Horse 2805 - Trading Sociopaths Want The Right To Continue To Be Trading Sociopaths

 A funny thing happened on the New York Stock Exchange this week which was best described by one of the high volume traders with:

"They acted as though the stock market was a casino, with no regard for people's money which wasn't their own."

I find this laughable because for hundreds of years and probably ever since there was a stock market, traders have always treated the buying and selling of securities as a casino and have been placing bets on what future movements in prices will do. Arguably that's all that the entire financial system does because it produces nothing of any tangible value whatsoever and merely apportions wins and losses according to sets of agreed upon rules; and the whole thing is backed by real goods and services and people actually doing real work of value.

To cut this whole story incredibly short, a group of people from the Reddit message boards decided to short squeeze a series of targeted companies on the New York Stock Exchange, with the most visible example being Game Stop.

A short is bascially a bet that the price of something is going to go down; it involves investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the value of the asset falls. 

There are a number of ways that an investor can achieve a short position and the most obvious way is so-called "physical" short-selling. That involves borrowing assets like shares or bonds and then on selling them.. The investor will later purchase the same number of the same type of securities in order to return them to the lender. If the price has fallen between the time of the initial sale and the time the equivalent securities are repurchased, the investor will have made a profit equal to the difference; conversely, if the price has risen then the investor will bear a loss. 

Got it? Good.

By deliberately buying up shares that they saw as underperforming (like Game Stop) and which traders had taken up short positions on, the group from Reddit forced the share price upwards and that has the effect of ruining the short. Professional traders are now complaining that targeted efforts from the outside which have resulted in them making losses are somehow unconscionable despite themselves doing a job which essentially is exactly the same kind of thing except with better information. Insider trading is when people in the market make trades on information that the market doesn't know about (usually coming from inside the board rooms of companies) but the argument that what the Redditors has engaged in is 'outsider' trading is immediately nonsensical. Outsider trading for want of a better word is otherwise known as trading.

One of the consistent things that is oft repeated throughout history is that when you have a group of people who have acted like a bunch of sociopaths with no regard from anyone else, when someone else plays by the rules which have been laid down (usually by the people who have acted like a bunch of sociopaths) and they find that their private advantage is in trouble, their next reaction is to go feral. Subsets of the group may even try to twist the narrative to include some kind of sappy story which paints them as a cruelly treated victim, or perhaps someone with a particular need. You see if it all of the time with issues like education, workers rights, and overt racism, where suddenly the privileged few become worried that their private advantage is under threat.

While this sounds like a new thing, it actually goes all the way back to the beginning of share trading; probably back to the very first share. A chap called Isaac Le Maire, who was a Walloon (Wallonia is now in modern day Belgium) was a sizeable shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie - VOC). Le Maire subcribed for shares to the tune of 85,000 guilders and he became the largest VOC's shareholder. In 1605 he was kicked out of the company and while it isn't exactly clear why, it's probably because he was running some kind of expenses fiddle.

In 1609 he and eight others founded a secret company with the sole purpose of exacting revenge on the VOC. Their new company with the purpose to trade in VOC shares, then started spreading rumours that ships had sunk, or that the British had chimed in on the spice trade etc. Le Maire then sold short shares of the VOC, without actually owning them and by the time these shares were to be delivered, there was an interest in keeping the share price as low as possible. This was obviously detrimental to the existing VOC shareholders, who sometimes were forced to sell their shares at a low price. In particular, in 1609 the share price fell significantly, and the VOC imputed this to the machinations of Le Maire.

What did they do? They acted like a bunch of sociopaths and went feral. They twisted the narrative to include a sappy story that short selling was hurting society's most vulnerable and that there was a large number of widows and orphans who had invested all their money in the VOC. That then just like now seems highly dubious but the Dutch government did issue a partial ban on short selling and Isaac Le Maire was barred from accessing any of his shares.

It is unclear exactly what the New York Stock Exchange is going to do at this point but it looks like that they have also acted like a bunch of sociopaths and gone feral. Trading platforms including Robinhood and Interactive Brokers have have their trading restricted as the sociopaths with no regard from anyone else, have acted like sociopaths with no regard from anyone else. 

https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/joint-statement-ongoing-market-volatility-2021-01-27

We are aware of and actively monitoring the on-going market volatility in the options and equities markets and, consistent with our mission to protect investors and maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, we are working with our fellow regulators to assess the situation and review the activities of regulated entities, financial intermediaries, and other market participants.

- Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 27th Jan 2021.

"consistent with our mission to protect investors"

Yeah, that says it all.

Horse 2804 - Bills Of Rights Point To An Even Deeper Problem With Human Nature

If I may be so bold that would say something outlandish, it is that in principle I hate the idea of the existence of human rights claims and Bills of Right. This because the existence of human rights claims always (as far as I can tell) is the direct result of people needing to make such claims because of other people's (singular and plural) lack of love and/or hatred of other humans; which is a lack of love which has been weaponised.

Human rights claims in almost every circumstance that I can think of, are in response to needing to put limits upon people's power and the effects of that power being exercised. If you will cast your minds back to a high school science class, power is the ability to do work; it's just that nasty people who want to do nasty things, will also do nasty work with that power. 

If you remove all of the overlay about whether or not the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen or not (because quite frankly, exactly zero credible evidence was presented to prove that assertion was true), then the display at the Capitol Building in Washington DC is reduced to nothing more than a display and exercise of power. 

The only reason why swords are polished and sharpened, are to do the work of slaughter. The only reason why a gun exists, is to do the work of slaughter. Why then do we have both powerful people and parts of the commentariat who support said powerful people, wanting to either make mirth of what has happened, or want to play the game of whataboutism? Again, this comes down to nothing more than a display and exercise of power.

Most of the context of human rights claims in the past, have to do with limiting the power of government to act in nasty ways. Arguably the four most famous human rights claims happened in the wake of nastiness.

The Bill Of Rights Act 1689 happened after the relatively bloodless Glorious Revolution; which itself is kind of a restoration of the English Government back to what it was before the English Civil War and the period of the Commonwealth. The Bill Of Rights of 1792 was tacked onto the back of the United States Constitution after the American Revolution which was a pretty bloody war. Both the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights 1948 and the International Covenant Of Political Rights 1951, happened in the wake of two world wars in which one hundred million people were needlessly ploughed back into the fields. In all of those cases and probably many more, the claims for rights only happen after a tremendous cost has been paid and even then, the people in charge of money and power, still manage to reorganise the world so that they are immune from paying the cost.

I think that we've definitely seen over the past forty years, what happens to people whose ancestors once claimed rights but who now live in the twilight of a reorganised world where the people who control money and power, reorganise the world. Whatever rights were formally claimed, end up becoming nothing more than tombstones to the dead. 

When the right to free speech is weaponised by nasty people who want to do nasty things, then that power is translated into nasty work. When the right to bear arms is weaponised by nasty people who want to do nasty things, then that power is also translated into nasty work. When a right is weaponised and springs forth a work of death, then the point of one's ancestors claiming the right in the first place is mocked.

There’s a certain madness in our politics. Much of it comes from the rise of postmodern conservatism and right wing identity politics. Exactly what is being conserved here? I think that it is disingenuous to say that "All Lives Matter" when by the action of power, the work which is done proves otherwise. I think that it is disingenuous to say that "Blue Lives Matter" when you wrap said flag around a metal pole and are using it to beat security workers.

I simply do not understand how rights even make any sense at all if on one hand you love your friends but hate your enemy. If you exercise your right to free speech and carelessly call someone an "idiot" (insert whatever slur on the basis of race, gender, nationality, religion, ability etc. you like here) then you quite rightly deserve to get yourself hauled into court. Where does any of this end? Love your friends and hate your enemies? We've been watching this merry-go-round of stupidity play out across western democracies for the last decade. 

If history has taught me anything it is that it is impossible for any society to learn any lesson beyond that of its current memory. Contrary to George Santayana's aphorism, history shows that both those who do not learn history and those who do learn history are doomed to repeat it. How then do we step off of the merry-go-round of repeated stupidity? It's that thing which people didn't do which caused human rights claims to be raised in the first place - civic love.

Everything worthwhile in the world has been built through the collective efforts of community. The people with money and power are loathe to admit it but the very instruments which caused them to have money and power in the first place were also built through the collective efforts of community - the ownership structure of factories and business is even called a 'corporation' and is a collective purchasing arrangement of goods and services, which is for returning interest, rents, and dividends to its shareholders.

It is only when people learn to cooperate instead of competing or fighting that anything big and important gets done. Western democracies have forgotten that and have enacted policies designed to work out a decreasing amount of civic love. We allow public housing, education, healthcare, and in some cases physical infrastructure to deteriorate because we actively keep on choosing to give power to nasty people who want to do nasty things; we should not be surprised when they  will also do nasty work with that power. 

If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Or do we want to just keep on riding on the merry-go-round of repeated stupidity, where a lack of love has been weaponised?

Horse 2803 - Prithee, News Media Wherefore Thou Goest Now?

Wednesday the 20th of January 2021, is the inauguration day of President Joe Biden. My suspicion is that the Biden Presidency will turn out to be a boring one; in a way that we haven't seen in more than 80 years. He inherits a similar set of circumstances to the second presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who was president during the Influenza pandemic of 1918-20. I think that progressives and statists will be deeply disappointed by Biden, that the establishment right of the Democratic Party will welcome a return to boring governance, and that the 'conservative' right will declare him to be either incompetent or the devil incarnate despite his presidency actually doing the job of boring governance.

That last point poses a problem not just for the authoritarian/rightist media in America such as Fox News, NewsMax, One America Network, and other assorted nuts, but also for the banana-choc and choc-banana media outlets like CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, as well as the other assorted fruit media.

Trump has been at the centre of the news cycle for 5½ years and all of the news media, now has the very real problem that the Biden Presidency will be so boring that it will be difficult to even manufacture outrage. 

News media has done exceptionally well over the past few years because the old adage that 'if it bleeds, it leads' is incredibly useful in selling advertising space. Audiences are almost always blissfully ignorant of the fact that their eyeballs and attention is actually the product for sale and that as far as profitable media is concerned, the spectator is the spectacle. That product (people's eyeballs and attention) is very much driven, moulded, and shaped, more by whether something is emotive rather than if it is true. Media outlets like One America Network learned from the experience of Fox News that the truthiness of the news barely has to exist and after watching small amounts of the One America Network so that I could underground what it is, I came to the conclusion that it is no different to the Sydney based newspaper "The Truth" from a century ago.

What we have seen in the last few weeks especially is a kind of reset where Mr Trump having lost the election, had now turned on his former friends at Fox and has kind of migrated a small portion of the audience elsewhere. Fox News appears to be sort of rudderless. The rest of the news media kind of gave up on trying to report anything coming out of the White House as it became more insensible. It is a bit like watching the analysis of a football match after the game happened, except that football pundits know that that window lasts exactly 20 minutes before the sports news cycle moves on. In relation to a Presidential Election Campaign which lasts a year, the normal news cycle should last about a month, except this time around the match was disputed by the loser.

What I suspect will happen in future is that Fox News will revert to playing the role of being an opposition party to a Democrat in the same way that it did for Obama. What I also suspect will happen is that the other media outlets will have to contend with the fact that Donald Trump is no longer the de facto editor-in-chief and that they won't get a stream of tweets and outrage from Joe Biden in the same way.

I also suspect that the racist elements of Fox News which went after Obama and actually allowed Trump to get his first foothold in the political cycle (remember that he came to political prominence on the subject of birtherism and then directly went after Mexicans, Arabic people, and people of colour), will turn their attention to Kamala Harris for exactly the same reason.

As I live on the other side of the world in Australia, it would be remiss of me to ignore the implications for the Australian media landscape of how the Biden Presidency will affect things here. Sky News Australia has already decided that it wants to be more like One America Network than Fox News in America and so its concession to genuine news is far less. Sky News Australia rotates columnists from its stable of newspapers (The Advertiser, The Herald-Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, and The Australian) through the Sky News desk; reporting opinion as news and untruth as opinion. As Seven, Nine, and Ten revert to their usual staples of reporting on robberies, stabbings, and washing powder, that leaves only SBS as the reporter of real news from overseas and the ABC as the last genuine news outlet of record; with AM and PM on Radio National as their flagship bulletins. We have enough of our own news and enmeshed politics with media looking the other way, that the fading of Trump won't really affect the news media landscape that much here. 

Without the constant drip-feed of outrage acting as dopamine coursing through the veins of the various news media outlets, there is always one thing that they could revert to doing; the collection and reportage of news. What a novel concept that would be!

Horse 2802 - The One Thing Trump Did Right As President

I am reasonably sure that over the next few months, it will become even more apparent that the administration of Donald Trump's Presidency is/was the worst in history. On reflection, not even the administration of 15th President James Buchanan which actually saw the country break apart into the nation's bloodiest war, was more of a case of impotence in the face of circumstance as opposed to incompetence resulting in the attack upon the Capitol by the administration's own supporters. The last days of the Trump Administration have proven that it needed to be put out rather than merely fading out.

Despite the insane and intense amount of corruption which have occurred, the optimist in me still wants to find one glimmer of goodness in all of this. That's going to sound strange to regular readers of this blog who usually get the end of a process where I have work-hardened rage into a useful tool for breaking things apart into smaller parts for analysis. However, it might not be unfamiliar as play a contrarian tune.

For reasons that possibly can only be explained through the lens of Donald Trump acting on behalf of Donald Trump, in 2018 he visited the North Korean President Kim Jong Un. There are almost certainly a host of reasons why this was advantageous to North Korea including that they could finally claim a degree of legitimacy by speaking to "the leader of the free world" and maybe nothing of any import was actually achieved in the long run but what can not be overlooked here is something very important. They spoke.

Let me reiterate that. They spoke.

In a very literal sense all that was achieved was a single page memorandum of understanding, which is by any measure of policy and/or economic development completely useless but it still remains to be said that the President of the United States and the Supreme Leader of North Korea actually spoke with each other.

North Korea probably thought that they gained some kind of prestige on the world stage and with the unified Korean team at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, for a short period of time they may have actually done so but in time the bunting has faded. It is difficult to see what the United States gained from the meeting and at the time sections of the media decried it as diminishing the office of the Presidency but while it is true that Donald Trump used that meeting (and indeed most of his time in office) for the glory of Donald Trump, I don't really see how it diminished the office in the long run. History will conclude that he is a bad President but the office will outlive him.

I don't think that it can be stressed how important that any kind of dialogue was opened up at all with North Korea. The United States' policy and indeed most of the world's policy for the past 70 odd years has been to either stand and point or stand and yell and point at North Korea and expect them to change. The political inertia¹ is such that pointing and yelling is never going to achieve anything.

It simply makes no sense for the strongest person in the schoolyard to yell at the weird kid who says that they have a knife, for fear of them actually having a knife and wanting to use it. Quite frankly, the United States enjoys its role as the strongest person in the schoolyard but even it has learned that it can not win every argument through sheer brute force.

The most important relationships that North Korea has with the rest of the world does not include the United States but rather includes Russia and Japan who are wary, China who might be an ally, and South Korea where the relationship can best be described as complex. It is worth remembering that the 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit happened in June of 2018; which came after the "Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula" which was signed in April, earlier that yet. Arguably this started well beforehand with the current president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in in 2017; whose government has tried to restart what had previously been known as the Sunshine Policy.

Quite obviously, North Korea wants to continue to exist and doesn't want the South to absorb it; while also obviously North Korea wants to continue to exist and doesn't want the North to start flinging weapons over the border. Seoul is less than 50km from the border with North Korea; which means that if the North were to launch a nuclear missile then the total scramble time would be less than four minutes, and impossible to evacuate. Suffice to say that while the two countries exist, there will always be tensions between the two countries. The best that the United States can do from the other side of an ocean, is to remain well out of any talks, save to act as a peace maker.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I would have done exactly what President Trump did and fly² to North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un. Even during the height of the Cold War, dialogue was kept open between Washington and Moscow; at one point Nikita Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower for a state dinner at the White House and Eleanor Roosevelt but wasn't allowed to go to Disneyland. Richard Nixon visited China and went to loads of schools, factories and hospitals in what he called "the week that changed the world".

The whole point of dialogue is mostly an end in itself because it is virtually impossible to change someone else from the outside. What the world learned repeatedly during the fall of the Iron Curtain was that when things move, they happen very quickly when compared with the scope of history; sometimes to the point where the leaders in charge find it to be unexpected.

One of the consequences of living in a post World War 2 world is that the distance that a spear can be chucked is around the entire world. That creates an imperative to at very least talk to your enemies. I think that it is better policy to try and do good for your enemies and try to understand those who hate you. You might not ever be friends but you will have moved into a state of quiet toleration. When it comes to international diplomacy though, moving to a state of mutual benefit and cooperation, even with your enemies, is better option; and while President Trump opening a dialogue with North Korea may have been done for really weird reasons, it still happened.

¹inertia - from the Greek word for laziness. Things like to keep on doing what they are already doing unless someone or something forces them to change.

²I do not know what Australia's equivalent of Air Force One³ is but I would change the registration of the diplomatic RAAF planes to VH-ROO and VH-EMU.

³Sharky One?! Really? What are you, 10 years old? 

Horse 2801 - "Coon Cheese" Was Always Racist And Highly Likely To Be A Made Up Lie

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/coon-rebrands-as-cheer-cheese-in-the-wake-of-racism-claims/news-story/caeebbf52433108bdc5f1c80a0c5bba2

The makers of Coon cheese have bowed to public pressure and finally changed the name of the longstanding brand. The 85-year-old dairy product will be known as “Cheer” cheese from July, its parent company Saputo Dairy Australia confirmed on Tuesday.

The decision to make a change was made six months ago in response to growing criticism that the name had racist connotations. It was originally named “Coon” after American cheese pioneer Edward William Coon who died in 1934.

But the word is also a racist slur against people of colour.

- The Australian, 13th Jan 2021

There is a major problem with the outcry that Coon Cheese is being rebranded because it is somehow caving in to the demands of political correct people/wokeness, or whatever it is that rightist and racist media want to rebrand people rightfully complaining about decency. That is as follows.

Edward William Coon almost probably never existed. If he almost probably never existed; then he also didn't die in 1934. Certainly I have been unable to find any obituary for Edward William Coon in any newspaper archive; which if he is as supposedly as famous as he is made out to be, then such a notice in a newspaper should exist.

I also find it very interesting that long time brand owners Kraft, never appear to mention E. W. Coon’s name for decades. Likewise, his supposedly famous ‘cooning’ process is only confined to a single patent and a single newspaper article; which is really strange.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1579196

Description

Patented Mar 30, 1926.

PROCESS FOR RIPENING CHEESE.

No Drawing.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, EDWARD WILLIAM Coon, a citizen of the United States, residing at 29 South Water St., Philadelphia, in the county of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Processes for Ripening Cheese, and do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

This invention relates to an improvement in a process for ripening cheese, the application being a continuation in part of the application filed September 1, 1925, Serial No. 53,949.

- Patent US1579196A, 30th Mar 1926

There is a distinct problem with the patent as filed. Specifically: I, EDWARD WILLIAM Coon, a citizen of the United States, residing at 29 South Water St., Philadelphia

Residing at 29 South Water St? Really?

It takes some ferreting aboiut to look at old maps and loo at the numbering scheme of streets but what used to be 29 South Water St., Philadelphia is now 1711 South Water St., Philadelphia. On that site is a building which is made of brick and which after emailing the Pennsylvania Land Titles Office, I am reliably informed that the building was originally built in 1920 and housed a cheese curing house.

The problem is, does someone actually reside at the factory? Granted that many businesses have registered addresses and this could very well be just sloppy bookkeeping but that warrants at least a further look.

https://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%205/Lowvile%20NY%20Rebulican/%20Lowville%20NY%20Republican%20Journal%201923/Lowville%20NY%20Journal%20Republican%201923%20-%20%28294%29.PDF

New York, Aug. 27.—The Dairymen's League Co-operative Association, Inc., has purchased, five milk plants in villages surrounding Watertown from E. W. Coon, of Philadelphia. Pa., maker and shipper of cheese, according to reports from authentic sources here.

While no announcement is made as to which of the numerous Coon plants in northern New York have been bought by the League, it is understood that the big Cape Vincent plant is not among those transferred. Mr. Coon has sent deeds of the plants to his attorneys, Cobb, Cosgrove & Kimball in Watertown. to have searches made and the transfer arranged.

- The Journal And Republican, 30th Aug 1923.

I don't know exactly how you trace the authenticity of sources from a newspaper which is 97 years old but I do know that outside of this newspaper article and that patent, it is impossible to find any contemporary sources which mention Edward William Coon. Again, if he is as supposedly as famous as he is made out to be, then there should be more than one mention in a newspaper and a patent notice.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=YYQbAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA59#v=onepage&q&f=false

Ser. No. 585,943. KRAFT FOODT COMPANY, Chicago Ill.

Filed Oct 7, 1949.

COON

Applicant claims ownership of Registration No. 87,857

FOR CHEESE

Claims use since 1910.

- pg59, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, 5th Sep 1950

I have a problem with this. The company claims use since 1910 yet didn't file a patent until 1926? If we assume that Edward William Coon had wanted to protect his name, surely he'd have filed a name device more than 23 years earlier at this point. There's so much dissonance in the dates here that the whole thing looks dubious.

I think that the most likely story here is that Kraft Foods as a very big corporation, probably filed all of the patents and lodged newspaper articles in what is known as adverse possession of intellectual property. I think that what is going on is that Kraft is displaying their intellectual property in a manner that is capable of being seen. They have given sufficiently visible and apparent notice that whoever a rightful owner might be, can not make a claim which would dissuade a reasonable person that they don't have a legal right to it.

The most obvious answer here is that Kraft Foods did the barest amount to maintain their trademarks which they knew were racist. 

I think that the most likely set of circumstances which explain this is that Kraft Foods learned about a process for making long lasting cheese, then went away and perfected it with all of the resources available to a multi-million dollar company; then registered the patent with a name that wouldn't be interrogated that closely. If anyone came after them, they could claim that this person sold them the rights to the process and donkey up the paperwork, which would add just sufficiently enough of a cloud of misdirection that nobody would challenge the patent.

My suspicion is that given that the name appears to be invented in the 1920s, that Kraft Foods wanted to have a name which they could use as a kind of dog whistle; so that they could practice racial segregation of their products.

Company founder James L. Kraft made his initial fortune by working out how pasteurise cheese so that it could be shipped long distances; which was particularly helpful when it was shipped across the Atlantic during World War One, when Kraft Foods won the contract to supply United States government cheese in tins to their armed forces. No doubt that as someone who fits into the era of Jim Crow which is the legal pretence that the races be "separate but equal", the idea that under the law non-whites were given inferior facilities and treatment would have been attractive to someone who could sell cheaper products for the use of black people; especially in times of war. 

One thing that we tend to forget is that the present often mythologises the past if it suits our needs. This may have been one of those myths that was allowed to perpetuate because that way people could use the excuse of the past (which they haven't interrogated) to defend their current racism.

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views; which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. I do not believe on the balance of evidence, that the existence of Edward William Coon was a fact.

...and I also think that the Australian and the Daily Telegraph which are hiding behind that same myth is because they want to use this excuse of the past to defend their current racism.

Horse 2800 - Let's All Ride The Merry-Go-Round Of A Lack Of Civic Love

 If I may be so bold that would say something outlandish, it is that in principle I hate the idea of the existence of human rights. This because the existence of human rights claims always (as far as I can tell) is the direct result of people needing to make such claims because of other people's (singular and plural) lack of love and/or hatred of other humans; which is a lack of love which has been weaponised.

Human rights claims in almost every circumstance that I can think of, are in response to needing to put limits upon people's power and the effects of that power being exercised. If you will cast your minds back to a high school science class, power is the ability to do work; it's just that nasty people who want to do nasty things, will also do nasty work with that power. 

If you remove all of the overlay about whether or not the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen or not (because quite frankly, exactly zero credible evidence was presented to prove that assertion was true), then the display at the Capitol Building in Washington DC is reduced to nothing more than a display and exercise of power. 

The only reason why swords are polished and sharpened, are to do the work of slaughter. The only reason why a gun exists, is to do the work of slaughter. Why then do we have both powerful people and parts of the commentariat who support said powerful people, wanting to either make mirth of what has happened, or want to play the game of whataboutism? Again, this comes down to nothing more than a display and exercise of power.

Most of the context of human rights claims in the past, have to do with limiting the power of government to act in nasty ways. Arguably the four most famous human rights claims happened in the wake of nastiness.

The Bill Of Rights Act 1689 happened after the relatively bloodless Glorious Revolution; which itself is kind of a restoration of the English Government back to what it was before the English Civil War and the period of the Commonwealth. The Bill Of Rights of 1792 was tacked onto the back of the United States Constitution after the American Revolution which was a pretty bloody war. Both the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights 1948 and the International Covenant Of Political Rights 1951, happened in the wake of two world wars in which one hundred million people were needlessly ploughed back into the fields. 

In all of those cases and probably many more, the claims for rights only happen after a tremendous cost has been paid and even then, the people in charge of money and power, still manage to reorganise the world so that they are immune from paying the cost.

I think that we've definitely seen over the past forty years, what happens to people whose ancestors once claimed rights but who now live in the twilight of a reorganised world where the people who control money and power, reorganise the world. Whatever rights were formally claimed, end up becoming nothing more than tombstones to the dead. 

When the right to free speech is weaponised by nasty people who want to do nasty things, then that power is translated into nasty work. When the right to bear arms is weaponised by nasty people who want to do nasty things, then that power is also translated into nasty work. When a right is weaponised and springs forth a work of death, then the point of one's ancestors claiming the right in the first place is mocked.

There’s a certain madness in our politics. Much of it comes from the rise of postmodern conservatism and right wing identity politics. Exactly what is being conserved here? 

I think that it is disgenuous to say that "All Lives Matter" when by the action of power, the work which is done proves otherwise. I think that it is disgenuous to say that "Blue Lives Matter" when you wrap said flag around a metal pole and are using it to beat security workers.

I simply do not understand how rights even make any sense at all if on one hand you love your friends but hate your enemy. If you exercise your right to free speech and carelessly call someone an "idiot" (insert whatever slur on the basis of race, gender, nationality, religion, ability etc. you like here) then you quite rightly deserve to get yourself hauled into court.

Where does any of this end? Love your friends and hate your enemies? We've been watching this merry-go-round of stupidity play out across western democracies for the last decade. 

If history has taught me anything it is that it is impossible for any society to learn any lesson beyond that of its current memory. Contrary to George Santanaya's aphorism, history shows that both those who do not learn history and those who do learn history are doomed to repeat it. How then do we step off of the merry-go-round of repeated stupidity? It's that thing which people didn't do which caused human rights claims to be raised in the first place - civic love.

Everything worthwhile in the world has been built through the collective efforts of community. The people with money and power are loathe to admit it but the very instruments which caused them to have money and power in the first place were also built through the collective efforts of community - the ownership structure of factories and business is even called a 'corporation' and is a collective purchasing arrangement of goods and services, which is for returning interest, rents, and dividends to its shareholders.

It is only when people learn to cooperate instead of competing or fighting that anything big and important gets done. Western democracies have forgotten that and have enacted policies designed to work out a decreasing amount of civic love. We allow public housing, education, healthcare, and in some cases physical infrastructure to deteriorate because we actively keep on choosing to give power to nasty people who want to do nasty things; we should not be surprised when they will also do nasty work with that power. 

If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Or do we want to just keep on riding on the merry-go-round of repeated stupidity, where a lack of love has been weaponised?

Horse 2799 - A Moral Compass With No Needle Points Nowhere

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/morrison-ministers-slam-the-twitter-ban-on-donald-trump/news-story/50b2d232ec4a9dcc736d9b62fe814015

Senior Morrison government ministers have slammed the silencing of outgoing US president Donald Trump by social media giants after the pro-Trump siege of the Capitol. Josh Frydenberg and Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack spoke out against Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Mr Trump days before he leaves ­office next week, as Labor welcomed the move to kick the ­Republican leader off most major social media channels.

Mr McCormack has also been attacked for comparing the US Capitol siege — which left five people dead and was the first time congress has been successfully stormed since 1814 — to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

- The Australian, 11th Jan 2021

It should be a pretty easy thing to condemn an armed uprising upon the nation's capital and the Congress of one of long standing military allies; especially one to whom we have been obedient servants and gone to wars for 70 years that don't even remotely concern us, right? However, as it stands there isn’t even one Liberal Party MP, let alone the acting PM , who has condemned the radical right insurrection in the US last week. Morrison’s modern Liberals & Nationals are clearly pandering to extremist & crazy views, by tacit silence and complicity.

On the surface it seems very odd that Australian politicians appear to be more vocal about Twitter banning Trump for inciting a coup than they are of Trump actually inciting a coup. Suddenly this became about an issue to do with free speech and that that same free speech should be absolute; including if it is an incitement to violence and destruction of property.

In the absence of the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) who is on holiday (which is fair enough), the acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack has almost seemed to say that he would rather Twitter allow Trump to incite further violence because he feels “uncomfortable” about depriving him of his free speech; including when the exercise therein results in violence. There is a really obvious absurdity here when you consider that the frequently nicknamed "Leader of the free world", aka the President of the United States could call a press conference in an instant and the press would duly report what he had to say. I do not understand how you can claim a suppression of free speech in this case.

“I feel pretty uncomfortable with those measures which were announced. Freedom of speech is fundamental to our society,”

“As Voltaire said, ‘I might not agree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it’. Those decisions were taken by commercial companies but personally I felt uncomfortable with what they did.”

“I don’t believe in that sort of censorship. There have been a lot of people who have said and done a lot of things on Twitter previously who haven’t received that sort of condemnation or indeed censorship,”

- Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack, 11th Jan 2021

I also find it absurd that the condemnation is being directed at Twitter, which is a private corporation and explicitly tells people in its terms of service that:

https://twitter.com/en/tos

We reserve the right to remove Content that violates the User Agreement, including for example,  copyright or trademark violations or other intellectual property misappropriation, impersonation, unlawful conduct, or harassment.

...

We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason, including, but not limited to, if we reasonably believe:

i - you have violated these Terms or the Twitter Rules and Policies or Periscope Community Guidelines,

ii - you create risk or possible legal exposure for us;

iii - your account should be removed due to unlawful conduct,

It should be appallingly obvious that an incitement to violence and especially one which results in the storming of the Congress is a pretty egregious violation of law; and considering that Twitter as a private corporation would rather not be the carrier of possible future messages which might cause the same, then their reasons would be very easy to understand. Twitter isn't a common carrier and has at least some basic duty of care obligations to the general public. Furthermore, in their terms of service, they can both terminate an account and cease providing services for literally no reason at all.

All of this is a secondary issue anyway. All of this is a giant case of misdirection. The obvious question which should be shouted from the rooftops is: why do Liberals not condemn Trump personally for his conduct?

This isn't even a matter of hyperbole any more. The refusal of the LNP leaders to condemn fascist incitement to violence & right wing terrorism is a disturbing reminder that Australia has a serious problem. Whether that's because the leadership of the Liberal Party is so incredibly craven that they do not want to disturb America, or whether the leadership of the Liberal Party is so craven that they do not want to disturb News Corp is still unknown.

It shouldn't have been that hard.

See? This is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, doing something which any member of our Government should have done. That wasn't so hard was it? And yet how many members of either the Liberal Party or the National Party of Australia have done this? Zero.

As I write this, the President of the United States has less than a fortnight left in his tenure of the office. I really do not think that an open statement of the truth is very likely to put the standing between our two nations in doubt. Admittedly I do not have a particularly good understanding of philos and how it relates to the nation state but I do know that what we saw last week was a strike against the very workings of democracy of the United States. If we fail to rebuke the current President and the actions which have been incited, then in this case we actually hide civic love, if rebuke is truly what is needed for the good of that person, or indeed a nation. 

For years this President has been spouting out racist remarks, refused to condemn white supremacists, and when his remarks incite the storming of the Capitol building, what's the reaction of the Australian Government? Silence. By saying nothing, we are saying that we are prepared to walk on by this. 

If your moral compass is so devoid of purpose that there's not even a needle that points in any direction at all, then what faith should I place in the government that they will do what is right? 

Horse 2798 - American Elections Remain Terrible For A Reason

Let's enter the world of the unhinged for a while and entertain President Donald Trump's assertions that the United States Presidential Election was fraudulent everywhere.

Notwithstanding the fact that elections are a matter for the states to conduct and enforce and therefore the entire Federal Government of the United States has virtually zero standing in any case that might exist relating to elections, part of the very core of the problem lies with the President himself. For the moment I'm going to have to get you to set aside all of the events of the news and all of your political biases because this is a deeply rooted mechanical problem with the way that democracy is done in the United States.

There is a Federal Electoral Commission (FEC)  of the United States but they don't actually conduct elections. The FEC is so toothless that it only has 339 employees and a budget of less than $80m; which is probably just enough to pay everyone's salaries, pay the rent, and keep the lights on.

The commission's own website describes its duties as "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections." This all seems hopelessly inadequate to me, as it contains absolutely no regulatory or enforcement functions and absolutely no ability to ensure the integrity of the elections which it doesn't conduct anyway. 

On top of that, it hasn't actually been able to conduct what little functions that are assigned for it to do, for almost the entirety of the Trump Administration.

NPR's Politics Podcast for most of 2017 and the beginning portion of 2018 gave reports on the number of positions that remained unfilled because the Trump Administration had simply never bothered to put forward the names of people to Congress for approval. Apart from judges and justices of courts, the Trump Administration still had about 1700 positions that they never ever bothered to fill; which meant that the authority to conduct the various functions of government was never legally vested in appropriate officers. The FEC remained one of those government agencies which was legally unable to function for almost the entire tenure of Mr Trump's presidency.

For the critical period relating to the 2020 Presidential Election, the FEC was literally unable to function from late August 2019 to December 2020, with an exception for the period of May 2020 to July 2020, due to lack of a quorum. In the absence of a quorum, the commission could not vote on complaints or give guidance through advisory opinions. After July 2020, there were 350 outstanding matters on the agency's enforcement docket and 227 items waiting for action.

We have a President claiming fraud, illegal activity, ballot stuffing and a lack of oversight; which has been consistently defeated in the courts through lack of evidence (63-1 ???), while at the same time he didn't actually provide the FEC with the necessary staff to be able to conduct said oversight.

My natural assumption is that there was always some plan to discredit the election results if they didn't go the way that Mr Trump wanted. I he'd won the election then there would have been absolutely no need to complain about the result. Given that his administration has from Day One shown an amazing amount of ineptitude, it doesn't surprise me that it is also inept at trying to make the case that the election was flawed.

If there had been any serious attempt at electoral reform, then we would have seen national policies and procedures rolled out during 2020. Even now, I don't see any suggestion that there should be changes in the way that elections are conducted. I don't for instance see suggestions that there should be paper only ballots, or an independent and uniform electoral commission to conduct elections, nor have I heard about any plans for how voter ID is supposed to be conducted. It might sound bizarre speaking as an Australian where I have never had to produce any form of identification at an election but I don't find the idea hideously offensive, provided if and only if the obligation to provide Voter ID was placed on the shoulders of the jurisdiction demanding it.

I find it maddening that there were any Senators presenting objections to the election, who argued that the number of votes for President must surely be wrong and fraudulent but that the number of votes cast which gave them their seat in the Senate were pristine and flawless. 

The bottom line here is that the United States has been repeated crying out for an independent electoral commission, paper ballots, preferential voting, maybe proportional representation in the House of Representatives, voting on a Saturday, as well as post election scrutineering of votes but it won't get any of these things because it vehemently chooses not to. The people in charge (which includes both entrenched party machines) demonstrably like the system being broken because it means that they get to stay in charge. If democracy suddenly broke out and people actually got to decide their own destiny then things would change.

Horse 2797 - Operation Cyan Line - The North West Metro aka. "You Can't Get There From Here"

One of my personal bugbears about living in Sydney is the deliberate stupidity of State Governments in making transport planning decisions; based not on foresight and future needs but on spite and wilful intention to cause harm. Both sides of the political aisle in NSW have been at it for more than a century and will more than likely, continue to do so in the future. In 1932 when Mr Van de Groot slashed the official ribbon to declare the Sydney Harbour Bridge open "in the name of the good and fair people of New South Wales", he did so to the embarrassment of Premier Big Jack Lang; I think that despite de Groot's unseemly rambunctiousness, he may very well have been doing it in the best spirit, precisely because he did it "in the name of the good and fair people of New South Wales".

Successive decisions of spite are the reason why the Castle Hill Railway Line which was supposed to have been built by the end of 1937 was not ever built, why the extension to the Eastern Suburbs Railway Line from Bondi Junction through places like Coogee and on to La Perouse and then to connect to the Botany Goods Line which would have served the airport also was not ever built and also why the subject of my own personal source of annoyance, the North West Metro doesn't connect to the Richmond Line and might not ever be built in my lifetime.

Any network of things always has problems with its weakest connection. The very point of a network is that the efficiency of a system increases beyond what the individual components of that system would be capable of because they are connected. 

I live out in the Western Suburb of Sydney; which tend to be ignored by state governments except as a concession that we might have the ability to vote for members of parliament. That shouldn't be relevant but humans are spiteful and when you give them positions of power, they sometimes use that power spitefully. I suspect that the reason why the North West Metro doesn't connect from Tallawong Station to Schofields Station which is a distance of 2222m, is that it stops in a Liberal Party voting seat and to extend it further would mean providing services that would be shared with Labor Party voting seats.

By not connecting the railway line that distance of 2222m when it was originally built, the railway line is deliberately made harder to use; to the point where virtually nobody at all who lives in the west is ever going to. It is a way of enforcing economic apartheid; which also happens to be an engrained policy of government in Australia and appears elsewhere in things like education and healthcare policies.

This is where my experiment comes in. For the purposes of this exercise, I wanted to go from Marayong Station to Rouse Hill Town Centre. It is a sufficiently large enough shopping centre which also contains some restaurants, medium end clothing and retail, and a pretty nice cinema. 

From my house in Marayong to Rouse Hill Town Centre, it takes 13 minutes to drive. I realise that taking public transport will always be subject to the vicissitude of fate but had the 2222m of railway line been built in the first place, then it wouldn't have been so bad.

Some notation will be in order:

M = Marayong Station

Sc = Schofields Station

T = Tallawong Station

B = Blacktown Station

RH = Rouse Hill Town Centre

Times that are given will be the time that I arrived at these various places.

Drive: 13 minutes.

I do not need to test this again.

What should have been:

M = 0900

Sc = 0907

T = 0909

RH = 0911

11 minutes.

Theoretically in a best case scenario had the line been built and you could make a connection between a Richmond Line train and the North West Metro at Schofields, the whole trip should take just 11 minutes. The worst case scenario would be if you just saw the Metro train leave Schofields and have to wait the entire 10 minutes for the next one that arrive. That would have been and should have been 21 minutes.

Sadly, that connection does not exist (thanks to the then Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian, who just happens to have the other end of the North West Metro terminate in her electorate at Chatswood) and so I have had to make alternate arrangements to solve a problem which had the thing been built properly, need not be a problem.

So then - the experiment.

Train, Bus, Train.

M = 0945

Sc = 1013

T = 1024

RH = 1032

47 minutes.

This I imagine is going to be the default assumption by people who look at the maps inside the trains both on the Richmond Line and the North West Metro. I looks as though there should be a bus connection in lieu of the rail connection which doesn't exist.

Train, Bus, Train.

RH = 1043

T = 1049

Sc = 1128

M = 1132

49 minutes.

In both of these cases, the bus in question is the 751 bus from Blacktown to Rouse Hill. As far as I have been able to tell, it is the only bus that runs between Schofields and Tallawong and even then doesn't act as a shuttle. There apparently is an on demand service but if you don't have a credit card and/or don't have the app (which I don't) then it doesn't exist.

Train, Bus.

M = 1140

B = 1145

RH = 1251

71 minutes.

This was also the 751 bus from Blacktown to Rouse Hill Town Centre; and needed me to take a train from Marayong to Blacktown.

Bus, Train.

RH = 1350

B = 1432

M = 1446

56 minutes.

This was the 735 bus from Rouse Hill Town Centre to Blacktown; then a train to Marayong.

Train, Walk, Train.

M = 1446

Sc = 1453

T = 1515

RH = 1521

35 minutes.

It is a strange state of affairs when walking appears to be the fastest way to get somewhere; that is because I don't have to wait for the connection. If you had any sizeable amount of shopping or if you are old, then this opinion also doesn't exist for you.

Train, Walk, Train.

RH = 1530

T = 1533

Sc = 1555

M = 1621

51 minutes.

Again, I had to wait for a train at Schofields; which had there been a connection with the Metro, I would have made easily. 

Had there not been a pandemic going on, then the obvious problem with the Metro would have been on display. Bus connections exist but are bad. There have been reports in various newspapers that the commuter car parks fill to capacity in the morning and that some stations along the line don't have any parking spaces at all. If the point is to get people onto public transport, then it fails as a project.

My experiment shows that there is practically no point to using the Metro if using a car is an option for the people of the west. Connections to Tallawong are hopeless; connections to Rouse Hill prove beyond impractical, and connections to other stations are also mostly pointless.

If you have to take an hour in some cases for a journey with proper infrastructure connections could have taken 11 minutes, then the impracticality of the system is sufficiently large enough a barrier that people aren't going to use it.

I really want to like the North West Metro but it can never be anything other than a fun thing to ride, for me, in its current state.

I have been officially told by Transport For NSW that no plans currently exist to make that final connection unless approval is given for both the Badgerys Creek airport at the Metro extension and it increasingly looks likely that from this end, that connection will never be made. Yet again this looks like the deliberate stupidity of State Governments in making transport planning decisions; based not on foresight and future needs but on spite and wilful intention to cause harm.

Horse 2796 - Mike Pence Should Grow A Spine And Invoke The 25th Amendment Immediately

 I woke up this morning Sydney time to hear that the count which should have taken place in the US Capitol building has not because of armed protesters storming the building. This has also involved civil property damage, with windows being broken and several fixtures inside the US Capitol building also being broken.

The only conclusion that I can come up with is that as these people were in some instances flying the Confederate Battle Flag, that because virtually all of them were white, they are entitled to get a free pass. Had they been black, there would have been shots fired, as has happened previously. 

This comes on the heels of President Trump threatening to invoking martial law to overturn the results of the 2020 election and seizing supposedly fraudulent voting machines in an effort to prove his case. I also note that in a rally, Trump called for Vice President Pence to reject the Electoral College votes and send them back to the States for recertification; in an act which the Vice President would have absolutely zero authority.

As he's basically called his supporters to storm the capitol while Congress voted to certify Joe Biden’s election victory, and as his rhetoric grows ever erratic and dangerous, I think that the only legal course of action left may very well to invoke the 25th Amendment. The problem with this is that Mike Pence is a craven coward and is currently acting as the enabler of a psychopath.

Section Four of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution provides that:

"If the vice-president and the majority of the Cabinet decide that, for whatever reason, the president has become unfit to carry out the powers and duties of the office and they transmit a letter to Congress to that effect, then the vice-president becomes the acting president and remains so unless and until Congress refuses to allow that transfer of power to stand."

The 25th Amendment was passed after a period of tumult which saw Franklin D Roosevelt die in office, and after John Franklin Kennedy was assassinated. The ability for someone to take over and act as President came into sharp focus.

The usefulness of the amendment became even more apparent during the Watergate scandal, and Section 3 has been invoked on three occasions where a sitting President was undergoing medical treatment and it was assumed that they would be temporarily incapacitated but return to assume the office again.

The amendment was created to deal with rather boring and not at all controversial instances where the President might be unfit to carry out the duties of the office (being shot, falling into a coma, maybe after being taken hostage) but Section Four appears to deal with what happens in moments of extreme outrage and controversy. This is different to Impeachment and removal from office in the case of high crimes and misdemeanors; which have especially in the last week been comprehensively proven by evidence. Section Four exists specifically with instances where the president’s unfitness or inability to hold or execute the office of the President is being contested by the President himself.

Now I know that the text of the Amendment does require that two-thirds of each house of Congress would has to take a vote to allow the Vice President to continue in the position of acting President however, the actual wording of the text is such that Mike Pence could send the letter to the Congress that makes him acting president, and Trump would have to contest the Vice President's actions by his own letter to Congress. As there is a limit upon the filibuster in the House but not the Senate, the House could simply tie the whole thing up for three weeks and the Senate could dither and filibuster upon it until the clock ran out.

I know that this sounds stupid and wouldn't actually remove the President from office because no substantive vote would be take but it would gum up the wheels of government for 21 days; which is longer than the number of days that remain in Mr Trump's term. Had this happened several months or even years ago, then Mr Trump would merely return to the office after 21 days if Congress failed to act.

As long as Democrats in the House accepted this as the temporary arrangement, then this would be fine. While not actually legally holding the office of President, and probably not genuinely in a proper acting capacity, Pence would have in effect become acting president without actually acting in any capacity at all and would remain in that weird nebulous state for the rest of the current administration’s term in office of only a few weeks.

Aside:

After having posted this on Twitter, someone asked about the removal of a Prime Minaister in Australia.

As there is no such position mentioned in the Australian Constitution, then however the caucus of the party in charge decides, with the approval of the Governor General, is all that is needed to make and unmake a Prime Minister. For instance, Frank Forde was Prime Minister for just seven days while the Labor Party hastily rearranged itself after the death of John Curtin.

Horse 2795 - Health Hazzard's Grave Mistake

I thought something was weird when I read this on the Grauniad's website yesterday:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/05/berala-and-western-sydney-residents-risk-1000-fines-if-they-attend-scg-for-sydney-test

Residents from Berala and surrounding western Sydney suburbs have been warned they will be fined $1,000 if they “put a foot inside the SCG” for Australia’s third Test against India.

...

However, New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard said on Tuesday he intends to sign a public health order banning people from suburbs affected by the Berala Covid-19 cluster.

He listed Auburn, Berala, Lidcombe North, Regents Park and Rookwood as suburbs covered by the ban and said “ticket sales have gone in a way that is aimed at ensuring that people from particular suburbs around Berala do not acquire tickets”.

- The Guardian, 5th Jan 2021

NSW Health later confirmed this:

https://twitter.com/NSWHealth/status/1346755368618131456

You must not enter the Sydney Cricket Ground for the purpose of attending any part of the New Year’s Cricket Test as a spectator if:

- you live in an affected area (Auburn, Belmore, Berala, Birrong, Lidcombe, Potts Hill, Regents Park, Rookwood, Wentworthville)

- NSW Health, 6th Jan 2021

Residents of Rookwood? Rookwood?!

I hear that due to ongoing industrial action, Rookwood workers have formed a skeleton crew and will definitely be there.

I don’t hear anyone from Rookwood saying "boo" about not being allowed to attend the cricket.

I suspect residents from Rookwood won’t be watching the cricket from their living rooms either.

Granted, the NSW Dept of health has grave concerns for spectator safety

Maybe they thought this was an Ashes Test between Australian and England.

Maybe the NSW Health Minister has had a change in spirit and a visit from the Ghost of Christmas past.

Those people from Rookwood will be turning in their graves, that they can't go.

They're so angry because they never thought they'd live to see this day come.

Rookwood in case you didn't is the suburb which contains the Rookwood Necropolis. It is the dead centre of this city.

People are dying to get in.

The Rookwood folks are laying low anyway.

If the residents of the Rookwood Necropolis were placed in the seats in the Members' Stand at the SCG, would anyone be able to tell the difference?

I think we actually need stronger penalties to discourage the residents of Rookwood from attending social events; however it could just be that the NSW Health Minister has made a grave mistake and he hasn't been able to dig himself out of it.

Horse 2794 - New Year's Day... ON MARS

 Ah January... the first month of the year. Although given that the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is for all intents and purposes a circle and therefore doesn't really have a beginning and doesn't really care about one, we could have very well placed that beginning point anywhere. Also because it is a circle, we could have divided up the year into something other than 12 parts and it would have been absolutely fine. 

It is by a very long series of historical accidents and improvements that we have come to sort of accept the Gregorian calendar as the universal civil calendar here on Earth. The year which is made up of 365 days and which has to be corrected by means of a leap year with an extra day every four years, also overlays twelve months in an almost arbitrary fashion and the idea that the year should begin on January 1 which is the date of appointment of some officers in the Roman Empire, is itself daft, hundreds of years after that empire has long since disappeared.

The most sensible notion would be to assign New Year's Day as one of the equinoxes; for at least then, it would be tied to some physically measurable phenomenon upon the Earth. As it is, January 1 isn't exactly a marker of anything in particular except the arbitrary marker of the beginning of the year which we have all agreed to. 

The calendar with its January 1 beginning is a bit like Peter Pan's remark in JM Barrie's novel that "every time a child says 'I don't believe in fairies' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead." January 1 seems to me to be either a fiat date or a fiduciary date, in that it's all made up and only exists because we all believe that it does. 

Naturally, our entire time system of days, hours, minutes, months and even the year itself, is utterly unsuited for use on any other planet; which all have their own year and period of rotation.

Actually, the whole idea of years and days which can be measured is kind of a nonsense on all but two planets in the solar system.

Mercury only has about 1½ days in its year. Venus has roughly 1.9 days in its year.

Jupiter has more than 10466, Saturn 24134, Uranus 42732, and Neptune 89728. All of the big gas giants spin amazingly quickly as well; with all of them spinning in less than an Earth day, and Jupiter especially taking less than ten of our hours.

Note that I have deliberately left out Mars. The dusty red plans of the fourth planet, might very well end up being the only other planet that humans ever end up visiting. It is also the only other planet which has anything resembling a sensible day or year relative to us.

Mars has a day which relative to the Earth is 24 hours and 39 minutes long. It's close enough that humans could actually get used to that because we've conducted experiments on people who work underground and have concluded that humans can function absolutely normally with a day as long as 29 hours long. An extra 39 minutes in the day relative to the Earth, would be perfectly acceptable.

Mars also has a year which although is longer, is at least sensible. Since we've already proven that the idea of a year and where it begins and ends is more or less arbitrary, then having a 668/669 day year, with New Year's Day being measured from the Spring equinox, is also perfectly fine.

A calendar which would have to be devised for Mars would need four leap years for every ten; which is actually insanely easy to wrap your head around. Leap years would be all years that are even numbered except for the ones ending in 0.

Of course this then brings into question the idea of how many days would be in a month and how many months there would be and in that respect, 23 months of 28 days and one of 24 days or 25 days, solves the problem. Or if you want to tack on all the days at once, every tenth year would be a leap year with the 24th month either being 24 for the other 9 and 28 every 10th year.

If there was a calendar of 668 days with four being added in the tenth year, then the best option for deciding weeks, is to adopt an 8-day week like the Romans used to have. I note that the Romans had a day exclusively set aside for shopping; which is kind of what a lot of people end up using their Saturday for now. The existence of a seven day week appears to have zero relationship to anything astronomical but is still one of the most stubborn and enduring aspects of our time keeping.

As for the names of the 24 months and the eight days of the week that end up being the most logical:

Viri - spring

Flavu - summer

Rubu - autumn

Cabu - winter

Green, Yellow, Red, Blue for the names of the four quarters.

Una, Duo, Tres, Quatra, Penta, Hexa.

15th Rubu-Hexa, MY53: would be the 15th day of the Sixth month of Autumn in the Mars Year of 53. (15/18/53).

I note that there is already a system for enumerating Mars years relative to the northern spring equinox which occurred on April 11, 1955. That equinox marked the beginning of Mars Year 1 (MY1). That means that we would be in Mars Year 35 (MY35) on Mars.

As literally all calendars are made up and the rotation of the planets doesn't give a hoot about how we choose to number them, then any sensible system will work just as well. I am sure that the people playing in the Mars Football World Cup in MY135 will not even give us a thought.

Horse 2793 - A Cricket Ball Hits The Wickets

The often daft and almost arbitrary game of cricket isn't exactly helped by the fact that so many of its terms are equally daft and almost arbitrary. Indeed unless one was born in a Commonwealth country, it is likely that the game will appear as incomprehensible as nuclear chemistry, calculus and/or complex mathematics, astrophysics, or trying to work out what kale is for.

Among many conundrums is the question of what the castle made of three stumps with two bails as lintels at either end of a cricket pitch is called. That might sound like an easy enough question to answer but when the word 'wicket' has multiple meanings, what we think is an easy question to answer turns out to be somewhat more complicated and difficult.

The Iceland Cricket Association stated on Twitter that:

https://twitter.com/icelandcricket/status/1292116369035730946

Thanks for your help. So we have a new pet hate. DRS captions ask whether the ball is hitting the “wickets”. The correct word is “wicket”. It’s amazing that such an error could have gone unnoticed for so many years.

- @icelandcricket, via Twitter, 9th Aug 2020.

The question that I always have whenever someone makes an assertion like this is 'is it true?'. The truth doesn't care about what you think it is but sits there like three stumps in the ground until someone comes along and knocks them over.

Cricket is a game of laws. Unlike most legislation where the meanings of words is up for debate, the words in the laws of cricket are not. Unless there is an appeal through the Privy Council for an interpretation on the Laws of Cricket, they remain very much intact.

https://www.lords.org/mcc/the-laws-of-cricket/the-wickets

Law 8 - The Wickets

8.1 Description, width and pitching

Two sets of wickets shall be pitched opposite and parallel to each other in the centres of the bowling creases.  Each set shall be 9 in/22.86 cm wide and shall consist of three wooden stumps with two wooden bails on top. 

- as at 31st Dec 2020.

When you refer to a wicket being down, that is a different thing to the set of wickets at either end of the pitch. In every instance throughout the laws, when they mean the little wooden things at either end of the pitch, they are always plural. The logical question is now why the law is using a plural form of the word here. If you are referring to a 'set of wickets' then that is openly stating that there is more than one of them. 

What then, is a wicket and why are there more than one?

One of the helpful things to remember when reading law is that words generally have the normal definition as found in a commonly accessible dictionary. Since the Oxford English Dictionary is also going to include the definition as used in cricket and the law can only be interpreted through the normal definition as found in a dictionary, this presents something of a bootstrap paradox. Thankfully though, we aren't being bowled a Yorker here, as the Oxford English Dictionary also provides the common definition for a 'wicket'.

Wicket. n. - "a small door or gate, esp one that is near to or part of a larger one."

- OED3

The word "Wicket" is probably from the Old Northern French "wiket" and/or Old Norse "vikja" to move. That lead me to go hunting further. The word "hliðið" in íslenska might have the same Proto-Germanic/Norse origin.

Those wooden things at each end of the pitch, has not one but two doors/gates each. This is where half of a history lesson is in order.

Cricket is generally assumed to be a game which was invented by shepherds and literally played in fields. That in principle explains a whole bunch of things including why there might be wickets in the middle of fields and why the game takes so long to play. The former might be explained by small fences going across the fields and shepherds using what they found as the material from which they invented their game; the latter explains why it requires such extraordinary amounts of patience. I suppose that if your job involves standing around in a field all day long, then you will have built up a very different relationships with time than those of us in a post-industrial mechanised world where time is described by clocks. If time only has the notional ideas of 'morning tea', 'lunch' and 'afternoon tea', then you're likely to invent a game which also has a glimpse into the patience which extends for hours.

One of the consequences of having so much time to play with, is that cricket is the game with the richest and deepest set of statistics of all sports. 

The game used to only have one wicket at either end of the pitch but we know that in a match on 22–23 May 1775, "Lumpy" Stevens of Surrey beat the Hambledon batsman John Small three times with the ball going through the hole in the centre of the two stump wicket of the day. As a result of his protests, the patrons agreed that a third stump should be added.

A third stump creates not two gates but four gates in total.  The DRS captions ask whether the ball is hitting the “wickets” plural because there is not one wicket but two wickets at either end of a cricket pitch.