Things change.

You can’t stop the arrow of time. Things, people, societies, they all evolve. Things that used to be a good idea don’t remain a good idea forever. That’s why religious texts look sillier the more we learn. The things in the Bible, in the Koran, the things those on the fanatical outer fringes of religions (or death cults, to put it more accurately) believe are, in the cold, scientific light of day, obviously nonsense. It isn’t the fault of the books, the religions or the people who wrote them. They are merely products of their time, attempts to understand and describe their Universe as best they can. But, things change. Most of us know it wouldn’t be right to stone an adulterous woman to death. Most of us know that homosexuality is not something to be reviled. Most of us know that the Universe is billions of years old, not thousands. Those that don’t tend to be strongly religious. Funny, that.

I apologise for any offence I may cause Americans now, but your Constitution is not immune to this. The 1787 US Constitution is the shortest written constitution and this reverence accorded it is so embedded that to suggest it is flawed in any way is akin to heresy. Mostly it works fine, and is a beautiful example of a set of articles that can be used to successfully govern a large number of people. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, I doubt they looked at their muskets and foresaw the utterly terrifying array of fully automatic weaponry that is so easy to purchase nowadays. Of course, they knew very well in 2008, when it was confirmed that the Second Amendment applied to any fucknut on the street who wants a gun. The pressure from the NRA and the fact that pointing out that sometimes a gun is a dangerous thing is political suicide might have had something to do with that.

I’m not saying the US is alone in worshipping old Constitutions – we are very fond of our own 1215 Magna Carta, more than five-and-a-half centuries earlier than America’s, but viewing it in a glass case isn’t tantamount to a religious experience. If people are allowed to carry guns, other people are going to get shot. It really is that simple. The much-celebrated right to bear arms is defective in a modern society, and if you want people to stop getting shot, you need to retract that right, at least partly. Gun crime is almost unheard of here. It has been much reduced in Australia since a change in law was adopted following a tragic shooting incident in 1996. The sad truth is many, many more people will have to die before anything changes. But hey, an outdated civil liberty applicable to a different age is more important than life, isn’t it?

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

So, it’s been about four months since I declared my intention to not be such a bloater, and, mostly, progress is still slowly being made. A couple of stones have been lost (not sure exactly how much), resulting in less hideous chin and less bulbous belly, and the positive comments continue come my way. Hurrah! I did tweak it recently, because it got rather boring – I now give myself the weekends off. So the progress has slowed, but is still being made. No longer king of the toads. More like a prince. There is still work to be done though – I’m aiming for at least a minor functionary.

Why Obama’s win is important, even though little will change.

I suppose the first point to address here is that I live in the UK, so I don’t have any business expressing an opinion on an election that I wasn’t eligible to vote in. But, one, this blog is mine, so I write whatever happens to fall into my head, and two, and, much as many of us wish it wasn’t so, things that happen over there do have quite far-reaching international consequences. So there.

Now, the thing about the US election, is that, in many respects, it doesn’t matter who wins. Not even a little bit. The US (and the UK, to be fair) operates under a system that is closer to an elective oligarchy than it is to a democracy. Although, on the face of it, Democrats and Republicans appear to be bitter rivals, there is collusion to retain power in the form of that unchangeable two party system. The Pres isn’t about to change the corporate love-in that is US politics, nor will he alter the foreign policies or military stance. None of those in power will acknowledge that the American Dream, in its original form, is incompatible with a world with finite resources and a population of 7 billion. Climate policy is unlikely to change. Now, at the risk of being a pot shouting racial slurs at a kettle, I am aware that UK politics, and indeed the politics of many countries continue to act and plan as though social and economic systems built on constant growth are endlessly sustainable, but America is quite a lot bigger than most of those other countries, including my own fair homeland.

But, Obama’s win does matter. It is a good thing, for a number of reasons. One of the parties wants to force women to have their rapist’s baby. America chose the one that doesn’t. One of the candidates posthumously converts dead atheist loved ones to his own religion, violating one of the most sacred cornerstones of the very concept of freedom; that of freedom of religion. America chose the one that doesn’t. On the subject of religious freedom, one of the parties would like to dissolve the separation of church and state that helps prevent religious persecution. America chose the one that doesn’t. One of the parties will not even acknowledge climate change is something that exists. America chose the one that does. One of the candidates thinks 40% of the people he would like to represent are parasites feeding off a too-generous state. America chose the candidate that is able to respond to a person communicating in sign language without missing a beat. One of the parties wants dying people who cannot afford healthcare or health insurance (assuming they could even get cover for pre-existing conditions, which they often can’t) to hurry up and die already. America chose the party that is working towards providing healthcare for everyone. One of the parties wants to stop or at least reduce teaching the sciences in general and evolution in particular in an attempt to keep the population as dumb as possible. America chose the party that isn’t afraid of educating people, even if it means they start questioning the conflicts arising between what their religion tells them and what we now know about our Universe.

While I get the cynicism in respect of the illusion of choice (the same illusion exists here as well), the differences noted above are important. What is more important is the choice reflects an underlying feeling in the US; the feeling that the GOP, the tea-party and Donald Trump (by the way, Mr T – ‘unprecedented’ and ‘like never before’ mean the same thing) do not represent the way they feel. I’m no fool, I know the Republicans will gain power again sooner rather than later, but for the moment, there is reason to be positive.

In the long run, the most useful thing anyone can do, either here or there, in my opinion, is to attempt to effect change at a local level while still partaking in the voting charade that goes on at a national level. But I’d be surprised if even that ever begins to change things.

The horror, the horror...

It’s begun. My eldest daughter is five, and the bollocky, over-sexed, unoriginal pit of fecal aural matter that is our current pop scene is now starting to exert influence on her. She was jumping on our bed, the words “I am Jessie Jay Jay” coming from her mouth. She’s a big Toy Story watcher, so I hoped she might be referring to the cowgirl doll voiced by Joan Cusack in the films. Alas, when I asked her who, she said “Jessie J daddy, she’s a dancer and she dances every day”.

Hearing that sparked an odd kind of horror inside me, in which my mind’s eye showed me my daughter in a ridiculously tight outfit thrusting her crotch in the direction of Brian May’s guitar. Clearly, things are unlikely to ever get that bad, but I suspect I’m not far away from the JLS or One Direction phase, or whatever unshaven ken dolls styled and auto-tuned for the screaming masses they have by then. A band once cleverly prophesied that Pop Will Eat Itself. Pop is no longer eating itself, but is now feasting on its own cannibalised regurgitated vomit and calling it X-Factor.

Is it odd that I’m feeling more confident about handling the drink, sex and drugs phase than I am about the incoming being-fed-this-putrid-ear-shit-and-brainwashed-into-thinking-it-has-any-fucking-value-whatsoever phase? Wish me luck.

But is it art?

Not really. But maybe, in a way. I’ve had conversations before about whether cinema is really art. Well, yes, it absolutely is. Sure, when presented with Transformers: Dark of the Moon it is harder to contend this. But, what about ‘real’ art? For every tortured Van Gogh masterpiece, there is a light switch or unmade bed. Now, I'm not here to tell you that that kind of modern art isn't art, but I am contending that film has as much right, perhaps more, to be called art. Cinema is another form of storytelling, and storytelling is an art form, whether it is in the form of a book, graphic novel, concept album, or simply told around a campfire. If you don’t agree are you really trying to tell me that Tracey Emin is an artist, and yet Terrence Malik is not? Then you are nuts.

But games? Now we’re on to rockier ground. Roger Ebert would say no. There are many others who might tell you yes. Me? As usual, I’m kind of on the fence. Ingenious? Definitely, whether classic or modern – Pong, Pac Man, Tetris, Sonic, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, Bioshock, L.A. Noire... on and on the list goes. But art? Stories in games now have a much more cinematic feel, and as mentioned, I believe story-telling is a genuine art form. And some of the concept art and graphical touches are simply phenomenal (just two of many, many examples are shown below). But the stories and the design, which are art, is in service of the creation of an addictive diversion, which is not. So is art employed in the service of something which is not art still art? Perhaps some things man was never meant to know.

Concept art for Gears of War.

Concept art for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

Still fat. But maybe not quite as fat. One colleague referred to me as ‘trimmer’, and more than one family member has commented favourably. Also started up the swimming and the walking again this week. It might actually be working. Might have to have a weekend off soon, though – feeling the wine withdrawal.

Some things hurt my brain.

Philosophy sucks. It hurts my head and finds annoying and unfair ways to win arguments. Arguments are won by being right. Being right is proven by being backed up by facts. Without breaking a sweat, philosophy can tell you that no fact is certain and that there is no possible way to prove you are not merely a brain in a jar being fed electrical signals. Or that some god created everything in the universe exactly the way it is five minutes ago. There is no comeback. However, instead of serving as a reminder not to make too many assumptions about your world, I find it just prevents me from winning arguments, although this might be due to my inability to debate orally in real time. Facts, no matter how irrefutable, become unstable. The certainty that the Earth orbits the Sun melts away a little, because that might be what the nameless scientists want the brain in the jar to think (I do wonder, however, why people who subscribe to this way of thinking don't leave for work via their bedroom windows, if not for the fact that they know they will fall and likely break something).

But that way madness lies, and it is no way to win an argument. The Earth does revolve around the Sun. It is irrefutable, and there should be nothing more than a minor concession to the vanishingly small possibility that we are brains in jars or the butt of a joke played by a bored omnipotent being. It pays to look at my atheism the same way – I don’t know for an utter certainty that one of the vast myriad of gods dreamt up in our history is actually real, but I find the possibility of me being a brain in a jar much more likely.

Sometimes, particularly online, this way of thinking, of disregarding the value of things we know to be true, has a more damaging consequence than annoying me. It creates an environment where a fact is relegated to the status of mere opinion. Where people who simply have a big mouth can command as much attention as genuine experts on a vast variety of subjects and issues. Worse, where those with an agenda are able to take misunderstandings in respect of things we know to be true (yes, yes, unless we’re all brains in jars or whatever) and deliberately use them to foster denial and mistrust and cause conflict. It is that time again, where I sigh wearily, bring out my tin drum and bang on, once again, about two areas in particular where this kind of thing happens: climate change and evolution.

A recent Koch-funded study defied skeptic/denier expectations, confirming that the data in relation to climate change (that it is happening, and that human activity is responsible for much of it) was not only accurate but that the IPCC may have in fact underestimated the effect in some respects. This year polar ice melt is at a record-breaking high. Do you think that this will have anything but a negligible effect on those determined to deny the fact of climate change? Or the Koch brothers themselves? Not bloody likely.

And as for the big E, the very same applies. The fact of evolution is very hard to deny without sounding like a fool. The culprit is usually either a mind enslaved to an outdated religious doctrine, or a determination to stick to a hastily made conclusion and neglecting to look any further. The old erroneous conclusions resurface again and again – if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes, if every living thing on the planet is linked by evolution, why have we never found evidence of a 'crocoduck', why are there no transitional fossils. The first two illustrate the same fundamental misunderstanding of the very concept of the theory – no one living complex species of animal in existence on the planet today evolved from another living complex species of animal in existence on the planet today; they all shared a common ancestor. The third point illustrates the lack of interest in confirming one's own conclusions – there are literally thousands of transitional fossils (fish to reptile). Thousands (reptile to mammal, reptile to bird). Some further reading gives a number of examples of human evolution, too, if you can be arsed to check before talking shite about 'missing links'.

Keeping in mind the philosophy bit, there is, obviously, like every fact, a chance that evolution could be wrong. About as much chance that the Earth doesn’t revolve around the Sun. About as much that all of physics is wrong. The theory of evolution is as sound as the theory of gravity, and like all scientific theories, it started as an idea based on observation. Over 200 years, further observation and testing has established a solid theory that explains, beautifully, the biological state of the world today. Maybe the philosophical brain in a jar approach isn’t responsible for the deliberate and wilful misunderstanding of facts and scientific theories, but it ain’t half an annoying way to bring an argument to a stalemate.