tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2009-11-21:/This is lovely white text, isn't it? I'm mainly writing about religion, and mainly in order to deprecate it. I do have other concerns, though, including science, history, the quest for space and Bristol City FC.MokoFeed2009-11-21T12:13:16+01:00tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2009-08-07:/2009/08/07/new-blog-6670813/secback2009-08-07T11:28:51+02:002009-08-07T11:28:51+02:00 <p>I've moved to a new blog. It's called <a href="http://we-bounce-around.blogspot.com/">Bounce</a>.</p> <p>It's all about football. The new season starts today. Do drop in, it just wouldn't be the same without you. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2009/08/07/new-blog-6670813/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-09-26:/2008/09/26/tests-4778858/secback2008-09-26T13:12:18+02:002008-09-26T13:42:09+02:00 <p>In my capacity as underemployed career failure, I've recently found myself undertaking any number of employment tests for temporary office admin jobs. <em>Type this in as fast as you can</em>, they demand.  <em>How many spelling and grammar mistakes can you find in these documents? What's 17 x 7? No slacking now.<br></em><br>All right. I've taken four tests. Look, four is quite clearly a member of the set of any number. If I'd been asked to undertake -7, 3.81 or pi tests, I could still have described it thus. Even the square root of minus one tests would have been within acceptable parameters. So there.</p> <p>I've learnt a few things about the wonderful world of work (the original www). Firstly, it is vitally important to stick to the script. If you've been told to circle the errors in a letter to an imaginary customer, they're not looking for you to identify sentences which despite being technically correct are perhaps rather infelicitously phrased. In fact, they don't even seem to appreciate having them pointed out.</p> <p>Next, don't overdress. These days, only management wear suits. Everyone else wears a shirt with a collar, but no tie. Far from conveying eagerness, dressing up too much smacks of <em>lèse majesté</em>.</p> <p>Don't be fooled though. Despite the lack of starch, there is a chain of command in these places. They are there to test you, and not the other way round. So far I have seen no suggestion boxes marked <em>How could we design these tests so they aren't full of stupid errors?</em> This is a valuable clue to their level of interest in your ideas.</p> <p>Finally, be grateful. They've passed me as a medium Microsoft Word user. After fifteen years teaching it I certainly hoped I'd picked up the odd thing, but it's a boon and a privilege to have the fact confirmed by a pleasant young lady with trousers and a bun. And a nice smile. Maybe I reminded her of her father.</p> <p>In the end it's worked, and I now have fifteen hours a week of office drudgery at the top of a hill. The view is lovely, but I won't see it. No window seats for us minions. It beats selling the Big Issue, or reading it, but I can't say I'm thrilled. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/09/26/tests-4778858/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-09-16:/2008/09/16/not-just-me-going-on-4735479/secback2008-09-16T14:23:57+02:002008-09-16T14:23:57+02:00 <p>Here is a post on the <a href="http://www.asktheatheists.com/">Ask the Atheists</a> website.</p> <p><strong>How to get out of going to Church</strong><br><em>3 years ago I came out to my mom that I am atheist and she has been fine with that but within the past year she has gotten a new boyfriend who is somewhat religious and making me go to church with them. If I don&rsquo;t go I have been told that she will take most of my stuff away [clothing, computer, cell phone, and my camera which is my passion in life] and that I could not live with her anymore. Now I could go live with my dad but it would be very unsafe for me there because he is an alcoholic and he lives in another city. I know I could just go and sit there but I am really atheist and cannot stand the sight of a church much less attend a service. She has expressed to me that the most important thing for her is to get me to go to church, but I have also expressed to her that not going to church is something I am very passionate about more so than my camera. Help please.</em></p> <p>It's not the first such post I've ever read at that site. In fact there's been a steady stream of kids wanting advice on how to deal with their parents' threats.</p> <p>And here is a letter to the Guardian a few weeks ago.</p> <p><em>Your correspondents who are hostile to faith schools (Letters, September 3) are missing the point. It is a fundamental human right to be able to choose the education for your child which is in accordance with your religious beliefs. A society that takes away this right is an intolerant one.</p> <p>Secularism - the belief that religion has no role in public matters such as education - is itself a belief system. It is absolutely wrong that such a belief system should be given a state educational monopoly and religious believers denied their rights as parents.<br></em><br><strong>Andrew Nash<br>Headmaster, St Edward's school, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire</strong></p> <p>So this guy thinks that parents - including, presumably, parents like the mother in the first extract - have a fundamental human right to impose their religious beliefs on their children's education.</p> <p>I can see why a religious person would claim that right - it's hard to see how religion could ever survive in the world without it - but it's vitally important for us to assert the right of children to a pluralist education in the face of people like him.</p> <p>See, this is why I go on about religion. It's because it's a political subject, as well as a philosophical one. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/09/16/not-just-me-going-on-4735479/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-09-09:/2008/09/09/punching-oasis-in-the-face-4705555/secback2008-09-09T21:38:16+02:002008-09-09T21:38:16+02:00 <p>A few months back I wrote a short piece called <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/21/moving-4202411">Moving</a>, in which I referred in passing to Cristiano Ronaldo. In the comments, <em>I said that he still has the most punchable face in football. There should by rights be an award for it. The award should be a punch in the face.</em></p> <p>I stand by this on the ethical principle that some people should be punched in the face, just because. And now I've received support of a kind from the good people at <a href="http://www.cracked.com/">Cracked</a>, although they want to <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/09/09/how-to-punch-oasis-in-the-face/">punch Oasis in the face</a> instead. In fact they take the whole thing further than I'd ever thought to, outlining a series of inspired strategies for achieving their laudable goal.</p> <p>Who would you punch in the face, and how would you go about it? I think we should be told.<br> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/09/09/punching-oasis-in-the-face-4705555/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-09-08:/2008/09/08/it-s-always-the-little-things-at-first-i-was-4639408/secback2008-09-08T15:48:13+02:002008-09-08T15:49:07+02:00 <p>There's always a few little hints at first. I was in Tesco's the other day, and there was no filter coffee on the shelf. None. Just a couple of jars of that vile instant dried sludge they lay on for the disadvantaged. It was just the little Express Tesco near me, not the big one, but still.</p> <p>Now we've all seen disaster films, so I expect you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking, namely <em>that's how it begins</em>. There has to be a minor mishap or two at the beginning, just to set the scene. They're usually trivial in themselves, but when you put them together an ominous pattern emerges. Unexplained tremors in the suburbs of San Francisco. Ice sheets cracking under Dennis Quaid's feet. Electrical problems in a new tower in San Francisco (San Francisco again. Such a terribly dangerous place, yet gay people thrive there. God must really love them).</p> <p>I think that's what's happening in the real world. Minor mishaps. <em>At first</em>.</p> <p>Mark my words, the mishaps may start small, but they escalate fast. This week there's no decent coffee. Next week there might not be any cakes, and that's it for elevenses.</p> <p>Other meals could go the same way. Foot and mouth would take down the steak houses, and there wouldn't be much call for chip shops if potato blight cut down the nation's tubers.</p> <p>Suppose the farming malaise spread to other key sectors, like oil or football. City centres would be gridlocked as cars ran out of petrol. Staple goods would be even more expensive. Previously reliable players like Lee Johnson would start to make basic defensive errors. Believe me, it might happen.</p> <p>Farms, factories and takeaways are repossessed (no more pusillanimous conditional tenses now, I'm hitting my stride). Ministers resign. Gary Johnson gets a new job at Rovers, and takes all our best players with him. Demagogues take over the streets, as Abu Hamza and Martin Amis duke it out for control of the Finchley Park crack trade. London burns, and being by the river somehow fails to help.</p> <p>A sign appears outside the Ivy - <em>Meat Curry, £5 a bowl</em>. Only the A-List can afford to pay. Fern Britton waits tables for scraps, but Judy Finnegan's got none to spare, and somehow Bill Oddie's got owl feathers caught in his beard.</p> <p>By now we're into the final stages. Famine, plague, religion. The seas rise, comets appear from nowhere and the last boy kills the last girl in a fight over the last gnawed bone.</p> <p>A pessimistic vision, you might think, particularly as it turned out they'd moved the coffee to a different shelf. How little you understand. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/09/08/it-s-always-the-little-things-at-first-i-was-4639408/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-08-20:/2008/08/20/the-numbers-game-4610825/secback2008-08-20T13:03:20+02:002008-08-20T13:04:35+02:00 <p>We had our first home game of the season on Saturday. It was like finding a comfortable old sweater you'd misplaced for a few months.</p> <p>We drew 1-1 against Derby, who were really quite poor. We dominated the first half, went a goal up from our promising new striker Nicky Maynard, then fell apart after the break and gave away a soft goal from a shocking defensive error by our best midfielder. Honestly, it was just like watching England.</p> <p>So now we're seventh, with 4 points from six games. If I said that a last minute winner would have made us third while a last minute loser would have made us fifteenth, you can see how little placings mean so early on.</p> <p>Paul Wilson, meanwhile, has been writing about <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/08/17/a_firstclass_average_but_champ.html">Championship attendances</a>. It's often said that the Championship, although only the second most popular football division in Britain, is the fourth most popular division in Europe. Wilson points out that this is only true if you judge it by <em>total</em> attendance, which is higher in the Championship because there's 24 teams playing 552 games, whereas other leagues have perhaps 20 teams playing 380 games. Measured by <em>average</em> attendance, it's only the eighth most popular division. Even the German second division comes higher.</p> <p>Excuse me, but <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/14/bristol-city-2-crystal-palace-4173384">I said this months ago</a>. Received wisdom in general is almost reliably wrong. Birmingham doesn't have more miles of canal than Venice. The Pope isn't 'special' somehow. The moon isn't about the same size as the sun. Neil Warnock isn't actually a warthog, he's something far, far worse.</p> <p>The significance of attendance figures depends on what aspect of the game you're considering. So why might we be doing this? Not <em>why are we asking pointless questions about numbers?</em> - wash your mouth out with saline solution for ever saying such a thing. No I'm asking <em>what pointless questions exactly are we trying to answer from our data?</em></p> <p>So let's consider the options. If we're wondering how big it 'feels' to be at a game, then obviously average attendance is the crucial factor. But if you're wondering how much money teams can afford to spend on players, then total attendance across the whole season (and ticket price) is the name of the game. That's why clubs play meaningless friendlies at the beginning of each season. They have to give the teams a runout anyway, so they might as well extract some revenue from it. And it's why baseball can support such huge salaries on such cheap tickets. If players play 162 games a season, their cost per game is almost reasonable.</p> <p>If you're asking how football-mad a place is, then you have to ask what percentage of the population go to the games. By that measure, there can't be many leagues to compete with the Championship. Take Sheffield. About 9% of the population of Sheffield went to United or Wednesday's first home game. Bristol doesn't quite match that, but you can't expect people in East Bristol to have to go and watch Rovers. There is such a thing as cruel and unusual.</p> <p>Meanwhile, City have drawn Crewe away in the next round of the Carling Cup. Nicky Maynard's old club. Should be fun.</p> <p>And after my previous post, my ads have gone all soapy. <em>Lotion pump</em>, <em>soap foam pump</em>, <em>liquid hand soap</em>, <em>foamy delights</em>, <em>soft creamy unction</em>, <em>soapy tit wank</em> ... actually I may have made a few of those up. Frankly, I get quite enough of that kind of thing in the junk mail. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/08/20/the-numbers-game-4610825/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-08-13:/2008/08/13/products-4566936/secback2008-08-13T23:38:21+02:002008-08-14T16:00:04+02:00 <p>When it comes to shampoo, I'm a ' supermarket own brand' kind of a guy. I've even <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/03/04/hypothesis-test-conclusion-3816253">experimented with washing up liquid</a>. But on my sister-in-law's last visit she waved grandly across her hair products and said "now you will use these up, won't you?", and it would be rude not to.</p> <p>I start with the phial labelled <em>Shampooing</em>. I'm gambling that <em>shampooing</em> the participle means basically the same as <em>shampoo</em> the noun or verb, and the evidence suggests that it does. It takes three applications to get my hair clean though. I guess it doesn't have the kind of industrial-strength gunkstripper they ladle into every bottle of Tesco's own brand.</p> <p>Then I turn to the <em>Bain et Douche</em>. My schoolboy French tells me this means <em>bath and shower</em>, the gloop in the bottle looks like a kind of gel, so I put the two together and treat it as bath and shower gel. It works well enough, although the Tesco's one smells nicer. When I see the price tag, I resolve to seek work as a translator, because whoever translated <em>bath and shower</em> into <em>bain et douche</em> must have got thousands for it.</p> <p>The next bottle in the queue is labelled <em>Acondicionador</em>. Honestly, she's such a travel queen. You could run a language class on the stuff in her bathroom. It must be conditioner. I pour some into my hand, rub it into my hair, leave it for a minute and rinse. Nothing happens. Yes, it's conditioner.</p> <p>Then I come to the <em>Aqua parfumé</em>, which I translate again, as <em>perfumed water</em>. I splash it all over. I now smell like a woman. A posh woman. A hundred posh women. Hang on.</p> <p>On closer inspection, the bottle is actually <em>Aqua parfum</em>, with no <em>é.</em> I now more accurately translate this as <em>a very, very smelly <strong>perfume</strong> called Aqua, despite the fact that aqua is Latin for water, which doesn't smell at all, ha ha caught you out, you foolish boy</em>. I have doused myself in posh perfume. If you set me on fire, I would smell like Barbara Cartland being cremated. It's like Home Alone, but without the excuse of being ten.</p> <p>I can't believe they have safety campaigns for fireworks and drunk driving, yet anyone can leave toiletries lying around unattended. It's been a few days, and the smell seems to have worn off. I'm just glad I didn't have any classes. Still, at least it stops you smelling anything else, which in Bristol is a blessing.</p> <p>Be warned though. Toiletries are like email attachments. If you don't know what they are, don't open them. The Backlash - it makes the obvious errors, so you don't have to. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/08/13/products-4566936/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-08-12:/2008/08/12/around-africa-in-a-phoenician-boat-4573595/secback2008-08-12T17:45:19+02:002008-08-13T22:59:30+02:00 <p>It may be necessary to explain a few things about this story first. The Phoenicians were a Mediterranean sea-trading civilisation of the first millennium BC. They founded Tyre, Lisbon (probably), and Carthage. The word <em>Punic</em>, used to describe Rome's wars with Carthage between 264 and 146 BC, comes from the word <em>Phoenician</em>. Famous Carthaginians include Hannibal and Dido. No, not her. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido_%28Queen_of_Carthage%29">The other Dido</a>. When I first saw the word <em>dildo</em>, I thought <em>that word looks a lot like Dido</em>. Not the other way round, you may have noticed. What kind of preparation for life is it when they teach you about mythical Phoenician queens <em>before</em> they teach you about dildoes?</p> <p>Incidentally, there's a place called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildo%2C_Newfoundland_and_Labrador">Dildo</a>, in Newfoundland. There's a headland there, called Dildo Arm. At the other end of Dildo Arm - Dildo Cove. I kid you not. Next to them is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildo_Island">Dildo Island</a>, and once a year the whole area celebrates Historic Dildo Day. They've even got a mythical hero of their own, called <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephbot/39938808/">Captain Dildo</a>. I find myself thinking of John Barrowman for some reason.</p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus">Herodotus</a> was a Greek historian of the fifth century BC. In his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histories_%28Herodotus%29">Histories</a>, he tells the tale of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, with some backstory over the whole region. In the backstory, he casually refers to a Phoenician ship which had apparently sailed all the way round Africa, and back to the Mediterranean again.</p> <p>You're now ready to read the BBC article referred to in the heading (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7550162.stm">Around Africa in a Phoenician boat</a>). To paraphrase for the ninety per cent of you that couldn't be arsed, some latter day Thor Heyerdahls are going to try and recreate this voyage, in a ship built to a Phoenician design, but mainly crewed by British volunteers like John Bainbridge. <em>It's about how you get on with people, that's the most essential skill</em>, he said.</p> <p>I'm not so sure, myself. I would have said the most essential skill was the ability to control an ancient Phoenician sailing ship. And they probably ought to read their Herodotus more carefully. He says the original crew took three years, and had to stop off twice to plant and grow some more food. Good luck doing that in the Congo.</p> <p>They don't think that's going to be necessary. They think they can do all 17,000 miles in nine or ten months. By my calculations, that's about 60 miles a day.</p> <p>I reckon that's a bit tight. According to the BBC article, the ship has a top speed of ten kilometres an hour, which is six and a bit miles. That's 150 miles a day, at top speed all the time.</p> <p>Which means they're expecting to average 40% of their top speed. Day and night, for nearly a year. Not including stops to take on provisions, days when there's no wind, or it's blowing the wrong way, or you have to put in to avoid bad weather.</p> <p>Good luck to them though. And here's their website (<a href="http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/discovering-the%20expedition.htm">The Phoenician Ship Expedition</a>). You can <a href="http://live.adventuretracking.com/phoenicia">track their progress here</a>. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/08/12/around-africa-in-a-phoenician-boat-4573595/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-08-10:/2008/08/11/first-day-4564177/secback2008-08-11T00:20:16+02:002008-08-11T00:22:45+02:00 <p>So I turn the telly on yesterday, and blow me if it isn't the Olympics. Honestly, they could have given us some notice.</p> <p>Incidentally, because it actually is the Olympics, that means you don't have to blow me. In fact, I positively forbid you to. So there.</p> <p>Of course the Olympics isn't like one of those sordid commercial sports events you sometimes see. Here, it's the taking part that counts. It must be, because it certainly isn't the watching. I've never seen such crappy spectator sports in my life.</p> <p>Take judo, for instance. Judo just looks like two adults trying to playfight with a child who's crawled off and left them playfighting each other instead. I'm surprised no-one in the audience shouts <em>all pile on!</em> It did give us one thing, though, the return of an old friend - that classic commentator's phrase, <em>and the British athlete has got a lot to do</em>. Normally it means <em>the British athlete is about to be overtaken by that Malawian guy who's never run on an actual track before</em>, but in this instance it means <em>the British athlete has just been forcibly reshaped into a rhombus for the fifth time</em>. Go team GB, I'm sure we're all tremendously proud. Well, at least you haven't been taking controlled substances. Not helpful ones, anyway.</p> <p>And then there was the women's weightlifting. So that's where Beth Ditto's been. Look, she's lifted loads more than Jeanette Krankie. And there's the swimming. And the cycling. And the standing and waving. Oh no, that's just a medal ceremony. Sorry, it all blurs together after a while. Still, well done Beth. I never knew you were Korean.</p> <p>Back in the world of real sport, it was the first day of the football season as well. And City won, 1-0 at Blackpool. Starting as we mean to go on. And Rovers lost. Not that half of you care. To you, it's about as meaningful as the Olympics. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/08/11/first-day-4564177/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-08-07:/2008/08/07/title-4545991/secback2008-08-07T15:55:12+02:002008-08-07T16:03:22+02:00 <p><em>For Dave, who says he misses my little offerings.</em></p> <p>In the supermarket they have a section for stuff that's past its best, but isn't actually against the law yet. I always check it out - with judicious timing and a willingness to adapt, I can save myself a fistful of florins on a good day.</p> <p>It used to be a polite forage, but these days it's a scrum. I guess maybe people are that much more appreciative of a bargain in the current climate. I expect in garages they're all clustered round the pump with last week's petrol in it. It may be slightly stale and there's a worrying smell of benzene, but it's quite good enough to get you to the children's party with the cheap toy off the market and the fig rolls you don't want to risk on your own kids. It's tough times out there, and we're all cutting corners we never wanted to, or thought we'd ever have to.</p> <p>There's no queueing at the cheap counter, the only place in England where this is true. I don't push, I'm not prepared to push, so sometimes it takes a while to get in. I was quite pleased last week when I managed to pull out a free range chicken and some rolls before being edged out by keener appetites. I was hovering round the fringes like one of the smaller chimps, waiting for a chance to nip back in while the alphas were hurling dung at each other, when suddenly someone grabbed both items out of my shopping basket, then dropped them back in again. If there's one thing worse than having your bargains stolen it's having them not stolen, and I was about to remonstrate with the non-thief when I realised it was the shelf stacker, who up to now had been amusing himself by throwing yellow ticketed tidbits into the melée as if they were buns.</p> <p>He'd made my items even cheaper. They were already reduced, but now I had a whole free range chicken for three pounds. This is unheard of. It's also an odd strategy from the point of view of the supermarket.</p> <p>I thanked him and he smiled. I think he just did me a favour, for no advantage to himself and at some personal risk. It's the little acts of resistance that warm your heart. They're the real augurs of the coming times. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/08/07/title-4545991/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-07-26:/2008/07/26/not-the-best-cake-in-the-world-4502480/secback2008-07-26T17:05:51+02:002008-07-26T17:05:51+02:00 <p><a href="http://membracid.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/not-the-best-cake-ever/">Damn straight</a>.</p> <p>Because <a href="http://www.theyrecoming.com/extras/pumpkinfest03/">this is</a>.</p> <p>Thanks Bug Girl, as ever. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/07/26/not-the-best-cake-in-the-world-4502480/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-07-25:/2008/07/25/can-i-be-the-first-to-call-it-the-grassy-4497600/secback2008-07-25T15:01:36+02:002008-07-25T15:01:36+02:00 <p><a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=grassy+Knol&btnG=Google+Search&meta=">Apparently not</a>. It's still a conspiracy though. Yes it is.</p> <p>I refer to Google's new Wikipedia ripoff, which they've called <a href="http://knol.google.com/k/knol#">Knol</a> to suggest knowledge, I suppose. It's got a few hundred articles by experts, apparently, and now we can add our own. Once we've added them we can allow Google Ads if we want and keep a slice of the earnings from them.</p> <p>The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that in a Knol you keep editorial control over your article. If other people think they can improve on it, they have to write their own. The competing articles then fight it out for hits. The more hits you get, the higher you come in the rankings. In itself, it's not a terrible idea.</p> <p>There's a scandal brewing, though, which is the placing of Knol articles in Google search rankings. Danny Sullivan of the blog <a href="http://searchengineland.com/080724-140223.php">Search Engine Land</a> has done some research, and it seems like they're doing suspiciously well. Almost as if Google was biasing its search results towards knols, and therefore giving them an advantage over similar Wikipedia entries.</p> <p>I'm going to write one on Ovid (probably the one single topic in the world I know a little bit about), and see what happens to it. I'll keep you posted. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/07/25/can-i-be-the-first-to-call-it-the-grassy-4497600/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-30:/2008/07/01/all-kinds-of-stupid-4386950/secback2008-07-01T00:46:52+02:002008-07-03T22:20:20+02:00 <p>Last time we wrote about the American Family Association, and noted what a special kind of stupid they were. There's all kinds of stupid, though, and it isn't all horrid and mean. Some of it is stupid like a big, happy dog that wants to lick you all over till your critical faculties dissolve into uncritical enthusiasm.</p> <p>Take <a href="http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/st_infoporn_1607">Kevin Kelly</a>, for instance. Writing in <a href="http://www.wired.com/">Wired</a> magazine, he's all breathlessly enthusiastic about the future. <em>Never mind Web 3.0</em>, he gushes. <em>The next stage in technological evolution is a single worldwide computer.</em> This projected entity is to be collated from all the existing devices that connect to the Internet - PCs, laptops, palmtops, mobiles, etc. <em>As an increasing number and variety of devices are lashed to one another via the Internet and other communication systems, they form the components of what we might call the One Machine.</em></p> <p>Well, yes, Kevin, we could <em>call</em> it that. We could <em>call</em> a field of daisies The Great Superdaisy of Cosmic Oneness. The question though is whether there's any <em>point</em> in calling it that.</p> <p>As if calling the Interweb <em>the One Machine</em> isn't bombastic enough, he then goes on to compare synapses with hyperlinks, apparently for no other reason than that both connect to other things, and goes on to state that <em>as waves of links surge around the world, they resemble the thought patterns of a very large brain</em>. This is too much for Chris Edwards at the excellently named <a href="http://blog.hackingcough.com/2008/06/a_huge_evergrow.htm">Hacking Cough</a>, who is piqued enough to refute the argument point by point.</p> <p>He expertly demolishes the analogy between synapses and hyperlinks, but the crucial point to my mind is that the Internet would only be like a brain, or like a machine come to that, if the different parts of it shared a common goal. If it doesn't, and it doesn't, then comparing it to minds or machines is just rhetoric.</p> <p>It's not that I'm uninterested in the future, you understand. Apart from anything else, it's got the whole of next football season in it. I just think that when you argue through analogy, it's incumbent upon you to define the extent of the analogy as precisely as possible, or your argument just dissolves into an amorphous hippy gloop. And frankly I had enough amorphous hippy gloop in the Eighties. You just can't flush that stuff away. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/07/01/all-kinds-of-stupid-4386950/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-30:/2008/06/30/there-ain-t-alf-been-some-stupid-bastard-4385859/secback2008-06-30T20:06:12+02:002008-06-30T20:06:12+02:00 <p>You do get the odd dimwit on the Internet. Not in here, obviously, you're all unlauded Wittgensteins. No, it's those other places I'm talking about. The <a href="http://www.afa.net/">American Family Association</a>, for instance. They're dim enough when they do it on purpose, for instance by calling an article <a href="http://capwiz.com/afanet/issues/alert/?alertid=11479656">Newt Gingrich offers common sense solution to energy crisis</a>. Say what?</p> <p>But here's Ed Brayton explaining how their grasp of the medium can sometimes actually exceed the vacuity of their message. <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/afas_searchreplace_function_wo.php">AFA's Search/Replace function works perfectly</a>, he calls his post, and I think he's right.</p> <p>They have some very strict policies on language at the AFA, and one of them is that instead of <em>gay</em> they should always say <em>homosexual</em>. Presumably they think <em>gay</em> sounds too sympathetic. If you're the kind of website that would rather cut off its own dick that sound sympathetic to gay people, you might well think it a logical step to add a replace command which corrects this liberal <em>faux pas</em> automatically, but top American athlete <a href="http://www.tysongay.net/">Tyson Gay</a> may well beg to differ.</p> <p>I'm sure my lovely readers can fill in the blanks. To be fair, it's not the AFA's fault there was an athlete called Dix in the next lane.</p> <p>Thanks also to <a href="http://badidea.wordpress.com/">The Bad Idea Blog</a>, long-term chronicler of the online dimwit phenomenon for the benefit of future generations, for bringing this to our attention, along with the proposed <a href="http://badidea.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/adulterers-for-marriage/">Republican amendment to the United States Constitution</a>. If passed this would make gay marriage unconstitutional by defining marriage as a legal bond between a man and a woman, so you have to wonder why they chose Larry Craig and David Vitter to propose it.</p> <p>The Larry Craig who was arrested for trying to have sex with an undercover policeman, you wonder? The self-same. It's obvious, when you think about it.</p> <p>Well, at least David Vitter's straight. Just ask Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who used to organise prostitutes for him. The DC Madam, they used to call her. That's short for Washington DC, and not AC/DC, in case you were wondering.</p> <p>Fortunately there's apparently virtually no chance of this amendment even making it to a vote, never mind passing. Which means we can afford to laugh. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/30/there-ain-t-alf-been-some-stupid-bastard-4385859/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-20:/2008/06/20/savaged-4341328/secback2008-06-20T17:29:50+02:002008-06-22T15:22:23+02:00 <p>The other day I was going round Totterdown putting flyers through people's doors advertising my services as an IT home tutor, when I got savaged by a dog.</p> <p>Yes I did. Don't give me that tilted head look. I was savaged on the finger. Savaged on the finger by a dog.</p> <p>It wasn't a normal dog. Normal dogs just want you to go away. When they hear you by the door, they bark. It's an evolutionary strategy designed to deter, without the need for conflict.</p> <p>This one was quiet as a mouse. The first and second last sign of its presence was a sharp pain in the finger, then it hit the door a tenth of a second later. Doors being generally stronger and smarter than dogs, our interaction ended with the finger-savaging foreplay, rather than moving on to the bone-crunching main event. In fact, I've no real grounds for asserting that it was a dog at all. It could just as easily have been Chucky, or a sensor-activated stapler mounted on a bolt gun.</p> <p>It wasn't the only problem I met on my rounds. The flaps on some people's letter boxes are on the kind of hinges you'd use to seal fuel intakes on space shuttles. One of them bit me worse than the hypothetical dog. If NASA had got letter box manufacturers to design their O-rings, Christa McAuliffe would still be teaching.</p> <p>And it would be nice if I got some kind of response, after the zero responses I amassed last week. Half the people who live in these houses have signs offering reiki or homeopathy. I refuse to believe people like that already know everything about computers they need to know. Perhaps they rejected my leaflet because the evidence I offered for my tutoring skills wasn't rigorous enough, or maybe they were worried in case repeated exposure to computers had made me radioactive. Either way, nobody except the stealth dog was biting.</p> <p>You do learn stuff though. One thing I learnt was that houses on main roads are far more likely to have been converted into flats. I think this is because main roads were considered desirable before the onset of modern traffic, so they got the biggest houses, but now that wealthy people don't want to live on them they have to subdivide them to make them viable.</p> <p>Another thing I learnt was this. It clearly makes more sense to do one side of a street, then the other, rather than criscrossing constantly, but in a hilly area (and Totterdown has the steepest roads in Bristol) that means you have to go up and down twice as many hills. How steep does a hill have to be before crisscrossing becomes the most economic approach? Surprisingly steep, but when it comes to steepness many Totterdown streets are surprising enough.</p> <p>This strategy had better work, anyway. I've sat down and done the spreadsheet, and if I don't get any extra income the first standing order to bounce will be the mobile phone bill on July 16. How annoyingly common to be broke in the middle of the same recession that's breaking everybody else. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/20/savaged-4341328/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-19:/2008/06/19/cycle-city-4337212/secback2008-06-19T17:32:04+02:002008-06-20T11:43:00+02:00 <p>I know I promised you some stuff about history, and I did try, but it turned out to be dull as shite, so I gave up on it. It seems an odd metaphor, dull as shite, but I suppose I've never seen it sparkle.</p> <p>Instead, here is news that Bristol has been named as Britain's first <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7462791.stm">cycle city</a>. They want there to be twice as many cyclists in three years. The BBC thought it was so important, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7463022.stm">they asked Sean about it</a>.</p> <p>Sean, accurately pigeonholed as the very opposite of a lycra-clad fitness fascist, was so enthusiastic about cycling he managed to talk for several sentences without once mentioning the vital importance of everyone in the world converting to Linux, which may be a first.</p> <p>I tease, for it is the job of friends to be teased, but he made some valid points, pointing out that the council wasn't as pro-bike as had been implied, and that cycle theft is so prevalent he always rides bikes that aren't worth any money because the nice ones used to get nicked all the time.</p> <p>If they really want to be pro-bike, I've got a few suggestions.</p> <p>1. Do something about car showrooms behaving as if they own the roadside next to their forecourts. The Mitsubishi place near me has a fleet of cars constantly parked there, and it forces cars on the road into the cycle lane just as I'm trying to turn off. I suspect this one might be popular with car drivers too.</p> <p>2. Stop the council constantly coming up with schemes to turn our cherished cycle routes into multi-lane superbus freeways. Apart from anything else, if you force us onto the roads we then slow down traffic far more than buses do.</p> <p>3. Bring in a congestion charge, but give exemptions to people who share cars. That way the kind of people who won't ever act out of any kind of collective solidarity with their fellow citizens will be forced to do the right thing despite themselves.</p> <p>4. Reverse car safety laws. These days cars are like little fortresses, with their cages and their airbags, and it makes people complacent. If you made safety belts for drivers illegal and required all cars to have a six inch spike sticking out of the steering wheel, road deaths would decline to virtually nothing overnight. An oldie, that one, but a good example of thinking outside the envelope. Or whatever the expression is.</p> <p>5. Landmines. Just think about it. Every year thousands of people die in road accidents. Enough randomly scattered landmines would kill a few people, but drive everyone else off the road, with a massive net reduction in road deaths. Plus, instead of having to jet off to Africa or somewhere Geri Halliwell could protest landmines right here in the UK, which would save massively on air miles.</p> <p>So, six inch spikes, landmines and a congestion charge. I'm just kidding, obviously. There's no way people would go for a congestion charge. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/19/cycle-city-4337212/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-15:/2008/06/15/halfway-4314020/secback2008-06-15T15:00:30+02:002008-06-15T15:00:30+02:00 <p>Isn't football just great? Just go and find the highlights of the Holland-France game the other night. Yeah baby, that's what I'm talking about. Which is an entire sentence containing no actual new information at all. Why on earth do people talk like that?</p> <p>You may remember that with the technical assistance of my good friend <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/xooorx/">xoorx </a>I <a href="http://sport.fatgeek.org/manhattan/">made an entire blog</a> about the 2006 World Cup. Unfortunately I haven't been able to take time off work for Euro 2008, which means I've had to choose between watching it and writing about it.</p> <p>I'm sure this can't be right. Whenever it's bloody Christmas or something we get paid holidays, yet we're expected to work right through major international tournaments. I've given up complaining because whenever I bring the subject up people think they have the right to be scathing, but it's yet more evidence that football never gets the level of attention that it so clearly deserves. I'm just glad I've got you to discuss it with, because I know you'll understand.</p> <p>And just to show I still care, here's a halfway roundup, group by group.</p> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2008/schedule_and_statistics/group_a/default.stm">Group A</a></p> <p>Portugal are the winners, after seeing off Turkey and the Czech Republic. They play the already eliminated co-hosts Switzerland in the last game in the group, while Turkey and the Czechs compete for second place.</p> <p>In the event that teams have the same number of points after three games, placings are decided by results between those teams, then by goal difference. This means that Portugal are guaranteed to finish top, because Turkey and the Czechs can only equal them on points, and they've already beaten both of them.</p> <p>Incidntally, this method is another thing that surely can't be right. Apart from anything, it reduces the drama. If goal difference was considered before results between teams, then no team in this group would be sure of their place. Portugal would still be facing the possibility that they might lose to Switzerland, in which case the other teams could still beat them by winning their last game by a hatful.</p> <p>If Turkey and the Czechs draw their game, they will have the same number of points. Because the game between them was a draw, the decision would be on goal difference, but they've both scored 2 goals and conceded 3 so far, so they'd be equal on those grounds as well. This means that the placing would be decided by penalties - the first time this has happened in the group phase of an international tournament. Isn't that exciting? Well if that's your attitude your life must be very dull.</p> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2008/schedule_and_statistics/group_b/default.stm">Group B</a></p> <p>Croatia are guaranteed to finish top after beating tournament favourites Germany 2-1 the other night. Germany just need a draw against Austria in their last game to take second place, but if they lose they're out. In that case, Austria go through unless Poland beat Croatia, in which case it would go to goal difference.</p> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2008/schedule_and_statistics/group_c/default.stm">Group C</a></p> <p>Holland are the winners, no matter what. If they beat Romania, and France and Italy draw, then the second place team would go through on two points. Unless Holland score a hatful, this would probably be Romania. It is a remarkable fact about four-team groups that it's possible to go through on two points, and also possible to be eliminated on six. Yes it is remarkable, which I have of course demonstrated simply by remarking on it.</p> <p>If Romania beat Holland, and remember this would be a weak Dutch team because they're already the winners no matter what, then they finish second and go through.</p> <p>If Romania lose or draw and the other game isn't a draw, whoever wins, France or Italy, go through. If both games are drawn, Romania go through.</p> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2008/schedule_and_statistics/group_d/default.stm">Group D</a></p> <p>Spain have definitely won, and Greece are definitely out. Second place goes to the winners of the Sweden-Russia game. If they draw, Russia go through on goal difference.</p> <p>So now you're properly informed on the permutations, but I can see other gaps in your knowledge, and I know how desperate you are to have them filled in. What's the history of the groups? Which ancient rivalries are being played out? Who were the empire builders and who had empires built on them? Whose roads echoed to the hobnailed sandals of Roman legionaries, and where did the janissaries of the Ottoman Sultan pass? Coming soon, the stories the mainstream media didn't dare touch.</p> <p>Incidentally, if each game has three possible outcomes, win lose or draw, and there are six games, that means there are 729 possible permutations in the four-team group format. Which means it really is interesting. So there. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/15/halfway-4314020/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-08:/2008/06/08/latin-4277723/secback2008-06-08T12:32:18+02:002008-06-08T12:32:18+02:00 <p>There are times when I almost feel like a citizen. First they make cycle lanes, then they let pubs open later, and ban smoking in them. Now, no less a figure than the Mayor of London is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/boris_johnson/2075126/Boris-Johnson%2C-Mayor-of-London%2C-says-to-teach-classics-to-cut-knife-crime.html">bigging up Latin</a> to the youth.</p> <p>As a solution to knife crime, apparently. More declensions, less dissension, he reckons. <em>I think there's a huge amount we can do in London by promoting the learning of languages including Latin</em>, said Boris. I couldn't agree more. I conjugated my first Latin verb over thirty years ago, and since then I haven't stabbed anyone.</p> <p>That's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson">Boris Johnson</a>, in case you were wondering. I do try to cater for all the members of the Backlash diaspora, scattered as you are from Sydney to Frankfurt. He's a conservative British politician who won the mayoral election quite recently. His <em>schtick</em> is to carry on like a buffoon so nobody notices how ruthless he is. It's worked for him so far, but now he's mayor of London he's right in the public gaze, where we can all watch him crash and burn.</p> <p>And if the pluperfect subjunctive doesn't do it, there's the gentlemanly art of pugilism. This is what he says about boxing clubs.<br> <em><br> They take kids off the streets and they not only teach them to enjoy the pleasure of belting seven bells out of each other but they give them an opportunity to get qualifications and an education</em>, he reckons.</p> <p>What a guy. The veneration of the classics, the utter alienation from the real world, the way he turns his apparent shortcomings into a winning formula. Does he remind you of anyone? And just think - have you ever seen us in the same room together?</p> <p>He's missed a trick though. Why not put the two themes together, and bring back gladiators? Not <a href="http://gladiators.sky.com/">Gladiators</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiators">gladiators</a>. Named for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius">gladius</a>, the short stabbing sword of the Roman legions.</p> <p>It's a win-win solution. The young folks get to stab people in front of an audience, which they seem to regard as an important part of the stabbing experience, and the rest of us have something to watch between the end of Euro 2008 and the new season. Everybody wins.</p> <p>And they've even got a venue. For what is the Millennium Dome, if not Britain's Colisseum? Vastly over budget, it was built to save a ruler, in which task it entirely failed. The next leader along took it on instead, and wished he hadn't. All it needs is some blood in the sand, and the likeness would be complete.</p> <p>I think I may be getting the hang of this politics thing. Vote Backlash for the next London mayor. Gladatorial combat, Bristol City as the official team of London and solar panels all over Buckingham Palace. You know it makes sense. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/08/latin-4277723/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-05:/2008/06/05/houses-are-work-4265260/secback2008-06-05T15:21:21+02:002008-06-05T15:21:21+02:00 <p><em>Here's yet another one I wrote a few days ago and then forgot to take out of draft. And to think I teach people how to use computers for a living.</em></p> <p>I've moved into my brother's house, as you know, and I've spent half this last week cleaning my own house for the tenants, who move in next week. I've no desire to be a landlord, but I was caught in the crash in the housing market and couldn't sell the place.</p> <p>It's been a surprisingly satisfying experience. My usual analysis of undone domestic tasks goes like this. <em>My floor is festooned with crud/a tile has fallen off in the kitchen/there is a weed. How does this affect my enjoyment of Ovid or the match?</em> On observing that it doesn't, I can then simply return to the more interesting activity. Every now and again the chaos builds up to the point when my enjoyment of Ovid or the match is actually threatened, and at that point I get busy, but any resulting sense of <em>achievement</em> is usually undermined by the knowledge that as fast as I sort out one bit of the house another bit goes off.</p> <p>Now, though, I'm cleaning an empty property, and then leaving it to go and live somewhere else. When I return, everything is exactly as clean as it was. It's as if entropy has been banished from the place. And every time I do a room, the next time that room has to be done it won't be my job.</p> <p>I still haven't been able to face the garden though. I have a horror of gardening, brought on by a bad experience a few years ago. I was writing something about the similarities between cybernetics and chaos theory, and took a break to go and do some weeding. Half an hour later, I returned to my writing, only to find that I was unable to carry on at my previous level.</p> <p>Which proves something I should surely have guessed. Gardening makes you stupid. I guess that accounts for Gandhi.</p> <p>I've also started cycling again, as the journey to work is now long enough to justify it. It turns out that if you don't do any cycling for three years, when you start again it's almost instantly painful. The motions involved in walking and cycling are so dissimilar that it doesn't matter how much of the former you do (I don't drive, so I walk quite a lot), it doesn't prepare you for the latter at all.</p> <p>The Huns were known for walking bandy legged, because they spent so much time in the saddle they couldn't walk properly. I think I've got the opposite problem.</p> <p>It sorts itself out after a while. The trick is to get fit enough so you don't reach the pain barrier until after the endorphins have kicked in.</p> <p>Still, cleaning, cycling, and I've improved my diet. Onwards and upwards, or some such crap. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/05/houses-are-work-4265260/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-06-01:/2008/06/01/reconnected-4255224/secback2008-06-01T17:52:30+02:002008-06-01T17:53:19+02:00 <p>I'm back!</p> <p>Gushing thanks to <a href="http://irvken.net/blog">Sean</a> for fixing my computer and bringing me back to reality. Just imagine being stuck in that awful bland world with all the atoms in it for an entire week, and I'm sure you'll understand the depths of my gratitude. Cheers mate, expect an imminent visit from an Amazon.</p> <p>So now I'm free once more to wander wherever the cyberseas carry me, my palpitating thighs wrapped round Google Reader's salty flanks like Orpheus riding the dolphin. For a while back there I was almost reduced to using my own imagination. Now I can use all of yours' instead.</p> <p>But it's important to give something back, apparently, so here's something I wrote about City's Wembley defeat eight whole days ago. I'm feeling a little better now, by the way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Frankly, anyone who says &lsquo;never mind, you had a great day out&rsquo; can kiss my red and white arse.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Yes, it&rsquo;s a grand spectacle. The arch looms over you like something out of Halo Jones, the escalator to the top level seems to go on for ever and I&rsquo;ll never forget the sight of 40,000 Bristolians packed in around and below me. But if you really think any of that makes up for losing, you&rsquo;ve obviously never done the Grim Trek Home.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>My personal dark night of the soul came on the train back to our car in Uxbridge. Only about five per cent of City fans had parked there, but five per cent of 40,000 is a lot of people, and we all turned up at the station at half past five and crammed onto the only train.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Never mind waterboarding, if I was the CIA I&rsquo;d be stuffing insurgents into a metal shoebox with several hundred miserably disappointed people for company. Trust me, it&rsquo;s cruel and unusual enough for Amnesty to take an interest. And the precisely modulated squeaky wheel was a masterstroke.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>It&rsquo;s two days later now, and I&rsquo;m coming to terms with the sense of anticlimax. We actually played quite well, it&rsquo;s been a great season, and Gary Johnson is still the best thing that&rsquo;s ever happened to us. There&rsquo;s no way we&rsquo;d ever have got this far without him. It&rsquo;s been brilliant watching the team mature under his guidance.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>And we&rsquo;re reaching people we&rsquo;ve never reached before. On the bus to the ground last March, I met some students going to a game for the first time. They&rsquo;d obviously never been that way before, because when we went past St Mary Redcliffe one of them said &lsquo;look, Bristol&rsquo;s got two Cathedrals&rsquo;.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>I hastened to explain. Bristol is a city of unities, I said. One cathedral, one harbour, one football team. I was being facetious, of course. There&rsquo;s the Catholic Cathedral as well.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Good times for City, then, but we&rsquo;re still sad. It&rsquo;s our travelling fans I feel for the most. No trips to Manchester and Liverpool now, they&rsquo;ll have to settle for Swansea instead. Just have a look at the Championship table and tell me honestly &ndash; football aside, has it got you thinking about weekend breaks?</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>I&rsquo;m guessing probably not. I've been in the Tourist Information Bureau in Coventry, for instance, and you have to admire their heroic struggle against appalling odds, but there&rsquo;s only so much you can say about Lady Godiva. There aren&rsquo;t that many sightseers heading for Burnley or Watford, either. Just our poor away fans. Talk about looking for a good time in all the wrong places.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>It&rsquo;s alright for Premiership fans. They get five games in London next season. You could take football-loathing partners and leave them in the Tate Modern for a few hours while you swan off to Stamford Bridge. There&rsquo;s even a Canal Museum. Imagine having so many places of interest you can afford to devote an entire museum to canals. Someone opened a museum in Watford once, but they shot him.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Home fans will suffer too. Now we have to have Neil Warnock back again (not Ian Holloway though. Ha!), and Nottingham Forest, who got promoted. Something in the soul wilts and dies at the thought of Forest coming back.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Of course, fainthearts say we&rsquo;d have foundered and died in the Premiership. The likes of Rooney and Ronaldo would have just dismembered us, they reckon. It would have been like promoting a team of fauns into a division of meat processors.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span>Which is missing the point. Rooney and Ronaldo dismember everybody else as well. It&rsquo;s the games against Middlesbrough or Fulham that really matter, and I reckon we could have held our own.</span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><em>It would have been nice to find out, anyway. Never mind, there&rsquo;s always next season. Don&rsquo;t go telling us that though. Not till August, anyway.</em></span></p> <p>I sent this off to Venue in the hope they might pay me for it, but they said thanks but no thanks. One reader has expressed disappointment that I was 'prostituting myself' to corporate ghouls. I can only agree, and point to the economic factors which traditionally drive people to such lengths. If there's one thing worse than being a media whore, it's being a failed media whore.</p> <p>The good news is, Gary Johnson says he's staying. We love him.</p> <p>And don't go thinking you're excused wall-to-wall football. Euro 2008 starts next week. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/06/01/reconnected-4255224/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-25:/2008/05/25/no-broadband-4220540/secback2008-05-25T18:20:27+02:002008-05-25T18:20:27+02:00 <p>I think this one explains itself. The problem is being resolved, so expect something about Wembley soon.</p> <p>We lost, by the way. So don't expect upbeat.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/25/no-broadband-4220540/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-21:/2008/05/21/moving-4202411/secback2008-05-21T11:05:25+02:002008-05-21T13:19:22+02:00 <p>I'm moving. Literally. Not as in <em>I have a velocity which when multiplied by my mass gives my momentum</em>, but as in <em>my possessions are in transit</em>. Or on transit, in this case, the vehicle in question being my brother's flatbed truck.</p> <p>So my schedule is this.</p> <p>Wednesday. Move. Teach for a couple of hours. Don't play chess. Rush to be done in time to watch Champions League final.</p> <p>Thursday. Two classes, both in the same place but annoyingly separated in time. Arrange my possessions pleasingly, or at least turn them all the right way up. Write about final, if moved to.</p> <p>Friday. Wave brother and sister off to Greece, try not to trash their house for the next six months.</p> <p>Saturday. Go to Wembley, watch City beat Hull and get promoted.</p> <p>Not a lot of writing time, I'm afraid. I'll write about City though.</p> <p>Click on <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/bristol_city/default.stm">this link</a> at 5:30 on Saturday, to know if I'm happy or sad.</p> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/bristol_city/7411438.stm">BBC Interviewer</a> to Gary Johnson: <em>And now you're ninety minutes away from playing Ronaldo</em>. Johnson: <em>Yes, that's if we don't buy him</em>. That's what we've needed, a manager with <em>chutzpah</em>. And look how far it gets you. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/21/moving-4202411/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-15:/2008/05/15/now-that-s-sex-4176696/secback2008-05-15T11:02:42+02:002008-05-15T11:02:42+02:00 <p>It's got football, it's got statistics, and if it doesn't actually make you come I'll want to know the reason why.</p> <p>It's the <a href="http://stats.football365.com/">Football 365 stats page</a>. </p> <p>Here's the <a href="http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/teams/BristolCty.html">Bristol City page</a>. Best viewed large, and at length.</p> <p>I still haven't moved, by the way. It's now happening on Tuesday. Yes it is.</p> <p>And it's <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/7393756.stm">Hull</a>.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/15/now-that-s-sex-4176696/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-14:/2008/05/14/bristol-city-2-crystal-palace-4173384/secback2008-05-14T15:46:32+02:002008-05-15T14:26:16+02:00 <p>It's not quite <a href="http://www.drmardy.com/chiasmus/definition/definition1.shtml">chiasmus</a>, but there's a pleasing symmetry between this title and <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/10/crystal-palace-1-bristol-city-4157888">my second last</a>. Merge them, and you get the composite title <em>Bristol City 4 Crystal Palace 2</em>. It could just as easily have said <em>Crystal Palace 2 shit goals from defensive errors, Bristol City 4 belters</em>. 4 being higher than 2, we win.</p> <p>It could all have gone horribly wrong. After dominating the first half, we'd conceded a stupid goal from a poor headed clearance, and they were much better after the break. It took a penalty miss from their top striker to get us to extra time. We did hit the bar twice, mind. I wouldn't want you to go underestimating us.</p> <p>For all my American readers, extra time is just like overtime, and the scores are totalled over the two games. We'd won 2-1 at their ground, which combined with their 1-0 after ninety minutes made it 2-2. In any other competition, we'd have gone through on the away goals rule, where the team who's scored the most goals at the other teams ground wins, but rather annoyingly that rule doesn't apply in the playoffs.</p> <p>I say annoyingly, but actually it gave us the opportunity to witness two brilliant goals. Firstly Lee Trundle scored another cracker, from a loose ball on the edge of the box. This was just before the turnaround (15 minutes each way in extra time). Then Michael McIndoe hit a great one from a well worked free kick. That's seven goals in three games, and six of them wondergoals.</p> <p>After that Palace lost heart, and we just played out time. Our fans were briefly confused about how many we were winning by, and decided to ask the opposing manager if he knew. <em>Warnock, what's the score? Warnock, Warnock, what's the score?</em> I'm fairly certain he knew, but he wasn't letting on.</p> <p>The whole experience was unknown territory for Neil Warnock, who'd won all his previous playoff semi-finals. Mind you, he'd never had to play us before. He also lost the Dignity and Composure as a Playoff Manager in a Press Conference to Gary Johnson, by a shocking margin. Yes, that's our Gary Johnson. We love him, you know.</p> <p>And <em>boo!</em> to the last bus, which left so soon after full time I didn't have time for a drink. I had to come home instead, and settle for some cans of Guinness and a bag of Minstrels on my own instead. The chocolates, you understand. I don't like troubadours any more than the next man, but I'd never be so needlessly cruel.</p> <p>So what now? Now we play one more game, at Wembley, against Hull or Watford. Hull won 2-0 in the first leg at Watford, so it's probably them, but we find out tonight. The winner plays in the Premiership next season, the loser stays in the Championship. Promotion is generally reckoned to be worth about £60million in revenue, making the playoff final the biggest game in world football, when considered from a financial point of view.</p> <p>Incidentally, did you know the Championship gets more spectators every season than the top league in Italy? OK, there's 24 teams as opposed to 20, so 552 games against 380, but even so that's a remarkable fact, and testimony to the popularity of football beyond the world of oil gangsters and <em>galacticos</em>.</p> <p>And it says something about City as well. Most weeks we get 15,000 or so, and we're playing teams whose home gates are 20-25,000. So everything we've achieved has been done against teams with much bigger budgets than ours. Hooray, hooray, hooray for us. Especially, hooray for Gary Johnson, the best thing that's ever happened to City. How do we feel about him? I think you know. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/14/bristol-city-2-crystal-palace-4173384/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-11:/2008/05/12/eat-my-meat-4161716/secback2008-05-12T00:02:00+02:002008-05-12T00:02:00+02:00 <p>The evocatively named <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/tv-radio-reviews/flood-itvbrmidnight-man-itvbrshrink-rap-more-4brclarissa-and-the-kings-cookbook-bbc4-825758.html">Hermione Eyre</a> does the TV review in the Independent on Sunday. Writing about Clarissa Dickson Wright's documentary about Richard II's fourteenth century kitchens, she says this.</p> <p><em>She also managed to reel off a list of medieval kitchen staff with an (almost) straight face. Quite a feat given they sound like the habitués of a particularly debauched nightclub. At work in Richard II's kitchen were: mincers, boners, spit boys, and roasters. Bona butch jobs indeed.</em></p> <p>Ooh-er, what a carry on. I wonder why sex and meat have such a similar language. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/12/eat-my-meat-4161716/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-10:/2008/05/11/crystal-palace-1-bristol-city-4157888/secback2008-05-11T00:27:08+02:002008-05-11T00:27:08+02:00 <p>First off, let's hear it for Teletext. Slow and uninformative it may be, but when your computer crashes with five minutes left in the biggest game of the season so far it's refreshingly reliable.</p> <p>Society moves on and finds new technical solutions, but sometimes they falter, and when they do you may need to go back to the old ones in a hurry. I keep my old VCR plugged in for precisely that reason, and on my bookshelves there's a Bible, just in case science, humanism and basic human decency all fail simultaneously. Yes, I do always have to go too far. If you don't go too far you haven't gone far enough, if you ask me.</p> <p>Of course, there's going too far, and then there's being frankly rather silly. Like Europe's sports administrators, who have been trying to get the European Parliament to classify sports matches as performances. If they got their way results would become a form of intellectual property, and we might lose Teletext, BBC match reports and other vital emergency services. There's a report here (<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/08/sport_ioc_intellectual_property/">MEPs deny sports 'intellectual property' landgrab</a>). Thanks as so often before to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/striqun/">striqun</a> for the link.</p> <p>The article is confusingly worded, but it turns out they've failed, on the grounds that sports events, unlike plays or concerts, aren't predictable.  I guess MEPs don't follow the Premiership, which gets the same top four teams every year.</p> <p>Frankly, I'm surprised they thought it was worth even trying. Who's going to win the support of governments, the people who organise soccer games or the people who run television? How deliciously disconcerting to find yourself on the same side as Rupert Murdoch.</p> <p>However that may sit with us, at least we the people can carry on finding out scores without having to pay Trevor Brooking a tax. Today, for instance, it was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/7381811.stm">2-1 to City</a>. Which means that as long as we win or draw in the return game on Tuesday, we're off to Wembley in a couple of weeks.</p> <p>Here's the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/7381811.stm">BBC match report</a>, with interviews with both managers. Your homework is to listen to both and tell me which manager is the manager with dignity and composure, and which is the ignorant oaf.</p> <p>I think you'll find the finer qualities residing in the Bristol City dugout, in the person of Gary Johnson (we love him). Truly a prince among men. If I was a lady in waiting he'd get my rosette every time.</p> <p>And he's getting noticed in the national media. Last week he was in the Observer, now he's in the Guardian (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/10/championship.bristolcity">Johnson takes his low-key methods to new heights</a>). They say it's <em>remarkable that Gary Johnson is so relatively unheralded</em>, and they're not wrong. Well all I can say is, I'm doing my bit.</p> <p>Beyond football in Bristol there are other games, with other rules. Do you know the best thing about sport? Apart from Gary Johnson. It's the seasons. Every season builds to a dramatic climax, in every division and in every country. And because the seasons vary from one sport to the next, there's always something happening somewhere. Every second of every day. It's like being on a miniature train, endlessly riding the same route round an ice cream factory. Had enough mint chartreuse flavour? Never mind, there'll be some raspberry whipple along in a minute.</p> <p>Are you anti-sports? Are you waiting and waiting for the off season? Then it's as if you dwell on a planet which orbits many suns, all of them far too close. You yearn for the night, but it never comes, and meanwhile the heat of the day goes on and on and on, and the shelter and relief that you crave is forever denied you. Good. Now stop whingeing and get with the program.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/11/crystal-palace-1-bristol-city-4157888/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-07:/2008/05/07/the-floods-time-bomb-4142675/secback2008-05-07T12:08:15+02:002008-05-07T12:08:15+02:00 <p>You all remember last year's floods. Some (well, one) thought they were God's (perhaps slightly underplayed) response to gay marriage. Others (also one) suggested that they might trigger a canal-based renaissance for Somerset. That was me, and I was drunk. The Bishop was depressingly sober.</p> <p>And you've probably heard they're building housing estates on flood plains, and tutted at their criminal folly. Well it turns out they're felons of an even more foolish ilk than we'd realised.</p> <p>For not only are the lowlands of old England dotted with Barratt homes, they're also full of power stations and sewage works. The BBC has a report here (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7386383.stm">Flood risk fear over key UK sites</a>).</p> <p>So if you live on one of the new estates, the problem isn't just boring old floods. It's electrified floods with millions of human turds floating in them.</p> <p>Way to go, British Government. I think you've missed a trick though. What you should be doing is seeding water meadows with shark eggs. Then you could purge the countryside of people entirely, and make it safe for junior ministers' weekend getaways with their secretaries, without the <em>hoi polloi</em> hanging about. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/07/the-floods-time-bomb-4142675/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-05-06:/2008/05/06/end-of-the-season-4139933/secback2008-05-06T19:41:09+02:002008-05-06T19:41:09+02:00 <p>But not for us. We're in the playoffs, and we've got Crystal Palace, while Watford go to Hull. The winners play each other at Wembley in a couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted, although I'm moving this weekend, so don't go expecting epics.</p> <p>It's all been enough to earn <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson_%28footballer%29">Gary Johnson</a>, henceforth known as Gary Johnson (we love him), a profile in the Observer (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/04/bristolcity.championship">Fanfare for people's man fashioning a Bristol boom</a>). <em>I'd like to become the first manager to go from the Conference up to the Premiership through promotions, albeit with two different clubs, and hopefully we're four games away from that</em>, he says. He's too modest to mention it, but that would be four promotions in six years, two with City and two with Yeovil. When you think of the mess he inherited in his first year at City, when the team was bottom of League 1 at Christmas, that's an even more remarkable achievement.</p> <p>Before that, he was manager of Latvia. He's still honorary president of the Latvian Football Association, so when we say we love him, <em>we</em> means <em>everyone with any connection with City no matter how tenuous, plus a whole country</em>.</p> <p>And for the first time in ages, we played really well on Saturday, beating Preston 3-0. This kind of thing never happens. We never score three. We never take the lead then kick on, we take the lead and fall back to hold on to our gains. We never shoot from distance, we certainly never score from distance and we never play with such flair and élan.</p> <p>The much maligned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson_%28footballer%29">Lee Trundle</a> is showing the kind of form he's never showed for us before, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Noble_%28footballer%29">David Noble</a> scored the kind of free kick we never score from. For the second goal, Trundle and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McIndoe">Michael McIndoe</a> managed a neat little one-two in the opponents' penalty area. Even in the kind of game where things that never happen happen, this is unprecedented.</p> <p>In other news, it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George%27s_Day">St George's Day</a> in Bulgaria. I don't think they'd be keen to learn he was Turkish either.</p> <p>In more recent yet even less important news, I've just found a letter on the doormat. <em>An apology</em>, it's headed, and there's a Royal Mail logo on it.</p> <p>If they've started apologising, it's hard to know when they could ever stop. I open it. <em>I know you didn't ask me to write to you.[...] You're probably just thinking "oh dear, not another charity asking me for money". If that's the case, then I'm sorry. [...] the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children</em>.</p> <p>They've touched my heart, with their diffident approach. I shall write to them immediately, and forgive them.</p> <p>On a less wholesome note, here's <a href="http://membracid.wordpress.com/">Bug Girl</a>. Not her, she's a constant delight, but the subjects of her post, <a href="http://membracid.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/i-have-pubic-lice-in-my-mailbox/">I have pubic lice in my mailbox</a>. <em>If that sounds like a euphemism, it isn't</em>, she says, and we all breathe a sigh of relief for her. Until we read the piece, and begin to worry about the world instead.</p> <p>And just to make up for my little tease, this is the website of the <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/?lpsrc=google&lpcat=nspcc&lpgrp=general&lptxt=gen1&lpkey=nspcc&gclid=CMGQvMC_kpMCFQseQgodKywyfQ">NSPCC</a>. Give them some money, they do good stuff.</p> <p>You probably won't hear from me again until I'm in Totterdown. It's a fifteen minute walk and a whole world away. Can't wait. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/05/06/end-of-the-season-4139933/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-04-30:/2008/04/30/the-death-of-hofmann-4115558/secback2008-04-30T18:55:30+02:002008-05-01T17:52:30+02:00 <p>That's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann">Albert</a>, not <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman">Abbie</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Hoffman">Dustin</a>. Abbie killed himself in 1989 and Dustin's still alive, which after Meet the Fockers is definitely the wrong way round. One F and two N's in Albert Hofmann, apparently.</p> <p><a href="http://www.6thinternational.org/2008/04/what-a-long-str.html">Mrs Tilton mourns his passing</a>, which brought it to my attention. Turns out the old guy made it to 102. So now you know the secret of long life - be Swiss, and invent a psychedelic drug.</p> <p>I've written a little about <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/01/29/so_not_the_acid_after_all_then%7E3647013">my acid experiences </a>before, or more accurately their imagined aftereffects. To cut a long story short, I thought I was experiencing mild flashbacks, but it turned out the world was just a little weirder than I'd realised. Well, if it wasn't for Dr Hofmann none of that would have happened, the highs or - well, actually there weren't any lows. So just the highs, then. Thanks Bert.</p> <p>zombizi celebrates his legacy with <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zombizi_rip/2455450130/">this picture</a>. For today's competition, please explain why. This competition is open to everybody called zombizi, and the prize is another post by me about football.</p> <p>Just to fill the ball-shaped hole in the meanwhile, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7374317.stm">Ronaldo's been caught with some transvestite prostitutes</a>. That's the Brazilian Ronaldo, not the Portuguese one. Apparently he knew they were prostitutes, but didn't know they were transvestites. I'm not quite sure why he thinks that sounds better. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/04/30/the-death-of-hofmann-4115558/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:secback.blog.co.uk,2008-04-30:/2008/04/30/tense-4112449/secback2008-04-30T01:14:51+02:002008-04-30T18:38:11+02:00 <p>It's a tense business, being a football fan, and sometimes the last bit is the worst.</p> <p>There are times when the other team is all over you and you're hanging on for the final whistle, knowing that one goal could snatch it all away. I swear, at times the clock goes backwards. I've sweated it out for City often enough, and it's no different for fans of other teams.</p> <p>So congratulations to lowly Chester, who eked out a 0-0 draw against Stockport tonight, and secured their survival in League 2. Rarely can a team have failed to score at home against Stockport and made their fans so very happy. The Shropshire Union Canal will be awash with Carlsberg tonight. Commiserations though to Mansfield, who now get relegated to the provinces instead. League 2 teams are only just full time professionals, so going down threatens jobs as well as reputations.</p> <p>The evening's other game was quite a tense affair too, but Man United scraped through against an unlucky Barcelona to earn a place in the Champions League final in Moscow on May 21.</p> <p>Both teams in the final will be English, as Liverpool and Chelsea settle the other semi-final tomorrow. Bearing in mind that Liverpool knocked out Arsenal, this means that no English team has been knocked out this year by non-English opposition. This is unprecedented.</p> <p>Not that there's any cause for nationalistic fervour. It's all about the money, you see. English teams are rich rich rich because of TV rights for the Premiership, so they can afford to buy the best players. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't actually the warm beer that tempts them over the Channel, but the cold hard cash.</p> <p>Should be a good final though, whichever team wins tomorrow. I'm just glad I don't work for a Russian airline. Imagine trying to fly two such antagonistic groups into the same city separately. And then there's the fans to worry about as well. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://secback.blog.co.uk/2008/04/30/tense-4112449/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>