Horse 3215 - The Rules For Wearing Trackpants

If you would like Horse to write a piece on a thing, then please send an email to: rollo75@yahoo.com.au

After more than three thousand pieces, the evidence is that they are not unhinged but rather, have many hinges, doors, diversions, and entire pull out sections; to the point where instead of being unhinged, they are in fact very articulated.

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This week, I have been asked to pontificate on what I think the rules are for wearing trackpants are in public. Quite frankly, this is the easiest post that I have ever written.

Rule #0: Don't!

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.

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Oh wait, you're still here?

No really. Trackpants are a hateration, a holleration, and an abomination. If this was a ruling on The People v Trackpants in The Fake Internet Court of Australia, then heads would roll. To be honest, if was an officially unofficial fake internet court ruling then I'd rule that you shouldn't even wear them at home, let alone in public. If you wear trackpants then what happens is that not only do you reek of general apathy, but you also look as though you might reek of other unpleasant smells. Worse, you will choose to make yourself look like a fool in front of lots of people. If you're thinking of buying a pair of trackpants — don't.

Let's assume that you have taken leave of your senses and that you have already been blinded by tomfoolery. Let's assume that you have already have a pair of trackpants, despite ignoring Rule #0. Let's assume that you intend to throw caution, commonsense, and care, to the four winds. Let's assume that you are the protagonist in a classical tragedy, where you could have taken events to avoid your downfall and have deliberately chosen not to. Let's assume that you insist on leaving the house in your trackpants.

In this case, despite repeated warnings and maybe ribbings and insults, you have decided to look like a fool. Your intellect has been weakened through choice. Failure is your destiny. You are made of nonsense. Fine. At very least, please please please promise to follow the other rules, despite ignoring Rule #0.

Rule #1: The Half Hour Rule.

If you are going outside for more than half an hour, wear proper pants. Under every circumstance, including if you are only popping out to the corner shop to get eggs, bread, and/or milk, wearing trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up. If you are going to the corner shop, then looking like you have given up is in fact acceptable because looking tired, especially at 6am, is normal. If you are going to the corner shop, then looking like you have given up at 11am, is sad.

The half hour rule also applies if you are going outside to do things like gardening or mowing for more than half an hour. Wearing trackpants out the front of your own house, for more than half an hour, especially if it is after midday, is like signalling to the world that you might be sick and in quarantine.

Blue jeans or black jeans are the default uniform for getting stuff done. Even old blue jeans with stains of them, look purposeful, as though you have intentions of getting stuff done. Trackpants do not share in this vibe or purpose at all. 

Rule #1a: Movie Theaters Are Fine

The exception to the half hour rule is if you are going to the movie theatre. If you are sitting in the dark for two hours, nobody cares. If you are in a drive-in cinema, nobody cares. Wear whatever you want. Just be sure that the second you leave the movie theatre, you will instantly look like a crazy person.

Wear pajamas if you are going to the movie theatre for all I care. Wearing pajamas to a drive-in movie theatre is actually a master stroke because this says that your sole intent is to be comfortable while lounging around and watching a movie. In this respect, trackpants live in the uncanny valley between comfort and purpose and are just plain creepy.

Rule #2: Get Adidas Trackpants

If you must look like a doofus, then Adidas trackpants at least part way look like you have made an effort.

If you must look like a doofus, then Adidas trackpants with their classic three stripes at least are an attempt to look like a cool doofus. The exception to Rule #2 is of you do not want to cool doofus but do in fact want to look like a dangerous one. This is likely the reason why there is a stereotype of Slavic peoples wearing Adidas trackpants (and squatting).

Actually this like goes back to the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics which were held in what was then very very Soviet Russia. Adidas was one of the very first western brands to be let into the Soviet Union and behind the dismal side of the Iron Curtain. Since anything western was cool, and Adidas was one of very few connections that people could with the West, then Adidas became the cool thing. Remember, coolness doesn't care about rules.

Adidas is one of very few sporting brands of clothing that can get away with people in their adverts looking bored or slightly angry, and objectively looking cool. 

Rule #2a: Athleisure-wear/Active Wear Counts As Trackpants

Lululemon, Lorna Jane, Ell & Voo, Ellesse, Puma, Nike, Under Armor: all need to go into a raging bin fire to melt in the heat. Sorry, not sorry.

This also goes for leggings, jeggings, weggings, and whatever other eggings you can think of. Trackpants are in the same kind of class as lycra and bicycle pants. Nobody in the world needs to be exposed to that kind of thing. I will even go one step further and suggest that nobody needs to go to the beach and wear swimwear either because the sea should be respected; as it is the domain of shipping, piracy, sea-serpents, whales, sharks, dragons, leviathan, behemoth, and possibly Cthulhu.

Rule #3: Choose The Proper Colour

If you still must look like a doofus, then get Black or very dark navy Blue. These actually look like you have made an effort.

Grey trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up. Pink trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up. Red trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up and that you are obnoxious. Green trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up and you are creepy. Yellow trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up and might smell of dog wee.

Black trackpants at least give off the impression that in your spare time you might do donuts in the carpark of a supermarket and have crashed into a bin on several occasions. Black trackpants give off the impression that you are part way skilled in the art of elegant knife-fighting. Black trackpants give off the impression that you are dangerous and should be dealt with with caution.

Rule #0a: Do?

Deep down, you know it makes sense. You know that trackpants are the physical manifestation of ick in pant form. However, every set of rules has exceptions and asterisks all the way down; likewise, the wearing of trackpants also has expections and asterisks. The exception of Rule #0 is when someone chooses to embrace the ick. 

You know who embraces the ick? Children. Children are awful. Children produce terrible amounts of ick. Children love the ick.

Trackpants are acceptable for parents of small children; where the amount of goop and mess, is constantly horrid. Remember, wearing trackpants are the tacit admission that you have given up, and when you have actually given up trying to look respectable and/or decent wearing trackpants becomes the explicit admission that you have given up. In this respect, when puke and poop, and looking tired because you are tired, is part of normal life, then wearing trackpants becomes the expression on the truth.

We can forgive the parents of small children because truth is more important that the pontifications of a mad man. Children grow up though, and stop producing ick (hopefully). Leaving trackpants behind is then the confirmation that one has lived through the ick and succeeded. This is not giving up. After children have ceased to be the producers of ick, Rule #0 applies again... Don't.

Horse 3214 - They Had The Bomb; They May Have Used It Again - Oh Dear.

In Horse 3212, I yet again expressed my opinion that the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was evil, cruel, and unnecessary. My reading of history leads me to conclude that Japan would have surrendered anyway, and that the dropping of the bombs was just the next step in a war where American Generals has already considered ordinary Japanese citizens as unpeople; as evidenced by the three months of firebombing that rendered 8.5 million people homeless.

I understand the argument that the use of the two nuclear bombs brought about the end of the Second World War because the Japanese surrender came swiftly afterwards; and the chances of history already having happened is 1. However, given the history of firebombing Japan for the three months prior, the documented plans to keep on dropping the bomb, and the appalling lack of value placed on enemies and especially civilians in times of war, I find such justifications gauche. 

What I can not know, and hope that I never ever find out, is what would have happened if the events of August 1945 had actually opened the door to nuclear war as being acceptable. The thing that likely held back the newly minted nuclear powers from using the bomb in the Korean War, was the fact that the Russians probably hadn't yet developed the capability to deploy them rapidly and that the Americans had a fit of conscience.

Rather, the American fit of conscience was tempered by their fear of the unknown as to whether or not the Soviet Union had the bomb. Given that America had the bomb and the two sets of Allied powers converged on Germany to carve it up in the immediate aftermath of the way, then the chances of the Soviets getting the bomb rapidly approached 1 with the passage of time. America knew what the bomb could do, having used it twice, and the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction helped temper the two superpowers' desires to use it, through fear of immediate and swift retribution.

What would have happened if the two superpowers had gone and pushed the nuclear button back and forth? I shudder to think. The numbers which accompany what could have been a nuclear war are truly horrendous. If we assume something like the Fat Man bomb which was dropped upon Nagasaki is the standard, then as early as about 1950 a full-scale nuclear war which would have involved the USSR, United States, France and Britain; and would likely result in approximately the equivalent of 3 billion tons of TNT being exchanged. The amount of smoke produced either directly or as a result of things being instantly vapourised and/or liquefied and then consumed by fire, is something in the order of about 100 million tons.

If you did any kind of high school chemistry, then you should remember that 1 mole of gas fills approximately 22.4 litres at standard temperature and pressure. 1 mole of stuff, is the atomic weight of that stuff multiplied by Avogadro's Number, or the atomic weight expressed in grams. 100 million tones of smoke, needs a massive massive space - it works out to be about 77.6 cubic kilometers. When you also add in the amount of dust lifted into the atmosphere, be it radioactive or otherwise, then that's another 500 million tones of dust thrown into the air.

That much dust which would have nowhere to go, would hang in the atmosphere for many many months. A volcanic explosion in 1814 caused the so-called "year without a summer" which is what gave us Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", however this much dust is many magnitudes larger again. That much dust in the atmosphere for many many months, would simply block out the sun's heat and light from getting to the earth's surface as though someone had put up a very large umbrella. Nighttime would likely still exist but it would be kind of like a permanent evening for the whole earth, for months and months. 

No sunshine for many months would mean that it would be very very cold. In a place like Australia which is surrounded by the ocean, the average temperatures would like drop by about 25 degrees. In the summer that might mean a daytime temperature in the low teens and at nighttime, freezing. In the winter, even in places like Darwin, it might mean permanent freezing temperatures, even at midday.

If you can not remove sewage because pipes have frozen solid, or have broken, then every city in the world would be a potential breeding ground for all kinds of horrid medieval diseases. With water systems unable to cope with being permanently frozen, I would expect mass outbreaks and possibly co-concurrent pandemics water borne diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. About the only upside is that mosquito vectored diseases like malaria would possibly become extinct in a hurry. When you combine a lack of fresh water, with a lack of sanitation, with mass starvation due to persistent crop failure because of permanent freezing and permanent evening, then this a a recipe for population collapse.

Permanently frozen ground makes the job of burying the dead more difficult. Presumably what we currently consider essential drugs and medication would rapidly be exhausted and the numbers of people to die in the first few months would be horrendous. That many dead bodies are themselves sites for disease vectors; which only exacerbates the problem. The archaeologists of the year 3100 would find a discrete layer of skeletons and mass grave sites, as untold numbers of corpses would be buried together.

Then there are the larger problems like agriculture and crop failure. I imagine that economies would revert to subsistence pretty quickly and every able bodied person who could till the land, would be pressed into service as soon as practicable. Those who can not work, such as the very old and the very young, would find that the opportunity costs of a very new grim economy, would be horrid. My suspicion is that life expectancies would shrink at a faster rate than seen in a long time and that anyone over about the age of 70, would not be long for this world. 

My reading of history, has led me to believe that given events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the War in Afghanistan in the early 1980s, Able Archer 83, and nuclear scares in places like Türkiye, Pakistan and India, and who knows what in Korea, that the world probably cam dangerously close to full-on nuclear war several times. As someone who has lived through enough history to feed my confirmation bias that people are inherently selfish and a few wingnuts and nutbags are actively evil, I am very thankful that this tragedy of history never played out; while at the same time being fully aware that it very nearly could have.

Horse 3213 - The Mint Kit

Although not deliberately but still as an answer to the right-wing trashmedia, Australia will more than likely return to its familiar gold and green kit against Denmark tonight. Hopefully that should put a sock in the gobs of the dog ignorant.

After the Canada-Australia game in which Australia rose to the occasion in the most spectacular way that I have seen any Australian national side do in a long time, there were people on Twitter (all men, and all under the employ of either News Corp or Nine Ent Co.) who questioned why Australia was playing in the choc-mint kit and not the gold and green. Never mind the fact that Australian side was listed as the away side and was in fact in their away kit. Never mind the fact that for their previous two outings that they had played in the gold and green.

Never mind the fact that at the time, Australia was on 3 points and a draw or a loss, would have meant an early exit from the World Cup. Never mind that Australia played solidly, with a 4-4-2 which retained its shape under pressure, and which player marked excellently. 

Never mind the fact that Sam Kerr had been carrying an injury and that Tony Gustavsson had made tactical decisions which ultimately proved right; both in terms of personnel and of team selection, to play around that problem. Never mind the fact that Hayley Raso had slotted the ball home twice before the end of the first half and always looked menacing in and around the edge of the 18-yard box on the right hand side. Never mind that Mary Fowler pulled out a goal against the run of play and looked perfectly at home in a traditional No.10 position. Never mind that Steph Catley had an amazing game in which she found and made space up the left hand side and that when called to step up and take a penalty, she drilled home a bullet that could have torn through the back of the net.

Never mind all of this. The right-wing trashmedia were apoplectic that Australia was playing in mint of all things. How dare they!

What makes this madder than a kangaroo who has fallen into a stinging nettle bush, is that Australia doesn't even have green or gold on its national flag. Rather, Australia has a defaced blue ensign with the Union Flag in the canton and some stars in the field. How we got to gold and green, is a daft story.

Famously, an touring Australian cricket team, before there was the Commonwealth of Australia, attended a dinner at which the team was supplied with a hastily delivered set of blazers, as that's what the tailor's had which could be delivered in a hurry. Green with gold piping is nothing more than an historical accident. After this, Cricket teams began to issue the baggy green cap when Australia played in test matches; as the only point of differentiation for teams that all play in white or creams. 

Touring Rugby sides to England played in various shades of sky-blue, or white, or blue, until about the mid-1920s when the Rugby Union adopted gold, and the Rugby League adopted green. By the time that the 1960s rolled around, the Australian football team decided to play in gold because playing in green is mostly an awful choice for playing football in. Of the 92 football clubs in the top four tiers of English football, only Plymouth Argyle plays in green.

This brings me to the subject of the away kit. Away kits are generally a eye-diabetes inducing lollipop of colour. I have seen Australia play in dark blue, black, white, black, and grey, but very very rarely in green as an away kit. Playing in green, when set against a green playing field, is a bad idea.

What do I think about his mint kit? If it was an unsuccessful kit, then I would have considered this to be just another kit from the land of "Meh" and it would have sank beneath the waves of memory; only to be resurfaced as a question in pub trivia. However, this mint kit has with one appearance, given Australian football one of the biggest stories ever.

When needing a win, the Matildas played an amazingly organised and disciplined game and held out the Olympic Champions. When needing a win, the Matildas found the back of the net 5 times, to have one time denied for a spurious off-side; however nil-4 is still a riotous victory. 

Here's the thing about national and sporting colours. They all have stories behind them. France's tricolour is the result of Paris' blue and red flag and a desire for peace after revolution (hence the white stripe). America's stars and stripes were born out of needing a distinct battle flag which was different to the British. Australia's green and gold came about by accident at a tailor's shop. Brazil's yellow kit was the result after the hideously embarrassing 1950 World Cup in which Brazil lost at home against Argentina, and they have never played in white again. Mint now has a story.

Mint was likely a marketing decision; to get some kind of green on the park which would stand out against the darker green field. Whoever picked mint can not have imagined that the Matildas' mint kit by accident, was on display in front of 75,000 people; on the night that at least in Australia, the roar was so loud that you couldn't help but hear it. This leads me to an obvious conclusion. The Matildas need the mint kit as a forever away kit. 

Horse 3212 - They Had The Bomb; They Were Always Going To Use It

As living memory very quickly recedes and the number of people who fought in the Second World War who are still alive rapidly approaches zero (if you were 18 at the close of WW2, you would now be 96 years old), we very increasigly rely on documentary evidence. Quite literally nobody who made the important decisions during the war are still alive and that especially goes for making arguably the most horrendous single decision of the war: namely, to use nuclear weapons. 

I have my suspicions based on the ambiguity of documents, that the decision to use nuclear weapons was more or less a fait accompli; from the moment that the United States got their hands on them. When you have generals who can fight wars from desks, separated by oceans, the fate of people who you consider as the enemy is irrelevant in total war. 

The façade given is that X-Day which would have been an Allied invasion of Japan starting in Okinawa and Y-Day which would have been another  Allied invasion of Japan starting in Hokkaido, would have been met with the most brutal defence by the Japanese people at home as they fought with every pot and pan that they had. Japanese politics was deadlocked but the people themselves were not as weary as the German people had been. I also think that the thousand bomber raids on places like Dresden were equally cruel and barbaric.

As it was from April 18 until August 15 1945, US bombing raids mainly by B-29 Superfortresses dropped incendiary bombs on 64 Japanese cities; with practically no tactical advantage from what I can gather. Granted that the Japanese military had been brutal in Korea, and in China (especially Nanking) but to make civilians suffer for the acts of the military, is equally as cruel and barbaric. Maybe as many as 900,000 people died as a result of firestorms due to bombing across Japan, and 8.5 million people were rendered homeless.

On July 26, which is three months into the series of air raids on Japan, the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender (Potsdam Declaration) which was signed by Truman, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, contains a possible hint about what was to come:

https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/hiroshima-nagasaki/potsdam.html

We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.

- Article 13,  Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, 26th Jul 1945.

Probably anyone who had had their ears tuned to the sounds of the winds of change, may have interpreted the clause "prompt and utter destruction" as hint that the United States had something terrible up their sleeve and that they were prepared to use it.

Here's the problem which is becoming ever worse year on year. It is impossible to know what Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo knew, what Cabinet Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu knew, or what Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki knew. It is even harder to guess what they knew or could have imagined almost 80 years later. Not only do we not know what the government of Japan knew about what weaponry the United States had, we also don't know if they knew what accepting the terms of surrender in the Potsdam Declaration would have entailed.

What further compounds this problem is that even the US State Department appears to have conceded in a contemporary memorandum issued just four days after the Potsdam Declaration was issued, that the terms are deliberately ambiguous. How could the government of Japan know what accepting the terms of surrender in the Potsdam Declaration would have entailed, when even the US State Department had no real idea of what those same terms of surrender would have entailed:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1254

Note 4 - The Japanese Government: The status of the Japanese Government is left uncertain. It apparently is to continue and to exercise certain functions. (Article 10)

Note 7 - Enforcement of Objectives: Not clear. The Japanese Government has the responsibility of carrying out some and possibly all the demands of the Allies. Some of the “terms” would seem to necessitate direct action by Allied authorities.

- No. 1254, Department of State Memorandum, 30th Jul 1945.

What we do know is that the United States had the bomb and used it and would have used more. Another "Fat Man" bomb would have been used on August 24, with enough in production to drop three more in September and three more in October. I have no idea how these would have been used in conjunction with Operation Downfall but I imagine that the bomb would have been dropped before Allied troops were sent in. In this respect, the bomb would have acted similarly in principle to the way that shore bombardment works in general tactics before an amphibious landing.

The reason ostensibly given for using the bomb was that it would be the quickest and swiftest way to end the war in the Pacific. That may very well be true but I have my suspicions, given that the Japanese Diet was deadlocked 6-6 and that the decision whether or not to accept the Potsdam Declaration and the terms of surrender was being reserved for the Emperor; that the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only unjustified but an act of untold barbarism and cruelty, played out because warmongers knew that they could get away with it.

Horse 3211 - THE PEOPLE v PEOPLE FACING BACKWARDS ON TRAINS [2023] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v PEOPLE FACING BACKWARDS ON TRAINS [2023] - Judgement

H3211/1

It has repeatedly come to this fake internet court's attention that there are people who knowingly face backwards on trains. 

There are those who would argue that this fake internet court has a conflict of interest, where the judge would be a beneficiary of a decision handed down but when you consider that a fake internet court by virtue of having literally zero authority to enforce any decision it makes has no ability to make good on its assumed authority, then this is not an issue. Two half nothings are a whole nothing. It should be noted that The Fake Internet Court of Australia is more than just a kangaroo court, it is a kangaroo court which operates with a star chamber. Therefore, this fake internet court not only assumes original jurisdiction but also assumes the authority to assume it. 

Granted that facing backwards on trains is not in the same category or class as committing murder, it is still heinous enough to warrant being brought before a fake internet court with no actual jurisdiction whatsoever. As this is a case of both maximum irrelevance and minimum importance, this court is most suited to judgement of this kind of case.

Before judgement is pronounced, this court would like to thank our learned friends and esteemed colleagues, Pikup Andropov acting as counsel for The People and Marsha Mellow who acted as counsel for the defence.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

A motor omnibus is a motor driven omnibus. "Omnibus" is from the Latin "Omnibus"; which means 'for, by, and with, everyone and everything'. This is an apt description for public transport generally. A "train" is a series of carriages, for the conveyance of people, in train; usually on a railway. 

It should be self-evident that a train which is for the conveyance of people, in train, is shared by the great public in common. The ownership model of the train system may be public or private but this is immaterial to the case at hand. Commuter trains are shared by the general public; for the purposes of going places, such as work, school, university, shopping, for leisure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

As far as we are aware, which means that the chances of the Court being wrong about this are high, Sydney's train network is the only major suburban network in the world which has double deck trains on it. There are places with double deck trams such as Blackpool and Hong Kong but as far as train networks go, double deck trains are usually saved for inter-urban and regional train services. Also as far as the court is aware, Sydney's train network is the only major suburban network in the world which has reversible seats on it. The reason for this is that as most suburban train networks do not use full-size pullman cars, seats are usually mounted longitudinally down the sides of train cars and not horizontally as in Sydney. Sydney's trains are mostly rows of 3 and 2; with the inter-urban network being rows of 2 and 2.

Having rows of seats necessitates that the seats are reversible. With the exception of Tangara sets (T-sets), train cars in Sydney; including A-sets, B-sets, C-Sets, M-Sets, and older V-sets, K-Sets and S-sets, all have seats where the back of the seats is mounted on a rocking mechanism so that the seat can be "flipped" to change the direction of travel.

See Exhibit A:

As trains travel linearly through space and time, they have a natural direction of travel and as such, facing in that direction of travel is preferable. For this reason the seats on trains are reversible. Flipping the seats is a convenient and easy task.

With these known facts, the court is more than adequately armed to be able to make judgement.

Final Judgement:

One does not need to have committed murder to know that committing murder is terrible. Granted that not flipping the seats is neither a crime nor a civil misdemeanor, it is still terrible.

This particular case is similar in spirit to that of Gordon's Claim in "The Railway Series" by the Reverend W.H. Awden. Gordon's Claim relates to Henry, the green engine, whistling too loudly at stations. Whistling loudly at stations is also neither a crime nor a civil misdemeanor but it is still terrible; and summed up by the priciple laid out at the centre of Gordon's Claim:

"It isn't wrong, but we just don't do it."

This court needs to stress that flipping the seats is neither a crime nor a civil misdemeanor, and facing backwards is neither a crime nor a civil misdemeanor. The question of a thing being neither a crime nor a civil misdemeanor then cries out for reason why this court should care at all. That reason is... it is terrible.

A train carriage as omnibus in train, is "Omnibus"; which means 'for, by, and with, everyone and everything'. Everyone and everything is the great public. Travelling together in a train means that the space is a shared space which by definition must be shared. Not flipping the seats and facing backwards demonstrates negligence through applied inaction or worse, psychopathy through deliberate choice. 

If there is a group of people who wish to face each other, then clearly they have made the choice to be in community with each other; so facing backwards in that situation is sensible as this partitions them off from everyone else. However, a single person who is facing backwards, is assuming that everyone else wants to join in community with them. Now far be it for this court to rule against the principles of community and commonwealth but if you are facing backwards, then you have chosen to impose your strange and arbitrary rule over a kingdom of six. Why do it?

Why do it indeed? The vast majority of people who are on public transport are either tired, anxious, or nerds. There is already a social imposition which comes with travelling on public transport; it does not need further imposition from individuals who through negligence or psychopathy have imposed their little kingdoms of awkwardness on the world.

This fake internet court has no choice but to make a cease and desist order to people facing backwards on trains, where the option exists to flip the seats. Why do it? What is wrong with you? It isn't wrong, but we just don't do it.

People who face backwards on trains, you are guilty of both dastardliness and knavery. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no business facing backwards on trains, we order you to cease, desist and stop this egregious practice. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalties will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is.

If people face backwards on trains, then where are we as a society? It is one thing be terrible on one's own time but to ensnare others in your villainy is malevolent. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3211/1 - Ed)

Horse 3210 - Baseball Has An Impossible Rule And I Love It

In a forum recently, during a discussion about the differences between cricket and baseball, I made the comment that if you could bounce the ball on the way to Home Plate then someone like English test bowler Jimmy Anderson who is known for having an extraordinary ability to hit the same mark on a cricket pitch, would likely sail through every Major League Baseball side.

The reason for this is that Jimmy Anderson is aiming to knock down a set of stumps which are only 9 inches in width, whereas the Home Plate in baseball is 17 inches across. With 17 inches of space to aim at, I think that even I as a rank amateur could do considerable damage to a Major League Baseball side. 

If you only need 3 outs in an inning an there are 9 innings for a side in a baseball game, then you only need 27 deliveries to completely eliminate every player in all innings. 27 deliveries is less than 5 overs; which is well within the work rate of any half decent bowler. In one churches B-Grade match because we were short of confident bowlers, I ended up bowling 28 overs in a day. Four bowlers operated from the other end and even they all bowled 7 overs each; which is about the same as a good efficient Major League Baseball pitcher.

In that thread, someone posted the two diagrams of a set of cricket stumps and of Home Plate in baseball. However, even upon basic interrogation, the standard diagram of Home Plate bothered me. The reason for this is that the corner at the bottom is shown as a right triangle and yet every single number on the diagram is a rational number. Probably locked away in the minds of anyone who has done High School trigonometry are the values for sin 45° and cos 45° which are both 1/√2. √2 is not rational.

Without even doing any maths at all, I already knew that the standard diagram of Home Plate and probably the rules which underpin is, are mathematically impossible. As someone who works in an accounting office, where being cent perfect is the standard to aim for, I think that I have developed a professional sense of obsessive compulsive pedantry. In a glorious twist of hypocritic inconsistency, I quite often gumby up everything but when it comes to maths which has rules, and the possibility to attain perfection, what would be considered to be a psychological disorder (OCD) is transformed into hyper-diligence in the field of mathematics.

If you have too many rules, then you are in Germany. 

If you don't have enough rules, then you are in France. 

If you have rules and they are silly, then you are in England. 

If you have rules and they are wrong, then you are in America. 

Here is the relevant rule:

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/field-dimensions

Home plate is a 17-inch square of whitened rubber with two of the corners removed so that one edge is 17 inches long, two adjacent sides are 8 1/2 inches each and the remaining two sides are 12 inches each and set at an angle to make a point. The 17-inch side faces the pitcher's plate, and the two 12-inch edges coincide with the first- and third-base lines. The back tip of home plate must be 127 feet, 3 and 3/8 inches away from second base.

- Field Dimensions, Home Plate, Major League Baseball

Home Plate can be thought of as a 17 inch by 8.5 inch box, with a triangle attached. Ignore that box. It is fine. The triangle is a great big nonsensical schnibbity-nibbity schnick-nuck-neigh woo-woo.

The isosceles right triangle (if you can call it that) has a hypotenuse of 17 inches. We know this because the front of home plate is the front part of that 17-inch square. If each "leg" of the triangle has a length x, then by the Pythagorean Theorem the sum of the squares of the legs has to be the square of the hypotenuse.

a² = b² + c²

But since both of the two corner cut sides are identical, then b² = c²

17² = b² + b²

17² = 2b²

or

289 = 2b²

144.5 = b²

We have a problem. 12² = 144.

If the hypotenuse is 17 inches long then the length of those two sides is actually ≈ 12.02 inches.

If on the other hand, the two sides are 12 inches each, and this is a right triangle, then again using the Pythagorean Theorem the sum of the squares of the legs has to be the square of the hypotenuse; we get:

a² = b² + c²

a² = 12² + 12²

² = 288

a ≈ 16.97

If the two sides are 12 inches long then the length of the hypotenuse is actually ≈ 16.97 inches.

We could very well assume that all of the side lengths are correct. If this is true, then:

sinA = 12/17

A ≈ 44.90°

B ≈ 44.90°

C ≈ 90.20°

Here's the fun thing... I LOVE THIS.

I love that the only people that this is ever likely to trouble, are mathematicians who find this interesting, and high school students in maths class who now have a real world exercise to do maths upon. Of those two kinds of people, the mathematicians are going to go into an apoplectic rage about the real world not fitting with what the maths says, and the high school students are likely to be bored and grumpy as they stare out of the window.

I love that 12/17 is a good approximation of √2 because 17 is a number that doesn't really appear anywhere sensible in maths. I love that this exercise with a minor amount of annoyance has given me a fun new approximation of √2. I love that near enough is good enough because who in the real world honestly cares a jot that the dimensions are all out but less than even 1%. All kinds of stuff is designed to be within tolerance levels and in this case, for a thing where literally nobody in the world is going to get out a tape measure and argue over 0.03 of an inch, this is perfectly fine.

Best of all, I really love that you can have a set of rules which defines things yet contains mathematical impossibilities. I love that Baseball and even Major League Baseball has gone "Ah ha ha! We don't care!" and danced around like a porkchop with the rules. Near enough IS good enough. Good enough is good enough.

Horse 3209 - Your Opinion Is Safe

As Anti-Disinformation legislation gets thrashed about in the House of Representatives, news outlets like News Corp and in particular Sky News Australia and the Seven West Media Group are claiming blue murder, and also claiming that this legislation if passed would be Orwellian. Perhaps they fear that if such legislation was passed, they they might have to be partly accountable for the nonsense that they publish. However, upon actual inspection of the proposed legislation, it looks like government would be able to do no more than apply for retraction of individual pieces and not much else. It is certainly not censorship as Sky News Australia suggests but then again, for an organisation which openly lies to the public, I wouldn't expect anything less. Although having said that, I personally think that this is yet more proof that Australia is increasingly incapable of having any real policy of its own and must import both military and cultural policy from the United States. 

Something that came out of a United States Governmental Enquiry into political interference, both of foreign actors and domestically (particularly looking at Russian interference in the 2016 Election), was looking at the nature of Fox News in US Politics. Unlike Sky News Australia which is hidden behind the paywall of Foxtel in most of the country, Fox News in the United States can either be transmitted via Fox's terrestrial free-to-air networks, or via basic cable-TV services which have a far greater take up rate than in Australia. Fox News was successfully able to run the line that it is not actually a news outlet but an opinion service; and that is perfectly fine due to the United States' semi-anarchist interpretation of the right to free speech which springs from the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The United States' lurching towards ever more semi-anarchist interpretation of law as it applies to whomever happens to win the political argument of the day, is in my increasingly bewildered opinion, the reason for the polarisation of politics. "Free Speech" and "Freedom" are the war cries of the unhinged on both the authoritarian right and the libertarian right. (There is very little actual economic left to speak of.) Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of many voices speaking into the town square; it's just that I do not believe that it is a moral good that any right be absolute, and I also believe that there should be adequate remedy and equity which is capable of being sought, as a result of a right being abused.

Australia is of course a different legal environment and instead of Roman law being the die from which law is cast, Australia has retained a Westminster style legislatory process and couples it with a very long chain of English Common Law using equity as its central pillar. In Australia, we have several pieces of legislation and pieces of law which affirm the right to free speech. The Bill of Eights Act (1688), the Socttish Claim of Right (1688), the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1945), the Australian Human Rights Commission Act (1986) and Schedule 2 therein, as well as case law which includes X v ABC (1997 et cetera, and James v Commonwealth (1936), again and again and again confirm that not only is there a right to free speech in Australia but that it has just limits. Liberty unchained is tyranny by the powerful and anyone who says that they do not believe in any limits to liberty is tacitly admitting that they are perfectly happy from harm to come to people who are not them.

All of that aside, Sky News Australia in my not very well paid opinion, exists not as a news service but as an opinion service and bully pulpit which deigns to have the concession of news bulletins in order to maintain the open façade of pretense that it is a news service. Sky News Australia probably runs the bare minimum of news bulletins in order to maintain that façade but just like ABC News Radio, filling up 24 Hours with news bulletins is a Herculean task. However unlike Hercules who had as one of his tasks the cleaning out of the (cows stalls), Sky News Australia has decided that it quite likes manure and has made it its aim to fill up every single possible stall with the stuff.

One of the criticisms of government is that there are too many pigs with their snouts in the trough. However, when you fill up the stalls of democracy with as much manure as you can possibly find, what ends up happening is that weeds grow everywhere and flies and maggots arrive. Sky News Australia is perfectly happy to have weeds and flies and maggots in democracy because its sponsors and backers, can then play outside and occasionally accuse their political enemies of not dealing with the weeds and flies and maggots in democracy.

It doesn't have to be particularly profitable to work properly. Running an opinion piece service, means that you can hire a very small cabal of opinion writers, who don't have to do very much research into any of the news at all. You do not need to be in possession of any facts in order to have an opinion. You do not have to understand any facts in order to have an opinion. Sky News Australia knows this. In fact, it knows this so well that every single one of its Tweets, Twooshes, Blorps, Sploots, Xeets, and Splinks, all use the framing device that their opinion haver has that opinion.

"Caleb Bond says...", "Sharri Markson says...", "Andrew Bolt says...", "Rita Panahi says...", "Paul Murray says...", "Erin Molan says...", "Banana McGee says..."

It is perfectly truthful to report that Banana McGee says a thing, and not be subject to any standards of journalism. Remember, we have a wealth of statute and case law which confirms that a right to free speech exists within just limits and just because someone says a thing which is neither grounded in facts, reality, or common sense, does not mean that those limits have been crossed. To wit: reading through those Tweets, Twooshes, Xeets and Sploots, if taken to be read in the light of various mental health acts, is likely grounds enough in order to get someone sectioned.

I do not voluntarily watch Sky News Australia, though I have been subject to Sky News Australia while waiting in line at the bank, for more hours than I care for. In some respects it is a little bit like listening to a series of lectures on BBC Radio 4's "The Unbelievable Truth" in which during a lecture full of lies, contestants attempt to smuggle truths past the panel. Points are awarded for smuggling truths that go unnoticed and other panelists can win points for spotting a truth or lose points if they mistake a lie for the truth. The difference between The Unbelievable Truth and Sky News Australia is that as Sky News Australia has no explicit commitment to the truth, because opinions are not dependent on the truth, then the audience who is left to flounder has to play the game for themselves; with the added bonus that they do not get any points for mistaking a lie for the truth.

Perhaps the shiniest current example of an absence of commitment to the truth is Sharri Markson's glorious return to blaming China for the Covid-19 virus. I have read her book "What Really Happened In Wuhan" and to be honest, even taken at face value, one would still actually have no idea of what really happened in Wuhan. The book is replete statements where if A and B, then P; except that P is unrelated to A or B. It is guffaw and hogwash but it is heavily researched guffaw and hogwash. The thing is that I think that she has come to genuinely believe her own guffaw and hogwash and just like any decent piece of theatre, one can always find wingnuts, jackdaws, and unicorns who will go on television because they all love engaging in confirmation bias. Sharri Markson's show on Sky News Australia doesn't actually present itself as a news program, so a commitment to the truth is not even necessary, because opinions are not dependent on the truth.

The thing is that where the facts themselves are ultimately unknowable and even scientific papers in either direction can be written off and dismissed, then opinion (albeit very well dressed opinion) is about as close to fact as you're going to get; even if looks like guffaw and hogwash. It is perfectly truthful to report that Professor Apple O'Reilly says a thing, and not be subject to any standards of journalism. Even if the Anti-Disinformation legislation gets up, Sky News Australia is completely safe because reporting that someone has an opinion is not disinformation, even if that opinion is factually wrong. 

Unless there were actual incitements to violence, or running foul of the various discrimination acts, then opinions even in a legislative environment with Anti-Disinformation legislation are safe.

Horse 3208 - "The Homer" - Was It Really That Bad?

There is an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer discovers that he has a half-brother, who is named Herbert Powell. Powell is a successful businessman and who owns a smallish motor company, until he meets Homer and this puts into action a chain of events through which he is bankrupted and eventually becomes a hobo.

The episode, so very obviously set in 1991, has Powell Motors struggling against the tide of Japanese imported cars and in some kind of last ditch effort, he enlists Homer to design a motor car; which given that it is Homer Simpson, will always be disaster. Such is the narrative drive of The Simpsons that no matter what kind of problem befalls them or whatever success strikes, the net distance travelled narratively always must snap back to exactly zero.

When given the opportunity to get a free car, Homer is asked what kind of car that he wants. His requests are actually ludicrously straightforward. He either wants a big car, or a car with a lot of pep. When Powell Motors is unable to fulfil even these simple desires, Herbert loses is mind and charges Homer with designing a car which will save the company. The car that Homer Simpson 'designs' with the help of a team which very obviously has zero initiative or imagination of their own, is so terrible that it apparently bankrupts the company. 

However, when viewed through the lens of both history and removing the comedic devices, are the actual things that Homer Simpson wanted in a car insensible?

- A ball on the antenna, so you can find it in a parking lot?

You could have possibly costed that at about five bucks.

- Multiple horns, all of which play “La Cucaracha”?

Put that on his car. That's not a production feature.

- A separate soundproof bubble dome for kids, with optional restraints and muzzles?

Yeah, nah. That's daft. Don't install it.

As for the idea of optional restraints, various Design Regulations have become harder and more strict with it comes to the installation of points for booster seats and child capsules. This would be about meeting Design Regulations. Muzzles are likely a step too far.

- One Powell Motors employee suggests a “built-in video game”?

The various infotainment systems on cars have become more and more silly. You can get cars with Bluetooth and ApplePlay et cetera as standard. My Mazda 2 which was a $20,000 motor car, has electronic everything and Bluetooth and USB ports. In 1991, an AM/FM radio with a five-bang graphic equaliser would have been pretty neat.

- Gigantic cup holders for the drink cups from the Kwik-E-Mart?

Some manufacturers have made bigger cup holders to hold huge cups (or mini–buckets for fried chicken), but in general, the 350mL and 375mL can is still the industry standard, and the 592mL (20 fl.oz.) cup in America has also remained unchanged.

- Soundproof interiors?

Insulation from road noise has definitely improved since 1991. Today there is active noise cancellation which uses embedded microphones to find the offending frequencies and destructive addition to cancel out sounds. It only works for engine drone and wind noise and does not work to remove the noise of children.

- Shag carpeting?

The most horrid carpeted car that I have ever sat in, was someone's 1985 Holden Commodore Calais VK. It had a rumbly V8 up front and a square LED display and it had blue plush pile over every conceivable surface. The owner was obsessive about keeping it clean and smell free.

What of the two original criteria? A big car and a car with a lot of "pep" with an engine that will make people think “the world is coming to an end”?

This is perhaps where fiction in the episode was able draw so much from the truth. Cars had become smaller following the 1974 and 1979 Oil Crises. Ford's flagship car in America was the Taurus which had a 3.0L engine, General Motors' could do no better with its wheezy V6s. The whole automotive industry was being hamstrung by an inability to develop new technology and a need to comply with the best practice as embodied by the Californian Automotive Fuel Emissions requirements, or CAFE, which grossly limited power output. Gone were the 7.0L V8 dinosaurs from only a decade before. 

The 1990s were kind of as the so-called "malaise era" was coming to an end. Ford had discontinued its 5.7L Cleveland V8 and was only tentatively bringing back the 5.0L Windsor V8. Chevrolet had abandoned its 5.7L V8 for family sedans but kept them for cars like the Camaro and Corvette. Little did anyone know that there would be a second age of ridiculous power to come, as the internal combustion engine has had one last hurrah.

Engines like the 707 horsepower which go in the Dodge Hellcat, or 7.3L V8 engines which now appear in trucks, would have satisfied Homer Simpson. Sure, we're now building pedestrian killing trucks and SUVs instead of sedans and hatchbacks, but idiots like Homer Simpson exist in their thousands.

As for the final styling of the car? Yes, it is hideous but it says a lot about Powell Motors if one prototype which would have caused a ridiculous amount of hype and which cost $82,000, is enough to bankrupt the company. The Holden Commodore VE, of which the project started possibly as far back as 2002, had more than a $1bn worth of development poured into it. That $82,000 in 2006 terms, to make the two comparable, was worth $147,677. Unless Powell Motors had tooled up an entire factory, which includes the stamping shop and resetting all of the welding robots at very least, to build this as a production car, then building one car should not have been enough to bankrupt a company. Besides which, I am sure that there would have been at least one loon in the world who would have bought that as a bespoke show car.

The "Homer" that Homer designs is comically awful from a stylistic point of, but in all honesty, is it actually terrible? Sports cars such as the Toyota 86 and the Honda Civic Type-R have in fact sprouted wings and spoilers. Cars do not have bubble domes but they are way more rounded than they were in 1991. Even greens and hideous purples have appeared on cars since then. 

A properly done show car such as the VT "Marilyn" Monaro which was at the Sydney Motor Show one year, was enough to ensure that Holden Motor Company were able to take deposits on cars that hadn't even been delivered. Tooling up for a car which mead use of plenty of already existing parts, wasn't really that difficult. Powell Motors apparently are so stuck and set in their ways, that producing one show car, is the straw which broke the camel's back.

As The Simpsons is a comedy program, there was never going to be any kind of sensible resolution to the central dilemma of the narrative. I on the other hand, with the benefit of hindsight and a very great deal of resentment that the Australian motor industry was shut down, do not understand why cars like the Ford Taurus, Ford Five Hundred Ford Fusion, or Chevrolet Impala from Generation 7 onwards ever needed to exist. Even within the narrative of The Simpsons, Homer does not car where his car comes from (he has a Croatian-built car), and the truth of the matter is that cars like the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore in Australia were always better engineered, better backed, better tested, and better built than their American counterparts. 

To solve the internal problem of the episode, Herbert Powell could have bought a sedan from another company and slapped his own badge on it. Actually, the American motor industry could have done this many times and sold foreign cars under their own labels but instead kept on choosing not to, for reasons I fail to understand. This episode of The Simpsons is therefore not necessarily a commentary on the boneheadedness of Homer Simpson, but a parable for the American motor industry generally.

Horse 3207 - Eudaimonia - Why Bother?

I encountered a question recently which has stuck in my craw and will not come out. It is a question so incredibly irritating that it simply refuses to go away unless attempts are made to answer it. It also dove-tails nice into those series of posts which Horse has previously written about that grand question of Eudaimonia. Simply put, that question is:

"Why be good?"

I love the elegance of this question. In just three words it takes a sledgehammer to the egg that lies at the very heart of the issue. This is the beauty of "why" on full display. 

I think that we can all agree that a theoretical reasonable person, our Billy Brown from Sydney Town or Jilly Mavis from Brisvegas, will be carrying around in their heads some basic imprint of the underlying planks of common law. Don't kill people. Don't steal from people. Don't hit people. Invariably this will be then backed up by some variant of "the golden rule" which is "Do to others as you would have them do to you" or, "do not to others what you do not wish to have done to you." Variants of this exist across a whole host of cultures, religions, and law systems, and this can even be found in the  Code of Hammurabi. However just because this is practically universal and reasonably reasonable, does not make this so.

The Golden Rule I think implies that cultures, law systems, and religions, have all reasonably agreed that some kind of reasonable standard of universal justice exists. However, I still do not think that even The Golden Rule arrives at answering the question of why anyone should be good. The Golden Rule and justice itself can only last as long and as far as there is some authority big enough and powerful enough to enforce it. All forms of justice, be they restorative, retributive, or equitable, still rely upon that very brittle plank of "fairness" and immediately we run into a problem.

"Fairness" although a useful overlay from which to explain the word, is ultimately bunk. The reason for this is that humans are very much not impartial players in the game. Every one of us, has as the centre of the observable universe, a point which is roughly 19mm behind our corneas. When you then attach a personality, a mind, a soul, whatever, to observe and explain the kosmos from that centre of the observable universe, "fairness" devolves into a mere extension of relative selfishness. Considering that what is fair and just is always coloured by that viewpoint, it is a truly awful standard. Remember, 'tragedy' is when I cut my finger whereas 'comedy' is when you fall into an open pit and die.

If even the most readily agreeable rule immediately crumbles upon inspection, then it has to be thrown out. What if you inspect the authority by which cultures, law systems, and religions, assume to derive their reasonableness from. Again we have a problem. When you have self-interested  cultures, and law systems, even the destruction of people who are not you, can be made acceptable. Granted that you may have to invent some convenient cultural assumption or legal fiction or religious reason to enable that to happen, but if the underlying basis of the authority to determine what is and is not fair, just, or good, it itself not fair, just, or good, then even the plank of authority is itself bunk.

If we then interrogate that central authority which lies at the centre of the universe, a universe with no god has no inherent reason for being good, and a universe with one central all-powerful god also has no inherent reason for being good. Why should they? If you are that central all-powerful god then literally everything in the universe is answerable to you. Anyone and anything that questions your authority can be arbitrarily destroyed for the simple reason that might makes right. To be honest, I find the reason to be good because god is good, to be faulty because all this does is shift the question back to an already crumbled plank of authority, which is itself bunk.

Consistently, the question of "Why be good?" under those circumstances falls back to the opinion and choice of someone. History is littered with cases where cultures, religions, and law systems, have had to choose that other people have inherent dignity and are worthy as being accepted as objects to be good to. Questions of storge, agape, eros and philos, including civic philos are all dependent on a choice which has been made by someone and especially in the case of civic philos where the state has been forced to make that choice because people have demanded it for a very long time. However, the question of "Why be good?" when it is dependent on choice, fails to be answered. Whilst someone may choose that the other is a worthy object to be good to, it still does not adequately arrive at answering of "Why be good?" in the first place.

If I have brushed aside The Golden Rule, the concepts of fairness and justice, and even seemingly explained that goodness is not necessarily dependent on authority itself, then what's left? It seems to me that the answer to the question of "Why be good?" is that it is good to be good. It is good to do good. Goodness is its own end. The telos of goodness is goodness. The kosmos has no problem with atomic concepts like this which are indivisible. Existence exists. 1=1. 

It is as if the kosmos actually does contain a priori elements, that there are unmovable movers, that there really can not be turtles all the way down. The fun thing is that my conclusion which is reasonably possibly wrong, because just like our theoretical reasonable persons of Billy Brown from Sydney Town or Jilly Mavis from Brisvegas, who carry around basic imprints of how the kosmos works in their heads does not make this so, was also arrived at a long time ago:

But goodness, since it has the aspect of desirable, implies the idea of a final cause, the causality of which is first among causes, since an agent does not act except for some end; and by an agent matter is moved to its form. Hence the end is called the cause of causes. Thus goodness, as a cause, is prior to being, as is the end to the form. 

- Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae, Thomas Aquinas (1274)

Since as a reasonable actor, I can only come to a reasonable conclusion, then I think that it is reasonably reasonable that the the question of "Why be good?" is answered "because it is good to be good and that is the end to itself", is itself good enough.

Horse 3206 - Vote 1 IRV, 2 Star, 3 Score.

From time to time I get emails from people requesting me to write a piece on a thing. I am happy to do so because given enough material, I would write day and night like I am running out of time. Send me an email to rollo75@yahoo.com.au and I might write a piece for you; including if your suggestion is silly.

This week, I have been asked (rather rudely via email) to try and justify why Instant-Run-Off Voting (IRV) is in my opinion a better voting system than the writer's preferred system of Star Voting and Score Voting. Firstly, we need a brief description of the two voting systems.

Instant-Run-Off Voting is where the voter ranks all their choices 1, 2, 3, 4 et cetera, and when the votes are tallied, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and their votes are then distributed according to the next choice of the voter. In principle Instant-Run-Off Voting asks what would you like? And then if you can't have that, then what would you like? And it keeps on asking that question until at least 50%+1 of the votes are for one candidate, who wins.

In Star Voting and Score Voting systems, voters are asked to indicate their relative approval to various candidates by rating them relative to each other. If we assume that we can award 1-5 stars to whom the voter thinks is the best candidate, then they will award 5 stars to whom they think is the best and 0 stars to whom they think is the worst. These systems then either take a tally of average of the various scores and do maths to arrive at a winner. 

The argument in favour of these systems is that they indicate the relative approval of the electorate for the various candidates and this satisfies a bunch of criteria which are nominally good at determining what people like. I will agree that Star Voting and Score Voting are good achieving these ends but that IRV demonstrates one thing better - hate.

The writer in their email who wishes to be anonymous, argues that IRV can lead to insincere voting where voters will preference a candidate whom they perceive will lose, even when they know that their preferred candidate will survive later, for the sole purposes of knocking out their more hated candidate. The writer asserts that tactical voting is a bad thing because it distorts the results because of push-over voting tactics. Again, I will agree that this absolutely happens and will readily admit that I will do this and have done this in the past; precisely because IRV demonstrates one thing better - hate.

I have now mentioned hate twice as a feature and motive of IRV as though I was some kind of Sith Lord. In the words of my late mother "you shouldn't hate something unless you want it dead"; in the world of politics, wanting a campaign and even a political party to die and remain dead forever, are I think perfectly valid motives. IRV expresses that hate in the most excellent way and does so empirically.

Unlike voting for where people want to go for dinner where the outcome doesn't really matter if all of the choices are okay, politics is full of policies which different people think are excellent through to vile. Also unlike voting for where people want to go for dinner, the consequences are such that an elected candidate gets the job of being in power for many years at a time. Asking for the mere approval of the electorate isn't actually good enough. In a single-member district, where there is only one winner, then the voter is actively being asked to make a choice where the outcome is explicitly exclusionary. IRV actually forces the voter to make an explicitly exclusionary choice.

Push-over voting, where a voter preferences a candidate whom they perceive will lose, even when they know that their preferred candidate will survive later, for the sole purposes of knocking out their more hated candidate, is itself a deliberate action. The ballot box is itself a game of not only trying to get whom you want to win, to win, but also of to get whom you want to lose, to lose; and in some cases to never ever come back. If there are ten candidates rating from all-right, to okay, to meh, to cuss cuss cuss, then marking "10" in that last box for the cuss cuss cuss candidate not only expresses hate through the ballot box but is actually also quite cathartic.

Single-Member districts are themselves subject to Duverger's Law which says that in the long run a political system will tend towards two-party politics or two pelotons. This is because there are only two end outcomes in the game - win and lose. In the long run, teams generally form to knock the other out; this already front loads the electorate. If there are two groups who like/hate Allan Albertson and Betty Bingle, then sincerely voting for Carol Cox, Dave Digby, and Ektar the Exterminator ahead of the others, is I think a perfectly valid way of expressing hate at the ballot box. Voting CEDAB if you hate B is valid. Voting ADECB if you love A and hate B is also valid.

Instant-Run-Off Voting and especially voting 1 for someone's first preference, as an exclusionary choice. This is perfect when the result itself is exclusionary because there can only be one winner in a single member district. In Star Voting and Score Voting systems, voters are only asked for their approval and not their abject hate. Star Voting and Score Voting systems can lead to electing someone whom some of the electorate may tolerate but they can not deal with abject hate because 0 stars is not a disrete unit. 

Someone much smarter than I suggested that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Star Voting and Score Voting systems can deal with approval but they are unable to determine a withholding of consent or a refusal to give consent. Instant-Run-Off Voting by its nature, which forces voters to make an empirical distinction between their preferences of candidates, explicitly tells you who they hate because that person will be last.

Horse 3205 - The Barbenheimer Bin Fire

With the two movies Barbie and Oppenheimer currently in cinemas at the same time, the opportunity to watch both of them as a kind of textual contrast seems really delicious to a lot of people. The interblobs are full of the phenomenon of "Barbenheimer" and I have even heard of some people's desire to see the two films cut together and then redubbed in the same way that "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist" which was released in 2002 was a recut of the 1976 film "Tiger & Crane Fists" with new unrelated footage.

Personally, I have no interest in seeing Barbie but I might have some in seeing Oppenheimer, however my social media feeds are a mix of angry people from left and right parts of the economic spectrum along with authoritarians and libertarians all having a five bell alarm dumpster fire. Both films are said to have some king of luxury-gay-space-communism-apologist-cryptofacist-death-imperialst agenda; depending on which member of the commentariat is speaking. With every opinion turned up to 11, the wall of sound is such that as a neutral, I have no ability nor desire to bother to understand any nuance at all.

As I don't really care about any of this insane yell-fest, the things that I have found to be the funnest have been pink and black meme worthy contrasts, people trying to shoehorn quotes into both films, and the following graphic which in my mind looks like the kind of thing that you'd see for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election:

Presumably the degree to which something is trending in America, correlates to the level of anger at the thing because that's the way the interblobs work. The interblobs are the ultimate perpetual outrage machine for the simple reason that human nature is such that while pleasure and yumminess and happiness is good, it it fleeting and dissipates. On the other hand, rolling resentment and anger feeds itself. This is a phenomenon which newspapers have known about since the beginning of newspapers which is why the adage "it it bleeds it leads" works so well. Indeed being angry and having designated enemies is the entire basis and business model of a lot of print and TV media. 

We can probably conclude that Oppenheimer is trending in New Mexico because that's where the nuclear bomb tests were conducted and where Oppenheimer was based. The rest of the map is a mystery to me, other than to say that something major has happened in Mississippi as the index figure has reached maximum. Also what's kind of odd is that this map would not be out of place for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election.

If we take pink as red and blue as blue, then plug those trending index numbers into the expected votes for the Electoral College in a United States Presidential Election then we get this:

Where the index is 0, I have taken this to mean that the state is undecided and that this would remain a toss-up. Something really interesting emerges. That is that six states which are currently sitting on 0, are sufficiently powerful enough to render the imaginary Barbie-Oppenheimer election for 20XX, too close to call. As the Barbiecrats still need 26 and the Oppenblicans still need 31, then this imaginary election swings on the hinges of Michigan and Pennsylvania. I would suggest that Barbie needs to mount a campaign based on building pink Cadillacs and rock-and-roll and Oppenheimer needs to campaign for steel production and higher automotive tarrifs. 

Perhaps the freakiest thing about this whole Barbie-Oppenheimer thing is that are not quite contemporaries. Oppenheimer worked on the Manhattan Project and the the Atomic Energy Commission before being driven out during the second red scare as a supposed communist. Barbie on the other hand, is a doll which was first introduced in 1959 and well and truly into the Cold War.

Assuming that the peak performance of an organisation happens when the average age of everyone within it is 38, then that puts the birth dates for the two enterprises as 1907 and 1921. It is reasonably safe to assume that probably everyone involved in either is either very very old or very very dead. Either way, both stories either because nobody is left alive or because the work is only making use of the branding and intellectual property, are both works of some degree or completely textual fantasy. I can make that remark without having seen either because that's how films work.

Ultimately the Barbie-Oppenheimer outrage election is about the audience of 2023 yelling in all directions and running from side to side like a bunch of brainless sheep. Also, before you accuse me on commenting on films that I haven't seen, remember that Barbenheimer started out as a meme flame war and that has been very much on display and burning brightly from the outset. I would still like to see both films put through the meat grinder and made into one new glorious abomination sausage.

Aside:

I know very little about Barbie lore. I do not know if she was/is intended to be a teenager or young woman but if we take her age to be 20, then she would have been born in 1939. Barbie is therefore a member of the Silent Generation, who would likely have little memories of the Second World War which would be sensible, but who would have grown up with rising awareness that what Oppenheimer started was leading to nuclear brinkmanship of two superpowers. That is unless of course Barbie is truly a vapid and empty vessel, with no knowledge whatsoever of the world of 1959 which she found herself in. The actual real-life Barbie would be 84 years old now. 

Horse 3204 - Easily Countered With !!!!

The way that the algorithm works at chess.com means that if you play someone at about the same skill level, you can expect to win about 50% of the win. A database of millions of users provides possibly the truest set of calculations of Elo within any organisation.

I find myself being able to win plenty of games against people in or around the same kinds of skill level and then get absolutely beaten back into the stone age by people a thousand and two thousand Elo points higher. However the problem with playing against people rated roughly the same as you; especially down here at pleb level, is that you get to see the same rubbish again and again. 

One of the consistent things that you see at slightly better than rank amateur chess is the Wayward Queen Attack; which is used by people primarily trying to win cheap Elo points off of other users. 

Wayward Queen begins:

1. e4 e5

2. Qh5

Moving the e4 pawn to the centre of the board opens the door for the Light Bishop to play the cross diagonal and for the Queen to hang out on a white diagonal with only the opponent's f7 pawn standing in the way. play the g-pawn too quickly and the queen then takes Black's e-pawn and places it on the long dark fianchetto to take out Black's Kingside Rook. From here, the White Queen can do all kinds of merry damage before running away. This leave Black in a Not Good™ position.

If Black makes a complete dog's breakfast of the whole thing, then instead of a Not Good™ position, this results in a Scholar's Mate by having thw White Queen sit on f7, being supported by the Light Bishop on c4. 

If you are playing in pleb level chess, then this is such a common attack, that the obvious counter should also be known; which is why White should definitely never do it. However, since we are down here in pleb level chess, not doing something is often mistaken for doing; so people will do it anyway. 

This is the perfect counter to the Wayward Queen.

https://www.chess.com/game/f4b04be9-25fa-11ee-83c3-175b9801000f

Wayward Queen.

1. e4 e5 

This accepts the attack.

2. Qh5 Nc6

As the White Queen has moved to h5, the only reasonable response is to defend that pawn. d6 might be a good choice but Nc6 is nastier as this then gives opportunity to develop an attack

3. Nc3 g6

I have no idea what the White Knight is doing here. Black's next move must be to kick the Queen away. However, since this is pleb level Chess, White has never learnt anything at all and must continue to attack f7 at all costs. The only sensible thing for White to do is to retreat to f3.

4. Qf3 Qe7

White retreats to f3.

Black Queen to e7 is in preparation for the Light Bishop because at pleb level chess, because at pleb level Chess White has never learnt anything at all.

5. b3 Nd4

This was an unexpected turn of events. I was fully expecting White's Light Bishop to go to c4 but because they panicked, b3 is a move of incompetence.

Black Knight to d4 attacks that Queen. White must move that Queen because not doing so loses it in a stellarly terrible trade.

6. Qe3 Nxc2+

Queen to e3 attacks the Black Knight. This is a sensible move but only at the end of a chain of utter stupidity.

The Black Knight's next move is of course to c2, thus forking the King and the Queen and the a1 Rook.

A check is usually marked as ! a fork is usually marked as !! a fork of two major pieces is usually marked as !! a fork which places the King in check and forks two major pieces can be marked as !!!!

At this point, with only pawn having been taken, White resigned.

1. e4 e5 

2. Qh5 Nc6

3. Nc3 g6

4. Qf3 Qe7

5. b3 Nd4

6. Qe3 Nxc2+

As far as I can tell, precisely because this is pleb level chess, then the Wayward Queen is the chess equivalent of griefing n00bs in an MMO. While a "griefer" is someone who derives pleasure from the act of annoying other users and being a general nuisance, the punchline to this sad joke of an attack, is that there is a counter to it and it is just as easily deployed. Black advancing a pawn to e5 after e4 has been played, is fairly standard, as is playing the knight to defend it. Neither of those moves have left the book. 

The secondary punchline to countering a Wayward Queen attack, is that down here at pleb level chess, the likely gain at the end of it all, is no more than about 10 Elo. We are all playing for chump change. So why bother? It would be easier playing actual chess.

Horse 3203 - He Probably Didn't Care Why He Was Studying Philosophy

This week at work, we had a client arrive off the street as a cold client, wanting us to do his tax return. This chap aged 22, was doing a Law/Economics/Philosophy degree and will more than likely end up as a staffer for the Liberal Party, where the ending of the career path is almost to become a Member of Parliament as if by right.

Maybe to hold it over me as someone whom he guessed was lesser in intelligence or class (because I work in an accountancy firm) he asked me what I thought of various things in philosophy. I think that he was quite surprised when I mentioned Aristotle and his discourse on "telos" in the Nicomachean Ethics, which in a roundabout way speaks of what the end goal, what the point, what the purpose of things like Law and Philosophy were. I would expect that particularly Aristotle and Plato should be superstars of western classical philosophy but I guess that whatever his course was, decided that they were interesting but ultimately to be moved on from. Almost certainly because I work in an accounting office, I very much want to ask the pragmatic questions of telos and ethos, and because I am a person of faith to ask the questions of philos and logos and theos.

I do not know where this puts me in the world of philosophy but due to my continual questions of if something is true and can be proven or not, questioning what and whom a thing helps, and how whatever the thing in question is is supposed to make the world better and/or for whom, but I get the impression that I am probably somewhere on the fringe and asking questions which philosophy students in universities today, simply do not care about. Probably that's a function of the fact that university students want to turn in papers to get the marks and get the degrees so that they can go off into the world and jump onto the treadmill of employment but is that really what university is for? Surely it is actually about scaring people into the very real notion that we don't really know 1% of 1% of anything, and that the kosmos is complex and confusing and scary, and we need to ask questions of it all the time.

Looking in from the outside it seems to me that philosophy is like looking at those warning labels on electrical substations that say "Danger: Keep Out" because once you move past the labels, it gets very scary very quickly. The big questions should alarm people and philosophy should require a critical disposition because even you do nothing, the finiteness and smallness of humans becomes all too apparent. 

The biggest statement about humans which should scare everyone practically all the time, is that humans are finite beings, who live on a finite world, with finite resources and who occupy a finite place in space and time. The reason that that should scare people, is that those statements about humans and the world being finite, are immutable and unchangeable. 

Sooner or later, every single person must face the fact whether they like it or not, that they will die. Religion makes claims about what happens after death and that definitely changes peoples attitude and perspective but even irreligious people, areligious people, agnostics, and hard atheists must eventually face head on, that they too will die. Human beings are finite and fragile creatures who live in the face of death.

Actually I think that there's something vaguely poetic about the fact that for people born naturally (that is not by Caesarian Section), that humans first entry into the world is between the points where urine and feces enter the world. Make whatever poetic claims you like but apart from a brief flash of pleasure (or not) humans first acts are to cause pain, and then enter the world between urine and feces. The last moment of a human's life may or may not be painful (I do not know) but after having caused paid, it is the lot for humans to ultimately return to being the dinner of worms, where once again the elements which made up a human body are converted back into the things that the Earth is made up of, through the process of urine and feces.

Yet even in the face of death, humans still have rational and even irrational desires. As limited and finite beings we have various animal desires, to eat and drink things, to have sex with things, to move to places where it is warmer or cooler and to be in physical comfort, and to go sleep, but all the while even satisfying animal desires simply isn't enough. Humans also have desires to love and be loved, to know and to be known, and because they are limited in space and time, to leave some kind of mark upon the world which will outlive them when they are gone and return to becoming worm food.

Probably because humans stand in the face of death, they also have rational and even irrational desires to decide what is and isn't true, and to make rational and even irrational decisions to hold on to what they think is true. At some point, everyone either through conscious effort or by falling back to a set of default, either accepts or invents some belief set. People might like to play with semantics here but at some point literally everyone must come up with some belief set, some degree of faith in their belief set (because it is impossible to believe in nothing), and accept or invent some rudimentary religion. Even if it is not formal, if religion is a set of practices based around what one believes and it is impossible to believe in nothing at all, then everyone has their own religion.

Formal religions where belief sets are codified exist, but even people who do not have formal religion in their attempts to hold into certainty in the face of death, still must arrive at something. Anyone who arrives at any kind of conclusion, must eventually ask the question of if that thing is either true or not. Defending what people think is true, is the essence of dogmatism. Likewise it follows that if dogmatism exists, then the questions of worship and idolatry also exist because the things that people are dogmatic about and hold out as being true, are the things that people hold as worthy of praise and worthy of defending.

Perhaps even more worrisome is the amount of power and force that people will wield in order to defend what they think is true. Eventually we have to conclude that anyone who has any kind of power, has to decide who gets to control it and what to do with it. When you have disagreement between different people about what to do with power, who controls power, and how those who have power are held to account, then invariably there are questions of dialogue.

It is those last few questions about power, particularly the control of power and the possibility of domination of everyone else which results from it, which should be of importance to someone doing a Law/Economics/Philosophy degree. Everything that is of economic value in the history of the world is either the resources in, on and under the ground and the people who live on it and the law exists because we want to make some kind of order of the chaos.

It is also those questions of the control of power and the possibility of domination of everyone else which I suspect is the reason why people who assume that by birthright, they have they ability to decide what to do with power and who controls power. Those other questions of how those who have power are held to account and questions of dialogue, are to be ignored, minimised and extinguished. It was curious that this week at least, this person maybe for the first time, found someone else who asked questions. I wonder if he liked them or wanted to dismiss them.

"It takes more courage to examine the corners of your own soul, then it does for a soldier to fight upon the battlefield."

- William Butler Yeats

Horse 3202 - The Wings Likely Didn't Do It

The thing about a good argument is that it is not mere contradiction but a series of propositions which are designed to establish a reasonable position. The thing about a bad argument is that it contains assertions which when contradicted by evidence, is still asserted as though it were fact. It is the latter that I come across when people assert that the rear wing on the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow caused flips and blowovers. I think that this car is unjustly maligned and that the accusation made of its rear wing is misplaced. 

The reason why the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow had a rear wing as opposed to the simple spoiler which had been in place since the mid 1980s, was itself in response to "the big one" which had become a feature in NASCAR racing. Cars travelling together at close proximity in very big packs, were beginning to have accidents of 20 cars in them. By keeping the rear of the car more grounded, it was hoped that the cars would track straighter and finally enter the world of modern motor racing. By adding end plate vanes to the rear of new rear wings, it was hoped that cars would track straighter and truer.

During 2007 and 2008 though, the accepted story that the rear wing was causing flips and apparently backed up by cars flipping and blowing over, ran away from the truth, and partway through the Car of Tomorrow's run, the rules were reverted back to an older style spoiler. The flips still happened but don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. This post is about arguing against the story with a series of propositions about why things work the way they do; instead of how they are imagined to be.

This is a tale of forces, of wings, and of air. Let's begin with the air.

Air is a physical substance which has weight. Air is a mixture of various gases, of mostly mostly nitrogen (78%), some oxygen (21%) and other gases such as water vapour, argon and carbon dioxide. All of these gases are made of various molecules of the gases in constant motion. Air pressure is created by these molecules moving around. Things that move create forces because things are made of stuff and stuff when accelerated, creates a force.

Things that fly, make use of those forces, either by moving through the air or by floating in it. Moving air is a swirly mass of forces which creates lift, which is itself a force, which lifts things like kites, balloons, birds, and aeroplanes. You can move air and make it do what you want it to do, with fins, blades, vanes, planes, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

An aeroplane as the name suggests, is a device which moves a thing through the air, with a series of planes which we call wings. A wing is just a fancy plane, which is used to control air moving over and under it. Aeroplane wings are shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing. When air moves faster, the pressure of that particular air decreases. The pressure of the air on the top of a wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. Since practically the entirety of the physical world is about cancelling forces, an aeroplane wing wants to cancel the difference in air pressure on top of it and does this by trying to move upwards. This upwards movement is useful because the difference in air pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up into the air.

Physics is completely apathetic and agnostic when it comes to the orientation of wings in air; so if you turn a wing upside down, instead of lift being produced as a force to suck the wing upwards, downforce is produced to suck the wing downwards. The reason why wings are used on racecars and high-performance vehicles is because that downforce pulls the car downwards; which makes the tyres grip the road better. Since the only point of contact between a car and the ground is through its tyres, then having a wing pull the car into the ground is useful as it means that power is more efficiently transferred through the tyres into the road and also helps a car go through a corner better. Making a car go through a corner better means that when the corner straightens out, more power can be put to the road faster. The point of a racecar is to go around a track as quickly as possible.

However, if you turn that same wing backwards to the direction of travel because the car has spun, then you are no longer presenting the same shape of wing to air. Instead what is being oresented is a shape which because it was designed to face in the other direction, is now tilted upwards well beyond its stall angle, and where instead of the traailing edge having an attached layer of boundary air at higher pressure which creates downforce, that trailing side is now in turbulent air and is creating eddies. 

Downforce is not a push force because air hits the front of the wing but rather, a pull force as the whole device is sucked downwards to try and cancel an area of lower pressure. When the wing faces backwards, there is a baffling push force trying to push the wing upwards but no pulling suck force which creates lift on the other side. 

I know that this might require some rudimentary thinking but in order for that wing to present itself backwards to the air in the direction of travel, it means that the whole car must have turned around immediately before it. This is where the real world makes liars out of people claiming that the wing caused the Car of Tomorrow to flip. Instead of that wing being the first thing to present itself to the air, the thing that presents itself is the whole side of the car and then underside of the car. The most dramatic examples of the underside of a car presenting itself to the air and causing a car to flip, happened at Le Mans when the Mercedes-Bens CLK prototypes flipped twice going down the Mulsanne Straight.  

The Car of Tomorrow's rear wing was no bigger than about 6" x 75". This means that there is a nominal presentation area of 450 square inches. The underside of a NASCAR Cup Car is bigger than 135" x 78" or 10,350 square inches. This is an area a mere 23 times larger. Who is likely to win in a fight? An army of 450 or an army of 10,350? An 8 pound baby or a 184 pound boxer? There is no contest.

If you look at the statistics for the number of flips per year (fpy) then the real world yet again makes liars out of people claiming that the wing caused the Car of Tomorrow to flip.

It is possible to count every single flip and blowover in the entire history of NASCAR. I have only selected the first 73 years of data as the period of the so-called Gen-7 car is currently being run and is therefore incomplete. The Car of Tommorrow was Gen-5:

All flips:

Gen 1: 1948-1966 - 72 (3.78py)

Gen 2: 1967-1980 - 20 (1.53py)

Gen 3: 1981-1991 - 32 (2.90py)

Gen 4: 1992-2006 - 70 (5.00py)

Gen 5: 2007-2012 - 25 (4.16py)

Gen 6: 2012-2021 - 19 (1.90py)

If you drill down into that data for the flips and blowovers for the Car of Tomorrow we find two periods both with the rear wing and without it.

Gen 5: 2007-2012 - 25 (4.16py)

fpr w wing = 14/156 = 0.0897fpr

fpr w/o wing = 11/115 = 0.0956fpr

There was actually a weak tendency for cars to flip more after they changed the rear wing back to a spoiler.

If you really want to explore this further, then the Society of Automotive Engineers, ran models in water to experimentally address the issue at the time.

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2011-01-1432/

There have been claims that the rear wing on the NASCAR Car of Tomorrow (COT) race car causes lift in the condition where the car spins during a crash and is traveling backwards down the track at high speed. When enough lift is generated, the race car can lose control and even become airborne. At least in part, to address this concern, a new rear spoiler was designed by NASCAR to replace the wing and prevent this dangerous condition. This paper looks at the flow characteristics of both the rear wing and the new spoiler using particle image velocimetry (PIV) to provide qualitative analysis as well as flow visualization. In particular, the interaction of these downforce devices with "roof flaps" (which are designed to prevent lift) is explored. 

- Society of Automotive Engineers, Jan 2011.

The punchline of this technical paper was that it found no correlation between the Car of Tomorrow's rear wing and flips and blowovers and the SAE couldn't actually produce a flip or a blowover by running the models backwards into the flow as presented. The paper concluded that the cause was something else but made no experimental attempt to discover that cause.

Actually the very big data set suggests that the most massive spike in flips and blowovers happened not as a result of adopting the Car of Tomorrow's rear wing but before then, from season 2001 onwards. I think that the actual reason is likely a function of the beginning of "tandem drafting" which is actually cars locking bumpers and pushing each other. The data spike tells the story that the rates of flipping and blowovers, have more to do with how aggressive everyone is, rather than the cars themselves. When you have cars pushing each other, that is by far and a way a larger set of forces than the downforce at the rear of a car. Drivers pushing and punting each other, which seems to have become more acceptable after about 2001, I think is a far more likely and reasonable reason for flips and blowovers. 3000 pounds of car belting into each other and being used as bludgeons to bash each other with, is the far more reasonable reason.