Living & Growing

I will start this blog off with an admission: I’m not gay.

I’m also not Christian. I’m not Muslim nor am I a scientologist. I’m not black. I’m not Asian.

I’m a heterosexual, Anglo Saxon, atheist, white male. To compound this damning description I also work in finance and have voted Tory ever since I was legally able to.

Essentially I am about as far away from the urban street as its possible to be, well perhaps Boris Johnson is a bit further away but its safe to say I won’t be appearing as an extra on The Wire anytime soon. Unless it’s to get mugged that is.

It doesn’t really matter though, I don’t care and I’m sure 50 Cent and his chums don’t care much either.

I remember when I first learned the real truth about human reproduction.  I was about 9 or 10 years old. It was the summer holidays and I was idly walking back from the park with a friend kicking an old plastic football between us.

‘Fuck off! No way! Who told you that?’ I shouted after he had just, out of the blue, told me about it using terms like ‘Your dad put it there, they did this and then you appeared’

‘Its true’ he said nodding solemnly

I thought about this for a while, trying to exorcise the image from my brain.

‘That means your mum and dad must have done the same then?’ I grinned, throwing it back at him.

‘Nope' he said 'not them, just your mum and dad' then he ran off laughing and waving for me to pass him the ball.

I didn’t believe him at the time but within two years the horrible truth had been broken to me through the medium of pencil and chalk drawings in school. Living and Growing is a TV series I will never forget, for all the wrong reasons. Two years later it was a topic which had taken over my mind almost entirely. My forearms bulked out. Childhood was nearly over.

Anyway, it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it would when my friend told me about it that summer’s day in the late 1970s.

My three kids will find out one day, one already has. The other two have some time yet but eventually they will too. They might turn out similar to me, who knows. Two are half Asian so they already have a significant headstart in the street credibility stakes long before that even matters to them.

The good thing is regardless of their ethnicity, their sexual preferences or their career choices there will generally be no bias one way or another towards them. In general, and I am of course generalising here, the world is a pretty unbiased place to live. Rio Ferdinand might argue differently but we are certainly some way away from the world as it existed say, 200 years ago. Pockets of resistance exist in amongst some segments of the population and there is the odd country still believing themselves to be ethnically superior to another but these are rare.

Religion is different though.

Science is right, of course it is, 2000 years of scientific study and clinical evidence cant be wrong, can it? With such an overwhelming volume of work, postulating, hypothesising, proving and disproving how could it be anything but the truth? Well it cant be but it is certainly not the whole truth. It is still someway away from explaining the whole truth. Which leaves me in the difficult situation of there being some scientifically accepted scientific concepts I personally find impossible to understand no matter how tight I screw up my eyes; infinity, higgs bosun, warp speed to name just three.

So what is wrong with having a get out of jail card called faith in your back pocket? If you don’t understand it simply say it was gods will and move on. An omnipresent escape clause as John Loftus would describe it. But think about it, having an escape clause, omnipresent or otherwise has to be preferable to trying to figure out how the Starship Enterprise doesn’t bump into planets during warp speed. At least I think it is.

Christian bashing seems to be in vogue. There are multiple websites, facebook pages all with the intention of throwing unanswerable questions at creaky old men in robes safe in the knowledge they have no valid repost.

Its too easy. These sites seem to be awash with smug atheists actively seeking a fight then sniggering or arguing about creation and in the process trying to persuade some poor soul that his or hers belief system is flawed.

Are these the modern day equivalent of missionaries traipsing around Africa trying to convert the heathens?

Probably not.

To me it feels less of a conversion process and more of a bullying/self promoting ‘I am right and I want to hear you admit defeat’ type of process.

Either way its not very pleasant, in the same way it wouldn’t be acceptable to have the scientific community going out of its way to prove that man-love isn’t correct. ‘Its not supposed to go in there you know?’ is a pretty valid argument but I’ve never heard Stephen Hawkins say so and does it really matter? 

Not really.

Anyway religion isn’t all that bad. The vast majority – 99.9% - of people with faith practice it without any negative consequence on the rest of us so what’s the problem?

If you have to throw anyone to the lions why not focus on the 0.1%. The door knocking Jehovah witnesses, scientologists, Islamic terrorists and anyone who carries out violence in the name of religion. Leave the rest alone to whatever it is they believe.

Just a suggestion though, it might be an idea to keep your thoughts on the existence of god to yourself if you happen to find yourself in the middle of Helmand province.

Who knows at some future point the bearded chaps at CERN might discover the god particle and reveal to the world it was actually made by the big man himself. They could prove that Mary did conceive immaculately and not how my friend described it and they might prove that god exists and is a hazy man with a white beard.

What will you say then? Bullying atheists? Huh? 

Morally Taxing

Robots come in all shapes and sizes.  

From small shiny bins with a round, swivelly, antenna loaded, heads right through to large muscular and heavily accented Austrians. They have been imagined in every conceivable way. Sexy ones, ugly ones and ones which look like large buildings with spindly legs. Robots which go bleep, bloop in such a way you want to cuddle them and robots which are as murderous as they come. Male, female, dogs, cats, horses, knives, forks. Regardless of their shape or their intentions to you, me, mankind or a woman called Sarah Connor they all have one thing in common.

They are not real. They are all made up. They don’t actually, properly, in the real world, really exist.

Hard to believe I know but trust me on this one. They don’t.

The depressing reality is real world robots which do actually exist are rubbish and are a million miles away from what I would consider a proper robot. The oxford dictionary defines a robot as a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer. Real world robots barely scrape into this definition. 

Basically they come in two forms, they can either mow your lawn or hoover your carpet. Or both and that is it. Oh and they resemble a crap brown plastic plate on castors to boot. They can’t kill you, you can’t have sex with one, or at least I would strongly advise against it, they can’t break the code of a locked down force field/tractor beam and are bloody useless when it comes to telling jokes.

Why is this?

One of the core principles of physics is the universality of computation. Now I don’t profess to know much about physics, or anything much for that matter however even my simple brain understands this principle. Basically it states that if it is possible within the laws of physics then it is possible, given enough time & memory for a computer to replicate it in very fine detail. This law was postulated in the 19^th Century and was proved in the 1980s.

One of the implications of this is if the human body can do it then it is possible to build a computer to replicate it. Fact.

Why then, if it is proved to be possible, can’t we do it?

Let’s just assume for the sake of argument we can build one and assuming we can devise cogs and motors sensitive enough to move with appropriate fluidity would that be enough? Probably not.

A thought process is also required and herein lies the problem. The human brain is an ugly, spongy, grey, waterlogged bag of tricks so complex it would require one the size of mars to actually figure out how one actually works. The human brain is probably the smartest object in the world, not every brain but certainly a good proportion of them. It is the only object which actually knows there even is an Earth or understands the concept of self and existence, life, death and morality. The brain understands this and understands that replicating one must be possible following the universality of computation but still we can’t even build something simple enough to help me put together an IKEA flat pack shelving unit.

I don’t get it but then I don’t get a lot of things so this shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone.

We could build a robot to do our tax returns though.

This would be simple. In fact we have, they just don’t look like robots but the principles are fairly straightforward. If you earn this you pay that, if you do this then this happens. Taxation like a lot of rules and laws are fairly black and white, to the extent even a robot brain would get it. They are of course bourn out of societal judgements on what’s fair and what’s equitable but the rules are fairly binary in their nature.

With such a clear cut set of rules, people will invariably have issues with them, its natural. The richer folks among us complain that they pay too much and the less well off complain that the rich don’t pay enough. That’s understandable but if you are a good citizen, corporate or private, follow the rules and pay the tax you should be ok, right?

Not necessarily.

The phrase, it might be legal but isn’t morally right has surfaced a few times in recent months in relation to taxation and a bit like robots its something which is baffling me. Does this mean the existing tax laws are not moral? What exactly is a moral tax?

David Cameron described Jimmy Carr as morally wrong for using the infamous K2 scheme where he ended up paying a lot less tax than he otherwise would had he just declared his income like a normal, morally robust, citizen. Starbucks UK have come under the moral microscope recently as well for paying no corporation tax on its UK businesses even though it achieved £398M worth of sales.

The headlines are damning; £398M sales! No tax! Starbucks are making a mocha-ry of the exchequer (I made that up btw). In this age of austerity I can almost feel the seething rage and hear the grinding of teeth as the Sun or Mail’s headlines are read out on building sites, in housing benefit offices and teachers well used rest rooms across the country.

Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is smart. It’s a controversial statement I accept but if every person in the country could pay 1% less tax than they do at the moment legally do you think they wouldn’t?

If it is morally wrong to pay money into a K2 scheme in the channel islands or structure a company in such a way that it pays tax in Lichtenstein then the answer is very simple. Change the laws to make it tax avoidance and I can guarantee Starbucks, Jimmy Carr and every other so called ‘fat cat’ would stop doing it immediately. Its not difficult really.

Also following this logic if the legal schemes used by such people are morally wrong does this mean ISA’s or tax free pension scheme payments are also morally wrong? Are they not also legal mechanisms for individuals to reduce their overall tax liability?

The only way to make tax 100% morally equitable is to make everyone pay the same percentage. And by that I mean really everyone, whether you are a billionaire or a pauper you will pay the same % of your earnings. Another way to look at this, is it morally right to penalize someone more for working hard and being successful?

David Cameron making statements like he did are only there to pander to the restless natives reading the headlines. He knows there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. If he really felt that strongly about it he would task the Inland Revenue to jump all over it, close down the loophole and have them burn the participants at the stake.

Along with Klingons, warp speed and light sabers, R2D2 is not real and I can say with reasonable certainty he/she/it will never be real. I too am blessed with having one of those wonderfully amazing grey watery things sandwiched between my ears. And like most people I have my opinions and think these are correct. I do also recognise that I am probably not right, I have biases the same as everyone else and this is why just because I have an opinion it doesn’t make it right. It also probably means I shouldn’t be judging the moral rights and wrongs of a particular persons tax affairs.

Make the law then leave it to the lawn cutting, carpet hoovering robots and their bleep, bloop brains to police it free from bias.

Trust me, they will do a far better job than you or I ever will.

Free Sex. Free Money. Free Beer.

You want free sex?

You want free beer?

You want free money?

Having recently discovered the statistics function on my BlogSpot page this post is a test. It’s a test posting to prove or disprove my hypothesis that most people end up here by accident.

I know most of the people who read this regularly. I know the people who link up with me on the various social & professional networks end up here by being nosy but I think the bulk of traffic is accidental, random. This is not a pure guess, looking at the statistics function I can for example see which country you come from. I can see what operating system you use. I can see how you got here, I can see the search term you used to find this page and I can also see which posting you have read. 

After spending an extraordinary amount of time analysing these data I can conclude that there is a significant statistical correlation, for the sake of simplicity I will randomly call this r,  between the title of the post and the number of views it gets. Recently the bulk of traffic passing over this page comes from Google and the most popular search term which people find it through is Penoplasty.

Now I cannot think of a scenario whereby someone would type the words Mike Shanks and Penoplasty at the same time into Google and thus have to conclude its purely accidental.

Does this also mean the bulk of people reading my blog have small penises and probably can't type?

Regardless, to prove or disprove my theory I will upload this post and monitor the traffic. I am not sure what I will do with this information once I have it but I for one think it’s a very worthy exercise.

Its Saturday 8th September 2012, close to midnight and the current count on the blog is 2,474

Lets see.

Mute

I have tried hard.

I have.

I really have.

I have honestly given it my best shot but for some reason I just cannot get excited by the Paralympics.

Every time I turn on the television I find myself faced with a depressing autumn schedule bursting at the seams with lowest common denominator programming. In an attempt to avoid watching two annoying Geordies and the humiliation of dense people from a strata of the population I don’t recognise I find myself channel hopping and pretty soon I am sat watching the Paralympics. It’s packaged the same as the normal Olympics, it’s using the same locations as the normal Olympics, everything looks the same but it’s just isn’t. It isn’t otherwise I would watch as enthusiastically as I did a month ago.

The problem I find is pretty soon after tuning in I find my hand edging back towards the remote control. I get bored quickly and find myself trying to guess red or black along with the rest of the population with my brain resting in another room.

I really like sport, I love playing it and watching it so what is it about the Paralympics I just don’t get? Is it the various disabilities? Is it the need to classify and grade the disabilities to ensure a level playing field? Is it the implausible events ranging from the rather pedestrian sounding seated volleyball, through the improbable blind football right up to the laughable, whatever could go wrong, visually impaired javelin?

Honestly I don’t know why it is, it could be that if I am watching someone run 100meters I want to watch the best in the world, not the best of a particular segment of the population. I want to see the best, the fastest man on earth, the highest or longest jumper the best football players, the best swimmers, tennis players etc. I am simply not interested in the fastest man on earth with a particular disability or within a certain age bracket. Sporting endeavor is and should be Darwinism in its purest form.

Please don’t misunderstand, it’s not the disability which turns me off, I feel the same about watching ‘senior’ competitions, the over 40s or 50s or for that matter the under 21 competitions. Frankly I don’t care about them either. Why not go the whole inclusive hog and have a tournament for people with a BMI of >30?

In fact I would probably tune in and watch that, but just because it would be laugh.

I’m not against it, far from it, good for them for competing but I for one am going to watch Ant and Dec eat rhino turds in the jungle instead.

So why is it that I uncomfortable about the above?

A good friend of mine is a huge cricket fan and I have no issue whatsoever stating the obvious to him that cricket is a seriously dull game played at the speed of a koala on weed by a bunch of fannies in stupid clothes. That fine and he normally just nods in an accepting way without taking offence, as he should, because it’s true. But if I was to say for example, the Paralympics are shite the reaction I would receive might not be quite so accepting.

Maybe I should keep my opinions on such matters to myself to be on the safe side. In future when asked did I see the S2 dwarf hurdles last night I should respond with ‘yes, wasn’t it fantastic?’ and hope the conversations quickly shifts to I’m on X-Factor get me out of here.

But it does feel like I cannot say what I think or worse what I think or feel is horribly inappropriate and out of touch.

Bad sexual etiquette was George Galloway’s way of describing Julian Assange’s alleged rape charges recently and of course the reaction to his statement was predictably vitriolic. If some people could have their way he would be hung by the neck from the nearest lamppost and Mr Galloway himself knew this would be the reaction. He did it because he enjoys the infamy and the publicity this type of outburst gives him.

Regardless of his motivation though is he so wide of the mark to justify such a strong response? I would argue not, it’s more the subject matter which has become almost unmentionable. Opinions on the subject are so strong that most politicians of a serious bent steer the hell clear. Don’t touch it, it’s a minefield and you are guaranteed to piss one section of the population off if you do. Ken Clarke fell into the trap a couple of years ago and was castigated for suggesting there should be different degrees of rape, i.e. a 16 year old boy having consensual sex with a 15 year old girl is very different to the violent type of rape. I accept the age limit is there to ensure consent is given with a mature mind but it is different no matter how you look at it. In the same way that Julian Assange’s alleged crimes are different.

So what is so wrong with saying so?

What is wrong is there seems to be a culture where people cannot speak their mind, even if it is just to bring a healthy dose of common sense into the discussion.

Race and religion are another two topics which are untouchable and we have seen some ridiculous cases recently where applying a bit of common sense would have resolved the issues before they even became an issue and probably saved millions to boot.

It is almost as we continue to pursue our insatiable desire to protect people’s religious, sexual or racial freedoms we are losing our ability or the inclination to speak our minds on such subjects. We are too scared. We are losing the freedom to say what we think and I would counter this is something much more dangerous and definitely worth protecting.

If we lose sight of this we could very easily find ourselves sat at a mad hatter’s tea party, mute.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox.

I don’t like the Paralympics and that’s ok.