A Little More On Healthcare

Your next (mercifully brief) update on healthcare reform. It's worth reading this article in full, but the most important quote is the one which drives home the point I mentioned earlier:

The goal is to quell a revolt among House Democrats, who overwhelmingly oppose the tax, and are frustrated by having to consistently yield to the Senate on major legislation.

Big surprise. It's almost as though having three separate electable divisions of government and then deciding only one of them has any real power over domestic policy is an obviously idiotic idea.

Whilst we're on the subject, Thomas Geoghegan argues that the filibuster is not only a terrible idea in practice, but unconstitutional to boot. Ezra Klein, though, disagrees, though apparently only because he wants to distinguish between rules that violate what the constitution specifically says and rules that violate only what all accounts in addition to common sense say those that wrote the constitution intended.

Life Support Redux

Further to Thursday's comments on the state of the healthcare bill, I present another reason to hold off on breaking out the party hats. If Massachusetts takes leave of its senses and decides to replace the long-serving Democrat Ted Kennedy (who passed away due to brain cancer last year) with a Republican, then healthcare is dead again. Well, almost certainly. It would be nice to think that a newly elected official would not make his first act the destruction of something his predecessor made his life's work and spent decades upon [1], but that doesn't seem likely. After all, it would also be nice to think that a democracy would be allowed to pass laws that the majority are in favour of, too.

Given the significant poll spread, the fact that Massachusetts is pretty reliably liberal (by American standards and in the American sense of the term), I wouldn't put the odds of Brown winning as particularly high. My inner fatalist is biting his nails, though.

[1] Obviously, though, there's some bias here. If Kennedy had spent decades trying to put together a fascist state or a repeal of anti-slavery laws, I'd probably be delighted someone was going to knock it down. It's even possible to make an argument that the healthcare bill is worth opposing, though since those arguments involve a) a bunch of technicalities and b) sitting down and trying to work out which option will actually be best for poor people, no-one in the GOP has bothered to try. I guess I'm comfortable with arguing that you'd have to have a better reason than minority obstructionism for political gain if you're going to piss over your predecessor's legacy, but if people wanted to claim I was deciding what I wanted first, and then trying to justify it, they'd probably have a point.

Lost Logic

I note that Damon Lindelof has surfaced online to drop hints about the final season of Lost. Normally I would steer clear of such articles, for fear of learning more than I wish to, but this particular article had a title intriguing and vague enough for me to feel comfortable checking out. For the truly, massively spoiler-phobic, though, to the point where you don't even want to hear about the most vague intentions of the writers, I'd clear off now.

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So, on to the article. Essentially, the piece serves as Lindelof confessing that the last season of Lost will not, in fact, come complete with all the answers. This, of course, is roughly as surprising as discovering that your subscription to Weightwatchers will not, in fact, come complete with a year's supply of deep-fried cheeseburgers. One does not need to be surprised to be irritated, though, and frankly far more annoying than the admission that things are going to get dropped is the bone-headed argument Lindelof uses to justify it:

There are certain questions I'm very befuddled by, like, 'What is the Island?' or 'What do the numbers mean?' We're going to be explaining significantly more about the numbers, but what is a potential answer to, 'What do the numbers mean?' I feel like you have to be very careful about entering into midi-chlorian territory. I grew up on Star Wars, I've seen the Star Wars movies hundreds of times, I can recite them chapter and verse, and never once did it occur to me to ask, 'What is the Force, exactly?'

Um, no. No. This won't do at all. Lindelof is obviously a smart bloke; my frustrations with Lost aside it's clearly not a show written by idiots. Given it frequently seems to be a show written about smart people who act like idiots, though, maybe it's oddly fitting that Lindelof has apparently decided to employ arguments that even Locke at his most boringly obtuse could pick apart immediately.

Lindelof didn't think to ask about the way the Force worked, and I can't believe he doesn't realise this, for a very simple reason: the story never suggested that the mechanisms behind the Force were important. It was important to grasp the basic rules of it, but that was all. With that done, Lucas could go off and play, and we could follow.

That isn't how Lost has done business. It didn't introduce a list of six numbers and imply the specifics behind their power was irrelevant. The show presented it as a deep and vital mystery, a mystery which it allowed to stretch on and on, whilst feeding us tit-bits to keep us interested, and constantly promising at least partial answers only to whisk the rug away at the last second.

Lindelof is suggesting it was his subconscious choice as a viewer to not care about how the Force worked, and implying that those of us watching Lost should be making that choice as well. But it is blatantly obvious to anyone who has seen just a few episodes of Lost, to say nothing of written them, that the show was telling us, again and again, that the mystery of the numbers is something we should buy into. We didn't decide the explanation was important. They did. They told us it was important to their story, and if they then choose to toss it all aside (or find that they have no other choice), that is their failure, and it can't be brushed away by pointing out that it is not the case that literally everything in fiction requires an explanation.

I'm also pretty unimpressed by the idea that you can demonstrate explanations are a waste of time by pointing to what is generally regarded as one of the worst bursts of pointless exposition ever committed to celluloid. I mean, I get that Lindelof is trying to make a point, but the sheer never-seen-before-or-since incandescent hideousness of his example makes his argument meaningless. He could just as well argue that the teeth-shatteringly abominable sex scene in Watchmen is proof that there's no point in showing whether or not Jack and Kate get together. Only his actual argument is worse, because he's invoking the Unholiest of Unholies, the TPM itself, which despite Gooder's tireless efforts to rehabilitate it remains such an all-engulfing black hole of anti-accomplishment that comparing an idea to something attempted with that particular festering pus flood should be considered some kind of storytelling corollary to Godwin's Law. The longer a particular storytelling technique is discussed, the greater the probability someone will be able to argue it is worthless because Lucas used it in that film, or at least slapped together some bloated Frankenstein's monster that approximated it and then demanded his CGI crew compelled its digital model to step in shit.

I confess that the actual specific mystery behind the numbers doesn't particularly interest me all that much. I'm also aware that I might be reading too much into Lindelof's confession, and he might genuinely simply be arguing that he doesn't intend to explain the science behind what's going on (though he's picked an odd example with the numbers if that's true). And it's certainly true that my remorseless quest for answers doesn't prevent me from realising that tying the main story up in a satisfying manner is tremendously important, more so than filling in the gaps, however wide they might be and however much their lack of resolution might harm repeat viewings (if this is all starting to sound a bit familiar, believe me you're not alone in that). I guess we'll see pretty soon exactly why and how far Lindelof was attempting to lower expectations.

For God's Sake

Every now and then this blog takes some time out to consider the position of atheists and atheism within society. Usually, the societies in question tend to be either those of Britain, or the United States.

So let's head a little out of our comfort zone and take a quick look at Ireland. Specifically: their brand spanking new blasphemy law.

Though it is hard not to consider this from an exclusively atheist perspective, there isn't in truth nearly enough evidence in this one report to argue the law is deliberately aimed at atheists. Granted, in my experience it's generally atheists who tend to get accused by Christians of blasphemy and causing offence, whereas any objections to other organised religions tend to involve criticisms of their beliefs, practices and fanatics directly rather than their stubborn refusal to agree with the Bible. I accept that this is hardly enough to unequivocally state that this is an attempt to keep the atheist population, quiet, though.

Having said that, the likely effect of this law should be obvious. By including the phrase "[C]ausing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion", lawmakers have opened up the possibility of prosecution by opinion poll. If I'm right about it being atheists who are most likely to be accused of blasphemy (it would be interesting to see how determined authorities are to apply this law to Jews, Muslims, and so forth), all it takes is for some unspecified percentage of people to say they felt offended, and it's game over.

How is offence even measured, anyway? Are people going to get polled? Is it worse for 10% of Christians to tick the "very offended" box, or for 20% to tick "quite offended?". Is there a magic number of complaints at which point someone graduates from "widely criticised" to "under indictment"? Hell, if one hundred people can phone the BBC complaining that the final Tennant episode of Doctor Who was anti-ginger because the Eleventh Doctor didn't specifically state his reaction to not being a carrot-top was disappointment, then who knows what comparatively innocuous statements can lead to endless waves of chaos and bloodletting? This is to say nothing of how pathetically easy it is to gin up cheap controversy when required. If otherwise entirely sensible people can spend their days screaming for the resignation of Janet Napolitano on the basis of a three word quote deliberately spun out of context, what chance does anyone have once those with a vested interest in making noise and keeping tempers flared realise that if they push hard enough they can heckle people into receiving criminal convictions.

It seems almost redundant to point out the obvious free speech implications here. It's one thing to abridge freedom of expression to prevent the agitation of hate crimes. That's about balancing one freedom against another: namely saying what you want versus spending your days free of the fear of being beaten to death for the crime of being different. This is about saying what you want being measured against other people simply not wanting to hear it. It is no longer enough to turn off your TV set, or put down a magazine. It is not enough to avoid hearing certain words in certain combinations: these words must not be said at all. It's the legal codification of mob rule, where the mob in question might belong to a group that can't even cope with bus adverts disagreeing with them without seemingly taking leave of their senses.

Whenever seemingly lunatic laws like this get passed, I tend to advise caution about assuming that the status quo is likely to change all that much. It is one thing for a law to exist, and another for it to be both rigidly enforced by the police and taken seriously by the law courts. One would hope that this law might quickly sink into obscurity, a symbolic nod to those still defiant in their refusal to accept the separation of church and state. In this case, though, the article states that a blasphemy law already existed on the books. Thus, the logical conclusion is that this new law is not designed as a symbolic warning against offending religions, but a deliberate attempt to ensure that the country can start getting some convictions against all them filthy blasphemers that apparently keep popping up.

Someone, it would appear, is out for blood.

Update: Tomsk points out in comments that since the original, unenforceable law was in the constitution, it couldn't be repealed without a lot of fuss. I'm far from convinced that it is axiomatically true that a rigid, enforceable law is automatically better than a fuzzy useless one in situations where the law (in effect) cannot be removed, but Tomsk is right that one can view this as an (in my opinion desperately wrongheaded) attempt to tighten up the lawbooks rather than a deliberate attempt to make trouble. My issues regarding the obvious downsides of the law (and the potential likelihood of it targeting specific groups) remain.

A Hard-Fought Victory

As a follow-up to November's attempt to single-handedly play Arkham Horror with all six expansions, I can now further report that not only is it possible to play when C and Cocklick are thrown into the mix (though a certain amount of slowdown results from their strange desire to talk to each other and to me throughout the proceedings), but it is even possible to beat it, as our mammoth five hour excruciatingly slow beat-down of Ghatanothoa (also known as Cthulhu Jr.) eventually proved.

Of course, the meaning of this victory is entirely clear. It's time for a new expansion.

Friday Warhammer Blogging: Bretonnian Riverlands

Continuing my effort to photograph every model I've ever painted, we return to my still nascent Bretonnian Army based on the River Lords from George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire series. I didn't have time to set up pretty scenery, but you've all seen my bomb-site of a living room here before, so I'm not too bothered (besides, I don't want to go into my room; it's cold as hell in there right now. Stupid immersion heaters).

The full current unit. I'm just a champion away from it actually constituting a legal unit! I'm so excited! Unless they're grail knights, I guess, which would mean I'm already good to go. I don't know how you tell all these knight types apart, actually, which I freely acknowledge is kinda stupid of me.

The army standard bearer. Said standard, of course, carries the livery of the Tullys of Riverrun, traditionally the top dogs of the Riverlands. The knight himself bears the heraldry of House Mallister. Or at least, he sort of does. Further research has revealed that the purple should be a lot darker. This irritates me, but not so much that I've particularly tempted to re-paint him, especially since the darker purples can be difficult to shade.

A knight of House Vance of Atranta (I didn't even realise there were two branches until I read up on them courtesy of The Citadel). This was my first attempt to make a concerted effort to shade and highlight white. I think it's come out fairly well, conditional on my inexperience with anything so complex as "mixing paints." I'm very proud of the dragons, which go some way to compensating the fact that the towers look a little like tubby ghosts wearing crowns.

Never before witnessed by human eyes (unless you're Gooder, who keeps his obvious joy at his unique sneak previews of my painting projects surprisingly well-hidden), a knight of House Paege. I quite like the horse's colouring on this one, though I suspect the breed in question would be of limited use as a warhorse.

The latest knight, painted over Christmas when I wasn't too busy screaming in delirium. This last model is clad in the livery of House Bracken. I'm exceptionally proud of this one. Yellow is a notoriously difficult colour to get right, because the paints are always so horribly thin (at some point I'll get around to trying out Iyanden Darksun, which apparently doesn't have that problem, but looks a bit too muddy for my liking). I also think the stallion badges are the best ones I've done so far.

This Year's Loss

My father phoned a little while ago to inform me that my grandfather passed away this evening.

The news was not unexpected. He had been in hospital for three weeks, and as time went on had spent less and less time conscious, and a smaller and smaller percentage of that time operating coherently. Apparently,the occasion on which he was most aware happened to with the only time I was able to visit him, on the 3rd (I wanted to make damn sure my fever had passed before I started traipsing around a hospital).

It was immediately obvious during that visit that what bothered my grandfather the most wasn't his illness (which I won't go into detail about, but which was very serious and clearly terminal even before he took a turn for the worse a few days after Christmas), but his loss of independence. He requested we bring him beer, which the doctor was kind enough to permit, but it rapidly transpired that his interest lay not in the beverage itself (though I very much doubt that he didn't enjoy it) so much as the hope that the empty can could be employed as an impromptu latrine with which to frustrate the nurses.

Given this, given how unhappy he was to be reliant on others taking care of him, and given his lifelong discomfort with the idea that he was a burden to anyone, I genuinely think that if he'd been given the option, and once he realised he was almost certainly never going to leave the hospital, this is what he would have chosen. This was arly into my visit he asked whether or not he was becoming a drag upon the family.

He also asked, ludicrously, if he had done good in this world. You would have to know him personally to know just how ridiculous that question was. The men in our family deal poorly with childhood as a rule, but my grandfather's was something else again. Once more, I won't go into detail, because that would offend his belief (which I don't necessarily share, but choose to respect) that one's troubles are to forever remain internal, but it would be an understatement to describe his early years as brutal beyond measure. No sooner had he finally escaped the situation that had made his life so torturous, he found himself in the Navy during the Second World War, in which he divided his time between decoding Morse signals, punching people in the face (because he was a boxer, or at least mainly because he was a boxer), and hoping to God his helmsman could dodge the next shower of Kamikaze planes. Grandfather served on three vessels all told, including the HMS Jamaica, and an aircraft carrier that I am deeply ashamed to admit I can no longer recall the name of. He talked rarely of the war, and only ever to me. I have no idea why this was the case, but I was always deeply honoured by that fact. In fact, despite this unique dialogue, it was not from him but from a newspaper article that I learned he had been awarded the Burma Star.

Following the war, my grandfather worked in a steel factory for some time, before ultimately becoming a magistrate. This was not a position he sought for the power it brought, but from a sincere desire to help his community. Like many of those from Middlesbrough, my grandfather was a die-hard Labour supporter, because of his unshakable belief in socialist principles, mainly those that suggested we're better off making sure everyone is doing OK. He knew what he thought was fair, and he fought for it his entire life. He was also, considering he was born in 1926, a remarkably progressive man. This was most obvious in his opinion on homosexuality, which as with everything else was inevitably forged into a one-liner: "So long as they don't make it compulsory."

He probably wouldn't want me to mention he received the Middlesbrough Citizen of the Year Award six years ago, but on this point I will defy him, since it serves my greater point that only he himself could spend his days wondering whether or not he had done enough to make his life a net positive. I don't know how many people lie on their death beds and wonder whether they did enough; I guess quite a few. What made my grandfather unique, though, was that he constantly strove to contribute more to his society even whilst he was still entirely healthy. It wasn't some last-minute gasp of guilt or self-justification, it was the principle by which he lvied his life. If anything mattered more to him than to come home each day having done some good in the world, then I haven't the faintest idea what that could possibly be.

He had many other qualities as well, both good and bad. He was physically incapable of dealing with any situation other than to make jokes about it (sound familiar?), but it was through those jokes that he expressed his affection. It might sound strange to reveal that I know my grandfather loved me because of the day he tried to persuade me he'd gone for an IQ test and received the world's first ever negative score, but it remains stubbornly true. Affection was something one had to infer, rather than be given, but it was always there, just below the surface. How can one care so much for strangers and not love one's family?

He leaves behind his wife, three children, nine grandchildren (that we know about, it's a long story) and a lifetime of service to everyone he could find to help. Rest easy, Grandad. You deserve it.