Cassowaries Rant

You shouldn’t be seeing this. If you did, it means you followed an old link as I was just checking something out, or I forgot to fix something up. The new address is http://zsau.firespeaker.org/blosxom. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

I somehow managed to make the best-tasting food I’ve ever had yesterday, apart from the fact that it’s ever so slightly too tomatoey. Essentially chilli-con-carne without the onions, because we had none and I was too lazy to go to the shops. But it has exactly the right amount of spice, exactly the right amount of vinegar, and so forth. Just that the tomato’s a bit on the strong side. Though I find tomato too strong at the best of times, which is when it’s cooked into something like bolognese or chilli con carne.

Just thought I’d say is all.

I have noticet and fixt up a Bug in Internet Explorer’s Rendition of this Site: It made the Separation between Paragraphs very difficult to determine. This has made the CSS for this Page that much less Elegant, but made it that much more Useable. This notwithstanding, I still strongly suggest you use a mozilla-based Browser to view this Site; by Using Internet Explorer, you may not be able to see all Abbreviation Expansions, or all Quote marks, or all Italicisation (e.g. foreign Terms), and the Separation between Sections in an Article will be Noted only by the Small caps used for the introductory Word, and the Contents will look uglier. If you use Opera, unless it’s fixt [UPDAE: Which it is, at least in its latest Linux incarnation (7.5 beta)], you may not be able to click on Links (a Bug whose Cause I have no Idea of).

Secondly, I finally workt out what caused the Gap in the Border by the Search box, and it is gone (in mozilla-based Browsers). This has been bugging me since I first added it.

Q. What’s one Pedant at the Bottom of the Sea?
A. A good Start.

I have been lent a Copy of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, volume one of the Baroque Cycle. One might be surprised (based on the Author) or less than suprised (based on the Series Name) to learn that it is a Piece of historical Fiction (the Portion I’m reading is alternating between the late 17th and early 18th Centuries). It is, I am assured, a good Book; and Neal Stephenson is a good Author. Nevertheless, I feel like whingeing not about the writing Style, or anything else, but about some pedantic Points, based on the british (trade) Paperback.

Firstly, on the very first Page, they somehow managed to let slip a Typo: The project would not have happened it [sic] all were it not for serendipitous conversations several years ago with George Dyson and Steven Horst. This could be ignored if it were on the second-last Page. On the first and one has to wonder whether they relied on a Spellchecker for the Proofreading. To their Credit, I don’t think I’ve noticed any others.

Secondly, whoever did the Italicisation has no idea how to do it, and in a List of Titles italicised the separating Semicolons etc. I would not care about this if it was just a Webpage or a Word Document or something, but I expect better of published Books. It would be a pity if the Knowledge of Typography and Punctuation was lost to the Ravages of Time, because we have them for a Reason.

And thirdly, Stephenson has often used historic Words and Spellings (for instance, Clubb for ‘Club’ and phant’sy for ‘fancy’). I’m not exactly sure of the Authenticity or Accuracy of all of these. Yet at the same Time, and in the british Edition, modern-day american Spellings have been used, which is a horrible Mixture of the modern and the archaïc. I would not care if he hadn’t used the Archaïsms. Also, he has a Couple of Anachronisms: The most interesting one is using the Word silhouette in the Speech of a 1713 recollection of an old Man’s Childhood. Silhouette, from french silhouette, comes from the Name of the french Finance Minister of 1759, M. Etienne de Silhouette (1709–1767); he would have been 11 at the time and so I sincerely doubt that anyone, much less an old Man in America, would be making use of the Term. A much better Word would’ve been shadow. (De Silhouette drew Silhouettes on his Walls as a Hobby; his Name, in turn, is a Fankification of the basque Surname ‘Zilhueta’, which can be decomposed as zilo ∼ zulo ‘Hole’ + -eta ‘Abundance of’.)

Anyway, after this Diversion I shall get back to reading.

‘the “animal pity”, which is based on proximity and an awareness of the victim’s suffering, is easily overcome by a “civilized” organization which places the victim at an immense distance and diffuses the responsibility for his destruction across as many people as possible.’ (Wallace, J. (1996, November). Hobbes was wrong. In The Ethical Spectacle, 2(11).)

No-one has any ‘Rights’.

The good thing about blogs is that you can express yourself however you want. One particular gentleman, for instance, chooses to express himself thus:

Fuck! They make me out to be some sort of touchy-feely wuss, or something.

What I meant by unfortunate was that Bartlett’s attack was piss-weak. Me? I would’ve decked the old cow.

and:

It has come to my attention that many of the bonzer people of this pearler of a country think I have some kind of anal fixation. Well, that’s crap, and I’ll be working my bum off to prove it!

…

But there was a difference. See, Howard grovelled totally, but I just reaffirmed our ties with that nation while retaining the right to disagree.

This is all well and good and totally up to him. And if it were just anyone, I wouldn’t care less and wouldn’t be commenting here. But it isn’t just anyone, it’s Mark Latham, Leader of the Opposition.

He’s aiming at a very particular demographic. I am not in this particular demographic. I don’t think I know anyone that is. For his sake, I hope than a large amount of the few million people I don’t know are, because his party has certainly lost my preferences.

I added a pointless little feature to this site the other day: Whenever someone visits it and I’m online and the site providing the service is working, I get a message via AIM telling me someone’s visiting it. (Also gives me your IP address and your referrer, but if you’re concerned about this, you out to be using an anonymiser; you have to give this info to every site you visit. Well… You can disable referrer stuff if you have a decent browser…)

Someone has complained that I don’t write enough here. You may blame this on him.

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, John Cowan wrote:
I got a spam with a subject line of "Set up ywm fegghig". Now plainly
Ywm Fegghig is the name of a conlang; what conlang is it?

Clearly pronounced /win fEdZi/, it is the new form of Lam Fegghig (Old Fegghig), and in dire need of a spelling reform.

In Lam Fegghig, ywm, ‘clean’, was pronounced /yu:m/, but a series ofsound changes (turning the y into a semivowel, velarisation before the velar vowel, followed by fronting and subsequent derounding; finally, the distinction of length was replaced by one of tenseness). The change of from /m/ to /n/ actually represents a change of phonemics, but phonetically it’s still [m]. In Ywm Fegghig, ywm means ‘new’.

In Lam Fegghig, there was already a tendency to palatise non-geminate velars in palatal areas, so it was not uncommon to see a h placed after the geminate velars. Later, the palatalisation spread throughout, though attacked geminate /gg/ different from non-geminate /g/. /ij/ eventually simplified into /i:/ and then /i/.

The language is spoken on Crange /krAJ/, a planet populated by aliens with a ruling elite consisting of Welshmen who fell through a wormhole at just the right time to take advantage of the coup and the fact that this planet is almost exactly like earth, except that it’s populated by aliens and ruled by Welshmen. Somehow they managed to remain dominant these past 800 years (which is about 1100 earth years). These days, though, they’ve allowed much of the remote northern hemisphere to rule themselves, and they’ve formed a relatively eco-anarcho-socialist society. For much of the rest of the northern hemisphere, they’re content to have a rule something like Mrs Windsor’s in Australia (i.e. they don’t care what people do in their name, but they’re not necessarily democratic). The much more habitable south, though, is still under an authoritarian regime.

(Ywm Fegghig is spoken in the northern hemisphere.)

Here we have a collection of relatively short responses to some of The Bench’s recent posts.

In response to ‘Julian and Andrew Bolt’

As an interesting note, the reason we have separation of church and state in Australia (and it is in our constitution) is more because we had people coming from England, Ireland and Scotland, which had different popular/state religions: the Anglicans would’ve been upset with the Catholic Church or the Kirk; Catholics with the Anglican church or the Kirk; members of the Kirk with anything but the Kirk. I guess the question you have to ask if you want to know if it’s a good thing is if the means justify the ends…

At any rate, as far as the rest of Parson’s post on anti-vilification laws, I’m going to have to agree with him. What was described was nothing but corruption and entirely disgusting. I’ll even agree with him that we should get rid of them: but I’ll justify this with there should be no need for them (should be as opposed to is); on the other hand, perhaps anti-vilification laws do nothing more than create what we claim they’re meant to remove. Furthermore, affirmative action probably does more harm than good; revolution cannot start from without or you get Communist Russia/China.

In response to ‘Feedback—again’

• It seems to me that Joel’s saying living in Eltham makes you more successful. I know he knows that’s utter bullshit: there’s nothing about a particular area that will make you better able to exploit others. At least, you’ve disregarded the fact that being better able to exploit others causes them to be able to afford to live there, but not moving out of an area certainly increases the prices… I guess the other option is that perhaps you have more of a community spirit then other suburbs, but I’d be surprised if this were so: most newer areas have been designed to make community somewhat difficult, in spite of claims to the contrary.
• I’m not sure what house prices were like a decade ago, but relative to other similar areas (which is not Toorak but other relatively new outer suburbs), were they higher? I think that’s the question you have to ask. People who bought houses in Endeavour Hills probably did so because they were cheaper there than in Eltham, so they were better able to afford it. You must remember that inner suburbs haven’t always been as popular as they are now.
• I’d put the Labor Party as right-authoritarians-but-relatively-centre.

In response to ‘More Feedback’

Firstly, the name of the blog was Cassowaries Rant, that being the plural of a noun followed by the third person plural of a verb. Unfortunately, there seems to be some difficulty in grasping this (I’m not sure that anyone who’s made use of my blog’s name has got it right), so I’ve since renamed it to something that should be easier to spell. Don’t feel like it was your fault, though, Joel: I’ve been thinking of renaming it for a while but couldn’t think of anything suitably witty.

Anyway, thanks for the response and nevermind the wait. Over the weekend, I came across the theory of Anarchism. While it is an extremely freedom-loving, like me, and left-wing, like me, theory, I’m not sure how far I can agree with it. I had been planning on making a longer post, but because I haven’t posted here in over a week, and because I would like a quite thorough introduction to anarchism (which An Anarchist FAQ certainly provides in its over 500 pages) before I make my decision regarding it, the longer post will have to wait. But until I’ve made it, which will hopefully thoroughly explain my ideas of how society should work, and the light all my posts sholud be read in, this post my seem slightly contradictory or surprising: this is not reflecting a change of view, but a possible change in my understanding of humanity.

Till then, some questions about your ideal government.

Firstly, I’m not sure if government is the best term to describe it with. Instead of governing, you want it to protect.

Secondly, would there be elections with this government? It seems that they would be superfluous, as there would be no policies because once you get minarchism, it would be very difficult to go back to a welfare state (and, of course, the inverse is difficult). The only question is which freedoms will need protection (i.e. the freedom to exploit people who want to live in relative comfort or the freedom to live in relative comfort, which I think summarises the right libertarian and left libertarian ideas, respectively); my curiosity lies in how easy it would be for a society of that sort to swing between the two (I don’t ask you to hypothesise on this, and whether or not elections are allowed will probably have minimal effect on it. I’m asking if you think elections will be superfluous in this scenario or if you think there will be some use for them, and if so: what?).

Thirdly, what will there be to prevent a government whose sole interest is in freedoms from removing them? We’ve seen the freedom-loving George W. Bush Administration strip back many of the freedoms enjoyed by Americans with the interestly named USA PATRIOT Act, 2001, or the DMCA, 2000. Would such a minimal government retain a monopoly on physical violence? I can certainly see legislation (or whatever equivalent may exist—and any organisation must have some) like the USA PATRIOT Act being used to argue that fighting against anti-anti-freedom fighters is illegal (who fight because they’re being fought against when trying to remind the government what ‘freedom of speech’ means). I think it best to look at all possibilities: it is things like these which make me unsure of anarchism—though by the same token, I’d feel safer with no government than with one with no distractions.

Fourthly, I’m not sure how you conclude that taxes are the only bills we’re forced to pay. Explain to me how I’m able to get out of paying for my food without (a) going hungry or (b) stealing (remembering all the while that food isn’t magickable up out of nowhere, and requires, among other things, land to be grown on, something to start its existence, and, in general, time before it becomes self-sustaining). If anything, I’d say that food and water bills are closer to the only ones we’re forced to pay: plenty of people live without a roof over their head, without a job; how many live without food and water?

Finally, the point about Nazi Germany almost doesn’t justify your belief when taken from a broad enough perspective. But, after all, it was governments that limited Germany’s ability to prosper hence sticking the German people between a rock and a hardplace that lead to the Nazi Party being voted in. Though IIRC Germany wasn’t especially democratic before the war that lead to it all… At any rate, in Usenet and forums with geeks and similar venues, there is a general rule that (1) the longer any discussion goes for, the higher the chance the Nazies will be mentioned and (2) once this has happened, whoever made mention of them has officially lost the argument and everyone can pack up and go home. I recommend avoiding the use of Nazies: they are an appeal to irrational emotionality, hatred, and violence, rather than to intellect and thought. Yes, you will be bagged for bringing them up: but you certainly deserve it. Nazies are not an argument.

Mozilla Firebird is a Windows app. Go home Firebird.

It’s amazing to think that that black Stuff on my Hand was only Moments before a living, breathing Creature. I need another Solution to the Problem of Insects, lest it drive me Mad.

The Library of Babel and The Zahir, I think, will haunt me till the end of my days.

Because I’m sure you care so much, I have two new and incomplete sections on my website: Surveys and Codes, which has, surprisingly enough, the results of surveys and things like the geek, blogger and conlanger codes; and a Colophon. If you don’t know what a colophon is, it’s basically an about page, except that it’s the older term, used when the only written medium was printed.