra Engineering have signed a memorandum of understanding related to further Australian production of Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM ER) wing kits, and will explore applications for a powered version of JDAM.

The MoU will see Ferra continue to produce the JDAM ER wing kit, with the partnership to be extended through 2028, says Boeing.

- Flight Global, 24th Oct 2023

Boeing are famously going through something of a reputational poo-brown patch; with doors and engines falling off their planes in mid-flight, and their Starliner space capsule program having so many missteps that it even failed at being a ferry service to the space station this year. Nevertheless, Boeing are still about to mysteriously get their people killing programs working like a well oiler meat grinder.

So what is Australia's part in this? Why not just ask Boeing?

https://www.boeing.com.au/news/2023/boeing-ferra-expand-precision-aerial-munition-partnership

BRISBANE, Oct 25, 2023—Boeing [NYSE: BA] and Australia industry partner Ferra Engineering signed a Memorandum of Understanding to continue production of Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM ER) wing kits. The agreement also includes the intent to explore applications for Powered JDAM(opens in a new tab) — a long-range, low-cost and mass-producible JDAM derivative capable of travelling upwards of 300 nautical miles.

Brisbane-based Ferra is Boeing’s global supplier of the 500-pound JDAM ER wing kits. Under the memorandum, the partnership will be extended through 2028. The partnership aligns with the Australian Defence Force’s commitment to enhance sovereign weapons capability under the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) Enterprise and aligns with the AUKUS security partnership goal of advancing  trilateral defence capabilities.

- Boeing, 25th Oct 2023

I wonder what Ferra think of all of this:

https://ferra-group.com/capabilities/logistics-sustainment/

Ferra understands the need to provide higher value products and solutions to our customers. As part of our advanced manufacturing process, our role in the product life cycle doesn’t finish once the production product has left our organization.

Ferra has the capability to manage inventory and logistics on behalf of our customer. This has been delivered in a commercial and military environment.  

- Ferra Engineering, retrieved 12th Oct 2024

Now bear in mind that the identified shrapnel in Beirut is a piece of the Boeing JDAM; which means that as Ferra Engineering is Boeing's global supplier of the JDAM ER 500lb wing kit, that it had to have been made right here in Australia.

Isn't it funny. When Joe Hockey yelled at the auto-industry and told them to go away, they all did. Making cars in Australia is simply too hard. However, making parts and pieces to kill brown people? Well Australia is all for that because apparently it aligns with the AUKUS security partnership goal of advancing trilateral defence capabilities and enhancing sovereign weapons capability. Remember under the terms of AUKUS, we're not allowed to service our own F-35 aircraft but Israel is allowed to home-brew their own. Also under the terms of AUKUS, as the pathetic little lap-dog that we are, when Big Brother America wants to bomb the cuss out of brown people, we don't question it but comply like an evil evil little sycophant except that as a nation we're actually too stupid to even seek any kind of advantage. 

This is where your tax dollars are going. While America possibly is on the verge of lurching to the right as Donald Trump has repeatedly declared to deport people on day one, and as Israel actively pursues Benny from Cheltenham's personal goal of turning many thousands of people into chunky marinara because he must find joy in the suffering an deaths of people, what do we say? Nothing. Australia yet again has no foreign policy.

Horse 3397 - No. The Car Pipe Is Not "The Future"

In a piece in Uncy Rupe's doyenne newspaper yesterday (which I'm not going to link to because I'd rather not even give his firm the ad revenue) there was a breathless piece praising Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe under the streets of Paradise (not Las Vegas) and asking if such a thing could be implemented in Australia. Could is one thing because clearly with enough money, the billionaires of the world can buy whatever crazy bonkers jacknuts thing they want. A better question is should such a thing be implemented in Australia? As with any piece of journalism which is supposed to drive clickbait and ragebait, Betteridge's Law Of Headlines applies and the answer is "no".

Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe constantly gets praised by tech bros turned fanbois, who seem to not know the difference between AM which is Actual Machinery and FM which is Funky Magic. Funky Magic proposals are often seen as "the future" and there are countless FM solutions which faded away and have been blown away with the dust of the future's past. Meanwhile, the most boring and oldest pieces of technology which are AM and not FM, just seem to constantly and boringly work.

Yet again I find myself asking the question, why is it that public transport systems which carry millions of people are seen as bad because they are socialist and communist, whereas billionaires seemingly have a predilection to invent impractical and worse gadgetbahns that are always worse at the job?

Trains just work. Having a train with a designated corridor of operation, which runs to a timetable, stopping at distinct and discrete stations, is a thing which was nominally invented in a metropolitan setting with the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground in 1863. Some of the stations which are still on the Metropolitan Line are now more than 160 years old; which says that trains running in an underground pipe have been proven again and again and again; whereas Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe do the same job but magnitudes of degrees worse.

Just because you apply the magic word 'autonomous' to something, does not magically make it better. Autonomous Vehicles are fine, but Automatic Vehicles where the level of computing needed is nil, are better. Just like Colin Chapman's aphorism that if you wanted to build a better Formula One car just simply add lightness, when it comes to building the most reliable and scalable public transport system, adding simplicity is best. In practice it is possible to run Automatic Trains running almost to saturation, with no computers whatsoever. We know this because the first completely automatic and driverless lines on the Paris Metro, used cam wheels and relay boxes, to control the movement and door opening/closing systems. Automatic Train Operation on the Paris Metro, is proven technology which has been around for 70 years.

Having said that, there is a difference between Automatic Train Operation (ATO)  which is what things like the Paris Metro and Sydney Metro uses and Autonomous Vehicle Operation which is what Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe are supposed to use (and don't but we'll get to that later). Autonomous Vehicles generally have a big powerful computer which collects data about where it is and where everything around it is, in the environment. Autonomous Vehicles generally have things like cameras and RADAR and LIDAR, which then gets fed to the computer, which hopefully has had a sufficiently good enough machine learning regime that instead of a human meatbag being the wheel, the computer is the one to decide to drive the vehicle into a lake or into the side of an ambulance full of children with leukæmia. 

ATO needs only limited electronic/mechanical inputs because everything in theory is in a very controlled environment. While there are signals on the Metro, the driverless trains do not actually look at them and do not need to. The Metro trains do not need any kind of machine learning because there is nothing to learn. The Metro trains do not need AI because they do not need to be intelligent. The Metro trains do not need to worry about errant children with leukaemia accidentally falling onto the tracks because if the system is designed properly, there is no way to fall through platform-side glass walls. With ATO, all that is needed is physical electric contact, to move the trains forward and to have a series of switches and ludicrously simple software which makes the trains stop and start, and the doors open and close at the appropriate places. Actually in theory (and in practice starting on the Paris Metro in 1952) ATO doesn't even need computers to be able to operate because the whole system can be operated on a purely electromechanical basis; in the same way that a toaster works.

Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe, even inside a rather limited environment, still need thousands upon thousands of machine learning AI hours to be able to operate in their car pipes. Heaven forbid that they get turned loose onto the streets above because we are still at the stage where that same AI will take its thousands upon thousands of machine learning before rationally and autonomously deciding to accelerate into an ice cream stand with thirty children with leukæmia (why are there so many children with leukæmia in these scenarios?).

I do not know if Elmo wants to admit this but mainline railways, with no automation and a meatbag in the driver's seat, and with a few train protection measures such as signals and dead-man braking systems both inside and outside the cab, still do a better job both in terms of frequency and capacity, than his cars in the car pipe. Elmo's Boring Company which has somehow managed to convince the city of Paradise (not actually Las Vegas) to allow him to put his car pipes under the city, has built the tunnels but even the simplest of tracked vehicles such as a bespoke tram or train, would do a better job than his blobby Teslas. At best any given Tesla on the system as it stands can hold seven people; where as a small van sized tram could very likely hold twenty. A Tesla after all is a car, which is excellent for moving a small group of people around like a family but utterly rubbish at moving anything more than about ten people. 

The even more dumb thing about Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe, is that the pipes are hideously small and can only really be used for small cars. The pipes and the stations can not even really be retrofitted like the Glasgow Subway was; which runs really wee trains in really wee pipes. It would have made more sense to build a pipe to carry trams, because let's be honest, ten trams could easily replace the entirety of Elmo Mash's car pipe system.

However, at that point we start talking about buses and trams and those things very much start to look like proper public transport; which Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe are not. There are 70 Tesla Model Ys in Elmo Mash's car pipes; which means that at absolute maximum, the number of people that can be transported at once is 490. Any four car set on the Sydney Trains Network can do that by itself.

Just to enforce how incredibly bad Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe are, the London Underground with its electric trains in 1890, had a mechanical metal board which would pop up on the side of the tracks after a train had passed. The accompanying signal went red; which indicated that not only was the driver to stop the train but that there was a train inside the block section ahead. On the underside of the train was a glass bulb; which if it hit the metal board would smash, thus creating a leak in the vacuum breaking system and stop the train. Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe are still not actually smart enough to have any kind of automatic system which stops them in the event that there is a blockage ahead. The stopping of all the cars in the car pipe is still dependent on the AI making a rational decision to stop. The big difference between AI and a meatbag in the driver's seat is that AI does not have the fear of being fired and losing their job if they mess up. AI does not of itself care about accidentally turning those errant children with leukæmia into something resembling chunky salsa.

The super fun bonkers thing about Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe, is that they're not even Autonomous. Companies like Uber and Lyft dream of Autonomous Vehicles because that means that they'd be able to get rid of the meatbags which are otherwise called drivers, who demand horrid things like wages because they need to eat. In what surely was an amazing act of hubris, in 2016 Lyft announced that they would actually have Autonomous Vehicles by 2020 and that they expected that 80% of all vehicles on the road would be Autonomous by 2025. Well, here we are less than 12 weeks away from that data and the number of Autonomous Vehicles that Lyft actually owns, is nil.

I get it. People like the shiny thing. People's eyes glaze over with wonderment and actual dumbfounderdundament when they think about the possibilities of the future. I also think that the future is always designed by people who are to dream big and bonkers. But why is it though, that in dreaming big and bonkers that people with clearly more money than actual sense, just invent variations on gadgetbahns which never worked  in the past, which don't really work in the future, and which end up lasting exactly as long as the company which supplied the original bespoke cars/pods/viehwagens last. Long after people like Charles Yerkes in London, or John Bradfield in Sydney, have long since been dead and buried, the train systems which they helped to forge are still left behind and work amazingly boringly. Elmo Mash's cars in the car pipe will probably go the way of the of the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit System in Virginia; where pod things travel around on limited tracks, long after the original company which invented the system went bankrupt. Elmo Mash's car pipes will continue to exist long after he has numptied his way into whatever bonkers hatstand future he imagines has been blown away with the dust of the future's past. Meanwhile, things like the Sydney Metro will just continue to work properly.

Horse 3396 - Soichiro Honda: My New Favourite CEO

As a 2017 edition of Wheels magazine proclaimed, the reason for the then rise of the SUV displacing everything else, was primarily because of one key reason - all y'all are fat¹. Between the average age of a new car buyer rising well beyond 50 and the increase in size of the average person from 59kg in 1960 to 76kg in 2017, people are simply fatter and not necessarily taller; so they want something easier to get n and out of.

Since 2017, the pandemic has been and gone, and the car makers have decided to stand on the throats of the car buying public, as they  prefer to sell 2x $30K cars rather than 3x $20K cars. Why go to any effort at all to sell cheaper cars, when your more expensive cars can have maybe a buck and a half worth of improvements to bring in five bucks extra in revenue. 

The story of businesses doing squat all to comply with changes in technology and/or regulations, is not a new story at all. Indeed when Alfred P Sloan cam up with the idea of the 'Model Year' in the late 1930s, it was purely to create anxiety in the consumer so that they would buy new cars more often to keep up with fashion. In consequence, by the 1950s when cars looked more and more garish, the actual improvements under the sheet metal was glacial. Most cars in the United States still had not even adopted what we would consider basic technology and building methods such as unibody construction, front wheel drive, and disc brakes; all of which were standard on the Citroen Light 15 in 1936. Twenty years later, the build quality of the famed 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, was objectively rubbish; even by standards of the 1930s.

So when the California Smog Acts of 1967 and the Oil Crisis of 1973 came along, it should surprise exactly nobody that the big automakers in the United States responded as they always had done; by doing squat all. When federal emissions standards came along with the invention of the Environmental Protection Agency, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, were all happily producing outdated dinosaurs; when smaller cars from Europe and Japan, including from those car makers own overseas catalogues, made the Big Three look like foolish fools. 

Perhaps the most symbolic demonstration of the United States' general malaise and particularly the Japanese' car makers ability to actually build something of quality, was the first generation Honda Civic. It along with the KE10 Toyota Corolla, further made the Big Three look like a bunch of jackasses and when a mid-level manager at General Motors during a press conference, was asked by a member of the press as to why the Honda Civic could meet fuel efficiency and emissions standards, when the 1973 Chevrolet Impala could not, he responded with thinly veiled racism. 

Racism, corporate hubris, and sheer stubborn stupidity are hardly the stuff of legend, but this is where the groundwork to our tale begins. At this press conference in which the man in the grey GM suit tried to brush off the 'yellow peril' as being unimportant, the manager at General Motors explained while that the CVCC² technology which Honda were employing on the Civic worked perfectly well on their "toys", it could not possibly work on a proper car like the Chevrolet Impala.

"Well, I have looked at this design, and while it might work on some little toy motorcycle engine, I see no potential for it on one of our GM car engines, he said. Yep, another serving of the same old sh…stuff: haw haw haw, get a real car, haw haw haw."

- Richard Gerstenberg, GM manager

The 1973 Chevrolet Impala had a wheelbase of 121 inches, and had a choice of engines from the 250cid Inline-6, and a 350cid, 400cid, and 454cid V8. This is not a small car by any stretch of the imagination. I used to own a W116 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9, and that car which at the time was the most expensive car in the world was still small than the Impala and the V8 up front was only 418cid. 

Enter Soichiro Honda himself. Soichiro Honda was an engineer. Soichiro Honda was a cavalier. Soichiro Honda was an abject mad-man; who even made his way down to the factory floor, just to ride the motorbikes and drive the cars that his company was producing because as he saw it, if they weren't good enough for him, then they weren't good enough for the general public and he wanted repeat custom. 

In what has to be about most brilliant "go cuss yourself" moment in automotive history, Soichiro Honda found out about the General Motors' press conference in which his cars were being disparaged and he was mad; really mad.

He was so mad that he jumped on an ordinary economy flight to the United States, specifically to buy a bog-standard 1973 Chevrolet Impala with a V8 off of a showroom floor. He then had the car air-freighted back to Japan (because he could) and then immediately ordered his own engineers to do nothing to the car except built a set of bespoke CVCC heads for the car; of the same style and ilk fitted to the Honda Civic. He then had the same car air-freighted back to the United States, where he then delivered it to the Environmental Protection Agency in Ann Arbor; where having done nothing to the car but change the heads, it easily passed fuel efficiency and emissions standards. Not only did the car pass the EPA's standards, it did so without having to have a catalytic converter to it. 

"I have made my point. I am done."

- Soichiro Honda

This where most retellings of the story end because every great story has an Act One beginning, an Act Two complication, an Act Three struggle, and an Act Four denouement and triumph. Job done. I am not happy with any of this because there are so many things left up in the air.

This car which purely existed for the sole purpose of being a spite car, and which made arguably one of the most pertinent points in the 1970s, was one of the single most important cars of the period; and we have no idea what happened to it. As far as Honda goes, Soichiro himself probably thought nothing of it because he had no use for the car being proving his point. The people at General Motors had no use for the car beyond being embarrassed by it. They certainly would not want to keep it and Honda absolutely would not give them intellectual property. The EPA had no use for the car because why would they? So where is it? Nobody knows. 

As for CVCC technology itself - it no longer serves any real purpose. The advent of fuel injection, firstly mechanical and then electronic, completely obliterates the need for dual chamber valves in the intake manifold and direct injection means that the manifold itself changed all over again. General Motors never really learned anything; and just continued making increasingly rubbish engines until Vauxhall/Opel invented the Family 1 and 2, and they bought out Saab to steal direct injection proper. Honda continued to make all kinds of lovely high tech stuff; learning things from Moto GP and Formula One. So all of this means that the 1973 Chevrolet Impala with the Honda CVCC heads, is now just an appendix to automotive history and nobody knows where it went.

¹ no really, this is a thing: https://www.drive.com.au/news/plump-my-ride-designing-cars-for-fat-people/

²  Honda and CVCC - https://global.honda/en/heritage/episodes/1972introducingthecvcc.html

Horse 3395 - Cosplay Coal Miner Matt Canavan And The FIAT 500e

Cosplay Coal Miner Matt Canavan in what I assume is a regular fifteen minutes of hate against wokeness, political correctness, and what Rita Panahi would call "loony lefties losing it", came on 2GB this morning in a rousing display of triumphalism at the thought that FIAT was suspending the production of the 500e because of lefty loonie wokery or some such. To be honest, I have no idea what the jinkies that the anti-woke MAGA knuckle draggers on the right are talking about half of the time; because they've equally been carried off in a wave of nonsense to fight culture wars that I do not care about.

I don't know if Coalboy Canavan likes electric cars because they need coal-fired power stations, or hates them because they don't use petrol. I also don't know whether Cosplay Copper Miner Matt Canavan likes electric cars because they need copper as provided by his opinion provider BHP, or hates them because they use copper from Rio Tinto. I have no way to guess his opinions because depending on whom is paying the bills, he undergoes a Sailor Moon type magical transformation sequence to become whatever his opinion providers demand.

However, the matter of FIAT suspending production of the Fiat 500e has nothing to do with wokery, political correctness, or whatever nutcase invention that these people have come up with. FIAT is a business. Given that the Agnelli family by themselves are probably worth more than the GDP of Australia, I very much doubt that they honestly give a thought to whatever wokery that Cosplay Canavan can come up with.

The real reason, for a business making business decisions is far more transparent. A business making business decisions is because the business of business is business.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/stellantis-halt-production-electric-fiat-500-longer-due-poor-demand-2024-10-01/

MILAN, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Stellantis' (STLAM.MI), opens new tab chief Carlos Tavares will address an Italian parliamentary committee next week on the prospects for the carmaker's production in Italy, the company said on Tuesday, after it warned about poor demand for electric vehicles.

The hearing will take place on Oct. 11, Stellantis said in a statement, after announcing it had extended the suspension of production of its Fiat 500 electric city car until Nov. 1 due to weak orders.

- Reuters, 1st Oct 2024

The reason why FIAT are suspending production of the 500e is ludicrously simple; namely that they can't shift them fast enough and in their rush to extract profits out of the public, they've misjudged what the public can actually pay.

Here’s the basic problem.

https://www.fiat.it/car-configurator/#/

The FIAT 500e costs €29,950, or A$48,824.

Holy cash registers, Batman!

Someone needs to be sat in a chair and have the pointing finger of judgement wagged in from of them. FIAT expects people to pay nearly thirty cussing thousand euros for this? Really? Are they ignorant? Are they oblivious to the real world? Are they mad? Rub my nose in the dirt and call me 'stinky' but even Blind Freddy can see that charging thirty large for this, is madder than Mad Jack McMad who won the 2024 Mister Madman Competition.

This is almost the textbook example of doing market research and then completely ignoring everything that the market research told you. This is yet another example like the Edsel, or the Merkur Sierra, or the Cadillac Cimmaron, where the product itself wasn't and isn't inherently bad but the marketing/sales department have driven headlong into a wall. This is simple economics in action and is repeated elsewhere in the industry.

Suppose that you have the Whizzo chocolate bar on sale in the supermarket. The Whizzo chocolate bar sells for $2. The marketing department tells you that for only a few mils per bar, you can add nuts. You resell you Whizzo Nut chocolate bar for $3, on the basis that you only need to sell two-thirds as many because 3 x $2 = $6 and 2 x $3 = $6. Multiplication is commutative, yeah? You still expect $6 in revenue but have spent less in making the product to get it. The problem is that even with an item which costs $2, people are very much price sensitive and aren't going to just turn around and buy your improved product because of a minor change in benefit to them. 

If you then scale this up by a factor of ten-thousand, then selling two-thirds as many big products should scale up? 3 x €20,000 = €60,000 and 2 x €30,000 = €60,000 because Multiplication is commutative, yeah? The maths is perfect; so what's the problem? The problem is that €10,000 is a hell of a problem for the market to absorb. The people whom you hope to sell your improved product to, have not magically had an increase in buying power and are highly unlikely to even be able to buy your thing in the first place. It should be said that €30,000 is not exactly the kind of coin that any cool and funky teenager even has any more. This is not the 1960s, this is not the 1970s, this is not the 1980s.

Just like most of the OECD, wages have generally been on the slide in real terms since about 1980 at the latest. This is mostly because of that strange window in the latter half of the twentieth century where due to two bouts of unpleasantness, the destruction of physical capital was so severe and so massive that for about thirty years, wages growth exceeded the rate of return on capital. What we have seem, and especially after the pandemic, is that not only has capital reasserted itself but we have now reached the point in most countries in the OCED where more than half of all the rewards of GDP are paid as passive incomes to people who have not worked for them. What this means is that the imagined customers who would have maybe bought a FIAT 500 are now convinced that they can double their money by putting it back in their pocket, and the imagined customers who are teenagers or people in their twenties now no longer exist.

FIAT upon having realised that they now have a real life fizzer, aren't going to very well fund a sunk cost fallacy, are they? Consequently, their suspension of production is because of the most open of all business reasons, weak orders.

Now here's what I don't understand. Is this Cosplay Coal Miner Matt Canavan having a triumphant clarion cry because it fits that part of his magical transformation sequence, or this Cosplay Copper Miner Matt Canavan having a whinge because it fits that part of his magical transformation sequence?

Perhaps in a dose of double irony, the ad break which immediately followed had an advert from none other than BHP with their "a-woohoo, a-woohoo, a new generation³" jingle; extolling the virtues of copper mining. This is even more confusing than Cosplay Coal/Copper Miner Matt Canavan's triumph/whinge because I don't know who the advert is for. I'm not going to go out and buy a megaton of copper now. Having said that, if the chocolate bar company wants to sell me a Whizzo for $1, I'll have three of them.

Horse 3394 - Do Electric Sheep Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

The 1968 novel by Philip K Dick, "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" is not, as the movies "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner: 2049" would suggest, primarily concerned with the hunting down of a fugitive android. Rather, the novel seems to be more concerned with asking the philosophical question about what kind of emotions a machine can have, given that they are merely designed to follow their programming instructions. 

The two tests which are used to see whether or not someone is an android are a physical bone test (because androids are built inventions which do not have the random impurities in bone structure that humans do), and a specific empathy test to see whether or not the person in question is capable of feeling empathy for the theoretical person in the test. That's all fine and good but there is a massive plot hole which is papered over in that in theory the test would never be able to tell the difference between an android and a sociopath, and the fact that if the androids whom they are doing the testing on have already escaped from Mars to Earth because they fear their own destruction, then they have already exhibited emotion. Okay, there is a whole entire other argument to be had about whether or not fear and anger are genuine emotions or reactions to things but considering that they are things to be felt, I tend to think that they are emotions. 

Not that this is a particularly novel idea in literature, as this kind of question is played with again and again. From "Frankenstein", to "I, Robot", to "2001: A Space Odyssey" and even into modern cinema with the aforementioned "Blade Runner" and even "Millennium Man"; so this is well trod ground. It should be of no surprise then, that on a very recent re-watching of the 1991 anime "Kyatto Ninden Teyandee" or in English the Samurai Pizza Cats, that I come up against this question again. Thanks to this most dubious of dubs and the many decisions that were made in writing the English gag dub, I have this persistent question; especially about Lucille. 

Edoropolis/Little Tokyo is set in a semi-future-past-present-eka-Edo Period. The world is populated by, as described by the show itself, animaloids. From here, the internal continuity exists only as far as the current gag calls for, and so very much of the time there is a Thirty Xanatos Pileup of discontinuities and dialogue disasters and triumphs. As far as the internal logic of the show is concerned, we honestly don't know if the characters are animals with armor, mecha-enhanced animals, androids with animal components, or just out and out robots. Who knows? Nobody knows. Not even the writers know. They don't even care.

On top of this, the internal logic about how species work, is also nonsensical. Unlike say Bluey, where the primary person template is a dog and only a dog, in Samurai Pizza Cats, everyone is everything; so don't think too hard about it. Here's where it gets weird. It is canon that the different kinds of animals can have children; the most visible example of this is that Emperor Fred who is a panda and Empress Frieda who is a rabbit, have a daughter who is also a rabbit. Also, when Francine who is a cat tries to go on a date with her beau, he turns out to be a terrifying horse looking man thing. Knowing all of this, I still have this persistent question about Lucille.

Apart from being the object of Speedy's and Guido's affection (for reasons that seem mostly nonsensical to me), Lucille doesn't seem to exhibit any kind of sensible emotion. Not even when her brother is kidnapped does she seem to perturbed. Admittedly this is because she is trying to maintain a level of stoicism but she doesn't seem to concerned that he is kidnapped. Lucille's emotions both in the Japanese and English dubs range from apathy to ambivalence when all about her friends are being blown up in explosions. I do not know if this is a lack of empathy or sociopathy or just played for comedic effect. However, she is frequently upset; which always results with a trap door opening in the top of her head and a spray of missiles in a crazy Itano Circus fashion, but again that is usually because something bad has happened to her and not necessarily because she feels bad for anyone else.

So here is my persistent question about Lucille. Lucille is a sheep. Is she a mecha-enhanced animal? Is she an android with animal components? Is Lucille actually a full robot? Is Lucille an electric sheep? Is she actually the textbook case study of whether or not androids dream of electric sheep? Is Lucille an android, in which case she might dream of electric sheep? Is Lucille an android but a sociopath, in which case she would not dream of electric sheep? Is Lucille an electric sheep but a sociopath, in which case she would not dream of electric sheep? Is Lucille an electric sheep and she dreams of androids? Are Speedy and Guido androids, and do they dream of Lucille who is an electric sheep? Is Lucille both an android and a sociopath but a narcissist; in which case does Lucille dream about herself; who is an electric sheep?

I know that works like "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" are supposed to make us ponder about things like sentience and the ethics of killing machines if they actually gain self-awareness but I do not think that we will even get close to such things in my lifetime. That question seems to be a bit useless for that reason. However, the internal logic of the question itself, does in fact give you the answer.

An 'android' is a humanoid robot. When machines switch off, they are not on. Robots do not dream. As an 'android' is a subset of robots, androids do not dream. Period. If androids do not dream, then they do not dream about electric sheep, or in fact anything else for that matter. Dreaming is the domain of a thing which does not switch off, lest it dies. The question of "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" follows Betteridge's Law Of Headlines which states that: any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'.

With a small amount of manipulation, we can turn Betteridge's Law Of Headlines into a paradox by asking: Is Betteridge's Law Of Headlines True? Paradoxes are fun but my persistent question about Lucille, "Do Electric Sheep Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", is so utterly mind bending that it makes my head want to explode.

Who knows? Nobody knows. Not even the writers know. They don't even care.