Horse 2792 - 1 Is Not Prime

 This whole post is a reply to someone on Twitter; who has asked what I think is an excellently conceived question because what often appears to be the simplest of things often turns out to be elegantly intricate.

"Okay, you're a smart guy. Explain to me why 1 isn't prime."

This question gets at one of the things in mathematics that everyone takes for granted but when thought about for long periods of time, is like an eel on the end of a fishing line and gets tied up in knots needlessly.

To answer this, we'll come at the problem backwards and eliminate that which doesn't apply because whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.

To begin with, we are concerned only about integers; which are rational, real, and positive. We don't want to concern ourselves with fractions or negative numbers here.

A Composite number is one which is composed of many factors.

12 can be divided into 6 parts, 4 parts, 3 parts, 2 parts, and left alone as one part; all arrive at whole numbers.

A Prime number only has two factors; which are itself and 1.

7 can only be divided into 7 parts. 

A Prime number n, can only be divided into n parts nicely. If you divide Prime numbers into any other number of parts, you get weird bits.

Imagine that we are in charge of Horse Chocolate Factory. We make a bunch of different lines of chocolate but we are best known for our blocks of chocolate.

Composite numbers are like blocks of chocolate that you can divide into rows, columns, or perhaps groups of identical smaller block sections.

Prime numbers are like blocks of chocolate which are in bars; which you can only break into individual squares and still get all of the bits be identical.

Now we know about Composite numbers and Prime numbers; so we're done, right?

No!

We're still left with the problem of 1. There is no meaningful way to break one square of chocolate into any number of pieces and while you could possibly say that it fits the rule for Prime numbers that you can divide it into 1 part nicely and still get 1, without any weird bits, you haven't actually divided it, have you?

1 appears to be a special case which doesn't fit into the definition of being Composite or being Prime, without us looking like a fool.

1 is a special case because 1 can not be divided meaningfully. Dividing 1 by 1 to get 1 sounds like it should be a trivial case except for the fact that it is a unique case. If 1 is 1 and all alone and evermore shall be so, and 1 is the loneliest number that you will ever find, then it's practically standing here screaming out for it's own unique classification in it's own unique voice.

So we give it one.

1 is unitary.

There are a class of these special numbers. The units, or the divisors of unity, are the basic elements of mathematics which have a multiplicative inverse. It probably goes without saying that 1 has an evil twin in -1 and I guess that if we're going to expand our definition to include the Gaussian integers, then we have four divisors of unity which are 1, -1, i, and -i.

1 isn't prime; because as far as the ontological question of how number are classified into basic categories and which exist on the most fundamental level, then we need to be extremely careful with 1 and with primes generally.

Horse 2791 - Fragments XIII: The World Keeps On Getting Hotter And Madder

 PR 24 - Past Rememberence

A wise saw once said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If may add a supporting reason why that is in fact the case, it is that no society is actually physically capable of remembering anything beyond the memories of its oldest member. Admittedly we have invented better methods of recording the present, such that people have a greater ability to get a sense of what the past was like but this is still at best, only like looking at the world through an expensive looking glass. Once one returns the looking glass to the shelf with all of the other items upon one's dressing table, it is again physically impossible to look at one's self. Herein lies the central problem of the past and indeed of history generally. Even if one chooses to study the past, the vast majority of people will not; they certainly will not remember the implications of what the past might be able to teach them if they have neither studied it, nor experienced it first hand.

And so it is with myself. I am two generations removed from the unpleasantness of last century in which more than one hundred million souls on board this world, were destroyed (some of whom were destroyed more efficiently and effectively due to mass extinction devices) and physically can not remember the past.

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TR 27 - Not 'The' Worst But Still Pretty Bad

I make no bones about the fact that I think that US politics for the last four years has been an absolute horrorshow. Rather than choose someone who had any experience in running civil government, the American people actively chose the star of a so-called 'reality TV show' who then proceeded to run the administration of the nation with as much reality as a reality TV show; actual civil government was allowed to withir and die. Back in 2016 the NPR Politics podcast would report how many posts in government remained unfilled and by about mid-February of 2017, then ceased doing so once it became apparent that those posts would probably never be filled. That number remains at about 1600.

The Trump Administration is not the worst in US political history as is often declared in hyperbole but it's certainly up there in terms of badness and unfitness. It would take something abysmal to knock off James Buchanan's administration which broke the Union and plunged the country into civil war but it was at least as bad as Richard Nixon's or Calvin Coolidge's administrations in terms of patronage and corruption. Right at the very end of its days, the act of questioning the democratic process itself in a desperate bid to hold onto power for power's sake, is currently going on like a fever; which is an apt metaphor for the administration's lethargic response to the Coronavirus pandemic which has now claimed more American lives than all wars combined since World War 2 but yet still hasn't gained even enough of an economic response which is appropriate to the scale of importance of the thing.

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CT7 - What Do They Actually Think We Can Do?

One of the problems with being a spirit trapped inside a bioelectromechanical vehicle is that you can never ever know what anyone else is truly thinking. It's even more apparent when the thing doing the thinking is of another species. I have no idea what or even how the mind of a cat works and I have no idea what kind of powers that they imagine that I posses. 

I was standing at the back door late yesterday afternoon when Micah looked at me, then looked at the sky which was raining, then looked back at me and meowed a sort of complaining and yet questioning meow at me. 

The message although wordless was immediately obvious. Micah had a complaint about the weather and then asked me to do something about it, as if I have the power to do so. What I do not understand is whether or not he actually thinks that I have the power to change the weather or whether this is just a generic complaint.

The fact that humans can open doors and open tins and make food appear is pretty special. I think that both Arthur C. Clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and the inverse corollary that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology apply here. 

On reflection though, being able to make food appear is pretty magical.

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RM8 - Ronald McDonald Law

The rules of procedure state that you have to have a detailed basis in law, chose, fact, or action, for what you are doing; and if you don't, then you could be liable for various sanctions and remedies to be taken against you.

It is what's known as the "No Ronald McDonald Law". You can't go to court and act like a clown and you especially can't act like a clown who isn't funny. You can't just show up and fling burgers around the place.

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IM11 - I Don't Understand The Malaise

I really struggle to understand why the whole malaise era of American motoring should have lasted for so long.

Ford of Europe continued producing cars that were smaller than what they were selling in the United States and the Fiesta, Escort, and Cortina should have filled up the entire of the small car line up.

I also do not understand why apart from the Crown Victoria which exists purely as a taxicab and a police car, why the Mustang or Taurus, should have ever been allowed to be anything other than Australia's Ford Falcon. Exactly at no point from the introduction of Mustang II was the Mustang better than the Falcon Coupe and at exactly zero point in time was the Taurus ever as good as the Falcon.

There is a similar story over at General Motors because Opel/Vauxhall with their Corsa, Astra, Vectra and all predecessors, were always better than their American equivalents, and Australia's Holden Commodore was always better than the Impala.

Europe develops better smaller cars than the United States because that's where their market lies and competition is fierce. Ford eventually had to concede the point and introduce the Fiesta, Focus, and Mondeo to the United States. General Motors on the other hand, simply let their smaller car engineering die and so never really understood how to go about making small cars; choosing to import the engineering from Daewoo/GM South Korea.

The Mustang even four years on when compared with a 2016 Falcon, is still not up to par. Panel fit and even just the reliability of the thing is significantly worse. 

When Holden were given the axe, I can only presume it is because that they did show up Chevrolet badly. The SS became an orphan in the lineup, when everything from 3L V6 Evoke, all the way up to Caprice should have been Chevrolets. The Impala was so terrible that when Holden was forced to replace the VF Commodore, Impala 10 came last in every test behind both Insignia B which became ZB, and VF.

All of this is nothing more than speculation now as neither GM nor Ford sell anything other than SUVs and pickup trucks in America and GM only half-heartedly bothers to sell anything at all in Australia.

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KR 9 - Maybe Not Just Karen

I do not know if people's sense of entitlement has increased during 2020 or if it is simply a symptom of increased tensions due to the pandemic. This morning I was walking across a pedestrian crossing in Marayong on my way to the railway station, when a lady in a Hyundai Excel came flying around a corner and point blank refused to slow down. She then proceeded to throw verbal mediocrities at me, accusing me of not looking where I was going, before she got out and then went into the newsagents' shop.

In my defence, I was in the middle of a pedestrian crossing and that she had Give Way signs facing her on that side of the T-junction, and I am a pedestrian which means that in theory I should have the right of way in all circumstances except for motorways but I suppose that in the court of this lady's opinion, I am still in the wrong.

I'd like to think that the general lesson that we've all collectively learned during the pandemic is that we all have to share our public spaces and our civic life but that's looking incredibly naive as it appears that human nature being what it is, with a pathological need to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story, trumps everything. It is almost as if it is simply impossible for us to learn that we are all in this together because we can't ever hope to recognise that there even is anyone else whom we are in this together with.

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EC14 - Let's Go To College

With California's 55 electoral votes, Joe Biden has been confirmed as the president-elect as members of the Electoral College have now cast enough votes to push him past the 270 threshold to win the Presidency. Officially the Congress will count the electoral votes on Jan 6th 2021 but assuming that entire states' Electoral College votes aren't discarded, then the result is finally final. President Trump has said his attempt to overturn the election results is "not over."

Last Tuesday (8th Dec) the US Supreme Court turned out appeals by a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly, who argued that a state law in Pennsylvania which was passed in 2019 which adopted absentee voting for any reason, and also adopted mail-in voting, was illegal. The Supreme Court noted in its reasons for decision that several courts had already denied the request, and that Mike Kelly waited until after the 2020 election to file his suit when the law was in place well before the election.

Last Friday (11th Dec) the US Supreme Court outright dismissed a Trump-backed lawsuit to block four states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) from voting in the Electoral College, claiming that changes made to their election procedures violated federal law. The decision clears the path for the electoral college to officially make President-elect Biden the next President of the United States. The reason stated by the Supreme Court is that: "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot."

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CC17 - The 3 Cs

The United States Center for Disease Control (US CDC) has finally issued a list of three Cs to avoid as the number of deaths due to Covid-19 has now exceeded 300,000 in the United States.

The 3 Cs to avoid are: 

- Crowds

- Close Contact

- Confined Spaces

As of this morning in Sydney, the Northern Beaches outbreak which has now extended to 19 cases and made national headlines, seems to have provide a practical demonstration that the 3 Cs being avoided by rich people who honestly do not give a rip, are:

- Care

- Courtesy

- Common Sense

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CV18 - They Knew What They Were Doing

The emails which are mainly from a chap called Paul Alexander who was in the Department of Health and Human Services, not only makes it abundantly clear that herd immunity was in fact the goal for the United States but that the Trump Administration didn't care about "people who get the virus and die and can't complain".

Now I don't know at what point that treason should be declared but when you have an open policy which is based around actually killing your own people, that has to come exceptionally close.

Nixon's Administration was corrupt, Hoover's Administration was also corrupt, and Buchanan's Administration through inactivity broke the Union in half, but Trump's Administration appears to have actually made a policy of killing more people due to Covid-19 than all wars since World War II combined.

The kindest word to describe this is autogenocide.

Horse 2790 - War on Christmas

Dear Ray Hadley,

You asserted on your 2GB radio show that there is a "War on Christmas". As someone who has been bombarded with Maria Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" just about every time I have walked into a shop since late October, seen armies of pallets of the official “I know nothing about you but I am still giving you a present” Christmas gift Ferrero Rocher, and seen enough tinsel to hogtie Hannibal's battalions of elephants on skis as they were coming over the Italian Alps, I can safely say that if there is a "War on Christmas" then Christmas is rudely winning.

Love,

Rollo

...

Dear Horse,

As a prolific letter-writer, I feel I must protest about the previous letter. I am nearly eighty and am quite mad. If this sort of thing goes on for much longer... Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom. You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? Right!

Yours etc.,

Sir Elmer Frogwhipple VC, ATM, KFC, BBQ.

...

Dear Horse,

I object strongly to the letters on your blog. They are clearly not written by the general public and are merely included for a cheap laugh.

I have the honour to be your obedient servant,

A.Ham.

...

I have no idea when this humbug of a supposed  began but I imagine that this current outrage began as a ploy to turn things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. Just like every other "War On..." vague concepts like Drugs, Communism, Terror, Poverty, etc. the vague concept always ends up winning because fighting a perpetual war with no clear conditions that would lead to its conclusion, is not actually about solving the problem but about maintaining outrage. 

For a shade over 40 years, Christianity has been weaponised in the United States for the pure purpose of extracting votes from the public in elections. Following the success of that perpetual campaign, a similar strategy is being employed in Australia but to far less effect because Australia became far more secular far more quickly. Not only that, the last four decades have also seen a dramatic shift in migration patterns of people who haven't come from nominally cultural Christian countries.

The idea of a "War on Christmas" where people use more inclusive phrases like "Happy Holidays" as an imagined insult to Christianity, just doesn't fly that far in a secular country, or where people come from many different faith backgrounds. It is impossible to build the same level of outrage if people genuinely don't care and will continue to have their Christmas with all of the secular paraphernalia.

To give you an idea of the sheer dumbness of declaring a "War on Christmas" where people use phrases like "Happy Holidays", consider just how many holidays there are crammed in this period of the year:

11/12 - Hanukkah Starts (Jewish)

12/12 - Dhanu Sankranti (Hindu)

14/12 - Geeta Jayanti (Hindu)

18/12 - Hanukkah Ends (Jewish)

23/12 - Festivus (Secular)

24/12 - Christmas Eve (Christian)

25/12 - Christmas Day (Christian)

26/12 - Boxing Day (Christian)

27/12 - Kwanzaa (Pan-Africanism)

28/12 - Holy Innocents Day (Christian)

31/12 - Watch Night (Christian)

01/01 - New Year's Day (Secular)

20/01 - Bodhi Day (Bhuddist)

26/01 - Australia Day (Secular)

I don't care about being "politically correct" which itself is another invented "War On..." a vague concept but given that you don't really know what holidays someone celebrates just by looking at them then "Happy Holidays" seems like a pretty good option. People are already running around in a season which is overloaded with jobs, tasks, shopping and a zillion other things that have to be done; so going out of one's way to engage in outrage over a phantom concept, seems pretty dumb. It's already hard to be merry or happy when you've got stuff that has to be finished by the end of the year. If you celebrate one holiday and the person you’re talking to observes another one, by using some kind of generic term, then you’re doing your bit to make sure someone’s holiday actually is merry or happy, or at very least not even more stressful. I find it even more weird that people don't seem to have a problem with the phrase "Season’s Greetings" even though it achieves exactly the same function.

If you really want to see what a "War on Christmas" looks like, then think of the Puritans. The Puritans had in England already successfully waged war against dancing and sport and then went to America to start their own fun hating society after some of them had been arrested for disrupting dances, sport, singing in church, and fairs. The Puritans in their lovely new no-fun America, decided to go even further and from 1659 to 1681 Christmas itself was banned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anyone found celebrating Christmas in the colony would be fined five shillings. People were expected to go to work and churches were barred from holding religious services; until 1870 in some cases.

Back in England, the Puritans dominated House of Commons passed a 1644 ordinance which abolished Christmas, Easter and Whitsun and from 1644 to 1660, Christmas was officially illegal in England. 

I suspect that what Mr Hadley actually objects to isn't an imagined "War on Christmas" but rather, the thought that brown people might be actually having a lovely time. To further undermine the idea that there is a "War on Christmas" going on, I find it odd that immediately before this complaint on Ray Hadley's 2GB radio show, Maria Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" was played yet again. I also find it really odd that in a rant about a "War on Christmas", Mr Hadley didn't once speak about a Jewish kid born in a shed and put into an animal food trough. It's almost as if that doesn't matter at all in the ongoing "War on Christmas".

Horse 2789 - It's Dr Jill Biden. Story. End of.

It's Dr Jill Biden.

Story. End of.

If someone has earned the right to use the title of 'Doctor' either because they have worked their tail off and been through more years of study than what would usually be considered sane and written a thesis, or has become a medical doctor which itself requires more years of study than what most people would consider sane, or has had the title of 'Doctor' honorarily conferred upon them for doing amounts of service and work than what most people would consider sane, then thy have the right to be called 'Doctor'. 

Story. End of.

Granted there might be a good reason why on a medical ward in a hospital that for institutional hierarchy reasons that someone who is a nurse or ancillary staff might not use the title of 'Doctor' within the context of work but that does not mean in any way that they aren't otherwise entitled to use the title.

Story. End of.

The only reason that this absolutely idiotic discussion has cropped up at all is because Donald Trump lost the election and a whole entire side of politics has decided to completely destroy every possible shred of decency and sanity in the name of their unholy god Trump. Trumpianity is surely one of the most pathetic religions that has cropped up and purely exists as a cult of personality. Of course it makes sense that it has displaced the temporary worship of the usual god whom America proudly proclaims to believe in, with that declaration of faith "In god we trust: One Dollar" because Dollar is a silent and incapable god and its shrine leaders are frequently deliberately stupid and cruel. The god Dollar fails in the face of almost every crisis; so people have changed their worship to Trumpianity which has a self-obsessed god who is equally incapable in the face of any crisis.

The god of Trumpianity lost in a general election; so its worshippers have gone full on coco-bananas wingnut.

This is the background to why the Washington Post published a hit piece questioning Dr Jill Biden's right to call herself a 'Doctor'. There is no other context which either this piece, or leader of the shrill choir Ben Shapiro, is singing this hymn with only one note.

Jill Biden had already received a B.Arts in Education in the early 1980s. She then went on to get her Masters degree and then work as both a teacher and as a policy maker; addressing both special needs children as well as looking at how education should be made more accessible. 

Biden then returned to school for her doctoral degree, having the better part of 30 years of practical experience in the field; where at age 55, she received a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in educational leadership from the University of Delaware. Her dissertation, "Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs" was published under the name Jill Jacobs-Biden. This happened in 2007.

Working for three decades and then going back to school to do more study and write a thesis, by any measure earns you the right to be called 'Doctor'. 

Story. End of.

This happened back in 2007. This was even before the 2008 Presidential Campaign which saw Joe Biden lose to Barack Obama and then after many months, be elected on the ticket as Vice President. None of that story has anything whatsoever to do with Jill Biden. Although she was conferred the rather useless title of Second Lady Of The United States, she continued to work in the field of teaching and educational policy; where she was quite rightly recognised as Dr Jill Biden.

Story. End of.

I will admit that the United States has a very strong suspicion of titles, which is due to its myth making surrounding its origin story; and so it doesn't confer titles such as 'Sir', 'Lord', 'Baron', 'Duke' etc. but it absolutely fawns all over itself in recognising titles like 'Senator', 'President', and 'General'; even after people have left the respective offices. 

If it wasn't a problem back in 2007, and it wasn't a problem for the entirety of the time that Dr Jill Biden was Second Lady Of The United States, then why is it a problem now?

I will admit that I do not live in the United States and so I do not share this cultural cringe when it comes to titles and styles. Admittedly we've actively tried to pollute the title of 'Sir' because of republicanism in Australia; which wasn't helped by the Right Honorable Anthony Abbott but even that doesn't invalidate the concept of titles. 

I'd like to suggest that part of this stems from a kind of insane rugged individualism which exists in the United States but I don't think that that's adequate in this situation. What I find particularly on the nose about all of this is the rank hypocrisy here; which is giving off a whiff of putrescine.

The bottom line is that whether we like it or not, we live in a giant interconnected system of mutual obligations. As a result of these mutual obligations, then you should give to all people that which is properly due to them: if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if you owe revenue, pay revenue; if you owe respect, pay respect; if you owe honour, then pay honour. Some people, whether they've been conferred it, or whether they've worked beyond what would be considered sane for it, are owed the right to be called by a title. In the case of Dr Jill Biden, she has earned the right to be called 'Doctor'.

Story. End of.

Horse 2788 - Who'll Come A Sheep Stealing And Arsoning With Me?

Once a jolly swagman, camped by a billabong,

Under the shade of a coolabah tree.

And he sang as he watched, and waited 'til his billy boiled.

"Who'll come a waltzing matilda with me?"

I find it really odd that the words of a poem by Banjo Patterson, which was then turned into a song; about a sheep thief, became a de facto national anthem for Australia and one which is sung at Rugby matches, in spite of Australians' utter hopelessness at singing football songs.

What I don't find all that surprising is that the poem which was actually based on real life events, has become the vehicle for sanitisation and myth making.

By way of background in 1890 the manager of Logan Downs Station, which was a massive pastoral sheep station, a Mr Charles Fairbain, tried to enforce upon the shearers who worked on the station, a set of employment contracts and conditions which would have seen them take increased hours for reduced pay and at the same time, smash their ability to negotiate a collective arrangement through the union. The conflict stretched on so long that it ruined their Christmas and New Years' and spilled over into a strike which began on 5th Jan 1891. All of this was occuring during the midst of a recession.

The shearers had a short list of demands which they weren't willing to compromise on until they had been met. They demanded the following:

- Continuation of existing rates of pay at 1890 rates.

- Protection of workers' rights and privileges, including standardised hours.

- Just and equitable agreements and the ability to negotiate through the union.

- Exclusion of low-cost Chinese labour, which undercut their pay rates.

Politically this is all going on around the time of the formation of the Labor Party in Queensland and the local unions hoped to form into a sufficiently large enough bloc to put seats into the Colonial Queensland Parliament.

Queensland Labor took on these things as policy; including excluding foreign labour from working in Australia, which led to Labor Party policy being adopted by the Protectionist Party and this became the basis for the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which is more commonly known as the White Australia Policy.

It should be noted at this point that the Australian Socialist League, opposed the anti-Chinese demands, even though they were also heavily involved in the strike and would also eventually join the Labor Party.

Yet again we see in history, a racist underclass who is trying to protect their own, forming political alliances with parties and entities who actively seek to undercut their pay and conditions, if it is immediately politically expedient. We've also got another national song in Australia (along with Advance Australia Fair) which is rooted in racism. 

Strikes tend to be infectious because collective effort yields bigger results than smaller pockets of dissent and soon there were strikes all across Queensland. This is where the story turns ugly. 

On multiple occasions, the Queensland Government sent in what was still a colonial army, to attack strikers. Naturally this escalated and shearers who were on strike then formed camps outside of townships; and then armed themselves.

Striking unionists retaliated to arrest and imprisonment by raiding shearing sheds, harassing non-union labour and committing acts of sabotage, although the incidents of actual violence or arson were few.

The whole thing gradually descended into madness as across Queensland, there were thousands of instances of armed soldiers arresting strike leaders and needing to protect non-union labour. Basically for four months in 1891, from February until May, central Queensland was practically on the brink of civil war at any moment.

It was really only after the Premier of Queensland, Samuel Griffith, called in the military on multiple occasions, that what eventually became known as the Great Shearers' Strike was broken. However, that didn't stop flare ups from happening over the next decade and it is in this climate that the conditions for the story of what would become Waltzing Matilda exist.

In September of 1894, some shearers at Dagworth Station were yet again on strike. On this occasion  situation broke into violence, with the striking shearers firing their rifles and pistols in the air and setting fire to the woolshed at Dagworth, killing dozens of sheep.

After arresting some of the striking shearers for arson and malicious damage, thee owner of Dagworth Station and three mounted state troopers gave chase to a man named Samuel Hoffmeister. Rather than be captured, Hoffmeister shot and killed himself at Four Mile Creek south of Kynuna at 12.30pm on 2 September, 1894.

This had ramifications across Queensland and the colonial police arrested thirteen union leaders across the colony and they were charged sedition and conspiracy, taken to Rockhampton for the trial; convicted, and sentenced to three years in gaol on St Helena Island Prison.

I guess that it makes sense that Australia should want a de facto national anthem which has to do with a vague attempt to stand up to authority and a vague kind of justice being metered out by happenstance. People who want to assume the role of the swagman can feel a sense pride in standing up for what you believe in and people who want to assume the role of authority putting down criminal acts in the name of justice can also feel that same sense of pride. 

We look to this rather than any national formation story because Australia didn't assert its independence through a war but a vote, and the racist white elements of society simply refuse to acknowledge that the whole country was stolen through brutality, genocide, and in one instance complete genocide. Our actual national anthem was first sung for the Highland Society of NSW, which would become part of the Advance Australia faction which contributed to the White Australia Policy being adopted in 1901.

We would rather take detached notions of sanitised mischief than actually face up to our country's formation sins.

...and his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong.

"Who'll come a waltzing matilda with me?"

Horse 2787 - #5 Is Dead, Long Live #5A... Maybe

I am hardly a musician and I am certainly not a musicologist but at least (and probably at most) I have acquired through osmosis, some basic music theory as well as a basic idea of how instruments work. I have also inadvertently caught the virus of basic luthiery (thanks to Mrs Rollo); which is why I have built my own three string guitar(s). 

I like to think that this is part of a very small rebellion, which is standing tall but still only managing to spit on the ankle of modern music; which is produced, polished, and pointless. If you have a string which passes over a nut and a bridge and the noise is then amplified either acoustically or electrically, then you have an instrument. Typically cigar box guitars tend to be 1, 2, 3, or 4 strings because although you can build 5 and 6, that generally also needs more fine skills and tooling; which moves the process out of the shed and into a more sophisticated workshop. That's boring.

I don't know if anyone could guess how 2020 was going to turn out but if you've spent this year in a state of voiceless paralysis then don't feel bad about it. Take all of the bits that you like and maybe the bits that you are forced to reuse and build 2021 into a new thing. 2020 could very well have been voiceless but with some new parts and a new set of strings, 2021 will be singing again albeit differently. Yeah okay, that's stretching the metaphor beyond sensibility but it is still true.

The biggest rule in building a three string guitar is that there are no rules. When you have no rules then it's impossible to predict what the results are going to be. After I've done surgery and restrung the guitar, it's going to have a different voice and that's okay.

If you want something that doesn't buzz and has lovely tones, buy a Taylor, Hoffner, Les Paul, or Fender. If you get weird tones and buzzes coming out of a cigar box guitar then that's the sound of the instrument, that's the sound of its unique voice; that's the sound of humanity messing about in a shed.

How many people have you heard say that they are going to write a book and then they never write the book? Look, just write the book. Do it. If you want to go out and build a guitar, just build it. I don't have a proper workshop and have to make my own makeshift drill tables from small logs and scraps, and do it outside. I am sure that you will probably have a better working space.

My black number 5 has had a problem for a while where one of the machine heads was stripping the worm gear. I could tune it to some chord (usually 1-5-1) and then the tension on the strings would cheese the worm gear up even further. It got to the point where it won't hold a sensible tuning and so I have had to replace the machine head.

After starting out with E-B-E on this guitar because I like the whine of a top E string at the 12th and 15th fret, the bottom string kept on going out; so I tuned downwards to hold less tension on the bottom string and then retuned the other two accordingly. I think that it ended up being many cents short of D-flat, with the top string also coming down to an octave above that; with the middle string being what whatever that A-flat/G-Sharp is in the middle of that new insane key. 1-5-1 tuning is very easy to work out and requires no musical theory at all - you just get the same tone at the 5th fret for the middle string and at the 12th fret for the bottom string, as the open top string. As it is, standard tuning on a regular six-string guitar is just a series of relative 5ths.

I know that it sounds strange but most music stores aren't interested in selling you replacement parts for instruments. They want to sell you whole instruments which are packed in a box. Guitar shops will sell you strings but strings are a consumable item. 

The unbelievable truth is that you generally can't buy machine heads very easily, let alone just one of them; so I found somewhere that I could buy a set for a normal six string guitar. Simple arithmetic tells me that six is just two lots of three; so even if I finish the job, I will have another set of machine heads which I can build another guitar with. The virus lives on.

However this is where the story moves into the unknown. I have to make the holes that the tuning pegs fit through, bigger. I have to do some surgery on #5 to replace the machine heads and the risk is that I end up creating cracks in the head of the guitar and the thing falls to pieces. With a properly built guitar that's a relatively simple operation but in order to turn #5 into #5A, I risk killing it altogether. 

I already feel a tinge of sadness when I have to replace the strings of a guitar because that already feels a bit like cutting its vocal cords. As it stands, I currently have a no-string guitar which can not speak. A voiceless guitar fails at its only function.

The other side of the equation though is that if I do end up killing #5 and it can not be reborn as #5A, then the virus of luthiery will drive me to build #6. As it was #3 was already reborn into #3A and then was cannibalised to build #5. If I am forced to build #6 because #5 can't be reborn as #5A, then because there are no rules, who knows what #6 will sound like?

Horse 2786 - No One Who Currently Has Power Likes Democracy

 There is a saying which goes something along the lines of "among all of the various forms of government that we have tried, democracy is the least worst". While that might sound like an altogether harmonious and splendid aphorism, it is worth pointing out that we have never actually tried pure democracy either.

Democracy, insofar as it exists in parliamentary systems, is the surrendering of the authority to various elected officials, as opposed to actual democracies in which things are decided by the general consensus of a population; which usually involves some kind of majority vote directly by the people concerned. Now obviously in a population of any more than about a thousand, direct election and consensus becomes unwieldy; however there are jurisdictions which still pose important questions to the people in direct referenda but most of the time, democracies usually involve one or multiple people representing some constituency. In that respect, representative democracy could be said to resemble pure democracy but only really at the point of the election of officials and at no other point in time.

That being said, although questioning the means by which those representative officials are elected is perfectly reasonable, disparaging the system despite all evidence, looks really really stupid and actively undermines the polity's confidence in the system.

I don't wish to get into a discussion about the details of conspiracy theories which are being touted as news and truth by self-interested profit taking media companies, but the existence of those theories points to two underlying conditions that are always bubbling away below the surface; which occasionally burst forth like an ill maintained sewer. Those two conditions have to do with the tension between freedoms and authority, and the maintenance of power and governance.

If we have been taught anything by the last 200 years of history, it is that democracy is fundamentally a good idea; not because of the goodness of people but because of the undeniable truth, that people are universally terrible. I completely reject the suggestion of philosophers like Rousseau who think that people are fundamentally good, based upon the overwhelming evidence that this is simply untrue. One only needs to look in any daily newspaper, or the news on the radio and television, or the abundance of cases being taken to court, to see this truth writ large.

Suppose for a second that we could install some kind of surveillance chip into people's skulls that would record every thought that someone had in a sample week. Ideally, in order to find someone who would be suitable to be Governor, King, President, Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else etc. we would first need to find one individual who be worthy enough to be fit for the job at hand. My bet is that we would find no suitable candidate in the entire world.

Let me run this thought experiment further. If I tell a lie to my cat, there is literally zero consequence. If I tell a lie to my wife, the consequence is that I might end up sleeping on the couch for a very long time. If I tell a lie to the central authority, through the civic means of say taxation or perhaps by violating the law through perjury or some such, then the consequence might be that I go to prison. If we are looking through the data on the surveillance chip to find anyone who might be suitable for the job, where they are in charge of the central authority, then I very much doubt that we'd find anyone who was not only fit for the job but also sufficiently good enough to avoid prison. I will even go so far as to suggest that Mother Theresa, Michelle Obama, Dr Victor Chang, all thought about stealing someone's delicious apple cider at some point. 

I would further suggest that deep down, we know this to be true; which is why tyrants of varying degrees of competence have worked out that you do not need to present the truth to people in order to get them to make you the Governor, King, President, Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else etc. All you need is a catchy slogan; to disparage the systems in place; and then declare "I alone can fix it", thus getting people to voluntarily select someone for the job whom our theoretical surveillance chip has said should rightly be in prison.

Democracy exists and was fought for because not only should all people quite rightly be in prison (which by my estimation includes literally everyone in the whole world) for some crime but people should not have unchecked power. Unchecked power always only ever leads to a single place; that is, unchecked cruelty. The unchecked power and unchecked cruelty of Governors, Kings, Presidents, Grand Poohbahs and Lords High Everything Else, results in suffering; which is why groups such as the barons, freemen, burghers, guildists, chartists, abolitionists, reformists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists, have all spent the better part of centuries trying to place checks on power and by extension, cruelty.

It is for this same reason that I personally think that the right to bear arms is dangerously stupid. A weapon that does not kill people has failed in its only purpose; so anyone who tries to tell you the lie that they want weapons for their 'defence', as someone else who is also openly unfit to be in charge of unchecked power, openly lies to both you and themselves because what they really want is the maintenance of power and governance and they want the means to kill you in order to keep it. Killing someone, even if it is under the banner of 'defence' is still cruelty.

British Labour Party MP Tony Benn, who repeatedly championed the cause of the vulnerable and stood up for the people who would become targets for whom the British Government would send planes to bomb, put forward five questions to ask powerful people:

1. What Power Have You Got?

2. Where Did You Get It From?

3. In Whose Interests Do You Exercise It?

4. To Whom Are You Accountable?

5. How Can We Get Rid Of You?

If you can not get rid of someone in power, then you do not live in a democracy but something else. That is why no one who currently has power likes democracy and also why every generation must struggle to win it again and again and keep it. If we do not, then the people who currently have power, will tend to start making changes in order to keep it; which includes voter suppression and putting in place barriers to voting such as really arcane and draconian ID laws. The great historical struggle, for the past two hundred or so years has always been over the scope and character of democracy and of the rich and powerful's attempts to snuff it out.

When those people in power begin to question the legitimacy of the process which is going to get rid of them, then the most logical assumption is that they intend to maintain their hold on power and governance by undemocratic means. If the people for whom they wield that power is not the people but the already rich and powerful and private corporations, then the marriage of the state and private privilege starts to border on functional fascism.

It is also worth being extremely suspicious of people touting personal responsibility as some cure-all to the necessary problems of government. What they really mean to say is that they would prefer smaller government and for the state to get out of the way; so that private entities can fill the void of power and governance. Private power and governance, which isn't actually answerable to the people, is the equivalent of privately run oligarchies who act as if they have no responsibility to the state or the people at all; and if you think for a second that they will do a better job than the state because of some notion of benevolence, then I should remind you that as compared with GDP, total charitable donations works out to be consistently less than 2% across the world. That isn't enough to run an old age pension system, much less any of the other functions of government.

A wise saw once said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If may add a supporting reason why that is in fact the case, it is that no society is actually physically capable of remembering anything beyond the memories of its oldest member. Admittedly we have invented better methods of recording the present, such that people have a greater ability to get a sense of what the past was like but this is still at best, only like looking at the world through an expensive looking glass. Once one returns the looking glass to the shelf with all of the other items upon one's dressing table, it is again physically impossible to look at one's self. Herein lies the central problem of the past and indeed of history generally. Even if one chooses to study the past (and the vast majority of people will not), they certainly will not remember the implications of what the past might be able to teach them if they have neither studied it, nor experienced it first hand.

And so it is with myself. I am two generations removed from the unpleasantness of last century in which more than one hundred million souls on board this world, were destroyed (some of whom were destroyed more efficiently and effectively due to mass extinction devices) and physically can not remember the past. I find it bordering on insanity that the nations which fought against fascism now find it so easy to themselves shift to the right and embrace those same things; while private interests try to convince them that the state can not help them, or rather is not capable of doing so.

I make no bones about the fact that I think that US politics for the last four years has been an absolute horrorshow (and this spirit of horrorshow is quickly infecting Australia). Rather than choose someone who had any experience in running civil government, the American people actively chose the star of a so-called 'reality TV show' who then proceeded to run the administration of the nation with as much reality as a reality TV show; actual civil government was allowed to wither and die. There should have been a warning that the person was unfit for the job when he uttered those words "I alone can fix it" on multiple occasions.

He then went on to repeatedly prove that he had no intention of fixing anything through demonstrated inactivity. Back in 2016 the NPR Politics podcast would report how many posts in government remained unfilled and by about mid-February of 2017, then ceased doing so once it became apparent that those posts would probably never be filled. That number remains at about 1600.

The Trump Administration is not the worst in US political history as is often declared in hyperbole but it's certainly up there in terms of badness and unfitness. It would take something abysmal to knock off James Buchanan's administration which broke the Union and plunged the country into civil war but it was at least as bad as Richard Nixon's or Calvin Coolidge's administrations in terms of patronage and corruption. Right at the very end of its days, the act of questioning the democratic process itself in a desperate bid to hold onto power for power's sake, is currently going on like a fever; which is an apt metaphor for the administration's lethargic response to the Coronavirus pandemic which has now claimed more American lives than all wars combined since World War 2 but yet still hasn't gained even enough of an economic response which is appropriate to the scale of importance of the thing.

For the rich and powerful, Democracy itself has to be attacked for the simple reason that those same rich and powerful, who have benefited and profited from the anemia of the state, have sensed that they might finally have a chance to smash what was built by human blood. Democracy, insofar as it exists in parliamentary systems, is the surrendering of the authority to various elected officials; if it will not be surrendered then they have decided to fight to take it by legal force.