Horse 3530 - The Infamous 24 Hour Final Paper

Macquarie University, for constitutional law, had the infamous 24 hour final paper. At the beginning of the 24 hour final, the question was posted on a noticeboard in the law building.

You had to then figure out a way to write the paper, print it, and submit it in a box under the noticeboard within 24 hours.

- Ji Eun Choi, 16th July 2026

I love a challenge. I also can not leave well alone. Therefore, when the opportunity to do a mad thing like this presents itself, I not only can not leave well alone but I bite.

Imma be honest with you, all I remember from constitutional law was "the defence power waxes and wanes" and "pistols at high noon" (referencing the Whitlam dismissal).

So here is a question I cribbed out of my ass (entire citation: my ass)

"Section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution confers the power to make legislation 'for the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws'.

Can Section 51(xxvi):

1. Grant legislative power to establish or define a category of race for the purposes of any such legislation, and;

2. Enforce that categorisation upon an individual irrespective of the individual's own beliefs regarding their own racial identity?

- Ji Eun Choi, 16th July 2026

I love this challenge.

<><><><><>

The question set before us by Professor Ji Eun Choi which has been assigned for us in these esteemed premises, is like that of Araldite – it comes in two parts. Also like Araldite, is my intention to address the two parts before mixing them together in a unified conclusion, which is stronger than the components and is guaranteed to smell funny.

The first part being...

Can Section 51(xxvi):

1. Grant legislative power to establish or define a category of race for the purposes of any such legislation, and

...shall be addressed presently.

One of the striking things about the Australian Constitution is that unlike the United States Constitution or the Constitution of the First French Republic, is that it neither purports to be nor attempts to be the wellspring from which all other law is derived. The Australian Constitution is not like a magic guitar which contains all the songs in the world and it is just for the songwriter and player to pull them all out through the sound hole.

In the words of the author John Green:

“They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands.”

- John Green

A similar sentiment was expressed by the United States luminary and founding father Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, when trying to discuss the nature of the new constitution that they has just conceived for that nation:

“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.”

- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison , 6th Sep 1789

Given this as the starting point, we must conclude that any question preceding with “Can Section 51 (xxvi)” do a thing, must also begin with determining what the ontology of the Australian Constitution is and also importantly, who it now belongs to.

The Australian Constitution if it is not the wellspring of law within the Commonwealth, must therefore exist within a framework of law, both inherited and derived, both precedent and subsequent to it. As expressed above, the Australian Constitution also exists within the context of its place in the here and now, and while the authorial intent may be advisory, the actual interpretation of what the law actually says must also be done in the here and now. Whatever the authorial intent of the framers of the Australian Constitution actually was, is functionally irrelevant, immaterial, and as they have all suffered an existence failure, incompetent. The law does not belong to the dead.

The actual text of the opening to Section 51 reads:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:- 

- Section 51, Commonwealth of Australia Act (1900)

Keen readers will notes that the next thirty-nine sub-clauses which follow, do not expand upon this power but rather, act as a series of fences to limit the bound and scope as where this power lies. Likewise,  Section 51 (xxvi) also does not expand upon the power, but neither does it contain any specific fences or advice as to what any of the conditions contained therein actually mean. This means that functionally, the subject of the subclause “The people of any race”, is practically perfectly plenary in this respect.

As mentioned above, since the  authorial intent of what the framers of the Australian Constitution thought is irrelevant, then what the words “The people of any race” actually mean, comes down purely to the interpretation of the courts when presented with the law, unless there is a definition section within the confines of the proposed law. 

There is statute directive which may be of some instructive value but again, this falls short of directing how the words “The people of any race” should be interpreted.

In interpreting a provision of an Act, the interpretation that would best achieve the purpose or object of the Act (whether or not that purpose or object is expressly stated in the Act) is to be preferred to each other interpretation. 

- Section 15AA, Acts Interpretation Act (1901)

When it comes to determining the the purpose or object of the Act in this case, then we are in luck as the opening to Section 51 says that that purpose is “laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth”. Again we run into the immediate problem that those words are not defined at law, and what makes this even more difficult is that in the 126 years that the Commonwealth Of Australian has existed, there hasn't actually been a case presented to the High Court of Australia, which requests an interpretation of those words. 

Oh howl howl howl. Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war. Oh beardy men in sweaty basements of yore, what foul horrors hast thou wrought upon us?

In fact, the best possible answer to the question of “Can Section 51(xxvi): grant legislative power to establish or define a category of race for the purposes of any such legislation?”, is to engage in a small piece of legislative memory. 

Almost immediately after the invention of the Commonwealth of Australia at law, the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act (1901) was the sixteenth piece of legislation passed by the newly invented Parliament. The effect of the Act was to immediately and severely restrict the entry of Pacific Islanders into Australia, and also to mandate the immediate deportation of thousands of indentured workers. 

It must be noted that the overt motives of this Act were extreme racial prejudice; specifically to remove a non-white labour force in an act of economic ring fencing and protectionism for white workers. In the numbered Acts of Australia, this is the first in what became known as the “White Australia Policy”.

In a similar vein, the Immigration Restriction Act (1901) effectively banned Chinese and other non-European immigration until its dismantling starting in the 1970s, and is particularly infamous because the so-called discriminatory “Dictation Test”, which allowed immigration officers to dictate 50 words in any European language, including in language which neither the person being forced to take the test nor the Immigration Officer administering the test could understand, and this led to failure and automatic deportation; including in cases where the person had been born in Australia and only spoke English.

The question of “Can Section 51(xxvi)” do this, is not a theoretical one, but one of historical fact. Can it? Yes. Has it? Yes. 

Did we in fact learn anything in the more than six score of years since the invention of the Commonwealth? In a more modern context, although Section 51(xxvi) interacts with pieces of legislation such as the Racial Discrimination Act (1975), as this is part of the Constitution of Australia, it remains the supreme law of the Commonwealth and it remains a constitutional exercise of power regardless of whether it conflicts with subordinate pieces of legislation such as the Racial Discrimination Act (1975). How a proposed piece of legislation would interact with this theoretical piece of legislation is currently unknowable.

It is worth noting that the Commonwealth Parliament can and has intentionally suspended the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) in consideration of passing specific laws which target certain racial groups. The  Northern Territory Emergency Response Act (2007), which became known as “The Intervention” suspended the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975), in the implementation of what it called “targeted welfare” which was specifically ringfenced for Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

It is also worth noting that while the “race power” contained within Section 51(xxvi) was originally designed in the 1890s to allow for explicitly discriminatory legislation, various High Court interpretations (such as the 1998 Kartinyeri case) have debated whether this power can be used to pass laws that negatively discriminate, or if it is strictly limited to beneficial "special measures" for groups such as Indigenous Australians.

The second part will now be addressed:

Can Section 51(xxvi):

2. Enforce that categorisation upon an individual irrespective of the individual's own beliefs regarding their own racial identity?

Again, the question of “Can Section 51(xxvi)” do this, is not a theoretical one, but one of historical fact. Can it? Yes. Has it? Yes. 

There are some comments which need to be made before the implications of the above can be expanded upon. Specificity is the soul of narrative. Specificity is the wellspring of nuance.

The first thing of note here is that everyone within the Commonwealth of Australia is bound by law:

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

- Clause 5, Commonwealth of Australia Act (1900)

More generally, the individual is not sovereign. There are no sovereign citizens. Not even the King, though he may be the Sovereign by title, is a sovereign citizen at law. In the grand procession of case law, his very late majesty King Charles I discovered that the King is in fact bound by law and the courts therein, when on 30th January 1649, Parliament indicted him for tyranny. The most interesting thing about  King Charles I is that at the beginning of 30th January 1649 he was 5'6” tall but by midday he was only 4'8” tall. 

This means to say that the law, not only overrides what someone's feelings are about it, but in fact renders their feelings about it utterly pointless. They are bound by the law, regardless of how they feel about it.

This being true, the question of what one believes about their position with respect to the law, is in fact and by operation of law, an equally pointless question. How one feels about the law and the individual's own beliefs regarding their own racial identity are in fact meaningless questions.

With respect to the actual question of race, this itself is not an objective scientific fact but is also a legal construct. It is the Courts themselves which define race, through predominantly observable and/or historical markers like skin colour, descent, or ethnic and national origin. Indeed the general text for the construct of race within the confines of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975), is one which is determined by verifiable and documented aspects of the individual such as shared descent, colour, or ethnic background, regardless of biological validity.

Given that Section 51(xxvi) objectively does grant legislative power to establish or define a category of race for the purposes of any such legislation, and define the terms contained within said piece of legislation, and has done so in the past, then it also stands that such a proposed piece of legislation would also contain the terms by which that  categorisation is enforced. 

Conclusion:

Here then is the very sticky and somewhat smelly conclusion to the whole thing, as the Constitution of Australia Act (1900) is gloriously glib when it comes to defining any of its terms, it would seem that the prima facie position is that it is unfair to those people who happen to fall on the unfavourable side of the law. Equally as famous is the fact that the Constitution of Australia Act (1900) does not contain a Bill of Rights and it is the opinion of the writer that nor should it do so. 

An act such as the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act (1901) was abhorrent to many people, even at the time of its passage. Equally, nobody mourned its passing when it was repealed with the Statute Law Revision Act (1974). This means to say that the Constitution of Australia Act (1900) in principle is entirely agnostic when it comes to the subject of human rights, or indeed of the concept of rights at all. This means that the Constitution of Australia Act (1900) actually does in practice live up to the idea that it belongs to its readers and that it belongs always to the living generation, because all Acts are made and can be equally unmade for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth by the current Parliament. Whether or not those Acts are good, is still up for debate.

Horse 3529 - Eudaimonia - Element XX - Enjoy

The problem with humans living firstly in the twentieth century and then the twenty first century, is that we can pretty well get everything we need all the time. The number of people living in extreme poverty where absolutely basic things like food, shelter, and clothing, aren't being met, has fallen to the point where now this purely exists as an allocation issue. This isn't to say that people aren't starving in the world but the reason that they are starving is not caused by lack of food, rather if there was the political and economic will it would literally disappear within a month.

The other side of this is that we live in a world which can now provide constant excess of the basics, to the point where there are diseases caused by that excess.

Perhaps the most visible diseases caused by that excess is Obesity which is the outward manifestation of the excess of food. Various diseases like lung cancer, liver failure, and other organ damage are the manifestation of the excess of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs. I would even argue that on a societal level, the fact that we now have entire generations locked out of home ownership, is the manifestation of the excess of capital and power being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

The traditional viewpoint is that the vice which describes this is gluttony; which is caused by overconsumption. While that might very well describe the vice, the corresponding virtue of temperance and/or moderation, seeks only to modify the behaviour and I don't think actually addresses the underlying problem contained within the human soul. 

As I have suggested on a number of occasions in this series, the centre of the universe is 19mm behind people's corneas. People are not only the centre of their own perception but with constant reinforcement, they are also the hero of their own story. The beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world, with unlimited unlimited wants, wants everything all of the time. The consequences of trying to feed unlimited unlimited wants all of the time, are described above. If the answer is not necessarily trying to cut off all desire because that seems from the outset to be actually impossible, then what is to be done about this?

As someone who works in an environment where everyone is paid more than I am, what is really apparent is that they aren't any happier than I am, despite and maybe even because of the fact that they are being paid more. Too much is never enough; which seems to be a maxim irrespective of what the field of play happens to be.

What is also strangely apparent is that not even the quality of whatever the thing in question appears to be enough. If it isn't more that people want, then it is a higher and higher quality of stuff that people want. This is why in principle that conspicuous consumption of Veblen Goods, is readily explainable even in the face of logic.

Anecdote is not evidence and I am but one data point but as someone who can eat a cheese and devon sandwich with mayo for lunch, and be more satisfied with my lunch than someone who spends more in a day than I spend in a fortnight, then this suggests that something else is going on.

In the greater scheme of work, I have been driven to despair this year. Mere sadness can sometimes be a useful prompt to lead someone to fix the situation but despair is the more profound realisation that no action will make a difference. Given this, what is one to do in the face of this?

The two things which I appear to have any control over at work, and over which I have any control are when I arrive and the attitude about the situation which I control. Of the former, if I arrive before anyone else, I gain peace and quiet in the space; of the latter, control requires a conscious effort and choice.

Here's the fun realisation. You can choose to enjoy anything. 

I think that the single most glorious thing that exists for lunch, is a grilled cheese sandwich with hochi sauce. There's nothing particularly glamourous or difficult about it but it is nice. 

There is nothing as magical as particular cups of tea, which are just absolutely perfect; seemingly for no reason at all. 

I like my Mazda 2, which is not an expensive car and neither is it a big one. It is fun to drive and I do like to just pootle about in it, even if it is just going to the shops. 

I like mornings where nothing in particular happens, and I can just sit in the sunshine while the washing machine is doing its business.

I mention those things because I think that there is a quiet glory in the mundane. This is not necessarily a defence of simplicity, but it is a suggestion that always wanting more and always wanting better is a fool's errand, which doesn't actually lead to any more happiness.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus once suggested that what he needed for happiness was a jug of wine, a small pot of cheese, and four friends. In this respect, the art of frugal hedonism comes close to the actual concept of this post in that by not chasing after luxury or excess, it gives you a better ability to fully appreciate the simple, beautiful moments around you every day.

The final piece of this particular puzzle is the very point of this post. What happens if life is hard, or lonely, or difficult, or if people are stupid obnoxious and daft? What then? What can you do if this is the case? 

Enjoying things, is actually a choice. It is actually a choice to decide to really enjoy that cup of tea, or to find small pleasures in work, or to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine, or as Epicurus suggests the philos of friends and family, or the calm before the world turns to horridness. It is a choice to choose that enough is enough, or that something simple is beautiful. 

If you want to take this as a command, then do so. Choose to Enjoy things.

Horse 3528 - Eudaimonia - Element XIX - Detachment

There is a skate clothing brand called SMP, which has never stated what the acronym stands for and has been deliberately left undefined. Depending on what the marketing department wanted to do at the time, SMP in various as campaigns has stood for: Skate More Parks, Surf More Pipes, So Much Possibilities, and particularly useful for the purposes of this post Sex Money Power.

That last set of things which the acronym could stand for, are the three things that we would usually associate with what was classically known as the vice of Luxuria or in English is known as Lust. Lust for more Sex, lust for more money, and lust for more power, are generally seen as destructive.

What is curious is that over the centuries, the word Luxuria has become more associated with the concept of luxury and has been decoupled from the notion of moral hazard. On the other hand, Lust generally has narrowed in definition to the point where people's first thought about the word is almost always of a sexual nature and the other perfectly valid uses of the word require qualifiers.

In the first instance it would seem that the antivice would be things like chastity, poverty, and submission. However, while these might address the actions of the moral hazard, they do not of themselves address the underlying motivation of the individual generating them. 

Probably the best word to describe this set of animal urges, physical desires, and material craving, is either Epithumia which mostly is concerned with how the appetitive parts of someone's nature are connected to the soul. This is the part of the soul constantly yelling and demanding the "Yummy, Yummy" thing with no regard for the context or the consequence, either with respect to the individual or anyone else.

In relation to unlimited unlimited wants, this is where a line is crossed into unlimited unlimited unsatisfiable wants; and where the gratification of those wants eventually consumes the individual.

The end of literally all desires in response to this is likely impossible. Wants and especially wants tied to needs such as food, shelter, clothing, warmth, love, peace, calm, et cetera, will always continue to exist as the individual continues to exist.

When all else fails, an interrogation of the wants and needs, must invariably lead one to the conclusion that the satisfaction of those needs and wants must fall short. When it comes to the falling short of wants that perhaps were destructive, or unrealistic in the first place, then it is good to ask "why?" of those wants. 

Humans are limited beings in time, space, ability, and power. The answer to that question of "why?" in relation to why wants those things, is perhaps best met with Detachment and a deliberate choice to let go of those expectations or desires, especially in relation to the unlimited unlimited unsatisfiable wants of sex, money, power, et cetera. 

Since Luxuria and Epithumia are tied to the cultivation of the inner life, then the integration and detachment of one's self is very likely to lead to inner freedom and peace, because if you're not carrying the burden of expectations they can not weigh you down.

Horse 3527 - Eudaimonia - Element XVIII - Generosity

There is a legend which relates to the invention of the number zero, which probably isn't true but inadvertently demonstrates something interesting.

To wit:

A man was arguing with a trader in a marketplace, over the price of spices and they came to a disagreement.

"None of these numbers are amounts that I want to pay," he said to himself.

So he considered all of the numbers and drew a circle in the dust.

"Inside this circle is nothing. This is the amount that I want to pay. I shall call it jeero."

I am not ashamed of sporking this story for a different purpose than intended because although it speaks about the invention of a 0 as a mathematical concept, it also touches on that most base of human desires to want things at no cost to themselves.

Every Economics 1A class will begin with the starting premise that economics tends to describe satisfying unlimited wants with limited resources and that markets are just an allocation mechanism in achieving that. Very rarely is the notion of unlimited wants examined itself. The curious thing about those unlimited wants, is that they are unlimited in being unlimited.

The problem with unlimited unlimited wants is that they are by nature insatiable. It is literally impossible to multiply all the zeroes in the universe and even get to one. 

The Greeks called this "pleonexia". The Romans called it "avaritia". The English word "greed" is derived from the West Saxon word "grædig" which just means "hungry".

Hunger is fine. As a signal that someone hasn't eaten anything in a while, it is useful. As an insatiable desire for material gain, be it food, money, land, animate or inanimate possessions, defined by unlimited unlimited wants, it is destructive.

Unlimited unlimited wants, which almost by definition includes more than one's rightful share, can only come at the expense of others. Unlimited unlimited wants for material things, or social status, or power, at the expense of others in the community, invariably comes with the degradation of those others in the community.

Here's the rub. If you don't actually care about those others, nor care that they are paying that expense, nor care about their degradation, then that's a perfectly acceptable price. For you, it is the price of zero, which is the amount that you want to pay.

Classical Buddhism would suggest that the proper way to stop being dissatisfied with the perpetual grasping for things, is to learn to live peacefully with the skilful desires while letting go of the unproductive ones. That all sounds fine and dandy if you want to pursue a path of asceticism but how practical is it?

There is value in learning to be content with what you have but again, while this is a practice that can be cultivated, as a human where the centre of the observable universe is 19mm behind our corneas, that is easier said than done.

It should be obvious to anyone who has lived for more than 24 hours, that humans as limited animated creatures, have basic needs for things like food, clothing, shelter, and more abstract needs for things like purpose, meaning, community, and love, and that the edges between needs and wants are very blurry indeed. I would argue that it isn't any kind of moral hazard to want to have your needs met, nor necessarily to want nice things.

Everything mentioned thus far looks purely at trying to satisfy an individual's unlimited unlimited wants. However, if you open your eyes just a little bit, there just happen to be other people in the world, who also live complex lives and who by virtue of being human, are worthy of dignity and having things being given to them.

Generosity suggests that not only is the other worthy of dignity and having things being given to them, but that it should come at our expense.

If we boil everything down to pure economics, then literally everything worth anything comes down to how much people want the thing at a price and how much someone else is willing to supply that thing at a price. Irrespective of whether the underlying motivation is one of greed or generosity, someone somewhere is paying. 

You can of course see this in the current discourse surrounding Capital Gains Tax proposals, and the almost malevolent opposition to any kind of removal of advantage for people who already own capital and property. People who own these their are definitely not generous, especially when someone else is paying for their advantage by way of rent. The idea that there should be public housing to meet people's needs is anathema to these people. Society repeatedly chooses to not see others as actually worth enough to meet the expense of basic dignity.

Across the OECD, total charitable giving amounts to no more than about 2% even if you choose to allow for tax distortions by including donations to churches and religious organisations which is almost unique to the United States. By demonstration, people just aren't generous. By way of comparison, the broader U.S. food sector represents roughly 6% of GDP and snacks account for about a third of that; which means that charity and snacks are actually valued about the same in economic terms.

In economic terms, we don't really believe that our fellow humans are actually worthy of dignity and having things being given to them; as much as we believe that our immediate need for snacks is important.

Generosity it would seem is reasonably rare. It is so rare that it accounts for one fiftieth of people's actual accounting. The unbelievable truth hidden in plain sight is that if people actually were generous and demonstrated civic philos, the world would change very radically and very quickly. 

But it doesn't and it won't.

Horse 3526 - Eudaimonia - Element XVII - Humility

It seems to me that the vast majority of people when questioned if they think that they are a "good person" will answer in the affirmative. The reason for this is at least twofold as it rests on the twin pillars of the fact that humans must invariably be the centre of their own perception of the universe, coupled with the fact that good self-esteem is basis of how one determines their own overall sense of personal worth and value.

However, a thing judged against a self derived yardstick, especially when motivated to determine a favourable judgement unilaterally, doesn't seem to me to be either objective or reliable. In fact, so egocentric are humans, that if someone comes to the conclusion that they are a "bad person" then the rest of us might conclude that they are somehow faulty and have low self-esteem, even though by an external yardstick that judgement might actually be perfectly honest.

It seems therefore just and reasonable to me that if superbia and hubris are generally marked as vices, then the antivice is going to be the active cultivation of an accurate recognition of one's place in relation to others. 

This actually leads one to a strange conclusion. The logical antivice for Superbia is probably some kind of self degradation. 

The word "humility" itself is derived from the Roman word "humilitas", which relates to being close to the ground or the earth. This was not anything remotely desirable, as for classical philosophers like Aristotle or Plato, this definitely carries a sense of lowness and a lack of social standing. This is a place of failure and debasement; which the Greek at first and then the Romans, would have very much blamed the individual for bringing upon themselves.

The whole idea that humility might be an antivice or perhaps even a virtue, is absolutely not something which the Greeks or Romans would have accepted.

However, an accurate reckoning of the value of one's self, might actually bestow one with a sense of quiet confidence. I might not necessarily be the best at X but I can do M, N, P, and Q, with some degree of competence.

What I find slightly disturbing is that the people who are actually best at putting the needs of others, either singularly or in community, ahead of their own personal recognition, are often the most neglected by others and the community at large. The question of who cares for the carer, is the forgotten question when someone properly cultivates and demonstrates a sense of humility.

Superbia is big and brash and loud but its antivice which tends to be small and measured and quiet, actually has a bigger impact when it is removed. People often whoop for joy when a person who operates with superbia is gone, but they won't necessarily notice when someone who has developed a streak of humility has gone. What they will notice is when the systems being held up by those people start to strain and/or break.

Superbia also happens to come with costs. Maintaining one's fame, or reputation, is expensively draining upon the individual who has to constantly keep face. Perhaps one of the most humble aspects of humility is the fact that not actually having to care about constantly comparing one's self to others in order to establish that sense of self worth, is actually a quiet state of freedom. Someone who is able to genuinely not care about what others think, doesn't have to expend the emotional currency of caring in the first place. Admittedly that does come with the secondary expense of often being treated badly by those people for who superbia is modus operandi.

Probably one of the strangest paradoxes about this antivice is that someone who is actually able to cultivate that sense of not caring about what others think, is also able to eliminate what they think about themselves. A person walking in genuine humility will not be thinking about trying to be humble. If someone is excellent in the task of putting the needs of others, either singularly or in community, above their own, they have no need to demand glory or recognition because in not care about what others think about them or thinking about trying to display humility, they end up not thinking about themselves at all.

Horse 3525 - No Deal, No Outcome, No Power, No Projection

Not for the first time an overseas "diplomatic mission" by Donald Trump, has achieved practically nothing. On this occasion, Trump's visit to China to meet with Xi Jingping, not only didn't result in any kind of discernable outcome but also didn't really improve relations between the two nations. In fact, the one thing that it did manage to achieve, was a glib confirmation that the projection of American power underneath President Trump, is weaker than at any point in the past 100 years.

Trump who when asked about the extent that the financial situation of Americans motivated his negotiations with Iran said, "Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans' financial situation", has now extended that stance of apathy to Taiwan. When asked if the United States would step in a defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Trump said that he wouldn't send troops in.

Now there's two ways of looking at this. Either this is President Trump trying to appease the Chinese government and semi-normalise relations between the United States and China by adopting a less belligerent stance, or this is the United States openly admitting that it actually doesn't care. This is in stark contrast to the Biden Administration who managed to walk the line by saying that they would defend Taiwan in the even of a Chinese invasion, while at the same time being more open and friendly to the Chinese government.

All of this stands in relation to a reasonably well known statement by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), that their ten-year plan in 2017 was to have the necessary hardware and manpower to at least be able to invade and take and hold Taiwan by the end of the plan. The timeframe for that plan is such that the end of the plan is 2027; which happens to be getting closer to the end of the Trump Administration in terms of the run of events, but more importantly, is now only seven months away. One suspects that an actual Chinese invasion of Taiwan would rather be a bit like the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, with a few token skirmishes but ultimately a walkover.

Now as the wheels of history turn and turn, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan seems not only possible but plausible. As for me, I live in Australia; which is also an ocean and a bit away so you'd think that it wouldn't affect me in the first instance but what is being expressed here is something bigger. It is not a leap to suggest that if the United States would not defend Taiwan, then it follows that it would also not defend Australia.

We already know that under the terms of the AUKUS "deal" which was perpetrated by the Morrison Government, that Australia has signed up to pay $368bn for imaginary submarines. Everyone already knows by now that the number of submarines which will be delivered will be exactly zero, and that all of this was the United States extracting extortion monies as tribute. However, Trump's statements that if the United States would not send troops in to defend Taiwan are a more general stance (which it is not unreasonable to assume), then equally sending troops and hardware to Australia which is also an ocean away, is equally not likely.

As it is, the United States already sees Australia as nothing more than a supply base for its stuff and just another big aircraft carrier. Big US companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, extract our gas and resources and literally don't pay us anything in taxation measures. The morons in government who cooked those deals will never have to answer for their abject stupidity. More worryingly though, is that there is in fact no obligation whatsoever under the terms of AUKUS for any military intervention at all. Trump is already actively agitating to dismantle NATO, on the basis that the other nations don't pay their way, but what this week has told us is that actually the United States just doesn't see the economic benefit in projecting its power any more.

Of course it will send in guns and ships until the balance shifts in places like the Strait of Hormuz, but that's because of the immediate and direct effect of the transit of oil tankers through the Middle East. Again, the United States literally couldn't have cared a jot and didn't care a jot about the regime in Iran until the point when its own direct interests were disturbed.

Trump was able to blast his clarion over the fact that China has agreed to buy 200 Boeing aircraft but even that was tempered by the fact that Boeing stock fell about 4% in value almost immediately. Trump who likes to think of himself as a dealmaker, walked away with the basic military and economic frictions between the United States and China moving nowhere whatsoever. Except, that we did learn that the United States has at least openly admitted now, that not only is it weaker than it used to be but that it chooses to be so.

Horse 3524 - l'Appel du Vide

I am a human in possession of a body with systems that I do not understand and with a brain that I also do not understand. I am not equipped with any kind of system manual, nor do I fully understand the signals that the various systems give me. Emotions are things that I would prefer not to have. Pain seems useful to me as a warning system but as someone who has been injured and damaged physically, certain aspects of this system aren't reliable either. 

And then there's this. 

What am I supposed to do with a sudden, intrusive, and equally fleeting desire to throw myself off of this platform and fall roughly 13 storeys below?

I have no desire to die. I have no need to commit suicide. I certainly have no wish to feel what I imagine is firstly abject terror from falling and then whatever pain would follow from going splat on the pavement floor below. There is no logical or sensible reason why I would think this. Apparently though, this kind of phenomenon is way more common than anyone dares to admit. It even has a name - "l'appel du vide", or "The Call Of The Void".

From what I can determine, the closest thing which comes to a rational explanation of why a perfectly functioning and presumably rational brain would come up with such an irrational thought, is actually paradoxically self-preservation. A brain which unconsciously produces such an insane and destructive thought, reviles itself and actually performs a metaphorical slight of hand in making itself reinforce the desire to live.

Apparently the Call Of The Void applies more generally to doing dangerous things, rather than just hurl one's self off of a high place. Other examples that I read about included wanting to touch a hot stovetop, drive the wrong way down the motorway into oncoming traffic, or running into traffic.

It also appears to be triggered more often by people who have suffered some kind of physical trauma with lasting effects (so this means that I fit the classic profile).

What this suggests is that what is going on, is kind of like a bodge job patch update, for a brain which already has suffered trauma to create and test a false alarm. Further to this, what might be going on is a sudden an immediate spike of the stress hormone cortisol; which given that I am now working in a way more stressful job, looks like a greater sensitivity to external cues in the environment and not some latent death wish.

The fun thing about being in possession of my brain is that I immediately wanted to pull this whole phenomenon apart and look at the various components because I am insanely curious. The truth is that have way too many people who rely upon me, to even allow me to entertain this as even 1% plausible.

But it's still as weird as all get out and that's kind to interesting

 to think about.

Horse 3523 - You Likely Do Not Need A Truck For Work and You Are Not Going To Use It For Work Either - 2026 edition

Almost two years ago, I conducted a highly unscientific study to work out the likelihood of someone who has a truck (I only found one actual ute this time around) and them actually using it for "work". 

Horse 3332 - You Likely Do Not Need A Truck For Work and You Are Not Going To Use It For Work Either.

Once upon a time, in the days when you could actually buy sedans, and hatchbacks, and wagons, and sports cars, the kinds of people who had trucks were the kinds of people who needed them. The absolute classic work truck is a Toyota Hilux Work Mate with pull down sides. These things were owned by tradies. In the accounting firm that I used to work for, actual genuine tradies would use actual genuine tracks and vans. 

As with this survey, in deciding what is a "Work" and a "Not Work" truck, I use a very very broad brush. If the truck has chequerplate boxes, or a ladder, or any kind of equipment at all (I would have accepted a single shifting spanner), on display at all, then it was a Work truck. If there wasn't any prima facie evidence that the truck had ever been used for work, then it went into the Not Work category. 

If a truck looked like it was for Work, in any way, shape, or form, then I classified it as a Work truck. If on the other hand, there was no obvious evidence that it looked like it was for work, then I classified it as a Not Work truck. The basic test, which I want to be as generous and as quick as possible, is to look at the obvious. If a truck looks like it is a Work truck then it is that; if a truck looks like it is a Not Work truck then it is that.

Also, since my survey has now switched from Marayong in Sydney's west to North Sydney where I now work, I will point out that this might have some bearing on the data which is collected. I imagine that as I am now working in North Sydney instead of Mosman, that the data is actually over-egged in terms of Work trucks, because of actual tradies who drive through North Sydney. They have less to be pretentious about than the people of Mosman. 

Here then, is the raw data:

Here is the organised data:

As before, the first observation is that the more expensive a truck looks and the nicer that a truck looks, the less likely that it is to be used for Work. Yet again the big offenders here are the Dodge RAM and the Chevrolet Silverado; both of which in two surveys now, have not yet fielded a Work truck. 

The fact that the Ford Ranger has remained at about 80% not work, also does not surprise me. The Ranger as it is sold in Australia, is almost never seen at all in a 2-door pulldown-side variant. The Ford Ranger has never been particularly sold in Australia as a Work truck and acts more as a replacement for the Falcon. Having said that, what used to be Falcon sales 15 years ago, are now not made up by the Ranger, Everest, Mustang and the rest of Ford's shrinking lineup added together.

The Hilux on the other hand, has actually become more of a work truck, with most of what I saw being 4-foor crewcabs with chequerplate boxes. This seems to suggest that Hilux has taken what used to be Commodore sales; with a little bit of takeover of what used to be pulldown side trucks of the Falcon and Commodore utes.

The Nissan Navara is perhaps the surprise of this data set, as it has flipped from being a Not Work to a work vehicle mostly. There was also 1 Ford Falcon ute, which was a one-tonne flatbed; with a generator strapped to the back.

The only truck that I saw towing anything, was a Toyota Hilux Work Mate; which had a cement mixer and what appeared to be both a generator and a concrete pump in a trailer.

The fact that the data sets look broadly similar should be of no surprise to anyone. The fact that there has been a general trend to Not Work as people but Emotional Support Trucks (ESTs) in lieu of actual cars, is testament to the fact that the market for motor vehicles generally is going this way. Ford will not sell you a sedan any more. Toyota do not sell a performance family car. Even the luxury car companies have all jumped on the trend of the SUVification of everything because an SUV can command a significantly higher price for only a marginally higher input cost.

However, the attitude of the consumer who claims that they "need" a truck for "work", is mostly likely lying to you. They do not. We know that they do not as evidenced by the fact that over half of all the trucks on the road (I think that my survey is probably representative) are not actually Work trucks. Yet again we have to conclude that ESTs are being bought instead of the sedans and hatchbacks. Certainly the adverts for them, like the advert for the Isuzu D-Max, or the advert for the Mitsubishi Triton, or the advert for the Ford Ranger, shows none of these things being used for Work at all.

Once again, the the consumer who claims that they "need" a truck for "work", is not likely lying to you on that count but also on the count that they claim to "need" a truck to tow a caravan. We know that this claim is also abject poppycock as evidenced by the fact that the number of caravans actually being bought are falling. ABC News: Why are so many Australian caravan companies collapsing? Again people who claim to "need" a truck to tow a caravan can be tested with the question "Do you have a caravan?" and we know that the answer is more likely to be "No" because of the sales data.

Spending more than $60,000 on truck which is used cart the family around in, and not actually a Work truck, but which is being rung through the business as a business expense, is not only a lie but a lie which the rest of the county is effectively carrying as an expense due to taxation effects.

In two years, my attitude has changed from not just questioning "what kind of truck do you have?" but now actively considering that in more than half of all cases, you not only have a Not Work truck but you are using it for Not Work. Unless proven positive, not only do you not need a truck for work, you are not going to use it for work. I now have two sets of data which points to this.

Horse 3522 - Not My Favourite Number But My Nemesis Number

 Some people have a favourite number. This is likely because as pattern seeking machines, people want to see familiarity arise again and again. Their favourite number might relate to a birthday or some other important thing or event in their life. This is all well and good but I have a nemesis number.

Just like my irrational dislike of seafood because I do not respect anything that the sea wants me to eat, or my abject hatred of SUVs because they only produce bad driving, I have also developed an intense dislike of one particular number.

19.

My late mother in her wisdom said that you shouldn't hate something unless you want it dead. This is excellent advice because it forces you to reframe your dislikes until you are absolutely sure that you really want the thing that you propose to hate to actually die. 

Now obviously my hatred of the number 19 is not to do with wishing the number out of existence; so this means that there is a very specific circumstance where the nineteeniness of something really makes me livid. That circumstance is bread.

As best as I can determine, the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread" is a slogan for the American brand Wonder Bread; following the commercialization of pre-sliced bread by Otto Frederick Rohwedder in 1928. That is dependant upon the invention of a bread slicer and herein lies the problem.

A loaf of bread which is sold in the supermarket is typically between 680g and 700g depending on how fancy the bread is. A loaf of bread should have 20 slices in it. 20 slices is perfect as if you make two sandwiches a day, then that's four slices of bread. Four slices multiplied by five days is 20 slices.

As Pippa from Robert Browning's 1841 poem, "Pippa Passes", when there are 20 slices of bread in the bag then...

"God's in his heaven.

All's right with the world."

When there are only 19 slices in the bag because the loaf has passed through the slicing machine only very slightly askew, then depending on whether you think that we are one slice short or one slice over, then this very small part of the world has gone very very wrong indeed. At least in this very small corner of the world, empires tumble into rubble and dust; the universe shrinks and the planets combust.

Oh howl, howl, howl, calamity. Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war. 

There is no earthly way of knowing that you're going to get only 19 slices of bread in the bag. Nobody is that prescient that they can determine that a loaf of bread which is sold by weight, is one slice short, as that is an independent variable in relation to the sale of bread.

Oh go on. Laugh. Point and laugh if need be. Let me become the object of your sport and entertainment. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer but tragedy is when I cut my finger. Forget horror films on the big screen, like Saw, Mick Cronin's The Mummy, Resident Evil, or Werwulf, the tale of me standing in the kitchen having discovered that there were only 19 slices of bread in the bag is an R18+ story. No, this is one worse than an R18+ story, this is R19.

Here I am standing in the kitchen, unable to express my horror and disdain lest I wake up the house and cause a ruckus. Functionally I have no mouth and I must scream.

As I stand here in the kitchen, all my dreads and fears through all the years are met with me tonight; I am having the terrible, horrible, very bad, no good day. 

19, you are my nemesis.

Horse 3521 - Morality Down, Trump Has Risen

 "The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."

- Brutus, Julius Caesar 

Can we all just take a look at what actually happened in the Middle East over the past few weeks, with an objective perspective and remove the rhetoric?

On 28 February 2026, Israel unprompted and then the United States as part of apparent military obligations (although officially undocumented) launched large-scale joint strikes on Iranian military infrastructure, missile sites, and leadership; using primarily missiles and rockets.

The campaign, which never received an Authorised Use of Military Force (AUMF) directive from the United States' Congress, was very quickly named "Operation Epic Fury," and then backfilled with the objective to 'destroy Iranian missile sites and disable nuclear development'; despite the claims that "Operation Midnight Hammer" in June 2025, already destroyed Iran's nuclear program in that series of missile and rocket strikes (which also did not receive an AUMF).

This was met with Iranian retaliation, when it responded by launching its own missile and rocket strikes against Israeli and United States' targets.

Israel then opened up a border of conflict in Lebanon, fighting Hezbollah troops; which mostly resulted in civilian casualties in Beirut and southern Lebanon.

Iran further decided to cause disruption by attacking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. As global oil prices are primarily driven by changes in Middle Eastern crude oil delivery (because of the chemistry involved in producing greases and plastics), Iranian attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz almost instantly caused a spike in crude oil prices, and a moral panic over the subsequent global energy shock.

Objectively speaking, the best light to paint all of this in is that at the end of the conflict, Trump 'struck a deal' to reopen a shipping lane which was already open before the conflict began.

What Iran has done through the instrument of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by demonstrating effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, is extract fees and sanctions relief. The costs to them, have been the lives of innocent people in Iran and Lebanon, whom they already considered as valueless.

Thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon, apparently count for nothing while the lives of 13 US Servicemen are the headline loss. The subsequent loss of United States' reputation, a minor depletion of US munitions, and the economic fallout of hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and the pull of general inflation due to supply chain disruption, is also seen as irrelevant.

My opinion:

If President Trump makes good on his threats to target civilian sites in Iran if the country does not re-open the Strait of Hormuz, then functionally this amounts to premeditated war crimes under international law.

Bombing "civilian power plants and bridges if Iran does not reopen the strait," is definitionally a war crime as making civilians or civilian objects the object of attack is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Elements-of-Crimes.pdf

However, even the targeted destruction of innocent people, at the order of someone held to be a rapist in a court of law, is perfectly acceptable to the people of the United States and the Congress who would not even entertain any kind of restraint:

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?...It's, like, incredible."

- Donald Trump, 23 Jan 2016.

This remains true.

Behold your god,

Seated in the Oval Office.

He does what he likes. 

No one will restrain him.

- Threnody 45:47

Horse 3520 - Eagle Down, Trump Has Risen

I am not one for watching News 24 (which is what Sky News Australia became after it forced to rebrand itself after court orders) and so I am not usually aware of the kind of effluent propaganda being dragged through people's minds, but this morning I am (was) on the train while someone played it sufficiently loud enough on their phone for all the immediate world to hear. 

At the weekend, a pilot in an F-15E Strike Eagle jet that was shot down by Iran on Friday, was rescued from an Iranian mountain after spending two days in the open.

United States' President Donald Trump praised the fighter pilot and the US Air Force who successfully returned him safe and sound, to a US airbase; and then the broadcast got weird.

President Trump threatened to find and jail the journalist who first reported that the fighter pilot was awaiting rescue in Iran, unless the reporter reveals the source. I note that Fox News and Washington Post were the initial news outlets to report the story, so there might not be a lot in that threat. 

The broadcast then proceeded to show Mr Trump in the Oval Office, with various people laying hands on him, praising God for his leadership, and then thanking God that Iranian people have been killed. 

In reference to the return of the fighter pilot who was retrieved, there was no reflection upon the fact that this same military put him in harm's way in the first place; much less the actual moral fitness of the war.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/05/at-least-dozen-hospital-and-health-facilities-in-iran-hit-since-us-israel-attacks-began-who-says

"At least 13 hospitals and other health facilities have been hit during the US-Israel attacks on Iran, global health chiefs have said."

- The Guardian, 6 Mar 2026

I don't know to what degree that this is being marketed as a just war in the United States but at least 13 hospitals, and over 30 schools and colleges damaged or destroyed in Iran during these military actions.

Make any claim that you like about regime change and the cruelty which the Ayatollahs and high-ranking Shia clergy have perpetrated in Iran (which was already well known), but to then turn around and claim that God is pleased, or wants to bless you when you have clearly targeted civilian populations, seems like a very strange clarion to blow. 

This war began with an opening volley of Tomahawk missiles thrown directly into Tehran; and resulted in 138 girls being killed at school. That was Day One.

This sits alongside Israel's continued efforts to turn every single last person in Gaza to bloody pulp, and and second front where innocent people in Lebanon have also been killed.

To turn around and yell at NATO for not wanting to help, after threatening to take Greenland by force, just looks churlish.

But to then dare to pray for God's blessing while you are busy tearing people to pieces and seemingly gloating at the fact, seems gauche. 

I mean I already get it that this man is a politician by office, so Christians in the United States are willing to overlook his character and the fact that he is more than likely a rapist (which apparently doesn't morally disqualify him from being elected to office a second time), but to lay hands upon him and make theatre by suggesting that he is a blessing, is madness.

It is really easy to look at the world like a chess board and watch as pieces fall. It is even easier if your King happens to be on another chess board which is on the other side of the room. So long as the things falling are only chess pieces, that's okay. However, when they are actual people, who used to have families, daughters, sons, wives, husbands, grandparents, friends... to pray a blessing upon the destruction of these people? Something doesn't work here.

https://youtu.be/6iHjbG3jtHM?si=VXo7jor1UOE2jcTS

“Mr President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price.

...

It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us. But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you.

...

Because he rose, we all know we can rise, and, sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up.

...

Because he was victorious, you were victorious. And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this: Because of his victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hand to.”

- Paula White.

You will be victorious in all you put your hand to?

What does that look like?

https://x.com/DashaBurns/status/2041222832265343141

"I don't want to tell you that. ... We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12 o'clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we want it to. We don't want that to happen."

- Donald Trump 

https://x.com/realstewpeters/status/2041208837357621298

"The Iranians are animals. That’s why blowing up their bridges and power stations isn’t a war crime.”

- Donald Trump 

My question is to "Christians" in the United States. So you voted for this, eh? Really? 

Horse 3519 - In Defence Of Hot Cross Buns

 Palm Sunday was yesterday, which means that this is the week before Easter and the only week of the year that Hot Cross Buns appear on the shelves. Every year I hear the same complaints about Hot Cross Buns and I think that it is because people just don't understand their place in the bun kosmos.

Sometimes you need to reiterate the obvious just to make a point.

A Hot Cross Bun is not a sweet bun. 

A Cream Bun with its very obviously not real cream is a sweet bun. Nobody in the world knows what that cream is but we don't have to care. A Cream Bun is a delicious thing which retains the memories of a thousand agricultural shows, school picnics, and local fairs.

A Finger Bun or its related cousins, the Eclair, Choux buns, pâte à choux de café, or even Sticky Buns generally, are the things of morning teas, churches, funerals, et cetera. The whole kingdom of Tea Cakes, also fits roughly into this kind of category.

A Hot Cross Bun is not a savoury bun. 

Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, Baps, and those breadsicle comestibles that veer further and further away, have functions which are mostly named. Granted that you can put a banana into a Hot Dog but merely putting food with other food is where we start violating the epistos of what we're talking about.

The point to be made here is that a Hot Cross Bun is neither an overtly sweet bun nor an overtly savoury bun, and shouldn't be denigrated for going about its own business.

Cream Buns, Choux Buns, Tea Cakes, Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, et cetera et cetera et cetera, are all doing solid work during the year, and I think that the perception of the Hot Cross Bun which really only shows up once a year and appears to look like a superstar, confuses people.

Of course a Hot Cross Bun isn't one of those other things and neither does it pretend to be. That's an end user perception problem and one which needs rehabilitation. The cross on top of a Hot Cross Bun isn't icing as some people invariably demand it to be, so the Hot Cross Bun has a doubly difficult job. 

The Hot Cross Bun should be thought of as a fancy Current Bun. 

As we live in an industrialised world where people's taste buds have been trained to only accept flavours which have been turned all the way up to 11, the whole idea that you might have a bun which is only semi-sweet at best, or perhaps subtly spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg, sounds absurd to people. In the world before massive amounts of cheap sugar, subtle spices were appreciated because they were slightly different. Current Buns ran the entire gauntlet between sweet and barely spiced, and a Hot Cross Bun is of this spirit.

In that respect, we seem to have no problem whatsoever with Muffins which can either be sweet or savoury, will accept jam or marmalade, or at the other end ham, cheese, sausage et cetera. Nobody appears to bat an eyelid at the idea that a muffin might contain raisins or currents, yet they will then look at a Hot Cross Bun and complain.

The problem therefore is not with the Hot Cross Bun but the people who complain. Now I realise that people like what they like and don't like what they don't like, but this is a perception problem which is grounded in ignorance.

To further complicate the problem, the Hot Cross Bun is a seasonal actor who arrives on the stage once a year and people have collectively forgotten that this kind of Current Bun used to be sold all the year round. 

I know that was then but it could be again.

We should be able to go into a shop and buy a current bun as you would toast. We should be able to pay not very much money for them. The song which was first published in 1798, and which states the price of ½d. should give us a price of about 88 cents when adjusted for inflation which seems about right to me.

I do not want to hear any more slander about something which is lovely but which people do not understand any more. The way back is not denigration but rehabilitation.

Hot Cross Buns are lovely. Be lovely. Eat lovely.

Horse 3518 - Jolene and Adeline

"Please don't take him just because you can. 

Your beauty is beyond compare;

With flaming locks of auburn hair;

With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.

Your smile is like a breath of spring.

Your voice is soft like summer rain,

And I cannot compete with you,

Jolene"

- Jolene, Dolly Parton.

"She stole my man, took him from me.

She's got crimson eyes, a screamin' body.

Face is young, she must taste sweet.

She drops those panties to her knees.

Walkin' on my happy home,

She won't give up until I'm gone.

I think I'm cursed.

I had him first.

Adeline, have mercy,

You don't wanna break my heart."

- Put The Gun Down, ZZ Ward.

Speaking as an observant robot who thinks that humans are illogical beings at the best of times and downright cruel at others, it seems to me that when it comes to the songs that humans produce for other humans to listen to, they feature the stories of humans pretty often. If it wasn't for the vast amount of oxytocin and serotonin flowing through the veins and arteries of these biomechanical meatbags with ghosts inside the shell, then most of the world of music wouldn't exist at all.

As a subject, irrational biomechanical meatbags with ghosts inside the shell being swept along in a torrent of love, is the supermajority of popular music. Taking the billboard Top 100 since 1960, 68% of all entries have referenced relationships and love. Politics, place, pelf, and purpose appear to occupy only about a third of all popular music. Songwriters it would seem, like mining the same subjects for most songs.

When it comes to that subject, you know the old story. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. Weird chemical things happen. Sometimes they steal members of other people's bonded partners; so the songs that are generated shift from someone being the object of one's affection, to scolding someone else for stealing said object.

But here's the rub. Said objects of people's affection as reflected in music, almost always tends to be ladies. The ones doing the thievery as reflected in music, also almost always tends to be ladies. 

I honestly don't know how to derive the statistics from the hideous amounts of data out there but I have a feeling that probably the vast majority of songs which have ladies' names in them, will also have to do with the subject of love and/or thievery.

When it comes to songs with men's names in them, they tend to have to do with the subject of men doing stupid things.

"Ev'ry mornin' at the mine you could see him arrive.

He stood six foot six and weighed 245.

Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip,

And everybody knew, ya didn't give no lip to Big John.

Big Bad John."

- Big Bad John, Jimmy Dean

"What's it all about,

When you sort it out, Alfie?

Are we meant to take more than we give,

Or are we meant to be kind?

And if, if only fools are kind, Alfie,

Then I guess it is wise to be cruel."

- Alfie, Dion Warwick 

"Hey Joe, I heard you shot your mama down,

You shot her down now.

Hey Joe, I heard you shot your lady down,

You shot her down in the ground."

- Hey Joe, Billy Roberts 

"He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack

Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track

Oh, the engineers would see him sitting in the shade

Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made

The people passing by they would stop and say

"Oh my what that little country boy could play"

Go, go,

Go Johnny, go, go"

- Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry.

Granted that there are songs like Blondie's "Denis" where Denis does happen to be the object of affection but these are few and far between. 

I suppose that I shouldn't really be surprised at this considering that societal norms for the last few thousand years tend to place ladies in the home and the menfolk in harm's way. It therefore makes sense that the songs that humans write reflect the idea that ladies are the objects of affection and that men are the objects of replaceable destruction. Even in most cultural instances of formal legally binding bonding ceremonies of marriage, ladies are dressed as thought they are the ones that matter while the men are essentially dressed as though this was a business transaction.

When Paul Beatle writes a song about his belle Michelle, he does so without even knowing the language that she speaks. In contrast, there is never going to be a corresponding song of that type in the other direction. 

Except...

"Hey Stephen, I've been holding back this feeling.

So I've got some things to say to you (ha).

I've seen it all, so I thought,

But I never seen nobody shine the way you do."

- Hey Stephen, Taylor Swift 

As with anything like this, convention holds for exactly as long as convention holds and no further. 

Stephen is probably a rarity. Stephen isn't being sung about as though he has done something really stupid. Having said that, I am now beginning to wonder.

The reason why I wrote any of this at all is because I happened to hear these three songs in a row while driving home one night:

Jolene, Hey Stephen, Put The Gun Down.

As my brain is both a pattern seeking machine and one for writing endless stories that go nowhere, my new personal head canon is that Jolene and Adeline are engaged in some kind of armed blood feud over Stephen. 

I hope so. I want to see this made into a movie.

Horse 3517 - CRUNCHIE v VIOLET CRUMBLE [2026] - Judgement

 The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3517/1

"Two households, both alike in dignity,

In  Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

- Prologue, Romeo And Juliet (1597)

When The Bard laid out his tragic type thesp at the end of the sixteenth century, he was mining hundreds of years of narrative and counter narrative about so-called "star crossed lovers", to create what is essentially a fairly average love story. Punters who paid their tuppence knew from the outset that the lead characters would die, and thus everyone was happy with the result because sometimes the best way to feel good about yourself is to smirk at the misfortune of others.

What the paying public were never asked to judge, was the standing and the underlying case of the narrative. Shakespeare doesn't provide any and the story never asks you to evaluate the moral fitness of the parties. For the record, as presented, the Montagues are at fault for deliberately committing acts of wilful violence and the Capulets are in fact innocent sufferers of the effects of that violence. This Fake Internet Court would have awarded damages to the Capulets.

This case of Crunchie vs Violet Crumble, stems from the assertion from someone at work that these two things are the same and that it doesn't matter.

There are in fact two things wrong with this assertion:

1 - they are qualitatively different 

2 - it absolutely does matter; even if only by the tiniest of quanta

These are the facts as this court sees them:

Firstly, the base problem with this whole case is that people will like what they like and in fact have the right to like what they like. The great Harry Selfridge once said that: "The customer is always right in matters of taste". While this might be correct in matters of personal preference (including if a customer really likes a ridiculous looking coat and hat), this does not imply that the customer is in possession of the facts. Since this Fake Internet Court has been charged with the task of deciding which of these two items is objectively better, then ironically taste which is a key component of food products, has to be excluded from the evaluation process.

The task therefore becomes one of not of telos which is the underlying purpose, but of eidos; that is which of the two best articulates the defining principles of what makes these things what they are. In this respect, this is an Aristotelian judgment and not a Platonic one. 

So then, the two protagonists are represented thusly.

Crunchie - this is from the house of Cadbury, which means that the outside is made of an already known component of milk chocolate. The interior is a honeycomb structure which is made from a caramel which is just on the verge of being burnt but never quite achieving it.

Cadbury though, is not the original manufacturer of this sweet product; with this being an inherited asset from the takeover of JS Fry and Sons. Crunchie's most famous stablemate is Fry's Turkish Delight. 

JS Fry and Sons' confection dates from 1929; which is possibly the worst time for something to hit the market, given the economic clouds which nobody saw coming and the storm which followed.

Violet Crumble - the interior honeycomb actually contains gelatin which means that a Violet Crumble can never achieve either Kosher or Halal status. As the honeycomb contains gelatin, it makes it denser and structurally better. A Violet Crumble is less likely to break during the shipping process. It also means that rather than the internal structure breaking along predictable lines, it shatters.

What I find particularly interesting is that although the ownership of this asset was passed from Hoadley's to Rowntree's, then Nestlé, and finally Robert Menz, the recipe of all of the components never changed. The chocolate on the outside is in fact unique to this particular confectionery.

Violet Crumble which debuted in 1913, actually found its way to the western front during the First World War; which meant that Flanders' fields actually saw flecks of violet amongst the mud.

Final Judgement:

The subjective test comes down to whether you prefer the less caramelised but more intense sugar-hit, or the lighter but slightly chewier honeycomb. 

However, this Fake Internet Court is not charged with that decision.

The question of which is objectively better when the things are qualitatively different, is an impossible question to answer. However, when given the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Horse 2878 has already established that both Crunchie and Violet Crumble are C3 Adequate rated. Adequate is not horrible. Adequate is adequate.

https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2021/08/horse-2878-rollo-chocolate-bar-ratings.html

We have already done the impossible. The improbable truth in this case is that it will not be decided on the basis of what Crunchie or Violet Crumble taste like, but on the basis of nothing more than patriotic prejudice.

To that end, this Fake Internet Court rules that Violet Crumble is better than Crunchie because it is Australia's own. It has survived two world wars, it is the original; therefore it is the better of the two.

This ruling is binding on all people at all times and in all points in history. The fact that this is such a trivial matter means that it is of national importance but this Fake Internet Court is prepared to deal with the fallout.

That is all.

Horse 3516 - The Beatles By The Numbers

 “Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.”

- Mark Twain

 “In God we trust, all others bring data.” 

- W. Edwards Deming

The perpetual maelstrom of chaos that is YouTube, seemingly has no idea what I want to watch next. It has a broad idea that I like motor racing, so it wants to provide with AI generated Motorsport rumour slop; it knows that I like music theory, so it tries to give me saccharine pop garbage; occasionally though it brings me an absolute gem, such as it did here:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzR68Zq4-Rs

The description of this video is that ii is "the entire Beatles album discography but it's just numbers".

The thing is that if you're going to give me a giant string of numbers, then as I work in an accountancy office, then my first inclination is to look at that string of numbers and realise exactly what else you have inadvertently given me. A string of numbers is in fact a data set.

In this case we have a data set which is not random but which is generated from the lyrics of Beatles songs. This means that before we've even begun, we know that the string of numbers is going to exist because it results from a series of contexts. People who are familiar with The Beatles' discography are going to know instantly that "she was just 17", that there are "4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire", and that "31" is going to be the collar number of a Policeman is the arresting officer of Maxwell, who is a serial killer.

Since I was given this lovely set of data, what else was I going to do but analyse it?

If we take a list of the frequencies of the various numbers, we find that the following results.

1 - 107

2 - 33

3 - 15

4 - 12

5 - 8

6 - 6

7 - 6

8 - 13

9 - 39

10 - 4

12 - 2

17 - 1

20 - 2

31 - 1

50 - 2

64 - 3

90 - 1

909 - 10

1000 - 1

4000 - 1

1000000 - 2

2000000 - 1

The first thing to notice about this is that apart from the strange spike of 9 at the end, that these numbers follow Benford's Law. That is that the first-digit in this set of numerical data, the leading digit is most likely to be small. In this case, it is 1.

In fact as far as the measures of central tendency go, the Mode of this set is 1, and the Median of this set is 2.

Things get weird when you look at the other measure of central tendency - the Mean.

If you take the mean of the whole data set, then you get: 14762.871

This is purely because of just three outliers in the data which are five orders of magnitude larger than the majority of the data set.

If you take out just those three pieces of data and also take out three 1s then the mean drops to just 58.

If you then remove the three and four digits from the data set an then the mean drops to just 5.8.

The two anomalies which change this data set from being a normal data set into whatever this is, are "8 Days a Week" and "Revolution 9"; where one of the songs is making use of hyperbole and the other... is bonkers to the point where I do not know if it even fits the definition of "music".

That is to be expected when most songs written by humans, for humans, talking about their relationship with other humans, is going to classify those humans as special. The "one" in relation to someone, is very obviously going to be talking about a relationship which is intimate and/or romantically entwined. The corollary that if there is the "one" then in a couple a song is going to be talking about us "two".

In fact, so incredibly obvious is it that that songs for humans that describe relationships with other humans, that we should naturally expect that more than half of the data set results from those terms. The numbers 1 and 2 account for 140 of 270 numbers, or 51% of the data.

Also embedded in this data set are the unavoidable certain things in life of Death and Taxes. "1 for you and 19 for me" refers to the marginal rate of taxation of 95% which George Harrison found as a result of being part of the biggest band in the world, and Paul's question of "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" stares at mortality and the ceaseless foot of time silently stealing swiftly by.

Given that this is The Beatles, I can not help but look at the comment to see one of the commenters, who I believe is a spokesperson for all of us when they said:

"We’re all here for that epic 9 solo"

- Mapoleo (user)

Indeed.

Horse 3516a - The Beatles (numbers set)

1

2

3

4

17

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1000000

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

1

2

4

19

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

19

5

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

7

1

1

1

1

1

20

5

9

10

6

1

1

1

1

3

64

64

64

2

5

1

2

3

4

4000

1000

4

4

1

1

20

3

3

1

2

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

12

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1

10

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

3

50

31

1

1

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

1

2

3

10

50

1

2

2

2

2

2000000

1000000

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

90

1

909

12

Horse 3515 - Full Of SA Fury, Signifying Nothing

There is a really curious thing which might happen as a result of the South Australia State Election on March 21st next month:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-20/sa-state-election-polls-put-one-nation-ahead-of-liberals/106370280

The Liberal Party will begin South Australia's election campaign with record low support, according to two opinion polls released today.

A Newspoll published in The Australian found just 14 per cent of voters surveyed intended to vote Liberal at next month's state election.

That puts the Liberals well behind One Nation on 24 per cent and Labor on 44 per cent.

Political analyst Kevin Bonham said if the result played out on election day, the Liberal Party would struggle to win a single seat.

"If the Newspoll were to be correct, they could conceivably win no seats at all, or they'd probably win about one seat,"  Dr Bonham said.

"Fourteen per cent of the vote does not get you many seats in a single-seat system."

- via ABC News, 20th Feb 2026

The Newspoll graphic looks like this: 

The South Australian House of Assembly which is the lower house, has a Preferential Voting System just like the one used at Federal Level. The South Australian House of Assembly uses Instant Runoff Voting to determine who wins the seat, and distributes preferences until a candidate has achieved at least 50% + 1 of the votes.

14% of first preferences of itself isn't disqualifying but it does generally mean that to achieve that 50% + 1 of the votes in practically every seat, that the Liberal Party will have to rely on 2nd and 3rd preferences; and with the way that votes generally fall, it is unlikely. What generally tends to happen is that voters will put who they absolutely hate, last. Thus, 2s and 3s end up coming a war for the centre position of whatever the electorate happens to think, and if you're only polling 14% on first preferences, this indicates that you are probably further away from the centre than you think that you are.

This means that with One Nation polling ahead of the Liberal Party, and they themselves being unlikely to win a seat, that the Liberal Party actually face exact electoral wipeout in winning none of the seats at all.

I would suspect that Peter Malinauskas is returned as Premier; with his Labor Government holding a super-majority in the House of Assembly, and possibly also holding a similar position in the upper house.

So dire is the Liberal Party's first preference poll, that Newspoll hasn't even bothered to do a Two=Party Preferred analysis; because a 2PP basis can't meaningfully be achieved if there isn't actually a logical second party. At 24% One Nation might pick up votes from people who hate the Labor Party but they've chosen One Nation as a protest against all majors, then the Liberal Party is likely to be sharing 6s and 7s with Labor - don't cry for me Argentina, the truth is we never liked you? 

Organisations like News 24 (formerly Sky News Australia) have decided to go full-on dropkick mode; by suggesting that the electorate is brainwashed and is being influenced by the "woke media" despite the fact that they are in fact a media organisation whose former proprietor helped found the Liberal Party in the first place. 5AA is already flying the racist banner and has accused Labor of importing voters; which is as idiotic as it sounds because the kinds of voters who they accuse Labor of "importing" are Indian and Chinese migrants who are more likely to vote for a pro-business party. The rhetoric doesn't even have to make sense, so why bother?

I don't know how you can accuse the electorate of being influenced by the "woke media" when you actually own the only newspaper, are politically amenable with the biggest radio group, as well as the commercial television networks. Unless this is yet another bash at the ABC, who to be honest haven't really said very much at all, then this makes no sense at all other than being a piece of rhetoric against an imagined enemy.

With the Liberal Party at Federal Level being in utter disarray and State Parliaments increasingly looking like bloodbaths with vultures picking off the remnants, I think that we are in one of those strange periods of history where conservatism as led by media telling the people what to think, is over as a model.

The reason for this is that the electorate tends to have very long memories and Generations X, Y and now Z, have never ever seen conservative politics work for them. In fact, they've seen conservative politics actively and repeatedly work against them.

It is worth remembering that the Liberal Party peaked in popularity when newspapers more or less dictated what the prevailing view of the day was. The Liberal Party's peak 1st Preference vote, more or less coincides with the peak of newspaper sales of the Herald-Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph in 1951. News 24 which is part of News Ltd's suite of media assets, plays to ever decreasing numbers; including in places where it is free-to-air.

Now that newspaper sales, Pay-TV subscriptions, and indeed the reach of traditional media has lost its ability to dictate what the electorate thinks, it follows that the electorate no longer thinks what conservative media wants them to. 

If we assume that the Liberal Party suffers absolute electoral wipe-out in the election and then a subsequent existence failure in the new parliaments, the question then arises as to what happens if there is no formal opposition. As Western Australia proves, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Questions are still put to Cabinet Ministers. People still voice complaints. The actual machinery of parliaments, which existed before the existence and invention of political parties, not only copes, it copes well. 

As for the action of the colour of the political football teams that will inhabit the next parliament, that's also pretty well completely known in South Australia. South Australia which is more than 90% urban by population, tends to have a stronger affinity for local community candidates. In that respect, South Australia acts more like Blacktown City Council which also has no formal Liberal Party representation. Instead, people are appointed because they are able to garner local support. South Australia actually has a long history of local independent candidates; who sometimes break through to Federal politics, as in the case of Nick Xenophon.

With only 14% of the vote, the Liberal Party preferences are likely to flow to Labor because rusted on voters tend to hate One Nation. With less than 30% of the vote, preferences are likely to flow to Labor because rusted on voters tend to hate the Liberal Party. Together, these two trends tend to break open the path for local independent candidates; these people are likely to populate the remaining seats.

With only 47 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly and what appears to be a 16% swing away from the Liberal Party, my Swing Calculator predicts:

Lab 43

IND 4

Lib 0

ONE 0

The Legislative Council reads:

Lab 12

Lib 5

Gre 1

SA-BEST 1

IND 3

That means that Labor would gain a majority in both houses with the asterisk of having to install a President in the Legislative Council but even then, it would require every single non-Labor Councillor to oppose legislation. I honestly have no idea what happens in the above scenario when you have 4 independent members - do you actually even need to choose a formal Opposition Leader? How does that work when there is no formal Opposition?

I just don't know.