The moving finger rants

This post will be incomprehensible if you use Internet Explorer, but it's not my fault they have no idea about standards compliance.

From todays's Scotsman:

Had enough?

Recent reports of the poor level of some teachers' and pupils' language abilities makes one wonder what they would make of this sentence: Two pupils debated whether to use had or had had in a test paper; one, where the other had had had, had had had had; had had had had the examiner's approval. Maybe another reader could do something more interesting than copying old puzzles out of Mensa books compile a sentence including the same word consecutively more than 11 times.

John Birkett
St Andrews

Right.

Sirs,

In his letter (11th August), John Birkett challenges us to use the same word more than eleven consecutive times. His missive had had had had, had had had had; had had had had: had he but known it, it is trivially easy to add a couple more ‘had’s to his total.

Yours etc.

Paul A J Hamilton
Viewforth, Edinburgh

PS. Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

That bang you just heard was a Scotsman sub-editor's little head a splode. Yes, I am intolerably smug.

ObDinosaur Comics

PanGloss, not usually one for sensationalism, is calling it the day Democracy died. miss_s_b puts it quite clearly: If this bill passes, Peter Mandelson will have the power to cut off YOUR internet. So here's mine:

From: Paul A J Hamilton
To: Alistair Darling MP
Subject: Digital Economy Bill concerns

Dear Mr Darling

I'm writing to you to express my concerns about the lack of proper Parliamentary debate on the Digital Economy Bill. The Bill is designed to regulate how a great deal of our economy operates in the coming years, and it deserves appropriate scrutiny and due democratic process, not to be rushed through at the wash-up.

The Digital Economy Bill contains several controversial measures that concern me and many voters. It unfairly places the burden of policing the internet onto internet service providers that are ill-equipped to do so. It allows the arbitrary disconnection of an internet connection on the mere suspicion of copyright infringement, without any burden of proof or procedure for appeal. This measure in particular will adversely affect not only infringers and alleged infringers, but their families, colleagues, and schools, many of whom will be innocent people who rely on an internet connection to go about their daily lives.

The Bill is being publicly opposed by industry experts, noted copyright lawyers, ISPs, and internet companies, as well as the general public. The only organizations who seem to be in favour are in the music industry. This smacks of law making by industry on behalf of industry and, frankly, makes a mockery of the democratic process.

As a constituent, I ask that you demand a proper debate at the Commons stage of the Bill, so that this inappropriately draconian legislation is not merely passed through on the nod while denying us our right to proper democratic scrutiny and debate.

Sincerely, etc.

As with the usual Creative Commons strictures applied the the rest of this blog, feel free to share, remix, etc. I suspect I'm shouting into a void, but I happen to know that a lot of you have MPs who aren't Alistair Darling.

• They Work For You
• 38 Degrees form letter

Go.

To: tycho@penny-arcade.com
From: [me]
Subject:Seasonal microbrews, brigand

Dear Jerry/Tycho

I've enjoyed reading PA for many years, but today's comic was a stroke of pure genius that struck a chord deep within my very soul.

I hereby unconditionally offer you my firstborn.

All the best,

pajh

~

They're my lungs [their title, not mine]

Sirs,

Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland witters interminably about the already well-known dangers of smoking (Opinion, 23 September), with cherry-picked statistics about the cost of smoking to the NHS. She neglects to mention that tobacco tax revenue far outstrips this figure and provides plenty of extra money left over to pay for the generous government grants that make up her salary. [sources: http://tinyurl.com/lvbm37, http://tinyurl.com/m2z8pk]

The simple fact of the matter is this: at no time in the last fifty years has a rational human being in the western hemisphere, whether adult or child, ever read the Surgeon General's warning, smacked their forehead in despair and cried to the heavens that they should have been told before. We all know what smoking does to us and some of us still choose to do it, and the figures show clearly that we more than adequately cover the social costs of our choice. It is not within the Government's remit to tell us what we can do in the privacy of our own lungs, and is certainly not up to interfering busybodies like Sheila Duffy and ASH.

Fact is it's got precisely fuck-all to do with the dangers of smoking to the individual, and it's got even less to do with somebody please thinking of the chiiildrun. It's got everything to do with the fact that Sheila Duffy personally doesn't like the fact that some people smoke.

I am glad to live in a world in which Sheila Duffy doesn't get to tell me what to do.

( Oh dear, he's at it again )

Thus:

Richard Lucas (Letters, 12 December) is justified in his concern at being tarred with the same brush as the American ``Christian Right''. His Dispensationalist brethren across the Atlantic have a remarkable knack for making all other Christians look bad by association—although sometimes it seems that Mr Lucas needs little help in this regard.

The phrase ``Christian Right'', in common usage, has come to encompass much more than a simple description of neoconservative politics as they apply to pronouncements of faith. The phrase can also imply religious bigotry, overzealous proselytizing, a penchant for warmongery, or, very often, a smug conviction that no one else is entitled to theological opinions of any kind.

May I humbly submit to the Scotsman the phrase ``Christian Convinced-they're-right''?

Well, I thought it was funny. Today I am setting conference rooms and doing accounts, so I am easily amused.

( From today's letters page:... )

There is, of course, no way they'll print it (despite the fact that I offered them an alternative phrase in case `whore' is too strong for a family paper). Nonetheless I feel better, and that's what's important.

The other night, after eighteen months, I logged into my university account.

The poor dears have been holding it for me, as if in the vain hope that someday I may return to sort their fucking lives out again. In England's hour of greatest need....

Several thousand unread messages—maybe I'll deal with those another time—and my essays. Oh, my essays.

Some of you may recall the Systems Design Project. Some of you may recall the vomitous torrent of bile, hatred and vitriol that I handed in as my report. The phrases obsolete hardware, could not charitably be described as cutting-edge and dysfunctional group dynamic abound.

( Highlights behind the cut. It's a `best of pajh' retrospective spleen-o-rama, just for you )

The whole thing is here if you're interested. (See, I can `host files' on my `web space' now. I have the technology.) I remain quite impressed that I managed to write 6,127 words and not one of them was `fuck'.

I handed that in and had a nervous breakdown two days later. On reflection, I can't say I'm at all surprised.

Oh, and if anyone can tell me what I was going on about in this document, I'd be much obliged if they could tell me. This was the one in which I fixed all of the problems inherent in the current approach to genetic algorithms and suggested a way forward based on common sense and less frenetic mid-nineties grubbing for research money.

I was some kind of fucking genius two years ago. Now I have very little idea what any of those words mean.

I don't know why I read the Scotsman letters page; it always makes me angry. The letters page is populated entirely by lunatics, retards and mouth-frothing morons, viz. the guy the other day who declared that the entire human race must immediately evolve into vegetarians because of E.coli.

How can there be so many Daily Mail-reading Middle-England fuckwits in a country that's not even England?

And then sometimes you get utter cretins like this:

Mixed Beliefs

George Newlands (Focus, 24 May) is kidding himself if he thinks that endorsing same-sex partnerships is loving and promotes healing. Asking God to make holy what he calls sin is the result of deluded thinking. There may be one institution called the Church of Scotland but there are two different belief systems in it; that much is clear.

Joshua Bovis
Greenvale Drive
Falkirk

In a moment of madness on Thursday, I replied. I was sort-of hoping not to get printed, because I don't really want to be the kind of person who writes letters to the Scotsman. No such luck.

Deluded thinking

Joshua Bovis (Letters, 25 May) sees the endorsement of same-sex partnerships as an affront to his God and decries it as the result of deluded thinking. On the contrary, asking an imaginary being who lives in the sky to tell us what is right and what is wrong is the result of deluded thinking. Appealing to our own sense and wisdom is by far a more reasonable attitude than one which uses the invented sayings of a fictional entity to support one's own hateful prejudices.

Paul A J Hamilton
Viewforth
Edinburgh

Herewith I accept my admission to the ranks of the mouth-frothing morons. One day the lunatics and retards of the world will gather, and they will build a statue of me.

Quite pleased they didn't put my house number in. The evangelical church round the corner would be out with the placards in the street. (Little Red Cookbook, Little Red Cookbook.)

I should also observe that in the last 24 hours I've been broadcast on the radio and published in a major mainstream newspaper. Wonder if I can get a lifestyle column next? (Spring fashions: What shade of black goes with that coat?)

(Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't buy the Scotsman. I steal it from work.)

From: <me>
To: <CS3 Course Organizer>
CC: <DoS>

Subject: AILP Task 5 results

It has come to my attention that the marks for the Individual Report part
of the AILP are identical for each member of each group, despite
significant variance in the style and quality of the individual handins.  
This seems to somewhat negate the point of having an individual section of
the practical.

Having put a lot of work into this practical, the offhand way in which the
marking seems to have been performed seems rather glib. Since Miles has
appeared to consistently shirk his responsibilities since the beginning of
the academic year, I was hoping that he might demonstrate some effort in
at least this final part of his role.

Furthermore, the marks themselves seem significantly lower than the marks
gained for the other four parts of the project. While I appreciate that
there will be some differences in marking style between Manuel and Miles,
a difference of thirty per cent is somewhat suspect. I was hoping that
there would be agreement on a standard of some kind between different
markers.

The students I have spoken to have been highly disappointed with the
situation. We'd appreciate some assurance that the marks given were indeed
fair.




pajh
UG 9901468
-- 
Paul A J Hamilton
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

             Subverting the Dominant Paradigm since 1989