Bornholm Dukketeaterfestival, Copenhagen and one bad photo of Sweden

So. I've been out and about. Lighting and puppetry brought me to Denmark this past week. A quick flight got me and the cast of the show I was working on to Copenhagen, and after a few hours of aimless wandering we hopped aboard the night ferry to Bornholm. This little number was equipped with quite comfortable and spacious cabins for a 6-hour trip, with loos And showers.  On the top deck you can see the shipping containers that accompanied us from the mainland being efficiently but slowly pulled to the pier. This ferry only does one trip each direction per day and is usually only ridden by a few lorry drivers. The trip back via Ystad, Sweden was only about an hour and was full of passengers and private cars.

A sample of typical Bornholm fare. These mackerel and herring were smoked on the island by a traditional smoke-house and donated by them to feed the puppet festival folk.  It was amazing--seriously, the best fish I've ever eaten. Delicate and perfectly balanced smoke and salt. I had a few handfuls, along with some cheese and some structural bread.

It is tasty. It is beautiful. It weighs about two kilograms per loaf. It is Danish Bread, and you will not forget it.

A typical Bornholm home behind Svaneke's community centre, Svanekegaarden. A group of highly talented children performed a fire show and some acrobatics for us out here the first evening we were in town. In addition to smoked fish and a variety of white cheeses, the Danish eat sausages as part of their daily routine, usually shoved into a baguette in a rather humourous way. Use your imagination.

Another Svaneke home.  My camera refused to capture just how vibrantly yellow most of the houses are. I think it's so the locals can find their homes in the snow.

The Svaneke harbour. It looks like there used to be a bit more of it. For non-Danish speakers, the closest phonetic equivalent is "Sffan-uh-kuh", with an a like in alcohol. If you pronounce it Sven-eekie you will baffle residents. Just FYI.

Ketch Tecla.  Probably 90' on deck, iron hulled. Cute as a button. In Svaneke harbour.

This house was moving very fast.

A medieval lamp on display in the Middelaldercenter, near Østerlars. (Eustah-laas). The staff of the Center very kindly allowed us to sleep in and around their grounds, from the office to the cinema to the log cabin covered in medieval-style paintings. Everyone was amazingly nice and patient with all of us lunatics invading their space and sleeping in their workplaces.

One of my cast (taking a picture) who was hanging out with one of the creatives behind the Hesbjerg Dukketeater's Tommelise, or Thumbelina.  This show was a very small, very short, very brightly coloured finger-puppet story for children that we didn't arrive in time to see, but they very nicely allowed us to play all of their musical instruments while we chatted afterwards--including the thumb piano, the bugle, the conch, and one of those nifty single-string instruments that you change the pitch of by squeezing. I didn't ask to play his clarinet though--that just seemed intrusive.

One of two cockerels who live on site at the Middelaldercenter. A costumed staff member informed me that so long as there are plenty of lady chickens to go around, dude chickens don't fight. So these guys were fit.

Me in a chain mail hood.  Yes. I particularly like the way it fits over my glasses.

A view of the Middelaldercenter and surrounding countryside from the central tower. We tried to play Rapunzel but nobody could jump high enough to reach my hair. Alas.

Cockerel number 2.  This one had lovely blue plumage but even creepier feet than the others. Bleh.  Feathery dinosaurs.

Wild mushrooms in the forest.  No, these were not woods.  It was a forest, and you could tell, because of all the fairies and the children dropping bread crumbs and the witches and the wolves in grannies' jammies.  No, I did not lick the mushrooms. It was all real!

Give puppeteers objects, and they will give you puppets. Nice folks. At the Bryghuset i Svaneke. (Brewery)

The only decent photo I managed to take out the train window on the way from Ystad to Copenhagen. This, dear reader, is in Sweden. The route was a short ferry from Bornholm to Ystad (Uh-sta), Sweden, then an hour's wait (in which I bought some salted liquorice-flavoured chewing gum just for the ew factor but did not get my passport stamped, sadface), then a train to Malmö (Mal-meu), then another train across the Øresund (Eur-sun) Bridge back to Copenhagen, a trip of roughly the same duration as the first from Køge (Cuue) but not nearly as comfortable or convenient.  I discovered on this high-tech train that something ugly happened in regard to Cairo and the Israeli embassy, but couldn't figure out who was out to get whom on account of the Swedish news reporting.

A shot of the Danish Parliament tower and a few state-esque buildings. I thought it was nice.

This drawbridge between the Copenhagen city centre and the neighbourhood of Christianshavn is pictured on the 200 kroner note. Interestingly, aside from the 50 kroner note (worth about £6.50 or $9 and will generally buy you one pint of beer) and the 10 and 20 kr coins, there are no people on Danish money.  Even the watermark on the 100 and 200 kroner notes is a boat.  I found this interesting.  And extortionate.

Someone's front stoop.  Sorry person who's house I spent five minutes crouching in front of.  I swear I was only admiring your nifty handrails.

A typical Christianshavn street. Bright colours, neat middle-road streetlights, and a delightfully eclectic mash of buildings surrounded by militant cyclists who defend their raised and well-paved bike lanes with terrifying (though polite) enthusiasm.

An older, quiet street in Christianshavn, near Christiania. I appreciated that this cyclist thoughtfully bought an antique-style bike to lean against her home for just this sort of photo-op.

At the end of the same street, second story.  Squee.

This was a really neat neighbourhood, apparently self-governed (provided everyone behaves, I think) that was populated with equal parts stoners and nervous middle-aged people in tour groups. Because everyone is free to sell and smoke light drugs on the streets here, they have a strict no cameras rule. I took a couple of photos away from the populated areas, but resisted temptation otherwise. Which was a shame, because there was some really beautiful street art and other things going on in there.

We stayed in Christiania for several hours during the interim between our train arriving and our plane leaving. I haven't mentioned yet that we did all of our travel--trains, ferries, boats, buses, cars, walking--carrying a 7' long muslin bag filled with the dismantled components of the puppet show's set. We named it Denise and considered it the most obnoxious and bitchy member of the ensemble.  Thankfully for the time in Copenhagen we were able to check Denise and our suitcases into the luggage lockers at the train station or we wouldn't have had nearly as nice a time as we did. I have no idea what this spire goes to but I really liked it and took about 80 pictures of it.

The Danish Parliament at dusk. It is difficult to tell here, but the ground floor is actually about three stories high--a disconcerting scale-twist that makes the building appear menacing and heavy. It appears to be only about four or five floors high, but is easily triple the height of a normal five-story building. We decided that the reason the Danish government is so nice and good to its people is because they fear the wrath of this building if they screw up.

Moments before we went back to the airport I noticed this weird anachronism--neat old buildings dotted with flashy-trash LED adverts.  I found it very telling of the relationship the Danes seem to have with their neat old buildings--they like them enough to keep them, but they don't find them remarkable enough to not decorate them with ugly contemporary tat.

I really enjoyed my time in Denmark and would love to go back, perhaps after I've learnt a bit more Danish and stocked up on some fruit and vegetables. The regular meals of bread bricks and cheese were always tasty, but after a while I was desperate for some vitamins. The beer is excellent, the fish to die for, the people friendly and happy, and the houses are YELLOW.

Yay Denmark!

Bugs

There are so very many insects here in South Carolina. I can barely step outside without getting the screaming heeby-jeebies.

Sounds of nature. Mmm. Cicadas, birds, Boeings, crickets, roller-coasters...


Everything is So Big. The appliances. The rooms. The spaces between things.

Everything is so Straight. The walls. The roads. The sense of decisive order.

Everything is so New. The houses. The cars. The silly young religions.


I'm here for a week. Then I return home to little, to wonky, to ancient.

Deer interwebz

Plz look after Boy while I is away. He wud like lolcats and nerdage. Ssankou.

@GOP: Taxes are Not a Punishment

They are a responsibility. They are a means of collecting money from the people in order to turn around and provide said people with a functional nation.

Tax money is used to maintain the roads that your donors' corporations haul their products around on, ensure that their private jets are built properly, provide them with an educated and healthy workforce, sustain oil wars for the sake of maintaining their extortionate fuel costs (though, to be fair, it is their privately-funded lobbyists who stand in the way of widespread adoption of ecologically-friendly and inexpensive fuel sources, not the state directly), and continue to create and uphold laws that ensure that life-saving drugs and treatments never go generic so their profit margins never falter. Your donor base benefits from taxation every day--indeed, far more in fact than most middle-class consumers who even now you're trying to screw in the face by replacing their Medicare and public education with vouchers so you can fund fundamentalist churches who will give that money right back to you.

Your donors are the people who most often use the tax-funded court system, trying to prevent each other from making money. They're most often protected by the rigorous enforcement of laws against vandalism--without which I'm confident far more disgruntled employees would cause damage to their factories and offices. They're most often bailed out when their decades of illicit activity and irresponsibility finally catch up with them. Not us.

Not us--us middle class goons and others who don't qualify for state assistance and never will, even if we hit rock-bottom. Not us consumers who you've turned a blind eye to when we've cried out for release from the crushing costs of insurance and debt that your donors turned toxic. Not us for whom cars are a taxable expense, not an itemized deduction. Not us who don't have a choice of what country to do our banking in.

We the middle-class are sick of paying for the lifestyles of your donors while receiving nothing in return. The intellectual elite that you seek so vehemently to silence are aware of the necessity of reasonable taxation on all sectors to maintain functional domestic infrastructure and healthy global trade relationships. Appropriate taxation is the only way to keep our roads in shape, as South Carolina's rutted tracks attest to. It is the only way to maintain a trained and honest police department, as Chicago's bribe-funded force can attest to. It is the only way to educate our youth, as the evolution-denying home-schooled kids who will never benefit your science-industry donors clearly demonstrate. It is the only way to equip our military, as Boeing is quick to remind you.

So seriously, enough is enough. Stop trying to distract your hot-headed voter corps with meaningless fights over whether-or-not churches should get state power or brown people should be allowed to immigrate. The answers are clearly established in the Constitution (no and yes, respectively) and are not up for debate--if you'd like to debate them you can do so we're not in an economy-crushing crisis. Stop prodding the powerless into attacking each other so they forget to hold you accountable for your jobs. Stop wading around in fluff legislation, waiting for the emergency imperative that you're clearly holding out for, and draft rational tax increases for the wealthy so we don't fall into the abyss that you, through your neglect, excavated.

Social Security did not cause this. Medicare did not cause this, except inasmuch as you've kept drugs extortionately expensive for the elderly so as to keep your pharmaceutical donors smiling. My grandma's pain pills are not expensive to make, distribute, or regulate. (Speaking of which, my grandma has never asked for nor received a $50,000 toy aeroplane.)

What caused this was three simultaneous wars, massive loopholes in tax laws that only the wealthy can exploit, free trade agreements that have allowed American companies to dump domestic employees because they want a fair wage, and freewheeling banking and insurance systems that ensure that unwealthy people are screwed if they get sick or their jobs get outsourced by your donors.

Those "job creators" you keep harping on haven't 'created' any substantive employment opportunities yet, despite enjoying the lowest tax obligation in our nation's history. Those "job creators" are in a prime field to put Americans to work right now--there's 14,100,000 unemployed people right now who would very much appreciate a reasonable income and group health insurance--nothing fancy. They don't want gold plated toilet seats, butlers or Bentleys--just enough support to live with dignity. Everything is in place right now for them to create those jobs you keep talking about, but they're not doing it.

Would you reckon they're waiting to create all those promised jobs until those fourteen million people and their peers drop the "with dignity" clause? Are they planning to bring their production lines back to the US the second we disband OSHA, or do we need to obliterate the pathetically inadequate minimum wage, open up our ecosystem to even more dumping, agree to pay for the injuries and illnesses we develop from from our now-unsafe workplaces and toxic food ourselves, and promise to not make them pay any taxes at all too? Are they expecting us to re-instate the Antebellum South to lure them back? Is that the trigger?

The problem is not us.

It is you.

Another Note I Sent to my MP

You'd think I was retired, the amount of time I spend harassing my poor elected representative. Next I'll be writing terse letters to my local newspaper about disrespectful youths and how I've grown so fearful I don't let my corgis outside any more. Nevertheless:


Dear Ms. Ruddock,

Frank Field and Nadine Dorries' recent underhanded moves in regard to women's safe and timely access to abortion services have just come to my attention and caused me considerable concern. No doubt I'm preaching to the choir here, but I nevertheless wanted to reaffirm that your constituents will not stand for any more gross attempts on women's rights by religious fanatics and misogynists. If you can do anything at the legislative level to prevent their “little modifications” from being introduced into law, please nip this in the bud as soon as you can.

I moved to Lewisham in 2009 from South Carolina, an impoverished wasteland of Bible Belt Americana. While I would not describe myself as a refugee, my partner and I did very deliberately choose to move me here instead of him to the US simply because the UK did not appear to be teetering on the edge of a catastrophic Christian takeover at the time. So when I saw that LIFE ousted BPAS on the sexual health council a few months ago I greeted the news with dread—I knew more Fundie garbage would be dumped in our laps in time. And sure enough, now MPs Field and Dorries are seeking to sneak new regulations into the healthcare bill that will at once require women to receive unnecessary counselling and prevent abortion providers from offering it, a measure which would place private organizations with private motives between women and their reproductive rights. This, I'm confident you'll agree, is an outrage.

This sort of twelfth-century legislation crops up in the US all the time—most notably in South Dakota. There women must receive counselling from an independent “crisis pregnancy center” at least two weeks before receiving an abortion. All of these centres in the state are church-run, anti-choice, and make a point of misinforming women—from lies about cancer risks to fibs about complications, infertility, and God's Wrath, they'll make up anything. Then, of course, they don't stamp the necessary forms to prove that advisees came in—they just cheekily refuse to allow women to meet that requirement. Not that this matters—the state has driven out all abortion providers, even for when a woman's life is in jeopardy. Distressed women now have to cross to Wyoming to receive treatment--a trip of hundreds of miles, followed by weeks of paying for accommodation while they wait.

It is vital for the health, safety, dignity, and personal sovereignty of all women that these outrageous attempts are stopped in their tracks, and for the perpetrators of this attempted crime against women to be reprimanded. These scum have seen the “perforate and tear” approach crush women's rights in backwoods America and figure it is worth a shot here. It ain't. Please help them see that what they're attempting is unacceptable in any decent society.

Warm regards,

Ms. KG

P.S. Oh cool--I just discovered that a group of choice supporters will be rallying on the 9th of July in the Old Palace Yard, Parliament Square, from 13:30-16:30, over just this issue. I think I'll join them.

---And she replied!

Thank you for contacting me about your concerns over the amendments to the Health and Social Bill tabled by Nadine Dorries MP and Frank Field MP. I agree with your comments and please be assured that if the amendments are selected for debate or brought to a vote I will be opposing them. If there is an attempt to introduce them without debate I will certainly oppose that as well. Yours sincerely, Rt. Hon. Joan Ruddock, MP

And her assistant tacked on a reply too:

I hope you don’t mind me adding to Joan’s letter. I don’t know if you attended on Saturday – I was there and thought it was a very good event. Best wishes, Ms. Senior Parliamentary Assistant

Cherry O!

No, this is not a repeat of the same pie. This is a Different Pie and it actually worked out a bit better than the last one. I stuck with Smitten Kitchen and I'm very glad I did, as most recipes out there call for sour or tart cherries and a bucket-load of sugar, but this called for actual edible cherries, a bit of lemon juice, and far less white-n-sweet. I even cut the sugar down from 2/3 to 1/2c just because I thought the strawberry-rhubarb pie was too sweet and figured it might be a schtick of Deb's--and as it was, I'm glad I did. It was just right.

I served it on the 4th of July to my British oppressors with plain ice cream. Everyone said they liked it, even the two people who didn't want to eat it because they don't like fruit. We then hiked up Blythe Hill and released some floating lanterns over the city. It was lovely.

Almost Tomato Time!

Yep, it's another gardening post. Sorry, I can't help it. Plants are just so photogenic. We'll start with my lavatera, which looks like it wants to be violet this year: It's about three and a half feet tall with a laser-straight stem, covered in buds. Very excited. Last year the only one that survived came out white, and while it was lovely, I was surprised at the lack of colour.

And moving on to my courgettes, which I'm slicing off every Sunday to keep the plant active: Yes, that is a courgette leaf, and yes, that is my foot. I had no idea how big they would get. Mental note for next year: plant them further apart.

The hosta is doing its flowery thing: I know hostas are praised primarily for their leaves, but I think the flowers are pretty too.

The red shrubby thing has "bloomed" again--this is the second time this season it has put out red leaves. They're already fading fast to green. Whatever it is, I think it's happy. The red leaves are new, the lighter green leaves are from earlier this season, and the dark green leaves are from last year.

Boy's Mum has shared some of her flowering tobacco plants with me: I've managed to keep the snails off them well enough that most have gotten big and strong and are blooming in a very interesting and attractive way:
I don't think tobacco leaves this small are any good to roll up and smoke--they're purely ornamental.

But how are those 'maters? I think you'll agree they're doing just fine.

The Yokel Effect

Joe is ignorant.

Kate tells Joe something he didn't previously know.

Joe is embarrassed that he didn't already know that.

Joe resents Kate for inducing this embarrassment.

Joe rejects anything else Kate may have to say.

Joe remains ignorant, but on purpose this time.


Michele Bachmann will try to make her religious dogma into law.

Joe wants religious laws, so he likes Michele Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann is wrong about US history and state policy.

Kate the News Anchor reveals that Michele Bachmann is wrong.

Joe is embarrassed that he didn't know she was wrong.

Joe resents Kate for making him feel embarrassed.

Joe rejects what news anchors say about Michele Bachmann.

Joe votes for Michele Bachmann.


(A Summary of Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.)

Plants, Pies, and Little Neighbours

So, WindoPlant is looking happier than it has in months:

This rhubarb and strawberry pie (recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen, discovered thanks to my dear Kim is still cooling on the rack RIGHT NOW.




I came across this little fella sleeping in my garden when I came home from the shops yesterday afternoon (and yes, he was breathing--it's always a bit iffy when it comes to London foxes. They're not the healthiest of creatures.)


But These boys live next door and come over to say hi to me almost every day. That's Squidge in the front and Mooney standing behind. They're very sweet. Squidge is a bit simple (he's a fully-grown tom who still chases his tail) and Mooney can be a bit aloof but they both come around right after dinner for a head-scratch. (Before we met the new couple next door, but after the cats started coming around to say hi, we called them Ackee and Saltfish.)


That's all.

Miss Apologist

I just watched the reel of Miss USA contestants' answers to the question "should evolution be taught in schools?" and wow, it made me sad.

Most of them said yes, but qualified it with some sort of higgledy-wibbledy "and creationism should be taught too, so the child can decide what to believe in." Several made disparaging comments regarding the fact that it is a theory, comments which clearly evidence their ignorance as to what the word "theory" actually means. This is pathetic, but demonstrates not their own idiocy, but the failings of their education systems.

In Fort Mill, in the year 2000 I learned about the theory of evolution in Biology 1. The teacher prefaced the unit with a well-rehearsed speech, one that chills me even now as I remember how directly she had to undermine her own intelligence every year. She looked fleetingly in each child's eyes as she said "this is a theory. I'm required to teach it to you. You are not required to believe it, and you will not be tested on your belief in it. But you need to be aware of it, especially those of you who want to study science in college or work in science when you grow up." She then fielded a number of protestations from the class members who wished to sit out because it was offensive to them. They couldn't, so some just didn't show up for the rest of the week and took a zero for the unit. Most kids, though, didn't care, and sat through the lessons exactly as they would any other lesson.

The trouble was, though, that the explanation in the textbook was weak, confusing, and disjointed. The diagrams didn't make any sense and examples seemed almost deliberately obscure. And all the while students whispered "it's just a theory, it's just a theory." as though this somehow negated it.

I'll admit, when I first learned about the evolution of human beings from an ancestor in common with contemporary apes, I was...not sceptical, not dubious, but somehow offended. I didn't like the idea that my big beautiful brain and fur-free face had a root in something so ugly. I didn't want to be part of such a humiliating lineage. But it nevertheless made sense. And in the end, that's all that mattered, because other ideas didn't.

But what got me was the repeated assertion that this was "just a theory" as though it wasn't a fact, just an idea that a few people believed in. But that's not a theory. An idea that makes sense but hasn't been proven or disproved is a hypothesis. The 45-odd identical young women in the interview reel who wanted to teach "both", side by side seemed to think that the word Theory means unverified claim, much like creationism. The only way evolutionary science could be taught alongside creationism is if no one had ever tried to test the hypothesis of evolution.

See, creationism never made it past the hypothesis stage. It did not hold up under experiment or examination. It was disproved. Evolution, on the other hand, has held up under experiment and examination. It has not been disproved. Does that mean it has been proven? Well, that's not really how the scientific method works. And anyone who has paid attention in science class beyond fourth grade knows that. The best you can hope for, really, is to be not conclusively disproved many, many times. Evolution has passed this scrutiny many many times, so it gets to be a theory--a generally agreed-upon-as-true concept. Creationism, and later its watered-down quasi-evolutionary sneaky-inny concessionary re-try versions have failed under this scrutiny many many times, so it gets to be a crock of bullshit. We know it is false. It has never stood up to reasonable verification measures. It is not a theory. It is wrong.

In answering "it should be taught alongside other theories, like creationism" these young ladies have only actually managed to say, "I don't know what the word theory means, so I'm not qualified to answer this question."

But that's what the system teaches them--so long as teachers can say "it's just a theory" and expect most parents to equate that with saying "it's just this insignificant idea" then they can teach their science classes in peace. In parents' minds no one has actually directly stated "this is the truth. All other ideas are wrong." so they don't raise up to protect their bullshit. Even though the teachers actually have said that. Just from a rather oblique grammatical angle. Evolution is the only explanation for biodiversity and the links between various species that has not been proven false.

But also (!) what is this BS about kids getting the option of believing in what they want to believe if all the cards are laid out on the table? No. Evolution is true whether or not you believe in it. It is belief-proof. You can stand in your living room or sanctuary all day and wave your hands around saying "la la la, I don't believe" but when you break for dinner, your relationship to the chimpanzee in the local zoo is still irrefutable.

School isn't about providing avenues for belief, and it sure as hell isn't about teaching religious fairy stories. It exists to provide young people with the basic knowledge and thinking skills they need to either undertake further education or do a grown-up job. Note, I did not say "critical" thinking skills. Just thinking. You don't get to think critically until at least your junior year of university.

The mere idea of providing a middle schooler with two contradictory ideas of where human beings came from, one which is true but kinda dry and the other which is clearly false (but is nevertheless presented as "as potentially true" as the other) but tells children that they're somehow special out of the entire universe, then leaving them to pick one, is clearly nonsense. Kids are dumb--not just insufficiently informed, but mentally undeveloped. They're not able to think critically or objectively. They just want to feel safe, fed, and special. That's why we don't argue with them or ask them to make choices. We simply present information to them as irrefutable and expect them to absorb it. And they do.

That is why it is so very vital to keep BS like creationism out of schools. Kids are too dumb to realize that their stupidity and credulity are being exploited by adults who want them to believe popular lies in the face of valid evidence to the contrary. Children believe their teachers with a sort of relaxed empiricism that can get them into trouble. (e.g. I'll believe it because someone much smarter than me believes it and appears to have done some research. Therefore whatever the teacher tells me is factual.) If you tell teachers to present evolution and creationism as equally-potentially-true approaches toward explaining some big unknown, you only confuse the simple-minded monkeys in your class. Tell them what actually is true, and let their churches lie to them.

The sad fact is, most of these contestants in some way acknowledged that kids' understanding of evolution is vital to our nation's progress. We can't make advances in medicine or biotech without it, or with a belief that something else is true. How can you hold two such directly conflicting ideas in one head? On the one hand, you can clearly observe the leaps and bounds technology has made since people accepted the Origin of the Species, you can acknowledge that this scientific understanding is vital, but on the other you can say "but I believe something different." I know this is true, but I don't personally believe in it. GlaDOS would explode.

I'll explain it. You believe the theistic lies because you were told them when you were very young, before you were really capable of examining them yourself. You were told them by people you loved and trusted so you never questioned them. And now, fifteen to twenty years later, they've gelled into a bizarre permeable sense-barrier. You can both know a truth and disbelieve in it, not because you have faith, but because you really just haven't thought about it. Or much at all.

Yes, the most important reason to keep creationism out of schools is that, if we allowed it, the dumber kids would turn out just like you, Miss USAirhead.

Spot the Difference!

Look closely...

April 30, 2011

June 12, 2011

I saw a documentary recently about the conservation challenge of non-photogenic endangered species, such as the Dominican Chicken (a big frog with tasty legs) which are on the verge of being wiped out (in the case of the Chicken, by over-hunting and an infectious fungus that was probably brought in by a tourist). It's strange--amphibians have been around for millions and millions of years, and even this particular species has been around for ages, but they are so very specifically adapted to their habitats that they're two degrees from extinction at the best of times (well, at least since the industrial revolution). I guess when you have a fairly permeable skin layer protected by a rather pH specific mucus, the slightest environmental change can wreck your defences and cause catastrophe. Like the white perch in Baltimore Harbour--almost all of them have an intestinal infection (that starts at the anus) by midsummer because the bay's acidity changes during fertilizer season, burning through their protective layer right when the algal bloom is reaching its peak. This illness, plus depleted dissolved oxygen levels (courtesy of the opaque slurry of dead algae) prevents many of these little ugly fish from reaching sexual maturity, so spawn counts are lower, which means the animals that eat them are going hungry...but they're not big or fluffy, so no one really cares. Holistic ecology is lost on most people.

I Attended A Quiet, Nerdy Lecture

and this happened.

Yeah. Protesters. They were upset about AC Grayling's proposed new school, a frou-frou private humanities college that would cost £18,000 a year and offer intensive scholarship to a rather specific student body. Richard Dawkins has agreed to do a few lectures a year there in science, and has made it clear that all of the money he receives for doing them will go to charity. The students don't like the idea of a new private, expensive school in the UK and want Dawkins to refuse to be a part of it on ethical grounds (e.g. the school is too expensive and takes the "best teachers" away from the public schools because it will pay them more.)

The protest lasted about forty-five minutes (the entire duration of which was spent with the audience hurling abuse at them and telling them to sod off), until the back-up police officers arrived, filed in, and escorted them out quietly. The lecture hall was completely packed--about 1,000 asses in seats--and maybe up to four attendees had any sympathy for their concern. The proposed university certainly wasn't the point of the talk or the reason why any of us had shown up. We'd come to hear a bit of give-and-take, perhaps some dorky science jokes from two of our favourite atheists.

In all honesty I got the impression that the whole point of the talk was to give PZ Myers an opportunity to say hi to some of his London readers, and maybe even have a drink with some of us. As it was the police made a point of shunting us and the professors out of the building as quickly as possible so as to avoid any other ugly encounters that they'd then have to deal with. I can't say I blame them, but it was a shame that the asshat brigade prevented what might have been a nice reception.

See, I have absolutely zero sympathy for these kids. Righteous as their anger must undoubtedly feel to them, I grew up in the USA where higher education is considered neither right nor privilege, but investment. A degree represents an investment of time, effort, and money in your personal future. The state does help students pay for it--not with giveaways, typically, but with low-interest loans and scholarships for the best students. This scholarship system may be considered a sort of sliding scale: the degree itself may be achieved either through more effort or more payment, within certain constraints. If the student consistently earns Cs she can still graduate with money, but if she earns As she can pay for it with merit.

This system worked for me: I earned damn fine grades throughout my undergraduate career and left school with only the debt I accrued through housing costs. The state of South Carolina paid my tuition all four years, and USC gave me a pat on the head in the form of the three words Magna, Cum *hehe* and Laude after my qualification. I'm so clever they had to tell me in Latin.

A lot of students started on this, the LIFE scholarship. It's quite simple, really--in the state of South Carolina, if you graduate high school with at least a B average and at least 1100 on your SATs, if you go to a SC university the state will cover your tuition costs, no matter what you study. In order to keep receiving this every semester all you have to do is remain in full-time study and maintain a B (3.0) average. You can even get LIFE if you didn't meet these criteria at the end of high school, but do well in your first few terms of uni. Sadly, though, most students who start on a LIFE lose it for one reason or another. Either their grades slip, or they drop down to part-time, or they transfer out of state, or they get in too much trouble (I think there's something about not getting convicted of felonies) or a variety of other things happen that cause them to not get funded. The state sees them as a failed investment and withdraws, which gives them a choice: either invest in themselves, or do something else.

Beyond this, nearly 40% of all students who start university drop out after two years--a fact that course designers actually depend on, but a huge pain in the ass in every other respect. Yes, third and fourth year modules benefit from small class sizes and intimate, direct discussion and tuition with teachers, but at what cost? The system has to filter through and crush the dreams of thousands of hopefuls every semester.

But let's look at this from a financial standpoint--unless you quit before you start, if you quit after a term you're left with money spent for nothing. Now, if the "state" pays for most of it, then you're only accountable for at most £4,500 per term that you kept it up. As an individual, that's not so bad. But think for a second--40% of all students drop out. That means the big nebulous "state" is accountable for the remainder of the actual cost of failing to educate all of you--a far greater amount per student than what you pay. Now who is that state? Oh right, it's your friends and neighbours. Y'know, me. We have footed the bulk of the cost so you could fart around and do nothing for a couple of years before giving up and moving back in with your mummy. Thanks for nothing. Excuse me, thanks for less than nothing. Thanks for thieving. That's right. We've given universities millions of pounds so you can come out exactly as employable as if you hadn't gone at all.

Yeah, I actually do want you to get something out of your education--a job. I'm depending on you getting a job. We all are. That's what society is built on. We all chip in--for roads, for schools, for hospitals, for common defence--and we all need jobs in order to do our bit. It is in the best interest of the government And the people for me to have a decent-paying job, because it means I can pay my taxes. I can provide my share of the responsibility of keeping my country running.

(And yes, it's even better for the UK for me to have a job, despite the fact that I can't claim unemployment benefits. Even if I'm not mooching off the state, if I'm not earning money I'm not putting anything into it either.)

Say what you want about reasonable taxation, it's there for a reason. It's not going away. Unless you want to form your own militias and let private companies run the trains for maximum profit, you're going to need to ensure that you have a solid government that is trying to represent the interests of the majority of people in your nation.

So the UK accepts that 40% of all people who start uni aren't going to graduate. That's 40% of the money they have chosen to invest in your future that they're counting on going to waste. That's stupid.

A better system is one that recognizes an investment in the students who are most likely to succeed. A system that rewards high grade earners and diligent attenders by lifting the financial burden from them, and encourages people who don't actually want to work hard for an education to get into a more appropriate field quickly. A system wherein individuals earn investment in their potential by proving that they have it.

In South Carolina I made a number of my fellow students unhappy with this assertion--that is, that I supported the financial arrangements I had signed up for by going to a local school. "I lost my scholarship, so now I have to work to pay for school, which interferes in my ability to go to school and study, so my grades have suffered even more" is a big one. And a huge f'ing crock. No. You don't have to. If you actually gave a crap about the education itself, if you didn't have the grades to start with or lost the good ones you had, you could take out a student loan. If you'd rather work for money than study, that's your own concern, but don't make it out like the state ought to keep paying for you to not attend school. The state has a responsibility to promote the general welfare of the people as effectively as it can. Your empty chair in the Economics 201 room is not counted as "people".

What loans and merit-based scholarships do is create not a two-tiered finance-based system, but a multi-tiered interest-based system. For kids who want to learn and are willing to put in the effort, the state supports that education. For the huge numbers of people who don't want to spend more time in a classroom learning abstract ideas and debating philosophy, there are opportunities to learn skills for a lower cost (both in terms of money and time) that can help you find good employment. For people who seek neither education nor skills, there are jobs available sweeping floors and digging ditches. Some people like that. Who am I to argue?

My point is you do not have a right to higher education. Your state has given itself an obligation to ensure that the most capable individuals can get into careers that on some level benefit everyone--even if the only benefit it provides is a taxable salary. If you can pay tax and save lives, so much the better. Get off your damn high horse of middle class entitlement for a second and recognize that it's not all about you, and never was. Your state has been foolishly squandering money on you for years, and they've learned their mistake. The majority of people do not need higher education--they need stable jobs. Most jobs don't actually require a BA-level education to be performed well, but a BA has become the benchmark of competence thanks to you pushing higher education on everyone. Thanks to your "education is a right" bollocks, kiddos, your education has become valueless.

If you want someone to be upset at, don't wave your hands around at academics who want to set up their own private schools. They're not the problem--they're just a symptom. The real problem is that the MA has become the new BA, and the BA has become the new high school diploma, but people still give credence to the idea that the universe was built on purpose in a week by a bearded humanoid who loves them.

You show me nation full of university graduates and I'll show you a nation with a higher ceiling.

Second-Year Growth

I discovered at the pub last night that a pleasant but hardly close acquaintance of mine has been following the progress of my garden on the ol' Book of Face. Flattered and a bit taken aback at this knowledge, I nevertheless happily engaged in a good twenty minutes or so of Plant Talk with her and had a lovely time. It seems that since this is my second growing season, my amateur gardening peers assume I must have learnt something by now. And I have! I've learned, for the most part, how I've done things wrong.

Take for instance my tomato plants last year. It didn't bother me that they were three metres tall and had more foliage than my forsythia and my holly combined. They were big and happy and gave me a lot of fruit, much of which never made it into the house (well, I mean it did, but it was already in a belly at that point.) The fruits were delicate and delicious, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. But I did a lot of things wrong.
I forgot to water them, okay? Summer rainfall is unpredictable here, so you never can be sure just how much rain is getting to the plants' roots. I'd see it rain and think "I don't need to water them today--thanks, sky!" and go about my business. But unfortunately, due to the angle the rain came in at, the semi-protective cove I carved out of the hedge for them, and (as the plants got bigger) the canopy of leaves the tomatoes themselves grew, most rainwater missed the roots entirely. So when I'd come out the next day and the stems would be sagging before my eyes I'd rush around to give them a drink.

This causes problems, I discovered--if you let them get dry, then suddenly dump a bucket of water on them, they slorp it up too fast. While this isn't really a bad thing when the plant is young, once fruits begin to grow, a period of dryness makes the tomato skins less elastic--meaning that when the plant suddenly injects water into them, they split. For un-broken fruit you must sustain your water supply. That didn't really dawn on me. They still tasted great, but they didn't last as long.
Another thing I didn't really realize until later in the season is if you stop fertilizing the soil on a regular basis, the fruit becomes tasteless and the colour is less vibrant. (see also "plant leaves make their own canopy which keeps water off roots"--water which contains liquid fertilizer). They do like my tasty high-potash tomato food from Tesco.

A third thing, this time involving growth. The plant doesn't really exist to make as many fruits as possible. That's not its overall priority. The plants want to be big and lush and eat all the sunshine they can find. Last year I didn't mind this, but I did something quite strange for no particular reason that taught me a lesson. I planted 3 tomatoes in 9" pots and the other 7 in the ground. The 3 in the pots stayed little (they maxed out at about 3') and were more prone to nutrient-retention problems, but they flowered first, fruited first, and sustained regular, if smaller crops of tomatoes throughout the entire season. The 7 in the ground (in the hedge, that became the hedge) got much taller (12' or more) and much, Much leafier, and produced more tomatoes, but did so later, and by the end of the warm season they all had at least one cluster that had not ripened. It seemed like they put far more effort into overall growth than fruit growth, more than likely because they had bigger, stronger root structures that could support unchecked growth of that kind.

It's worth noting that I didn't mind them getting huge and taking over the hedge at all--mostly because I had completely scalped the hedge to make room for them, and without the vines I would have probably caused several awkward "er, nice jammies" encounters with my neighbours.
But yes, at least someone out there has been enjoying my failures and occasional bright spots of success in the yard. Check out the slime trail left by one of my many tomato seedling murderers. I caught this one and gave him a fling at the fence.
My courgettes are flowering and have tiny immature squashes deep inside.
Two of my rosemary shrubs have been eaten by something or other but the third is happy and healthy.

The peony has finished its all-too-brief show but the azalea is still going and my miniature rose is just getting started. (teeny tiny rose! It would fit in a salad bowl)


The sage went all powdery and died, which is something my landlord says happens frequently. I have some sort of wall-climber that has tiny flowers that the bumblebees absolutely adore.
The apple tree is full of tiny orbs.
I hacked the fuchsia back almost to the ground in March and it's full of leaves again, ready to go. The lemon balm is taking over, but I don't mind. Apparently it is a useful mosquito repellent. (It does smell like citronella so I'm not surprised. I wonder what would happen if you mashed it into a small bowl of water and heated it?) I have two types of mint (one brightly-flavoured, one more subdued) that are both doing well, but I'm having to pull their little sprigs out of the path. They're growing in pots but that is apparently not a restriction. The Big Pink Plant finished blooming and has settled down for the summer.
The Japanese Maple is so richly red it's almost purple and the lettuces are covered in aphids.

The Hosta is happy and no longer looks like a city of the future. My garden has far more aphids and whiteflies than last year. I don't really know why but I have a few hunches--I grew tulips this year and by the end of March they had aphids all over them. I wonder if they like laying eggs on tulips. They certainly like laying eggs on lettuces, but then again everything likes to eat lettuce. Snails, aphids, flies, cats...I've decided to just leave the lettuces as a herbaceous sacrifice to the neighbourhood.

A note I just sent to my MP

Dear Ms. Ruddock,

This letter is intended to share with you my views regarding the Shoreditch High Street Overground "toll booth" and its impact on Lewisham residents. I don't know if you're aware that Shoreditch High Street Station was moved into Zone 1 in 2009 thanks to pressure from National Rail over concerns that the Overground would hurt their ticket sales. Because of this, your constituents must pay £11 extra every week just to pass through this station to get to our offices--a charge which commuters from other areas of zones 2 and 3 are not subjected to.

As the Shoreditch Toll Booth only affects commuters coming into town from our neck of the woods, I believe this is a regional equality issue that warrants your concern. We've been monopolized by National Rail for too long--and now rather than force it to compete with the less-convenient but lower-priced Overground as intended, TfL has caved to financial pressure from this for-profit enterprise, prevented the people from having a money-saving option, and undermined their own initiative to reduce traffic.

For every other region, the Overground costs £21 a week, but for us it's £32. If we didn't pay London taxes maybe a surcharge to get into town would make sense, but since we do, pricing us out of the Overground network is clearly unfair.

When the Overground was being built we were told that it was intended to help reduce congestion in the Tube and the central stations by providing an orbital service for the outer zones. But because of National Rail's shady dealing it's the same price for me to get to my office in Angel via London Bridge as Highbury & Islington, so I squeeze onto the Northern line every morning. We have no option but to pay for Zone 1, so we might as well use the faster routes straight through it. The few occasions when I've had cause to catch the Overground it's been practically empty--and rightly so.

Once construction begins in earnest on London Bridge Station rail travel in our region is going to be a nightmare. Surely TfL can see wisdom in keeping as many people as possible out of that! And with the Olympics coming up it seems contradictory to our city's best interests to Not offer a real incentive for locals to stay out of the city centre. We're all used to overcrowding--avoiding the tourists is not an effective incentive!

A solution that has been proposed to mediate the conflicting interests of National Rail and southeasterners is Shoreditch could behave like Zone 1 if you enter or exit there (the City is technically within walking distance, so fair enough) but if you only pass through without getting off your train, it remains Zone 2 as originally intended. This would not be difficult to programme, and it would encourage Zone 2 workers like my partner and I to go out of our way to lighten the load on London Bridge.

Moreover, Ben and I don't earn much, so the £1,000 per year this small change could save our household is significant. And as I'm well aware of National Rail's pay and neglect scandals, regular price hikes and service cuts, and the fact that they get our tax money regardless of the quality of their service, you'll have a hard time convincing me they deserve that grand more than we do.

Please help your constituents make ends meet and unclog the Tube by making the Overground serve its purpose. The Shoreditch High Street Toll Booth extorts the South East and should be eliminated.

Thank you for your time.

It's About Balance

Public. Private. Who decides? Who pays? What is appropriate? I'd like to touch on a few big industries that have a lot of leeway in modern Britain: the publicly funded, publicly run Arts Council, the publicly funded, privately-run Rail Union, and the privately-funded, privately-run pain in the ass that is Big Telecom.

I am a theatre professional. Well, I would be if I was employed. I am a highly educated theatre-y person. (An MA in theatre and a sockful of nickels might get you a loaf of bread.) Maybe my opinion on this matter has the potential to be modified by employment, but for now, I have a thing or two to say about state-funded art.

It's a bad idea.

The UK government established the Arts Council in 1940 to try and give artists an income--to keep the vagrants off the streets, essentially. The arts council was founded on the notion that artists are otherwise useless to society and it would less unsanitary to fund them to do something than to have them begging. (Okay, I'm making some of that up. The arts council was developed to preserve and promote British culture, which is a valid enough enterprise, 'cos let's face it, the British don't have a whole lot else going for them now that all their primary industries have moved to countries that don't get their panties in a wad about workplace safety and living wages. And unlike Hawaii, British tourism can't just sustain itself on sunshine and pretty women.)

Back to the point. Many theatres in the UK would collapse if state funding was pulled from them. Tourism would be threatened. Culture would be compromised. An entire generation of artists would fade into obscurity. It would be a catastrophe.

This is unfortunate, because honestly the last thing art needs is tax money, and the best thing for the industry is for the state to turn away from it.

(You traitor! Arrrrg! No wonder no one will hire you!) What tax funding has done to theatre is allow the general population to have a voice in what types of arts programming get funding. And guess what. 90% of the general population does not think that "art for art's sake" is a worthwhile use of their money. I for one don't. You want to take my hard-earned (non-existent) cash and give it to some idiot so he can poop on the floor? Film herself scraping off her fingernails and soaking her bleeding fingers in milk? Tie herself into an awkward position and paint the walls with her teeth? No. That's a waste of money. Tax revenue must be used for the public good.

So the opposite has happened. The only theatres, music groups, and art programmes that get money are ones that have some sort of outreach motive. At-risk youth theatre. Music therapy for the mentally ill. Art in hospitals. History museums.

This is fine. No, really. Well, sorta. I have no particular beef with nice people providing art-based social services. I would never do it myself, as I've only ever seen it backfire, but surely some good has come from bringing a joyful noise into classrooms and shelters. Sure, half the time the troubled teens are just shouting "fuck off, little miss do-gooder" and it's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of cello music on coma patients, but I'm sure that on some level it's all making life a little bit more liveable for someone (and not just the bleeding-heart practitioners themselves).

But the availability of free money for the right kind of art has crippled arts development in every other sector, because every organization that could be doing something cool is instead flopping around like sun-baked fish, desperately modifying their programming and mission statement in the hopes of getting picked up for funding. People and groups that have no business influencing children and prisoners are out there, compromising their vision (and distressing toddlers) because there's no other money available to support creative expression.

The private sector may call for a commission occasionally--a new sculpture for the lobby, a cubist portrait of the founder--but because of the pervasive influence of the Democratised Aesthetic, unless a submission can demonstrate its Community Outreach potential, very few corporate managers will risk investing in art. It's just bad PR.

Back in the day--long before my day--artists sought patrons. Wealthy individuals and companies paid artists to be their entertainment-on-demand. Yes, the artist had to produce work that the patron appreciated, but these sorts of relationships were varied and could lead to quite interesting, diverse outcomes. The upshot of all this was that exceptional artists could create art that pleased the aesthetic and interests of their particular niche, and if nobody else liked it, it didn't matter. Consider the Shakespeare histories that made sure to portray ancestral competing claimants to the throne as evil, or the architects who told George IV that the onion-domed And crenellated Royal Pavilion he wanted for Brighton would be just beautiful (and very accurately Chinese).

But time has moved on, expectations have been raised, and theatre has gotten more expensive to produce. Meanwhile companies have merged and streamlined, grown and expanded until entire industries have come to exist under one corporate umbrella. The only companies that can afford to sponsor arts organizations are such high-profile institutions that they can't risk being too controversial. Even innocuous, good-idea helpful patronage, when it reaches the ears of the wrong community, leads to boycotts and protests in the streets (or did no one else notice the Teabaggers flapping their arms around outside Home Depot for supporting GLAAD?) Big corporations that decide to support the arts have to be very, very careful that they are investing in programmes that make them look good across the board.

Theatres that already are big corporations have to make shows that will please everyone, or at least not offend anyone.

Which results in porridge. Bland, colourless, gloppy, saccharin sweet porridge.

Germany does something different. In German culture banks, investors, and huge monolithic corporations have adopted a fashion where it's hip to fund a theatre. They still have something resembling that patronage system, and in a lot of cases, the money that it takes to run an arts organization is hardly a blip on the corporation's ledger--at least, it's not a big enough concern that the funding body takes any great care to monitor the theatre's output. This occasionally leads to them paying performers to masturbate onstage to a house of empty seats, but it allows for funded creative experiment--artists getting paid a living wage to try new things, develop new ideas, and push the envelope without worrying if their actions promote awareness of Sidcup's recycling programme.

It's like that terrible waste of beautiful puppetry that's gone from nauseating the West End to annoying Spielberg's viewers: when you burden a show-horse with a plough, you wind up with both a broken horse and a poorly turned field. Art has been crippled by its failed attempt to Do Good. Art is not good. It is not bad. It is art, and if you try and give it a social purpose, you wind up with the abomination that is War Horse.

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But let's look at the flip side for a second. What happens when publicly-funded organizations get to do whatever they want with no accountability to anyone but themselves, despite the fact that they affect everyone? When they don't have to do good, even though they should? I am referring, naturally, to the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union.

The Tube. It is London's life force--an arterial system that provides almost every neighbourhood with workers, taxpayers, and the occasional vagrant. Like theatre it is also paid for with a combination of tax revenue and ticket sales. But unlike theatre, in the past year transit prices have gone up twice, services have been reduced, and the union has gone on strike at least four times, effectively shutting the system down and putting an undue burden on the separate unions of the buses, suburban rail, the Overground, the river, taxis, and the highway. Theatres tried that--nobody showed up and eventually the theatres closed.

RMT are striking for what at first sounds like reasonable causes--safety, hours, wages, job security. Fair enough, right?

Except. Except they don't really have a leg to stand on. Tube employees' base salary is £15,000 higher than any other transit workers'. More money is sluiced by the state into the Tube than into any other system--into maintenance, employee benefits, maintaining jobs, and line development. Particularly now that the Olympics are rapidly coming closer, ensuring that the city has a safe, reliable, attractive public transit system has been declared utterly vital. They are getting as much money as anyone can afford.

And we live in the Future. The city also has a lovely train service called the Docklands Light Railway, which is every four year old boy's favourite thing on earth for one very important reason: he can sit up front and pretend to drive. The DLR is essentially a large network of robots that functions quite well almost entirely without human involvement. It's on time, it's safe, and it runs itself.

Sure, in the evenings it's a good idea to have transit employees on board to ensure that when drunks fall onto the tracks, the machine doesn't carry on without heeding their plight. But under daily circumstances, drivers, door operators, and signalmen are more trouble than they're worth. Unfortunate to employment rates? Sure. But what is better for commuters--employing train employees to do an okay job, or having machines do a very efficient job?

This kind of gimmick of course makes transit employees very, very angry. And to an extent I understand them--why should people lose their jobs to machines, just because machines do them better and without needing to buy food or nappies or pay mortgages or take sick days? We've had to face the crushing truth that computers and machines work better than we do since the industrial revolution. As we innovate ourselves out of usefulness, we must take a moment to ask--why do we cling to the notion that a task that is better and more cheaply performed by a computer programme should still be a career? No one seems to mourn the obsolescence of the scullery maid or the lamplighter. And while home-made cakes do taste better, I have a hard time believing that the DLR is somehow inferior without that human touch. If a machine has been made to streamline the inefficiencies of human performance at any task, surely this is an indicator that the best human operation leaves room for improvement.

So far, the rail unions have kept the machines from completely eliminating their jobs, but this success has empowered them to take more bold moves, which may get them into trouble. Their regular, crippling strikes over ticket office layoffs (the computerized system works better, faster, more fairly, speaks 17 languages, doesn't yell at you for waking it up, and doesn't pull the shade at 4:45pm) and their planned strikes over the legitimate firing of two employees have endeared the soulless DLR to Londoners more and more over the past year.

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But what about private companies who have never done good, have never had to do good, but keep getting in the way regardless? I'm referring, of course, to phone companies and net neutrality.

Why does the phone company think it is owed something in this digital age? We have always paid for phone service--it's not like the entire history of telephone operation has been some sort of philanthropy on their part--but now that a video phone call can be handled for free and with minimal bandwidth occupation on the Internet companies like BT are determined to get their just deserves. Courts are filled every day with phone lawyers and lobbyists doing whatever they can to prevent companies like Skype from letting people circumvent their communication toll. Just because it Can be done for free doesn't mean it Should, surely.

The problem is the people who would add a surcharge to free services so as to hold onto their profit margin are convinced that the Internet is a closed system with a speed limit that can and should be enforced. Despite the truth that the interwebs just expand as new information enters them, and so long as people keep buying servers there's no reason the net won't just grow indefinitely, they are trapped in a 1980's version of the world where a town's long-distance jacks were limited and had to be handled by an operator. The extents they're going to now to impose their analogue fees on the digital world are akin to priests raving that, despite all evidence that a skilled surgeon removed your infected appendix safely, prayer actually saved your life. Get with the program. Manual telephone operation and religion have been dead for years, but for some stupid reason they won't stop kicking or demanding our money. You've had your day! Just let go already! Better, faster, smarter and cheaper systems have replaced you--namely computers and soap. The reason we're not paying you is because you shouldn't be paid anymore. You want a job? Invent a new service we can't live without. Don't demand that we keep paying you for a service nobody needs that you don't even provide.

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So. I think it comes down to: art should not be public, transit should not be private, and anyone who tries to force consumers to pay twice for internet and internet services should be shot. I already pay my monthly net subscription to BE AND a trumped-up "line rental" fee to the privately-owned BT--don't try and charge me for using Skype because I'm not paying your free-money long-distance fee for a piece of software to automatically connect me to my mom. I'm paying you for internet access. What I do with it is my business.