An Amercian Road Trip (With Disney/Waterparks)

I'm currently in the Big Apple, the American one, not Truro. The last time I was here I was 19, gosh that seems so long ago....

Its a family trip, with extended family, eight in all.

New York is great. Some observations so far.

• I'm shocked by the racial segregation here. There are the whites, who are served by the non-whites. Its economic/employment apartheid.
  
• Latina's have very big tatoos and are all very sexy. Everyone of them.
• It is possible to get a Coffee that has more calories than a burger.
• NYC is much bigger on foot than on the map.
• Jaywalking is illegal, but its fine to do.
• NYPD should go to the Gym more.

Start spreading the news, I'm leaving tomorrow......

If I set a Google Alert for "google" will it crash the internet?

Emergence

Emergence is the only magic.
New kinds of things just by degree.
Something for nothing,
New features for free.

Bulletpoint Buddhism: Kamma

This is the second of my attempts to express Buddhist Concepts as completely and succinctly as possible. As with the first bulletpoints, this is my interpretation and it is incomplete.

I hope you like:)

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Kamma

1. What Kamma is not:
1. Kamma is not currency.
1. It is not earned and spent and exchanged.
1. In some Buddhist cultures Kamma as merit has emerged but this idea is not in the Core Dhamma.

1. Kamma is not justice.
1. It does not make judgments.
2. There is no absolute morality with which Kamma could be somehow entwined.
2. Kamma is not energy/matter/force
1. There is no force of Kamma that flows through life effecting things.
2. There is no wave of Kamma good or bad that can wash over you.
3. Kamma is not the results of actions.
1. It is not the fruit (vipaka)
1. What Kamma is:
1. Logically
1. All causes have effects
2. Some causes are moral
3. Some effects are moral
4. Some moral causes have moral effects.
5. All effects are causes
1. Kamma is moral causation.
1. Etiology with moral quantifications and conditionals.
2. Mentally
1. Mental events events can cause other mental events.
1. Eg: If I see a sunrise, one mental event, that can cause a change of emotion, another mental event.
2. Mental states and systems are variously balanced between progressive/productive states and regressive/disruptive states.
1. Eg: Mental States can be "good" (happiness, mindfulness...) or "bad"...
1. The term "balance" represents the manifold systems and aggregates of mind such that the realised product, the experience settles one macro-state.
1. Its as if the experience of all the merging causes the experience of now as it is becoming and that experience becomes realised as one particular quality of experience.
1. Just as the many and various tributaries of a river become that river.
2. The kamma I create comes back to me in many ways, but it all becomes just the one experience of any given moment.
3. If a Mental state B is an effect of a Mental state A then there will be a consistent and contiguous distribution of balance between A and B.
1. This is saying that the mentality of an individual will not not have any random changes of balance between productive and disruptive states.
2. The disposition/satisfaction/contentment of individuals flows continuous and connected.
1. There are no gaps in the mental/moral/physical causal chains.
3. Eg: If I am very happy today, sad tomorrow and quite happy the day after, then this transition will be a continuous and connected change in my mental states.
4. Think of how a vista of clouds will change when watched. Each new state leads into the next but there are never points of discernible transition or sudden changes of kind.
4. Disruptive states will most likely produce more disruptive/bad/unwanted states.
5. Productive states will most likely produce more productive/good/desired states.
3. Socially
1. The interconnected systems of individuals and groups has many paths for moral causation.
1. This interconnected web of moral/other causation is the closest there is to a "force" of Kamma.
2. Disruptive causes are more likely to have disruptive future effects.
3. Positive causes are more likely to have positive future effects.
4. We can think of decisions we make as having social feedback.
1. Well intentioned decisions will have more positive social feedback than bad.
1. This feedback may be extant and obvious
1. Eg: Mary is a good person because she saved the orphans and this fact causes other people to be good to her and her to feel good about her self and other people to be good to others.....
2. The feedback may be subtle
1. Eg: The smile from a stranger causes you to.....
5. Understanding the karmic relationship you have with others is essential to following Dharma.
4. Altruistically
1. Good actions have more ways to benefit the doer than bad actions.
2. Kamma is the motivation/intention.
1. It is not the fruit (vipaka)
5. Individually
1. Only the individual has awareness of the mental states they experience.
2. Only the individual has potential causal control over their mental states.
3. Mental states and decisions are causes.
4. Only the individual can choose to cause a change in their mental states.
6. Philosophically
1. Kamma emerges when there is a sufficient depth/complexity of interconnected systems with choice/morality/self-interest to allow for macroscopic changes in the mental states of individuals.
1. EG: You may feel "glum" for no reason you can pinpoint but there will be antecedent reasons/decisions of immense complexity that entail this "glumness".
1. Antecedent causes could be material (more selenium!), sensory (my back aches) or more directly to do with thought and consciousness (life is rubbish today!) and there is a compatibility between them.
2. Kamma supervenes upon/emerges from mental-moral-social systems where decisions are the significant motivator.

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Bulletpoint Buddhism

I'm not a Buddhist scholar but I am a Buddhist and I like to think that I like to think.

Over the last seven years I have been pretty deeply involved in thinking about Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha, and trying to make this fit in with my personal attempts at understanding life and reality.


The Buddhism I have studied is the traditional teachings of the Buddha known as Therevadan Buddhism. I realised as soon as I started dipping my toes in this that it was much more level-headed and rational than I would have imagined; Dharma has evolved and taken up the effects of the cultures it took root in, this is never a bad thing, but, I believe, that it might make the core teachings less accessible to western rationalists, such as myself.


The following list of 3 Bulletpoints and their subs I believe captures the very core of Dharma; everything flows from the three doctrines of existence; Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha.


I have used the original Pali terms not to be pretentious but because, as an understanding will show, there simply are not the words or concepts in English to capture the essence of these complex, composite terms.

Please note that this is my interpretation and it is not complete.

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Annica, Anatta and Dukka, The Three Marks of Existence

1. Anicca: All causes have effects/All is impermanent
1. Everything in existence changes over over time.
2. All effects are causes.
   
3. All causes have effects.
2. Anatta: There is no soul/self/ego
1. No Soul: The universe is self-contained and complete.
1. There is no material beyond matter.
   
2. No new ontological material or events are added to or connected with the universe it at any point in space-time.
2. No Self: There is no thinker, only the thought.
1. There is no central seat of experience;
   
1. That idea is an illusion created as a by product of the fact that there are experiences.
2. The totality of an individual is composed of an aggregate of the material and emergent mental sensations, experiences, thoughts and self awareness.
   
3. Dukkha: Life is suffering
   
1. This is the First Noble Truth, Dukka.
   
2. Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness.
3. Impermanence is Dukkha.
4. Attachment to the idea of self is Dukkha
5. The diminishing returns on excitement are Dukkha.
   
6. Failed Expectations are Dukkha
7. Angst and Pain are Dukkha
8. Boredom is Dukkha
1. Dukkha has a cause:
1. This is the Second Noble Truth, Samudaya
   
2. The precedent cause of Dukkha is the misvaluing of past and expected experience in an increasingly diminishing space of possible experiences.
3. This creates a Tanha, a craving/thirst/want/attachment that necessarily has diminishing returns and cannot ever meet sustainable satisfaction criteria.
2. Reducing Tanha reduces Dukkha:
   
1. This is the Third Noble Truth, Nirodha
   
2. All individuals have the capacity to manage their inner mental life and attempt to reduce Tanha.
1. It may be possible to temporarily reduce the suffering of others but ultimately Dukkha can only be reduced from the inside.
3. If Tanha is eradicated totally than Dukkha is eradicated totally (enlightenment).
   
3. The Path to reduce suffering is The Noble Eightfold Path:
1. This is the Forth Noble Truth, Magga.
2. Magga divided into three domains, the Philosophical, the Moral, and the Mental
   
1. Philosophical Development
1. The Philosophical Aspect of Dharma is rich and challenging and consistent with contemporary science and philosophy.
   
1. Right View
1. To try to see the world as it really is.
2. To understand Dharma and how the parts are connected.
1. To be able to see Kammic Connections with increasing clarity internally and externally.
1. Kamma is the complex mental/moral/physical causal web that covers human experience and interaction.
2. To be able to understand becoming and the origination of becoming.
   
1. Right Thought
1. Renouncing the self to become selfless.
2. Cultivating compassion and morality
   
1. Moral Development
1. The moral aspect of the path is not based on the idea of a moral absolute but rather the practical and pragmatic point that you cannot travel well on the path if you are poisoned by the kammic results and internal/external distractions of the prohibited acts.
   
1. Right Speech
1. To always speak the truth. Honesty is essential to Practice of Dharma. Lies have kammic consequences that can never be predicted and should be avoided even in cases where it is not in ones self interest (though this would not be without exception, of course)
   
2. To speak without anger and abuse
3. To speak with good intention
4. Not to gossip
1. Right Action
1. Not to kill. The taking of life, most especially human life, is wrong.
   
2. Not to steal
3. Not to commit sexual misconduct
4. Not to be intoxicated.
   
1. Right Livelihood
1. Do not partake in activities that could increase the suffering of others.
1. Mental Development
1. Buddhism treats the mind as a body organ that can be exercised and trained.
   
1. Right Effort
1. To analyse and eradicate disruptive mental states
2. To understand and induce beneficial mental states
   
2. Right Mindfulness
1. To practice inner attentiveness.
   
2. To be focused and aware of the sensations, perceptions and thoughts that constitute the mind
   
3. Right Concentration
1. Suppressing worry, distraction, doubt, restlessness
2. One pointedness of mind

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The live and better formatted version of this can be viewed in my google docs here:


http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxw9rth_344vkzqzfgz

What is the Purpose of Life?

The natural state of reality is systemless. It is disorder not order. It is less rather than more. It is simple rather than complex. It is low in value and information. The natural state of reality is devoid of complex and connected systems.

Persistence is existence into the future. Given the natural systemless state of reality the only systems that can persist are those that are able to defeat the collapse into the natural state.

Imagine a system at a point in time. If we accept the Law of Impermanence then it follows that this system must change at some point in it's future. This change can either increase the system's arcitechtonics (make the system more organised, structured, connected) or it can decrease it. The natural direction is for systems to decrease arcttechtonically.

All of everything is tending towards nothing and it is only the persistence of systems, you, me the galaxy, that holds this of.

The very root fundamental purpose of life, traceable through a linear and continuous, though vague, path down through the scaled of abstraction; Beneficial states persist.

The foundational fact of systems is that beneficial states persists. The beak of a finch, a job promotion, the distribution of matter in the universe, beneficial states persist.

The fittest survive. The beneficial persist. In many ways these are trivial and tautological, but in in understanding this tautology with the systems framework you can see why things are as they are. They are as they are because of enough impermanence (time and change and possibility) to allow increasingly more complex systems to emerge from more simple systems.

That is why we are here. The purpose of being here is to continue the persistence of systems. And the method of doing this is by increasing beneficial states within systems.


There is no fundamental meaning to life, in the way there is no fundamental meaning to a joke, but there is a fundamental purpose to life.

Rebirth and The Simulated Buddha

There was a point a few years ago when I really, really wanted to believe in the Buddhist concept of Rebirth; it was the one thing that was missing from me taking on The Dharma, in every aspect.

I have since realised that you don’t need the notion of Rebirth to understand the Four Noble Truths and the subsequent Dharma that stands on this. However, I did manage to reconcile rebirth with my understanding of science and cosmology and put my explanations here for your perusal.

Rebirth

Buddhists believe that individuals are the realisation, at any current point in time, of a changing aggregate of mental events and properties.

There is no thinker, only thoughts.

There is most certainly for Buddhism no concept of soul or self. No eternal non-physical substance. No Cartesian experiencer in our minds. This is the doctrine of anataman and it is key to Dharma.

But if there is no soul and no self... how then, can there be rebirth?

The unsatisfactory answer provided by Buddhist's (Though not, as far as I am aware, by the Buddha Himself) is that though here is no soul or ego, the aggregate of mentality, causally conditions the realisation of a new but related aggregate in a future reborn individual.

The metaphor often used is that its like a candle flame lighting the next candle, that this is the conditioning of rebirth to future lives.

Its an initially compelling metaphor but offers no explanation as to what is being conditioned in the future, or the mechanism of this conditioning.

Rebirth, I believe now, Isn't needed to understand and benefit greatly from Dharma. But a couple of years ago I did come up with a way that I could make sense of rebirth alongside a scientifically and ontologically consistent world view.

The Simulated Buddha

I conceived that it would be possible that this Universe was a simulation, an ancient idea in Philosophy and now modern thought. In this model the entire universe is simulated from the bing bang rather than the "brains in vats" or Matrix simulations.

Universal Simulation Features

• This simulation was initiated 15 billion years ago in "simulation time".
• The universe was started a set of initial conditions and laws and let to progress according to these laws and conditions.
  
• The universe is one of countless simulations.
  
• The fact that we are here to ask confirms it must be one of the successful simulations.
  
• The purpose of the simulation universes is to produce exceptional systems.
• Exceptional systems will be at least rare statically in the simulated universe and rare functionally.
  
• Emergent properties like compassion and being self aware are what I imagined would be the kind of properties the simulation was created to produce.
• In my model there is also this notion of understanding the nature of the reality of the simulation. Such that enlightenment is understanding and extinguishing the simulated reality.
  
• When a sufficiently exceptional system has emerged within the simulation it removed from the simulation and made real in whatever actuality the simulation is run in.

Assuming the Universe has these features I reasoned that when the Buddha reached enlightenment what happened was he passed a threshold within the simulation. His mind became detached from the other systems of the simulation, he saw the simulation as it was.

The creation of enlightened beings was the internal purpose of the simulation. We cannot make sense of the external purpose of the simulation.


Within the universal simulation context it was easier to make sense of rebirth:


The aggregate mental properties that are the information about me that is passed on
into the next life. But this information isn't identical with the me now, its just reusing sufficiently enough of this information to retain the progress I have made as a conscious potentially exceptional being. This fits well with the Buddhist idea that we all have this potential for enlightenment in us.


The motivation for rebirth from the simulation point of view was that if your simulation produces exceptional systems, like conscious humans, at the end of massive antecedent causal chains (Ie billions of simulation years) then it be beneficial to retain the essential components of these exceptional systems.

Rebirth then, in this universe, is the persistence across human systems of the aggregate mental properties that form my consciousness, morality and personality. The reason for rebirth is to preserve the progress of conscious systems towards transcending the simulated universe.



Do I believe the universe is a simulation?

I believed that Buddhist metaphysics, including rebirth and Nibbhana, could be made consistent with science and my understanding of ontology. In my mind I achieved this.

I don't however believe this is the case.

I don't believe in rebirth.

I do believe all is impermanent

I do believe there is no soul.

My Poetic Thoughts on Madonna's New Album

Madonna went from "St Madonna Of The Yummy"
With the ever flat tummy
To "The Crone you would Bone"
At exactly the point
That Lock Stock was DVDd
But her Hard Candy
is actually pretty good.

My thoughts on "The Who"

As a boy I loved The Who, for all the reasons people loved, and love, The Who.

But then came the 90's and The Who didn't really fit with the non-prescription pharmaceuticals of the Era, so I put them on hold in terms of my listening.



Then as the 90s came to an end I started to get very much back into them. Until....


Townsendpaedeogate in 2003.


Sex with children is fine if by "children" you mean "consenting adult humans who have parents".....


But the accusations against Pete Townsend where not implying that simple tertiary relationship. So, being a great follower of tabloid-herd mentality, I decided to throw away my MP3 Who Discography and place the The Who's corpus very much along side Jordi Chandler's police statement.

BBC4 on a Friday Night

But last night, my Wonderful Wife and I stumbled upon a BBC showing of a two hour documentary about The Who. From the first moment we were gripped. Golly-gosh what a rock and roll story like no other. What a band!

There were many moments where I felt like I was watching Napoleon commanding battle or Michaelangelo painting, such is the status of their product and magnificence.

Is he or isn't he?

In the documentary they mentioned Townsendpaedogate and everyone came out to say, "of course he isn't a kiddiefiddler, no way Jose." But you can't just follow what you hear unquestioningly like you are just part of a flock. So this morning, listening to The Who, I asked myself this simple question:

Is the evidence for Townsendpaedogate significant enough to outweigh the facts that everyone thinks he is innocent, including the English legal system and the fact that he is a musical genius.

So in my head I visualized a 3 axis mind-graph, with the axes being Evidence (of paedophilia), Opinion (on evidence), Quality (of Music).


I did some samples based on past paedobrities and found a pattern, a planar continuum of separation within the bounds of the hyper-visualized mind-graph.


The line bisects the cube on the evidence/opinion plane increasing against an increase of 2.4/7.1. So it's quite steep in the opinion bias. (If you are having trouble visualising this you might want to pop into Mathematica and do it in a computer.)



I will call this bisecting plane the JK Discontinuity because Jonathan King sits very close to it in the positive side. Glitter, Jackson , et al are down in the bottom of the cube, below the JKD... but where was Peter Townsend? I visualised.....

There is no spoon.

Woooooot!!! He was in the top half of the graph!!! A few mind-centimeters from Bill Wyman, in fact!

I didn't need an explanation as to why Pete Townsend joined American Childsex sites, no sir. That question was now not needed. Neuroclustuer, locate. Neurocluster, delete.

Reboot

I am happy, The remaining Who are happy, and the kids, almost certainly, are alright.

Why I love the Ipod Touch Even More

I have written poems to my iPod Touch and even... though unpublished.. a sonnet and perhaps... in my head a number of eulogies and threnodies.

But just when everything about it couldn't get any better. It actually does.

It actually has become even better, than the best it already was.

It actually is the first time in my long and promiscuous affair with technology that something has become an order of magnitude better without any physical change its its form.

There are some great games on the touch natively. But now, thanks to some free software, you can turn your iPod Touch into.... into a ...... into a nigh on fully functioning Game Boy Advance!

OMFGAJCOAB Game Boy Advance on my Ipod Touch

It's amazing, its better than an actual Gameboy Advance because the screen is better and even the virtual controls are great... even the save game aspect is better.

And there are zillions of commercial games you can get, morally but illegally, from the Bittorent fairy. These are not old games, these are modern and in many cases great little games... and most though not all play as fast and smooth as I imagine the originals would have.




Incidentally here are some other Salted Tech Firsts for the Ipod Touch:

• Its the only object x for which we already have an x in the the house and my wife would like another identical x. We do have 2 electric toothbrushes, not sure how. The point is, the Touch, because it's not a phone, you just leave laying around. So you go in and your kids or wife are playing it. And it's cool, it's hard to damage or crash etc. How bad can it get? NONE BAD, it's ace!
• It creates a pansexual coveting response in all virgin Touchers. The first time someone has a go... coverflow or the internet or iPhyscis... there is a wow factor of distinction. A wow that is so rare now with consumer products. If you have one, people like you more, it's that simple.
• It's the gift that keeps on giving. If you give yourself one, which you should do, it will give back to you many fold. And it will give to those around you. It's an experience very much like having a slab of ice made from the water from the swimming pool from Cocoon in your house, for all to use... except it's warm to the touch.

Conclusion

A fundamental aspect of Buddhism, one of the Four Noble Truths, is that the root causes of the dissatisfaction... suffering...and lack of ultimate wholesomeness to life and existence is caused by Tanha.

Tanha is a complex, deep and composite Pali term that means something like thirst, desire, craving, greed, longing. And the idea is, and it in my book is one of the most important ideas in human history, that this Tanha is unavoidable, because at every stage, all is impermanent.

This is so easy to see in all we do. The holiday we can't wait for and then when there it's not quite as satisfying as we thought. That object we have been waiting for that soon looses the value we initially placed on it. Material things or.... everything, it's all subject to the disappointments caused by the unquenchable Tahna.

I believe that the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, is the greatest of gifts. l also believe, that if the Buddha had had an Ipod touch (Jailbroken), we probably would not have The Four Noble Truths.

Drifting into History

I saw a woman today
Walking down the street
She was drifting into history.

Her loneliness and her illness
Were entangled with her smile.
She was drifting into history.

In those approaching moments,
Warmth of life and chill of death.
She was drifting into history.

And when she passed away,
She was just behind me,
Drifting into history.

My thoughts on inappropriate underpants

Today I had the kids at home all day; they are both under six but talking.

It was one of those days when I try to avoid them as much as possible, even though I am their guardian. There is an age old principle in parenting, if they are crying, they are probably not dying, and this something I adhered to. But come about three I decided it would be good to at least give them one activity that didn't involve asking them to leave my office when there was an advert on whatever TV channel they were watching.



So I decided upon that stalwart, The Park.



They got dressed up as a bunny and a dog, as often they do, and I knew that I needed to get changed.


And for that, I needed underpants.



My domestic assistant does my washing. It's not a sexist thing, it's not a lazy thing. I do my things, she does hers. One of hers is doing my washing. And I must say, apart from the occasional fabric over-softening, She can't be faulted. But today, for the first time since I hired her, I was out of underpants.


There weren't even any available dry "one dayers" that any right minded guy would resort to. It was not a conspiracy, it was a black hole of underpants caused by the collision of various domestic singularities. It was the Perfect Storm (welcome to the first ever use of a storm metaphor to represent a lack of underpants).


I had two impatient kids dressed as super-sized pets standing in the hallway and I has no underpants. But I had options. Until you're strapped to the nuke, you always have options.

• Go Bareback - I don't really like to do it. I don't know why. Its not just hygiene, there are chafing issues. There is the higher probability of "monkey tears" after the use of a urinal.
• Go To Marks and Spencers and get some - it's just down the road. But it would probably involve leaving the kids at home.
• Wear some of my wife's- I don't really have "transsexual" issues about this, I just don't like the idea of my wife wearing panties that I have worn. She is above that, in my mind.
  
• Wear Swimming Trunks - There they were, in my drawer. In the drawer sans underpants, a pair of swimming trunks that would make an ideal pair of pants. Bingo!

Off we went. It emerged as an issue in my head, after a quarter of a mile, that my McGivered underpants would, for the rest of the day, be a real-time dual-side scrotal garrotte, with each step.


I tried to persevere, but it was just a few steps later that I realised that each step would also be but a stage in an endless cycle of self-wedgifying. I had to go bareback. And I had to go bareback fast.

Bear Grills

I got out my ever-handy pocket Swiss Army Knife and cut the right side. I walked a few paces and cut the left side. That was that... I thought.


Even though there was a full collapse of underpant topology and morphology with those two cuts, the underpants would not budge. The fabric, 90% Nylon, 10% Elastic, grips like a goat on a bramble, and so there was not going to be any lateral sheer between my balls and this alien skin. No sir-eeeee, Bob.


I had to go in.


Both hands.


I want you to pause for a moment and imagine a man standing in the middle of a pavement accompanied by two young girls, dressed in a full-on bunny suit and dog suit, tails, ears the works, and this person has both of their hands in their trousers, to the forearms, and is "aggressively fidgeting".


I pulled and pulled the front side was free... then the back... it kind of fell like a flat jellyfish into the seam of my trousers and I thought rather than extract, I would leave... I had achieved my goal.... la liberte du lingeree.


I was done. Free!


My kids by now had run off. I closed my knife away and looked behind me. There, standing watching me, were four workmen working on the road.


There was a hiatus in my head. I raised my hands and shrugged and all I said, with an accompanying (I guess) dumb-looking smile, was , "There's nothing to say!" before I ran off after the two kids.... expecting at any moment to be gunnded down by a Black Ops Paedocopter.... To die a nonce with my makeshift pants slithered down my leg.

Swimming Trunks are for swimming.

My Thoughts on BBC's "The Passion"

The Passion is the BBC's new Easter Special; designed by The Hegemony with just one purpose:

To get bums back on this nation's pews; for just one reason:

To counter the damage done by Richard Dawkins and Tom Cruise to the notion of religious belief, think, "Children of God in Need".


It's an ambitious project - 2 hours of TV that needs to open everyone's eyes to the teachings of both the Kingdom of Heaven and the Word of The Lord; a scope probably not matched in breadth and complexity since Peter Jackson's LOTR Trilogy.


The Passion, based on a script written by The Disciple Formerly Known as Saul, could well have been the epic that it needed to be in order to meet the BBC's conversion targets, but there is one critical flaw.

It's not the miasma of textual contradiction inherent in the script or the fact that The Disciple Formerly Known as Saul was of questionable veracity before two millennia of editing, re-editing and censoring of his original narrative.


It's not even that Pontius Pilate speaks like Rab C Nesbitt.


It's the fact Jesus, in the show, is far too smug.


OK, so he is the Son of God. He knows he's special, but Nazarine or No-zarine, there is just no call for smug.

This Jesus walks the messianic walk, and all that jazz, he can even do humble, but there is always that smug smarmy "holier than thou" look on his face.



If that's the Messiah....maseltov!!!

my thoughts on the BBC iPlayer on the Apple Ipod Touch

So this is just launched... I shall give it a whirl....

Hummm..... It looks just like the Desktop version....

Categories>Comedy>Late Edition... here it is playing.....

Its fast....to play and browse.

The pictures are a little bit thatcopyofTheMatrixIboughtonPatPongin2003

It is steaming smooth and sound is in sync.

This is great.

This is new.

The is the BBC on my Iphone in My time.

We were thinking of getting a telly for the bedroom.... but now... maybe not.

I love it when a Saturday Morning has a lil paradigm shift.

My thoughts on Jonathan Coulton

I heard this musician talking on this weeks TWIT (133) and thought he sounded smart and funny, didn't really hear his music.

I liked the fact he realsed his work under Creative Commons.

I did an itunes and bought his album for my delightful ipod touch. I liked that album and then acquired, via the Bitorrent fairy, his "Thing a Week" Albums. Now I'm not sure if I stole these or not.... but I am erring on the site of less caution.

Creative Commons means Its OK to act like a common thief about other people's creativity, Discuss

Whats It Like?


Its musically excellent, diverse and interesting... sometimes funky.... sometimes country... eletcronic and acoustic... jazz/blues and blues/jazz.

Lyrically, its of the same caliber, more so. It crackles with humor and insight and satire and romance and .... futurevisions. We have been thinking laughing and dancing. Super!

He sings about the big things and the little things, and, as any techlarised troubadour must, Flickr, Ikea and Zombies.


It is possible to label all musical experiences and media with a single term. In this case, jinglejanglejungleist, but don't take my word for it, listen to his music in your browser right here on his website.

This is also him, its the credits from the Game, Portal:




Jonathan Coulton, take it to the bridge....

My thoughs on Mad Men

I remember way back when, watching the first episode of The Sopranos.... and just thinking ... as the ducks did their thing (or was it geese?)..... that this was going to be good good TV. It turned out to be the best TV ever, IMHO. But now its done....

Last night I watched the first episode of Madmen, by the same man who made The Sopranoes, and felt very similar.

I wont even go into a description, watch online, this week only, in the BBC IPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009364t.shtml

Fingers crossed the series is perfect. here is my quick into guide to the male characters:

My thoughs on Personal Morality and Right Action

1. In most cases you should be able to clearly see the right action (there is no mystery about morality).
   
1. It is very hard to construct a hypothetical situation where it is not clear what is the right action.
   
2. If the right action does not appear to be the most compassionate action, it might not, in fact, be the right action.
3. If the action you want to do doesn't hurt or betray anyone, it may well be the right action.
4. The right action is often the fairest action.
5. The right action is never the least fair action.
6. If you cannot see the right action, then decide on the most compassionate action.

My thoughts on: The Darjeeling Limited

It was pretty good. But I missed the start. Which meant I never really got the hook. And if you don't get the hook, you don't finish the book.

I also missed various bits of the middle and latter parts.

My domestic assistant seems to think it was 7 out of 10 but I will have to unrate it.

The Beerpiphany of St Carlsburg, Part Two: Avoidance of the Alcoholocaust

The mega-myriad readers of my blog will know that I have a problem with alcohol. I'm not an alckie, I'm not even a big drinker. But when I drink, whether I end up sober, or so drunk I bone a bollard, my hangovers are evil. Invariably I enter a state I term the alcoholocaust.



In case you didn't know, hangovers are rated on the the H:E ratio (Hangover:Ebola ratio). The relative proportion of the hangover has a psycho-phsyiologiocal equivalent to Stage 3 Ebola. As a point of reference, a 19 year old rugby playing Russian would typically have hangovers with an H:E of 1:480. When you have an average H:E of 2, things get pretty bad. That's basically half an Ebola; an experience that can change you, as a man, deep inside.

Here am I, 36, with an H:E of a 68 year old.

Two weeks ago I went for a casual drink with my wife. I hadn't drunk much, maybe four pints... certainly not six. The next day, for literally about three hours I thought I had at least Marburg, possibly full-on Ebola. I was haemmoraging bile from my nose, which, considering my wife is a vegetarian, isn't very nice. At all. I pretty much puked myself into a mobius strip... inside the latrine. It was hell. There is a scant dignity remaining in life when four pints can do that to you. This much, now, is clear.....

It gets worse...

In the week I'm out for a drink with my dad and Conan. I was sober, we all were sober, I had max four pints... the next day... gesus fricking cristos.... another bout of full scale gastro-meltdown....

Que pasa?
"Feels like Lassa"

It is 2008. I had to take action. I went into Boots in the wonderful City of Truro. I asked the pharmacist if he could help me out with some sort of pre-emptive hangover cure. Yes, yes he could, he said.... but he couldn't.... he only sold what The Hegemony wanted him to sell... and that was just Resolve.

Resolve is not a cure. It is an insult to the cause. I knew I needed to go deeper...

• I started researching, learning, understanding. I was becoming a sage of alcohol. But even with the vast power of the internet I found no cure for my kind of alcoholism: high hangover susceptibility.
• I went far into the neurophysiology of alcohol on synaptic-dysfucntion.
• I searched for the philosophers stone of beer.
• I saw, under electron microscopy, how the decompositionals of alcohol by the body's organs effect the same neuro-receptors as those effected in auto-nausaic reactions, ie, the two finger tonsil tango.
• I fed rats Chocolate Liqueurs for months and watched them get more and more sleepy and podgy.
• I even went into the matrix and saw the back-end code for drunkenness as sensation and behaviour.

From fermentation
To defecation
And urination
There was no part of the alcohol equation
That was not very much, in my acquaintion

Last night I found the answer.

I didn't find it by luck. This was not muttered to me by some crazy from the crazyhouse...no wiki gave me tell.... this was found... by investigation... meditation.... dedication... and insight....

There comes a time in a quest
When you must do what is best
When you must make, and take, the test
When you must stand beyond the rest

And the answer... this enlightenment I bring to you.... this extinguishing of the alocoholocauststic anguish.... is summed up in the Four Noble P's which much be practiced before alcohol induced sonoration kicks in. The Four Noble P's, these which I have discovered, are the right and clear path out of Alcoholocaust:

The Four Noble P's

1. Pint (of water)
2. Pizza (purchased/prepared previously)
3. Pint (of water)
4. Paracetemol.

Perfectimondo.... Sunday morning.... I get up.. I check myself... and ?

Ebola?
"No la!"
Feelin' good?
"I'm feelin' fine?"
What's the time?
"Ten past nine"
AM?
"Amen..."
Having fun?
"Going for a run..."











The Beerpiphany of St Carlsburg, part one, is on salted.net

Salted Movie Review: The Nines

What is, or are, The Nines?

I'm fresh from this fantastic freak fest of a film, and I use that term not lightly. This film is a mesmerizing, if at times unpolished, masterpiece that not only intrigues right to the end, but at the end leaves you as if you have just done three Kaiser Sozes, two Matrix trilogies and half a dozen Monkeys.

It’s like one of the best quirky tales from 2000AD but made into a modern, well acted movie with great production. It has an unusually compelling style - and oodles of conceptual layers. But it’s complex and weird and hard to follow in a close to exhilarating way.

We just kept asking... "but?"... "how?" I think one of the brightest aspects of the movie is that it doesn't try to out weird you. So unlike, say, Eraserhead or Jacob’s Ladder (both great films, mind), there is always the chance that everything you see could be normal. And maybe, at the end it is all normal. Even with the revelation (I won’t spoil it by telling you what that is), even if you accepted it as this reality, even then, it could still be normality for all of us.

Q: Is it complex and weird like The Number 23?

A:No, the biggest part of The Number 23 is a number two.

I won’t tell you what The Nines is about, but I will tell you the nearest thing it reminds me of. My wife and I both will testify that my clothes (and of this weekend some soft toys) sometimes duplicate. Literally. As if someone has logged into reality, taken an unusual T-Shirt bought in a "London fashion sample sale" and then made an exact copy of it (except that one now has an oil stain that cannot be removed. I think it’s probably WD-40, so any tips appreciated). An exact copy. The same with a pair of brown trousers that I know, and would testify in a court of natural laws, that I only bought one pair of. No questions. I now have two pairs of them.

I think it also happens with socks, but my wife is sceptical of this.

Sure, the trousers and T shirt spontaneous duplications are mindboggling in the degree to which they render all notions of laundry normality.... abnormal, but it gets worse:

There have also been discoveries of soft toys that there were never, until recently, two of. One of the ontological clones was won five years ago by my dad in a raffle (probably Rotary) and could not possibly be duplicated (OK it’s possible. But I don’t think so). We have debated the possibilities. All of them, with a Doyleian keenness to the causal and material structures of our domestic reality that could allow this. Sure, perhaps the crazy lady across the road saw me wearing the shirt, spent four months on Ebay to get a copy, bought it with Paypal and slipped it in my smalls one spring morning. Maybe so. Maybe my brother in law, when he bought me the shirt, bought two, one for me and, knowing I'm a sharp dresser, one for him. And then at Easter three years ago accidentally left it in my house. Maybe....

It is rare in these days to have even the smallest of epiphanies.

Just as The Nines has lots of "buts", this crazy flux in our existential architectonics makes us have many more "maybes" than simple folk deserve. If you have objects disappear in your house, it can be weird. In English we call this "losing things". But when things don't vanish, rather they are duplicated... that’s mega weird... there is no word in any language for that kinda spooky. No word (ED, how about "isoanatanmorphic?", but that only applies to fruit.?).

These events, along with some before the little people came and took all my liberty away, have made me question the nature of reality at a very fundamental level, or at least, the nature of the material world.. and I guess I mean "material" in both senses here.

I wouldn't wish these kind of metaphysical palpitations on anyone, but luckily for you, you can experience even more weirdness than this by watching The Nines, without any actual weirdness in your clothing inventory. What is more, the weirdness The Nines can massage into your porridge is a kind of meaningful weirdness... a thought pumping weirdness... a metaphysical maelstrom... set conveniently in the Hollywood Film and TV world.

The Nines is in my Top Ten. That’s top ten of all time.

9/10 (duh!)

(Note: If there is a word for a review trying to represent what it describes, then I want that word to apply to this review).

My thoughts on Ross Kemp in Afganistan

If you are one of those people who, like me, know people who are in some sense "in the media" then you will know that Afghanistan is not the first Stan that Ross Kemp has been embedded in. There is nothing wrong with being gay, or Afghan, but last night's episode of this very in the heat new series showed that gay men can be placed front-line, battlefield deployments without crying.




I could not believe it, bullets were flying....

Taliban RPGS....

Snipers....

Ambush (not "manbush")

Ricochets....


The boy from Walford was in a situation - a bad lad jihad- where at any moment he could be killed, yet, he just stayed their, like a heterosexual solder.


Bravo!

If I won a Billion

If I won a billion:
A house in London,
LA and Amsterdam
And in each house,
And in every room,
An Ipod touched,
In my Itunes.

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Mini Review: Mark Wootton Exposed

Just watched this on BBC2, the start of a new series. It was awesome. You have to go to him, he doesn't come to you with easy laughs, but it is exquisite comedy. Mark Wooton is one of the World's secret comedy stars I feel, both his last his series "My New Best Friend" and "Shirley Ghostman" were ground breaking and this follows the vein... exceptional post-avant garde comedy (do what?).

The song he sung at the end, to a bemused live audience, was just...well... really funny.

You can watch it right in your browser on the BBC Iplayer here

Movie Review: Rise of The Foot Soldier

Just watched this, its REALLY good. I don't normally like violence but this was so well done.

Its a true story about a football hooligan/ gangster from the late seventies to the mid-ninties.

An unusual mix of great and average acting. Awesome fight scenes. Ace script. Ace film.