Conserve THIS!

Now that I've been able to persuade my car radio to pick up Radio 4 (seriously, I so awful with technology that I should be Amish, except for that whole no sex, no booze thing), and have been embarking on mammoth driving sessions up and down the country, I've had time to listen to various politics shows in-between whiny whiteboy CDs.

This included Sunday night's Westminster Hour (now available on iPlayer), which ended by running the first part of the upcoming Conserve What? series, starting tomorrow.

The basic idea is to explain what it means to be a conservative (small "c", though the big C's are unsurprisingly involved) in the 21st Century. Obviously, this of interest to me, if only to get a better understanding of the opposition.

The program itself is pretty poor. This should come as no surprise given it's been put together by a Daily Mail journalist, Peter Oborne. Even if one were to take what was said at face value, one would find it difficult to take the program and put together a particularly useful picture of conservatism.

As is frequently the case, though, a great deal was revealed by accident.

First of all, Oborne tells us, conservatism isn't a philosophy, more of a sensibility. This, Oborne suggests, is why there are so few "conservative philosophers" (he suggests Edmund Burke might be the closest to having earned the label). He also suggests conservatives don't consider politics particularly important, at least not when compared to your family, or your mates.

This argument gets right to the heart of my problem with the Conservative party. Why would anyone think a "sensibility" is a good thing to base the rule of a country on? Because politics isn't important, you see. Looking after Britain is something you do in-between church picnics and long walks on the beach.

It might not be quite paradoxical to suggest one wants power in order to ensure that said power is never used, but the very last thing you could accuse Thatcher or George W. Bush of being during their time in office was idle (Bush's record-breaking holiday time notwithstanding). The conservative belief that people should just be left alone to do their own thing misses (or deliberately ignores) one of the fundamental points of progressives, namely that practically every piece of legislation means denying people the ability to do or have something, or at least make it harder to perform/acquire. The denial might be explicit (no murders) or implicit (relaxing health and safety laws will make it harder for people to perform their jobs safely, or gain compensation when things go wrong). It might apply to all people (no murders, thanks), or only to some (making it harder, albeit fractionally, for a given group to get jobs due to some mandated hiring quota). For progressives, the idea is to find the perfect balance, if indeed it exists at all (and it probably doesn't, but like a sin-free life, it doesn't follow that is not something worth attempting.) Just like refusing to decide is itself a decision [1], not interceding on behalf of one group of people is itself an exercise in power [2]. I don't want to imply that this invalidates conservatism entirely, since the idea that man should be free and that if it that ends up screwing you it's tough isn't an incoherent idea (just a supremely distasteful one that conservatives frequently go to great lengths to refute, usually fairly unconvincingly), but it's worth bearing in mind.

It should be noted that I brought progressives into this quite deliberately, because Oborne does as well. Many of his points regarding what conservatism is boiled down to "progressives do X, and we think that's bad". It really didn't do much to dispel the notion that conservatives spend their time deciding what they're against, rather than what they're for. Further, whilst I can't claim to be anything close to an expert on philosophies, I'm not sure progressives would be likely to claim their political outlook is nothing more than a sensibility, which makes comparing the two as theoretical equals less than totally convincing. My own interpretation of the progressive philosophy (and YMMV pretty strongly on this) can be boiled down to the well-worn idea that all people should be offered equality of opportunity. The aim of political activity and the objective of political power is to achieve that balance. Or, in situations in which that balance cannot be achieved (which, as acknowledged above, is probably all of them) the aim is to oscillate around the balance point like a pendulum. [3]

Oborne's definition of conservatism, in large part, boils down to "We don't want that". The reason for this, he claims, is that society has worked perfectly well up until now, and we should have more respect for the generations spent assembling said society than to simply reshape it upon a whim. Why rock the boat and risk the way we live our lives?

There are obvious problems with this argument. Had this idea won over two hundred years ago, we would never have abolished slavery. Had it been persuasive forty years ago, homosexuality would not have been legalised. Evidently, neither of those resulted in the downfall of British civilisation. It would be difficult in this country (and all but impossible in America) to point to a single paradigm shift in history that we consider a good thing but which conservatives at the time did not oppose. As clear as those counters are, though, there is a more fundamental point to be made. The problem with conservatism is that it relies so heavily on slippery slope arguments. I've pointed out before that these have their place, but those occasions are comparatively infrequent. The conservative fear that change might lead to the collapse of civilisation as we know it that Oborne references is rooted in the perception of the various elements of society are not pendulums, but lines of dominoes. This is perfectly demonstrated by conservatives in America (you knew I was going to go there eventually), who are even now screaming that preventing 45 000 people a year from dying because they can't afford health insurance would be the death knell of freedom. The fact that their hero Reagan claimed the same thing about Medicare (seriously, he said if government-funded medical treatment for seniors wasn't stopped "[O]ne of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.") and turned out to be completely, embarrassingly wrong apparently doesn't matter. [4]

In the light of this, it's almost comical that Oborne accuses progressives of ignoring the lessons of history. What he means, I think, is that we focus on the negative aspects of history in our desire to avoid their repitition, and so in our eagerness to avoid a repeat of injustice, we might sweep aside some of the positive parts of our past as well. That, at least, is a defensible position. Perhaps we do have a tendency to throw baby out with bathwater. Oborne's problem, though, is that he thinks history in itself is virtuous. He accuses progressives of dismissing tradition, because we see it as prejudice. It would be far fairer to suggest that progressives focus on the prejudicial aspects of tradition and attempt to excise them. If Oborne wanted to argue that it might be a shame if a centuries-old ceremony was chucked out because there was no way to retain it in it's current, bigoted form (however passive that bigotry might be), then I'd at least be willing to listen. That stance is too complex for him, though. The progressive must be demonised. We can't possibly be faced with two unpleasant options and have chosen the lesser evil (or more precisely have chosen what our philosophy suggests is the lesser evil), we must simply be thumbing our nose at history due to an appalling lack of respect. [5]

This bizarre thought process results in Oborne lamenting the progressive desire to destroy venerable institutions. It apparently never occurs to him to consider the common traits shared by those institutions the progressive does want to see expunged (or altered). He once again makes his baffling statement that progressives are wilfully ignorant of history and declares that it is for this reason that conservatives recognise the corrupt nature of man, and furthermore that it is this realisation that leads to conservatives placing their faith in institutions instead. It is at this point that the wheels really fall off the wagon. It is most certainly not that progressives do not understand that man is prone to selfishness. In fact, it is for this very reason that we object to the idea of our government maintaining a policy of non-interference. Moreover, the idea that somehow an institution will counteract human mendacity, rather than multiplying it, is evidence enough that it is not the progressives that need to revisit their history lessons, but Oborne himself. Naturally, the government itself is an institution (how strange that Oborne trusts neither the common man nor arguably the most powerful of institutions, but somehow believes that all that lies in-between is sacrosanct, presuming of course that it is old enough), and so must be subjected to constant scrutiny to ensure its members are following the rules, but that is hardly an idea new to progressives.

Ultimately, the problem with progressivism is that we can never agree on which direction in which to proceed. The problem with conservatism is not dissimilar, only in their case it is better phrased as they can never agree on which direction in which to regress. Oborne admits that conservatism isn't automatically about stasis, it frequently involves the desire to change society as much as progressivism does, it is simply that in their case the aim is to change things back to how they were. A conservative might argue that this is an important distinction, that (to return to the analogy above) that they are attempting to re-stack dominoes rather than knock them down. This, of course, ignores the fact that society is constantly evolving in myriad ways, and therefore the fact an idea worked before does not imply that it isn't dangerous to return to it (again: consider slavery). Douglas Adams once perfectly encapsulated the way people often become more conservative as they grow older:

Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

This thinking can be expressed in another way: if we've changed anything in the last five years it was a cataclysmic mistake that must be reversed. If we've changed anything in the last thirty years it was a sad loss to society, and we must attempt to find our way back to it. If we've changed anything in the last seventy years, then we don't expect to see it back, but we'll still complain about it being gone, sotto voce in case the fascist PC brigade overhear.

If we changed something before that, of course, it is history, and we must fight tooth and nail to preserve it.

Time is not on the side of the conservatives. If a change is wrought, there is only so long to reverse it before it simply becomes the new order. It is one of life's great ironies that today's conservatives might fight to maintain the ideals yesterday's conservatives vilified so thoroughly. But then each generation of conservatives is convinced that their own lifetime represents the global maximum of human civilisation, and that unlike all the other previous conservatives, the ones who wanted the throne to have unchecked power or to tell brown people what they could and couldn't do, they're really, really right this time.

One last point: Oborne needs to bone up on his analogy skills. His attempt to compare conservative vs. progressive thought to a sprinting race doesn't really work. Conservatives always want the fastest person to win, because that's what the rules demand, he suggests, whereas progressives want to tinker with the rules so the same person wins each time. This is by way of suggesting conservatives are more concerned with the rule of law than progressives are. Aside from the sheer lunacy of anyone alive during the previous Conservative administration suggesting they have a superior commitment to due process than anyone else does, this entirely misses the point. The rules for, say, the 200m are fixed now. There was a time when they weren't. There will almost certainly have been a point at which people sat down and discussed how to deal with the fact that the track curves, and so everyone couldn't start on the same line. I don't imagine the discussion took very long (assuming someone present had a basic grasp of geometry), but the point is that sports and games require development to make them fair. Football is still developing, for example, with FIFA continuing to tweak the rules [6]. Football is also a much better analogy for society, by the way, because it is a sport in which one teams actions directly affect the other. Fairness is about ensuring consistency of interaction, not just ensuring everyone has the same conditions under which they can go it alone. The progressive is interested not in ensuring all runners have a turn at winning the race, but in fiddling with the rules until every runner has the same chance of running the race. It's not the same thing, and I should know.

Right, that took forever to write, and is probably too long for anyone to bother reading. Still, it should serve as a reminder to Spielbergo that it isn't the number of posts that counts, it's the insane length to which you can stretch each one.

[1] A brief and terrifying insight into my day job; whilst in Munich I attended a talk regarding imprecise decision making, which concerns itself with the idea that rather than offering people Option 1 or Option 2, you should offer those options along with Can't Decide. One member of the audience then asked whether or not you should extend the situation to Option 1, Option 2, Can't Decide, and Can't Decide Whether You Can't Decide. It says a lot about the company I keep that this observation resulted in at least as many thoughtful faces as it did rolling of eyes.

[2] Let us recall Paulo Friere here: "In the struggle between the weak and the strong, remaining silent is not to be neutral; it is to give victory to the strong".

[3] This, incidentally, is one of the reasons I'm in complete agreement with Stuart Lee on the subject of Political Correctness. The ideas and initiatives that the term is used to describe are borne of a conscious attempt to ensure bigotry and prejudice are no longer commonly expressed in society. If people want to argue it's gone too far, then I wouldn't immediately object. I'd suggest though that we're closer to the balance point than we were forty or fifty years ago, it's just that we're also on the other side now. At some point, the pendulum will swing back again, and we'll probably pass the balance point again, but hopefully not stray so far from it.

[4] The point I made above about British conservatives consistently standing on the wrong side of history applies tenfold to our American cousins. Slavery, women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, free medical attention for seniors,anti-pollution laws, food safety laws, on and on and on.

[5] Note again the defining characteristic of so much Conservative argument. There cannot be complex situations with no easy answers; there can only be easy answers which progressives refuse to see.

[6] Others know far more about this than I, of course, but I confess the fiddling with the rules of football might have more to do with keeping the game exciting and flowing smoothly than with the idea that there exists inherent unfairness that needs to be tackled. Hopefully though my central point survives.

Declaring Victory

It is with a glad heart that I report Senior Spielbergo has defeated himself in our little altercation before I have even had the time to organise my forces. By revealing that his mis-spelling of his own name stems from his craven insistence on copying and pasting my words rather than considering his own, he reveals himself to be exactly the sort of person whose lack of research and intellectual curiosity means that they will believe anything, including deliberately incorrect spellings laid as traps.

And even if I had mis-spelled his name by accident, which I think we can all agree is vanishingly unlikely, it should be noted that whilst spelling people's names wrong is a bit of a poor show, even (or perhaps especially) when you gave them that name yourself, it is orders of magnitude worse to fail to adequately check a quote before one uses it as one's blog title. Yet what more could be expected of a man who would turn against he who named him, and clothed him in the cloak of bloghood? How sharper than a serpent's tooth, and so on.

Truly, Spielbergo has sunk to such depths it is impossible to do anything but pity the man.

Flash Back To Flash Forward

More Flash Forward spoilers, my friends.

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The second episode went some way to allaying my fears, in that it managed to maintain interest in the investigation of the flashback, and found another couple of ways to play with the idea, without introducing new craziness (though Mr Dolls-And-Chess' pointless cryptic-ness and convenient desire to destroy useless evidence is the kind of non-revealing reveal that is liable to get old fast). It did raise a few questions, though.

1. Is the chance that the phenomenon was natural really 1 in 3600? I'm not sure it was. At the very least, you could make the same argument had the phenomenon started at half past eleven, which would make it 1 in 1800. Throw in quarter past and quarter to, and you reach 1 in 900. The start of any five minute interval would get you to 1 in 300. I'm not saying I find the overall conclusion invalid, but it's always worth noting that these kinds of arguments are based in which events we do or don't find remarkable after the fact [1], and those are always dangerous;
2. If you are determined to ensure your flash forward never comes true, would you really burn the friendship band your loving daughter gave you? You couldn't rearrange your evidence wall a little? Maybe throw out the shirt you wearing? Much as I hate to admit it, this is definitely a point in favour of Chemie's "Benford is a tosser" theory;
3. While on the subject of people acting like tossers, Olivia might try to object over her husband punishing her for an affair she has yet to have, but I noticed a distinct lack on her part to perform the (presumably very complex) process of walking away as promised. If she really loved her husband, she would have called Jack Davenport a fucker and kicked him in the crotch. Or chopped off one of his fingers. He had all his fingers in her flash, time to sort that out. She's a surgeon, surely she knows how to do it so it can't be re-attached;
4. I know we already pretty much know the truth on this, but is it really particularly likely that people don't already know whether a lack of a flash means the viewer was asleep? Why not just ask the populations of the countries who were fast asleep in bed when the flash happened? The flash was to 6am in the UK, you could check up pretty quickly whether no-one over here was logging onto Mosaic, or if all the flashes were about starring in a West End musical without knowing any of the lines and then turning out to be naked.

[1] Consider Yahtzee. If you ever rolled five 6's in a row you might say "Wow! Look at that! That's amazing! What are the odds?" Well, the odds of that combination are 1 in 7776, but that's not the point. The odds of getting 1,3,6,2,6,2 are 1 in 7776 too, (at least it is if you consider that combination to be different to 1,6,2,2,6,3 etc.), the relevant question is what are the odds of getting that combination or another one equally impressive. This leads immediately into the question of what counts as equally impressive? All five numbers the same? That's you down to 1 in 1296 already. All five numbers the same or all five different? 121 in 1296. I think about these things a lot.

Temporary Loss Of Service

No posts until Monday at least, I'm afraid; I am once more venturing into the Deep South. Rest assured, I intend to make it very clear to the locals just how puny their region is in comparison to the might of the North-East.

Hopefully the loss of two or three days will not cut into my blogging time to the extent where Spielbergo will once again out-post me. This is a time of war, after all.

Everyone have a good weekend.

Your Challenge Is Accepted

It has recently (i.e. fifteen minutes ago) been brought to my attention that rival blog "Senior Spielbergo" has declared war upon MotCC. Whilst I am obviously disappointed to learn that our differences could not be settled through diplomacy, I shall not shrink from the use of force. No amount of scurrilous use of misleading graphs or the despicable refusal to agree with every post that is vomited from my fevered brain will dissuade me. He can waste all the time in the world trying to defend the underdog against my wrath! [1] I shall not be defeated!

To demonstrate my unwillingness to back down, let me point out that everyone from Jersey was a collaborator, and in addition that Senior Spielbergo has actually managed to mis-spell his own blog title. Or at least, so I had always assumed. Maybe not. Maybe there's a Junior Spielbergo running around! WHY HAS THE PUBLIC NOT BEEN INFORMED! Does this Jersey Bean (or Half Bean, or whatever; I forget how it works) have no shame? Parading his alleged [2] love-child before us? Capering in the filth of his own degradation? Won't somebody please think of the children!?!

Think of them, in fact, the fuck up.

(I daren't think what people's filters will make of that, I've already gotten an e-mail telling me my blog is too graphic [3] for the sender's work computer).

[1] The underdog in this case being a massively powerful set of well-paid shills for the most corporation-y of corporations, and/or Michele Bachman.

[2] Actual allegation copyright SpaceSquid Productions 2009.

[3] Or is it, in fact, simply TOO FILLED WITH TRUTH!?!

A Lack Of Civility

It should surprise no-one to learn that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is almost exactly the same as its predecessor, at least in structure. You spend ninety-five percent of your timing beating up an ocean of faceless goons (whilst trying to ignore the fact that a Latverian soldier can get punched in the face by the Thing without it affecting his ability to fire in random directions at all; but that's superhero games for you), wading your way towards a major villain in the Marvel Universe (or even Shocker), who you then beat up. There is then a small injection of plot to make it look as though something more complex is going on, though invariably any new set of problems that emerge are solved by you finding a new ocean of faceless goons, who you beat up.

Still, why change what's apparently a winning formula? Certainly, as a card-carrying comic-book obsessive, I have no business complaining about endless variations on the same theme. I wasn't a big fan of the first UA game, but that's almost entirely down to it not being another X-Men Game. X-Men Legends II: Rise Of Apocalypse was an absolute gift to those who remembered the Age of Apocalypse from the early 90's. UA was far more general, requiring a broader love of Marvel than I could claim. It also didn't have a particularly interesting plot, being instead just the kind of pointless "villains unite" idea that got old twenty years ago.

UA2 has a much better plot, mainly because it's lifted from Civil War (apparently Secret War, too, though I haven't read that). Civil War remains one of my all-time favourite ideas for a Marvel crossover (the degree to which the ball was dropped with respect to execution is entirely debatable, of course), and has the added bonus of making the gatherings of heroes and villains seem somewhat less arbitrary.

It's all I needed. Everything else is the same; though the graphics have unsurprisingly been tarted up, and the combination moves are now a lot more fun (who doesn't want to see Luke Cage inside one of the Invisible Woman's force-fields, laying down the smack to all and sundry?). Seriously, though, the chance to smack Iron Man around, preferably with his own Registration ID card? [1] Sign me up for some of that!

Apparently the game affords me this opportunity (yay!), though we lacked the time to get there tonight (soon, Stark; soon your day will come!), which will hopefully add something new to the experience. I guess we'll see. It did though make me remember that I'd intended to write a post about the Civil War series itself one day. At this point I fully acknowledge that I'm three years late to the party, but it always amused me that so many comic book fans were adamant that Iron Man was a total douche and Captain America obviously in the right. When I read it I thought Millar did a fairly impressive job of ensuring both sides had equally valid points. Then I handed it to Gooder, and his first comment after reading it was "Wow, Captain America's a dick, huh?"

In truth, I think America did act like a dick, but he was also closer to the mark than Stark was. The first consideration when debating what to do about superheroes is what to do about supervillains. There are thousands of supervillains in the Marvel universe, a small subset of which can take down an entire country without breaking a sweat. Magneto alone conquered the nation of San Marco, destroyed a nuclear submarine (having survived its attack) and manipulated the planet's magnetic field to the point where they handed him his own country just to shut him up. That's a whole lot of power, and crucially, it's only the third of those events for which American superheros could claim jurisdiction.

The real-world explanation as to why the US has the vast majority of capes within its borders is obvious, but within the realms of fiction, it's just one more happy coincidence for the States, one more way for America to lord it over everybody else. If the X-Men had been registered, they would almost certainly never have travelled to San Marco to liberate it from an insane tyrant. I'm dissing the States here, but in reality any country would do the same; once they had their own official super-powered armed force, what government would send it to aid a foreign power when they could keep it at home to keep the local supervillains in line. Superheroes would stop being altruistic defenders of humanity, and become something closer to a nuclear deterrent.

If Galactus returned to Earth and attempted to consume it, one would assume that the US would lend its capes to the struggle to fend him off. What if he only wanted Africa, though? Or Australia? How many countries could he eat before the States were prepared to risk their heroes against him? What would stop Congress from actively negotiating the idea with The Destroyer of Worlds? I mean, it might be a really good idea from a game theory perspective. And certainly no-one could do anything about it, any force of superheroes strong enough to try and punish you over it would already have been thrown at Galactus (or whomever) anyway.

No. To register heroes is to give supervillains almost carte blanche to terrorize any nation other than America, and possibly it's closest allies (plus you might not want to mess with Canada if Wolverine decides to head home). Even if you want to argue (as some undoubtedly would) that the Americans would be within their rights to operate a "Me first!" strategy with respect to capes, it would most likely prove self-defeating over the long term. Not that Stark was thinking long-term, of course. His desire to follow the will of the people is laudable, but let's not forget that the situation reached the point it did at least in part because some buffoon outside of a nightclub decided to bottle a man who had saved the entire human race because he happened to share a job with someone who had botched an attempt to apprehend a criminal. I've never bought into this particular idea in fiction, the suggestion that acts of horrible carnage and evil will be blamed on those who devote themselves to stopping them, though it is certainly true that people in groups are astonishing stupid and with each passing year I seem to get closer to entertaining such an unbelievably depressing possibility. The fact remains that without people like Speedball and the other New Warriros, Nitro might not have blown up Stamford, but he would instead have killed who knows how many thousand other people? Also, Apocalypse would have taken over the world and then slaughtered most of the population, and Galactus would have eaten what remained. The Marvel universe is not somewhere you want to give people even stronger disincentives to becoming heroes.

All of which makes Stark dangerously short-sighted, albeit with a lot of good reasons for decisions he made based on the facts his myopia allowed him to see. Captain America was right, he just apparently hadn't the faintest idea how to explain that, and was thus, as Gooder pointed out, reduced to acting like a dick.

Anyway, I've digressed pretty far. I shall seamlessly join the two halves of this post by wondering aloud whether the possible multiple endings to the game will allow for a better ending (or even several better endings) than that we got in the original comic (though Joss Whedon was right, it would have been fatal to sign off on the inconclusive draw that was apparently originally planned), and leave it there. Maybe next week a game of Chucky Egg will inspire a discussion of the salmonella scares of my childhood. Who, at this point, can say?

[1] Did they have those? I bet they did. I bet they have photos. I bet Stark's is a photo, which is of him, on the beach in tight trunks, stroking an enormous pile of cash. It's probably laminated, too, to help shake off the cocaine fragments.

Here Are The Facts Redux

Having completed another go-around on the milkshake carousel, it's time to once again collate data. What fun!

First up: the updated chart of shake quality by category.

At this point it seems we're seeing the various groupings balancing each other out; aside from chocolate and (arguably) cakes, the categories appear fairly similar (fruit took a particular beating this time round thanks to the truly abysmal pineapple shake). This may set the pattern for the future, thanks to the law of large numbers, though I would hate to mangle my presentation of statistics to the point where I implied 3 was in any sense large. Naturally, chocolate remains what is known in the trade as "an outlier of awesome".

We now turn to the updated shake quality deviation graph.

Biscuits and breakfast cereals are the biggest winners here. The twin nightmares of pineapple and blackjack have massively widened the quality deviation for fruit and sweets respectively, both of which were until now highly regarded categories. Chocolate remains powerful, but cakes are now clearly the most dependable category, as well as scoring highly overall.

Finally, we consider the overall satisfaction I am experiencing with the experiment as a whole.


As this chart demonstrates, there is a slight but noticeable downward drift in my enjoyment as the experiment goes on. Had I not been fortunate in my last two choices, the drift might be even more prominent. Alas, I see the coming day when all acceptable shake flavours have been sampled, and only a morass of mediocrity remains, punctuated occasionally by moments of pure revulsion.

Truly, I must suffer to bring enlightenment to my readers.

In conclusion: cakes are solid and dependably delicious, chocolate continues to do the business, and breakfast cereal seems to have overtaken sweets in a result that defies all conceivable laws of reality. Oh, and this series may not be long for this world, since as a general rule if I'm going to be putting on weight I'd rather it not involve drinking concoctions more suited to Snape's potions class than anything else.