Brexit: Much Adieu About Nothing

The title says it all, really...

  "The first time I saw them hang a foreigner was from that very May-pole," he said, stopping and pointing up at the one we were walking past. "Though they were still called lamp posts back in those days... you probably can't imagine it, but these all used to light up at night before everything fell apart. Some of them still did, then, when we could afford to waste energy..."

He trailed off, lost in thought, but this was no place to hang around.

  "The foreigner?" I prompted, and took a half-step onward. But he didn't follow.

  "She was young… pretty, to start with. A student, anthropology, or some damned thing like that. Came over with one of the commonwealth aid teams, turned out… stayed behind to study us. Such a waste. Such a damned waste."

He sighed.

  "Thought it was going to be a lynching, at first, damned near was - usual fools whipping the crowd up, she didn't even try to run, hell, she didn't even deny being foreign, not that she could have done - she had a tabloid, of course, wouldn't have gotten very far without one, even then" As he spoke his hand reflexively lifted and waved his tabloid at me, I don't think he even knew he was doing it. I returned the gesture with mine, as law required. "But hers turned out to be fake. Some kind of foreign tablet or laptop - oh, of course, you won't have seen one. They're like tabloids, but not government controlled. Hers showed the right headlines, looked real enough, but the block warden noticed the headlines were late, or something. Don't rightly recall what, but he started asking questions and she gave the wrong answers and that was that… she should have run. Might have gotten away if she'd run. Can't have been a particularly good anthropologist, didn't seem to realise how much trouble she was in."

  He looked at me. "But that's the trouble when you're young. You think it can't happen to you. Oh, she knew, she could probably have given them chapter and verse on their motives, described in great detail why they were acting the way they were, how primitive minds worked, but knowing and believing are different. She didn't believe it was really happening until too late."

  "Well, anyway, a crowd gathered, a few party members turned up and wanted to be heroes. Damn near hoisted her up there and then, but the block warden wasn't having any of that - he stopped them. She thanked him, damned fool - he wasn't doing it for her, he just wanted to make sure of his share of the bounty. He held them back until the reporters arrived and made it official, they gave her a fair trial, found her guilty and strung her up… at least it was quick."

  Overhead a circling camera drone paused. We'd been stationary too long. But he seemed to realise and pulled himself back to the present, reached out and touched the pole briefly, then lowered his hand and started walking on.

  "You never forget your first," he said, the words softly spoken and left to hang in the cold air.

BASIC

[amusement] It occurred to me during a conversation that BASIC was a language designed for beginners to programming and used to be regarded as trivial to use; but it's now regarded by modern programmers as far too complicated for them to do anything with...

One wonders where this process will end. When the final "programmer" becomes unable to operate the single switch required to turn the computer on, I suspect.

Software blues.

Just done a little light reading for relaxation - a guide to optimising x86 assembler code... it is both amazing and appalling how much hardware there is inside these poor processors to try to deal with the awful code they're given to run by compilers.

It's insane. Rather than have programmers write competent code - which, I keep having to remind myself, is actually quite easy - we've ended up in a world where nearly all programmers write complete garbage that includes masses of other complete garbage that other equally-incompetent garbage-mongers have gathered together, and all this offensively incompetent shite gets compiled to a vast swamp of instructions that are then examined by the hardware, broken up into smaller micro instructions and re-ordered into some kind of sense before actually getting executed... but no matter how impressive that hardware is - there are typically tens of billions of examples of this happening in each and every computer in every second - it doesn't make the whole ridiculous process any less inefficient... and all this hardware and furious activity burns electricity and generates waste heat.

Feel your computer - is it warm? hot? Unless you're doing something that actually needs lots of computation (3D games count) that heat is almost entirely generated by programmers being stupid.

Why is this all so inefficient? Mainly because the languages and tools programmers prefer to use are chosen *not* by any logical, rational process but by the whims of fucking fashion by programmers with no idea of what is actually going on under the hood and no interest in finding out.

And they'll tell you this doesn't matter - hell! they tell *me* it doesn't matter and I know exactly how full of shit they are - but it matters to the extent that at the present moment the IT industry accounts for about 2% of all the energy used in the world. That's about the same as the entire aviation industry.

Think about that for a second... it should be such a small fraction that it can't be bloody measured easily. Instead it's a major source of wasted energy and pollution... and this energy isn't used because it needs to be used; not at all. This energy is almost entirely wasted, and it's wasted because programmers are so fucking useless. And they're not getting more efficient either, quite the reverse. All the time they find new ways to add layers of inefficiency to everything.

Programming constantly moves away from energy efficiency towards less efficient languages and tools. Programmers actively choose not to use efficient languages and expect everyone to buy faster and faster computers to keep up with the growth of their inefficiency. But this is hardly new, it was old news thirty years ago... for most of my life I've watched them at it with a kind of shocked disbelief... knowing how to write efficient software easily leaves you wondering what the hell it is about getting things wrong that other programmers find so appealing. It's harder to do it badly.

Reading this status has probably used about a million times as much energy as it should have done, and would have done if all the programmers involved in writing the code involved were skilled... the sad fact is most programmers aren't just bad but completely fucking clueless. So monumentally incompetent that there is no way anyone outside the IT industry will ever understand how fucking thick and clueless they are - most of you just don't have any experience of anything being done as badly as programmers do things. They make cowboy builders look like paragons of efficient competence. Saying they build structures like Heath-Robinson contraptions is ridiculously understating the absurdity of their habits.

Ah, fuck it. This is pointless... It's our energy and money they're wasting, and it's our planet they're raping, but nothing I say is going to stop that or make even a single one of the lazy bastards change their ways or admit to their crimes. And make no mistake - they are crimes. I just hope that one day they're recognised as such and the software industry becomes accountable for the energy they waste.

Now, programmers will be reading this and bursting with asinine remarks in defence of bloat and crud - understand clearly that I don't give a shit what miserable justifications you present; I've heard them all, and shown them all as the tripe they are countless times... what I'm left with is the sense of utter shame that people outside the IT industry confuse what I do with what you do.

Various grumbles of mine, old and new...

Just wandered through facebook and collected a few of my brief grumbles (some date from much earlier, back to the early 80's and were references there to even older grumbles from cix (mainly) or other publications of mine) that I don't think have made it to the blog... these were ones I've used as status postings. I wish facebook would let me download comments easily, there's lots of other funny stuff there too and I might collect some of that one day...

I hate defending myself from accusations that are unfair - I have defences prepared for the accusations that are fair...

I always said I wanted to be the world's best lover. Some people say I'm aiming too high, but that's just the first kiss.

Fear the demands of reasonable people; others can be disregarded, but these have to be prioritised.

Fear the dreams of the powerful.

Conment (n): a comment intended to confuse a situation, usually for the author's amusement.

Love of money is the root of all evil; indoctrination is the route of all evil...

I want to have a quiet word with whoever wrote the script for today...

"Once things start going wrong, they usually develop quite some momentum"

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but irritation is the father...

Being kind isn't a weakness, but it can certainly feel like it is at times.

By their assumptions shall ye know them

"I wonder why they call them altars - they never alter anything"

Religions are just different flavours of insanity.

"publish and be dumbed"

"Will mankind end its reliance on technology before technology ends its reliance on mankind?"

"It's the man who fell to earth and landed head first" Guess who is being forced to watch "The Voice"...

Whenever people go on about staring into the abyss I always think it's too deep for me...

I'm not sure that having your car make panicy bleating noises then draw a mushroom cloud as a dashboard warning sign is an entirely good thing...

"it's easy to tell when a programmer is writing garbage: their fingers move"

This is what happens when you build gormenghast on a budget.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a TV must be in want of period drama...

You are responsible for your actions; not the interpretations others place on them.

I spend my life trying to be funny, to cheer others up, and what happens? People just laugh at me... Bastards.

Quantum physics implies we are living in an immature universe; like teenagers, things only behave sensibly while they are being observed...

If you share the credit you can also share the blame

"A lesson many people never learn is that it's hard work trying to hide your true nature, and doing so alters it anyway - rarely for the better"

It is impossible to remain depressed while watching someone attempting to ride a unicycle for the first time...

The rule "if something sounds too good to be true, there's something wrong with it" always sounds too good to be true...

"It may not be coincidence I stopped writing games after I discovered sex"

It's paradoxical how often people use the process of asking questions as a way to avoid having to understand the answers to previous questions...

"I have no fear of heights at all. As long as they remain above me"

Hell is not seeing any connection between what you can offer and what you need.

How innocent a fresh new board looks before any software is written. After that they lurk.

For a social website there are a great many antisocial people on Facebook.

Would having a lover with multiple personalities count as an orgy?

The universe is full of things that get harder to understand the more you try to simplify them.

I'm dimly wondering about making an "I'm giving up moderation for lent" t-shirt...

I sometimes think that my drinking coffee is the equivalent of Clarke Kent visiting a phone booth.

"Sophistication is not my métier"

I think I need a magic ring that makes the wearer visible when worn.

I laugh at anyone who doesn't have a sense of humour, unless they're a comedian...

Sometimes I feel my insults are wasted... "You must be a terrible embarrassment to your subconscious" "You wot?"

[muses] What if all the conspiracy theorists are part of a larger covert organisation?

"Why do computers use Silicon for their logic?" "Because thirteen and a half billion years of trying to make Carbon work logically has failed..."

I often wondered - is "ferrarri" Italian for "sleazy"?

Confused someone greatly yesterday by pointing out that iron is really star-poo.

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make parent"

#twitter: a small for people who can't handle a proper medium.

"The art of philosophizing is saying with two words what any damn fool can say with too many"

I really can't make my mind up if I understand quantum superposition or not.

Is it ironic to not understand a paper on learning algorithms?

I was thinking about reading a book on procrastination... Actually, how would a book on procrastination ever get written?

There are times when I don't feel like screaming.

Understanding other people is usually easier than understanding yourself. Unless you're schizophrenic, of course.

I've just been accused of hiding beneath women's skirts - things are definitely looking up.

I rarely give advice, but if I did it would be "never give advice to anyone who might actually take it" - they're only after someone to blame when it all goes horribly wrong...

The paradox of keeping secrets - if you are really good at it, nobody ever finds out.

[muses] Are they called mermaids because they lack the necessary parts to get laid and become merwenches?

[muses] Was there ever a more repulsive concept than "sexual conquests"? Love isn't a battle, get it right and you can have winners without losers.

[muses] It's ironic how often people discuss science unscientifically...

[muses] If sex was ever incorporated into the Olympics I reckon I'd have a shot at an individual gold.

[muses] If you are what you eat... why don't nuts come with a health warning?

[muses] Relationships have two ends and women get to decide both, in my experience...

[muses] Why do judgemental people usually show such poor judgement? You'd have thought practice would improve it.

[muses] How do you learn to hypnotise people? Every time I try it in front of a mirror I put myself to sleep.

[muses] "Intelligent Design" is a remarkably ironic name for a concept that no intelligent designer takes seriously.

[muses] Pay attention to what people say when they're criticising others, it's often very revealing of their own character; people usually focus on and draw attention to the traits they see - and despise - in themselves.

[muses] Men insult their friends, women compliment their enemies... It must be bloody confusing to be bisexual.

[muses] Blogging is thinking locally and acting-out globally. Needs more pith. It's not pithy enough... Think loco, act-out global? Gah.

[muses] It's rarely a good move to tell someone that you understand them, but if you do make sure you do it in such a way as to leave some doubt in their mind - people usually need to believe that they're more complicated than everyone else. It's rare to find someone who appreciates being understood half as much as they'd appreciate you to have made a valiant effort at understanding them and failed... Of course - I could be wrong.

[muses] It strikes me as paradoxical that the world is so complex that the finest minds have been flummoxed by it, yet many of the most dramatic changes to it were made by those holding doggedly fast to ridiculously simplistic ideas.

[muses] was there ever a more passive-aggressive act than that of inventing the term passive-aggressive in the first place?

[muses] In my life I've met one or two people who took themselves very seriously, didn't have much of a sense of humour and who weren't also complete and utter arseholes - and maybe thousands who were; the odds aren't good people... If you want a pretty reliable guide to who to avoid in life I don't think you can do much better than look at how often someone laughs. Unless they're putting kittens in the blender at the time or something of that nature, in which case run like hell...

[musing] If one god started the universe off with a big bang, shouldn't it be called the Big Wank Theory?

At some point during the invention of language someone had to come up with a word for "think" and explain what it meant to everyone else... I bet that was frustrating.

Who was it who said "nothing that can't be proved is worth believing"? [rummage]... Hmmm... [more rummaging]... Oh, apparently it was me.

General advice... don't absent mindedly wipe your nose on the same tissue you've just used to wipe away some surplus superglue...

Being prepared and willing to understand the other parties viewpoint is a hell of a disadvantage when dealing with someone who isn't prepared or willing to understand yours...

I have nothing at all against people who can't write software, but why do so many of them become programmers?

Are "fundamentalists" named after "fundaments", ie "bottoms"? No wonder they're all arseholes.

While thinking up alternative terms for arseholes tonight I came up with "excrementally-advantaged" and "rectomentalists", neither generates any hits on Google. So, at least they're original, though I guess that means they're crap.

Intelligent design? We live in a universe where the slow drivers are always in front of us holding us up, and the fast ones behind, being a pain in the arse, and yet people still believe in intelligent design?

How come there isn't a single creation myth where Gawd starts out wanting coffee? I mean, I have to go to enormous lengths to get a mug. I have to get out of bed, dressed, toiletted, drive a vehicle - negotiate an industrial estate full of foreign lorry drivers - a door with the combination lock from hell, that hates me... Frankly, in comparison, for a supreme being I'm sure knocking up a universe must have been a doddle.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cackle and the buggers stare at you... It's quite disturbing, actually... Muha! Muhahaha-aha!... See? See?

Am I the only one who finds the process of "reductio ad absurdum" slightly absurd?

Was there a spell in Harry Potter called "Stupidify!"?

I sometimes wonder what it is that is so fucking *wrong* with programmers... The more someone else knows about software engineering, the less respect they have for them.

Never mind contact lenses - I've just invented "contract" lenses - makes everyone appear slimmer...

One of the rarest graces is the ability to admit to your mistakes.

It might surprise people but hoodies share several percent of their DNA with humans. They share the rest with paper tissues.

There is nothing so stupid that some religious nutter or other hasn't advocated it.

"The finest trick of religion is to persuade you that it is not nonsense"

It perplexes me that the belief that a god exists which created man in his own image can infect any halfway rational mind in the first place, but how such a belief can survive the process of going to the loo and having to scrape shit off your arse with bits of paper is utterly beyond me... I can't really imagine a supreme being doing that, nor would I even consider worshiping one that can't come up with a better way to power its creations... especially as it is also supposed to have created electricity at some point earlier in the week.

For some reason I just had the mental image of a ninja retirement home. A place for people who used to ninje but who are now reduced to shuffling around terrorising the staff with poison-coated zimmer-frames.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a sleeping woman in possession of a good grip on the quilt, must be in want of a cold foot in the small of the back. Okay, it's not universally acknowledged... maybe it's not even true... but it works. For small and rather exciting moments of 'work'.

I have been chatting with someone (who shall remain nameless) who tells me I need to brush up on soaps in order to understand women and have some common ground. I do not watch soaps. They are boring. Even the ones with enzymes.

Whatever enlightenment there is to be found in this world, it isn't to be found wandering around an empty beach at night. Not alone, anyway.

There is an entirely different kind of boredom on offer at the seaside. Nowhere else on Earth could I find myself watching Olympic showjumping with what could be described as relief...

I have had an epiphany. But it's ok, I cleaned up afterwards.

"Don't give the universe ideas? People exist to give the universe ideas"

"I've read several holy books. If you ask me God needs fewer prophets and more editors"

[muses] As 69 is a well recognised sexual position for couples, why aren't 6 and/or 9 recognised positions for singles?

Blue... Blue... Was there ever a less onamatopoeic word?

We are rainclouds in search of a sky.

I have long wondered why Sinbad wasn't called Singood or Sinfun...

Gave up and went to see the quack yesterday, told her I was suicidal and demanded drugs... She recommended hanging - bastard NHS cost cutting...

"Bible belt" isn't a location, it's an appropriate response... "Thwap!"

"Statisticians warn that living longer increases the risk of death"

You know that moment when someone you think of as a tiresome and pretentious fool unexpectedly comes out with something profound and interesting for a change? Well, you do now - what's it like?

Speaking about memory erasing, a few years ago Morag and I were discussing Rohypnol and how foul the whole idea of date rape was when she surprised me by saying she was prepared to try it to see what the effects were like. It's funny, but I can't remember what happened after that.

It's important to try to understand other people's motivations, as long as you're never foolish enough to believe you've entirely succeeded; if nothing else the exercise will provide useful insights into your own motivations - unless you're foolish enough to believe you already understand them...

Alien abductions... I've worked it out... The aliens must need ballast for their ufos. I bet there's a statistically significant correlation between an abductees weight and the likelihood of abduction. That's why they go for Americans...

Sometimes, less is

During conversation tonight... "Well, I thought, I've already lost an ear, I may as well try my hand at painting"

I sometimes - hell, most of the time - think that life must be far easier for those lucky enough not to understand people. Especially themselves...

"Happy people are responsible for nearly all cases of depression"

Sometimes the gods eat a *lot* of roughage before taking a dump on people...

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first give hope"

"I loved the sound of the phrase 'deferred gratification' so much I always put off checking what it actually meant in case that turned out to be a disappointment." [Statement made by a character in a dream last night. Macci's getting subtle in his old age]

There is no situation so bad that it can't be recovered by a few kind words or a hug from a lover... and no situation so good that it can ease the loneliness of not having one.

There are times when hearing about situations I despair at the sheer injustice of the world; life isn't often fair and that may be beyond our control, but how we choose to act about it isn't...

Why can you only get return tickets to paradise?

We've all heard of the "To Do" list... I'm thinking of inventing the "To Don't" list, but the first entry on my prototype is "Don't invent this list", which makes the project somewhat problematic...

I hate the internet; it's hard to compete with all the weirdness out there...

Gods!!! could there be *anything* more ironically annoying in the entire panoply of human experience than having someone dissect and explain a pithy phrase to you that you invented in the first place? As if you were so profoundly stupid you couldn't possibly get it? And irony of ironies, the phrase was "publish and be dumbed" - I did; I was...

"Anyone who regards sanity as desirable must be crazy" - I'm surprised but Google regards that line of mine as original... In fact no hits for "Anyone who regards sanity", which is very surprising. Has nobody ever regarded sanity before in the entire history of literature? I feel a poem coming on...

"Anyone who regards sanity as desirable must be crazy" "Yeah, but just because they're crazy that don't make them interesting... There are loads of crazy people you wouldn't want to meet in an asylum, that's all I'm saying" There is only one catch, and that's Catch Twenty-Flurble.

I was woken out of a dream this morning, and for that reason alone I can remember the last part of it, which was an argument where someone was referred to as "so shallow a piece of paper couldn't sink in them"... I wonder how many gems like that are created and lost forever every time a dream is forgotten?

"99% of religious beliefs wouldn't survive 1% of common sense"

[muses] Sometimes it depresses me how vividly our world is chronicled by failures; perhaps for no better reason than that only those who have nothing else to offer have the time to write about their lives.

There is a style of walking - I don't think it has a name - and it's a dead give away that the person using it is a parent - it involves the moving foot leaving the floor but not by very much; moving slowly forward while remaining close to the ground; being put back down slowly. I suspect it's acquired as the result of having trodden on one too many carelessly placed and surprisingly sharp toys.

"That comparison is rather like waking up in hell to find the devil asking which ball you'd prefer to have crushed first."

"Why not give evolution a hand? It gave you two..."

People are forever being said to have been "driven mad", but what about those who are so close to mad already it would be enviromentally irresponsible to drive them such a short distance? Can you walk someone mad?

There is no design cockup, no matter how extreme, that doesn't directly result from a design concept that seemed perfectly reasonable to the designer at the time...

It should be a crime to expose anyone under the age of consent to religion.

While pontificating today: "Let's face it, any particle that can change into three different forms is going to spend most of its time arguing with itself. It'll be far too busy to go faster than light"

'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' Who cares; what comes last is all I'm interested in - the chicken omelette...

Is there a programmer's semicolon to go with the baker's apostrophe?
"You've got to have semi-colons. Programmers can't be trusted with full-colons." [Settling into stride] "I mean, give them a full-on man-sized colon and they'd shit themselves."

"I realised some time ago I'm a trope, but I was hoping a spot of metonymy might upgrade me to a synecdoche"

I have a theory that most of the world's religions are the result of somebody missing the point of a joke.

An engineering principle that goes largely unsaid - the more certain you are of something, the less useful that knowledge is... We can only be certain of trivialities. So don't go through life seeking certainty - you can only have it about things that don't matter, and those who peddle it are selling their own ignorance.

"Good design is impressive; great design is invisible"

Contrary to popular opinion Wales is in a different time-zone to the rest of the UK -the middle ages.

"The greatest lie ever is romance. It's something men often want but can't have, and women often have but don't want. It's a lie so powerful people will die for it in the full knowledge it's a lie... We strive to make fools of ourselves by worshiping at the altar of romance, where the luckiest are sacrificed by those doomed to outlive them"

I'm beginning to suspect my sense of humour needs calibrating again. Who's got the reference mother-in-law?

"Plants are solar powered. They are not wind-powered. They evolved chlorophyll pretty damned smartish because solar energy is worth exploiting. They've now had billions of years to evolve in ways that would exploit wind power but haven't. Think on this oh ye advocates of windmills, and despair..."

Are they called "remote" controls because you can never find them?

"I am a great believer in the empowerment of women in general, despite my experience of the empowerment of women in particular..."

It needs at least two to love but only one to hate.

I have a theory - condoms have learned how to breed with humans. This is why there are so many empty brainless morons out there...

The entire history of the universe would be different if god had remembered to trim the sprue off Adam after he came out of the mould...

Isaac Asimov's short story "Nightfall" asked the question what would happen if the stars were only visible once every thousand years or so... Well, I'll tell you - it'd be cloudy.

"Don't knock it until you're tried it" said the guy installing the door-bell...

"I see myself as basically a gag writer" I said. "Well, you've made me gag often enough" he replied.

"I'm in touch with my feminine side" I said. "Go and wash your hands" she replied...

Many lives have been lost to the soviet union's AK47, the American M16 has caused its fair share of death and destruction, but when it comes to creating misery and despair nothing even comes close to the English M6

Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you sleep alone.

Is 'cuddly chemical' an oxytocin?

The moving finger flips; and, having given you the bird, Moves on.

I was being fondled intimately by a lover recently. "Oooo, that's huge!" she said. "Are you pulling my leg?" I replied.

Cats are natures way of justifying extreme cruelty.

Sanity is fragile.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is religion.

Sit by a river long enough and eventually you'll get pushed in...

A symphony of overcomplication...

I suppose a (c) Simon Brattel isn't out of place. I've seen quite a few of my one-liners repeated and generally it amuses me, but I try to attribute sources and I'd quite like it if others did too... it took me seconds to think some of those up. Seconds... 

Suicide bombers

The other day a friend and I were discussing the way the press call suicide bombers cowards. Call 'em idiots, if you like, that's generally appropriate, but cowards? I wouldn't have the guts to do it...

Then that led to us pondering [gross simplification alert] the whole Muslim paradise concept that these idiots are sold - die with the name "Allah!" on your lips and you are guaranteed an eternity of virgins, endlessly renewed... Well, think about it - what sort of pathetic inadequates would want to spend eternity in the company of virgins? The whole idea stinks of primitive misogynistic stupidity - give me an experienced lover over a virgin (or under, I don't care... sorry...) every time.

It's all a bit worrying, really - "Allah" sounds enough like "Aaargh!" that it could happen by accident. One wrong syllable and I could find myself educating virgins for eternity; remind me - is this supposed to be heaven or hell?

Maybe that's why black-box flight recorders show that the last word of people who know they're about to die is almost invariably "shit!"... Far less ambiguous than "Aaargh!"...

Hmmm. After due consideration I've decided to opt for re-incarnation and come back as a lesbian, who in their right mind wouldn't? Though knowing my luck it'll be as a lesbian sheep with all the frustration that implies. Gah...

Oh, shit - thought of something worse than being a lesbian sheep - might come back as a lesbian in one of those backward countries where the women have to go round wearing tents lest the sight of naked female flesh (we're talking about arms, legs, faces, etc here, nothing risque) drives the so-called 'men' wild with lust - ever stopped to think about their revolting logic? The men make the women cover themselves up because the men say they can't trust themselves not to rape women who are uncovered? What does that say about them? Learn to control yourselves and leave women alone...

Those wondering what I've got against sheep might not know that a female sheep that wants sex basically signals this by standing still. That's fine if you're a heterosexual because eventually the ram will notice and spring into action, but if you're a gay female sheep it's a bit of a non-starter... You stand still. If you're lucky another female likes you and... stands still... Then you both stand about being embarrassed and fending off unwanted males. It's a bit like a student disco, now I come to think of it.

I'm going off this whole lesbian thing, it seems fraught with difficulty.

Language fascists

I've been watching programmers parading their miserable ignorance again. The sort of playground squabble "My language is better than your language, my compiler's smarter than your compiler and my dad's bigger than your dad!" type of nonsense that would terminally embarrass a normal five year old, in other words the sort of reasoning few programmers ever advance beyond. Useless fuckers.

Grump. Snarl.

Think they'd understand if I show them allegorically how close their bigoted nastiness is to racism/sexism? No, it'd go wheeee-splat over their empty little heads. Tiresome pillocks... Gah...

[How about... Ponder...]



Heard the one about the programmer who loved and was fluent in C, the programmer who loved and was fluent in Pascal and the programmer who loved and was fluent in assembler?

When she wasn't writing software she was a pretty damned good hardware designer as well...



[Hmmm. Should I stop there? Would the target audience understand how much that exposes their stupid, narrow-minded prejudice? Would they even notice? Hmmm... Needs more...]


One day a stranger, a programmer of the modern ilk, who had travelled long weary years across the desert seeking enlightenment, laden down with objects and paradigms of the most exquisite kind, so wise in the ways of templates they were utterly incapable of actually writing code, arrived at her tent and, pausing unknowingly before the solution to all the questions he could possibly dream of having answered, saw only the dusky maiden; "Is your master about? And get me a drink could you, chop chop..."

And so the closest they came to enlightenment was the sound of one hand slapping...

[Too verbose. Far too verbose... Why do I waste my time on these people?]

** with that thought, crem is enlightened **

Dumb xians

Turn the news on - first mistake. Second mistake was watching; the god-botherers were out in force.

Started with a report on the 'miraculous' survival of an 11-month old baby caught in a tornado. "It was a miracle. God sure was looking after him" says some red-neck moron completely overlooking the fact that the very same god had just brutally murdered his mother and torn him from her arms... Ineffable? Very fucking effable if you ask me.

This was then followed by a report of the head of the Church of England advocating the adoption of sharia law in the UK. Well, not all of it, perhaps - we'll pick and choose and leave the stoning and beheading part out for now. Maybe keep the killing of princesses bits, I suppose, that seems to resonate with the national character.

Gah. I wondered dimly what the head of the C of E is doing advocating Islam, but I suppose it makes sense, after all they're really all on the same side - sky fairy worshipping nutters all.

Hmmm. So we should be allowed to choose which laws apply to us now, should we? Fine. I do that anyway, to be honest; it'd be nice to have it formalised... Programmers could choose a legal system that expresses everything in hexadecimal:

"Can't nick me for speeding, ossifer, I was only doing 5F and it's a 70 limit..."

Mind you, I think I'd rather be nicked than declare myself a programmer. No, it'll never work.

Turned the news off before I could get even more depressed...

Sexy xians

I've just half-convinced someone that "the sermon on the mount" is so-called not because it took place on high ground, but because the original (unexpurgated) text makes reference to the delights of the female form.

And that "doggy position" is nothing to do with dogs, but a corruption of "dodgy position" (I won't go into why)...

Bad Crem. Naughty...

Hacker foxes

Recently I've become involved with the design of the control electronics for a device that speeds up the process of turning food waste into compost - let it not be said that my life is entirely dull and uninteresting - but before I arrived on the scene a previous incarnation of this hardware managed to fail (a fuse blew and stopped a heater from working) and instead of turning garbage into compost, it then did a very good job of turning garbage into flies. Lots of flies. Lots and lots of flies...

Since this particular machine was sited in the grounds of a hospital this wasn't seen by everyone as an entirely good thing, and eventually the fact that the hospital was overrun with flies came to the attention of the health and safety people who then lept into action to find some way to assign the blame. Eventually a report emerged, which amongst other things suggested the cause of the failure could possibly be hackers. Or foxes. Or (presumably) hacker foxes.

Now, foxes aren't usually noted for their hacking skills, so it rather surprises me that they could manage to hack their way into the software on this machine, which doesn't have any connection to the outside world at all. There's very little software, and it's not changeable. There's no network interface. There's no serial port. There's no keyboard. There are a couple of buttons, but press them as much as you like and you won't find a way to blow the heater fuse... So beware the hacker fox, 'ees a clever bugger...

China trade

So, on the day that the rags start shouting recession the idiot in charge of the country states that boosting trade with China will create tens of thousands of UK jobs. That means tens of thousands more people employed selling goods made in China, presumably.

Does it take much intelligence to understand how utterly fucking useless those jobs are and how fast they'll disappear when the oil finally runs out and the pound crashes?

Wrong end of the shtick?

The loonies otherwise known as Scientologists appear to have a strange idea of promotion, given that Tom Cruise's promotional video is not supposed to be seen by anyone outside the church... Hmmm.

You can understand why they'd want their ridiculous ideas suppressed though.

Absurdity here