“I’m just a white boy called the Deputy CC / They said I’d never make it as a bitchin’ MC / You got it all wrong, cos now here I am / Giving it for real in the North Wales BPA jam” – North Wales deputy chief constable Clive Wolfendale

Christ and his mates on a bicycle eating polenta.

Mullets, where would we be without you eh? Honestly, apart from people falling on their arse I really don’t find many things funnier. Yes I am easily pleased.

‘It has been widely accepted that the rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, e.g., the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Many-Worlds Interpretation, and my father John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation, cannot be distinguished or falsified by experiment, because the experimental predictions come from the formalism that all such interpretations describe. However, the Afshar Experiment demonstrates in an interaction-free way that there is a loophole in this logic: if the interpretation is inconsistent with the formalism, then it can be falsified. In particular, the Afshar Experiment falsifies the Copenhagen Interpretation, which requires the absence of interference in a particle-type measurement. It also falsifies the Many-Worlds Interpretation which tells us to expect no interference between “worlds” that are physically distinguishable, e.g., that correspond to the photon’s passage through one pinhole or the other.’ Kathryn Cramer

Those pesky sceintists have done it again. Disproved a fiarly un-provable theory. Next week, why the past doesn’t exist.

“It’s as if we no longer NEED heroes to tear down to feel better about ourselves, we just create people to be torn down as soon as they appear, not waiting for the time when they stumble.” (The only card Solitaire Rose needs is the Ace of Spades! – Barbelith Underground 2004)

The concept of ‘pseudo people’ or simply famous for being famous is an apparent new construct. Think Liz Hurley, Paris Hilton (Is Paris Hilton a Simulacrum?), Jordan, ‘reality tv’ celebrities.

With all of these people there seems a real (sorry) difference between the media side to them and the real ‘them’ (whoever that is)? Further it seems somewhat difficult to get to that reality past the seemingly ubiquitous media facade. So maybe fame is the simulacrum, one which is constructed by the media and the person themselves sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. This simulacrum almost appears as a barrier against the real, allowing no reality through, further questioning what that reality is in the first place.

So in a sense what is real (in the celebrity sense)? I think the line blurs (take Jordan, and the frankly disturbing announcement that Jordan is dead and Katie Price now only exists).

Of course fame is no new concept, nor the idea of fame to the talent less, one dimensional or simply opportunist. But one slight shift seems to be the time-scale – where fame may have been handed (undeservedly) to historic figures via legend, folk-lore and story-telling, fame is now handed out in the now and the here, legends are constructed, cemented and destroyed – sometimes in the space of a week.

Maybe History is dead, maybe our past only exists in the present, constructed at will to whatever purpose we choose. Then again, hasn’t this always been the case, E.H.Carr believed that ‘History is an un-ending conversation between the past and the present’ not something that can be pinned down to an exact ‘reality’.

Sometimes though it does feel as if the fast forward button is stuck.

St George – an Cappadocian who died in Palestine who is now patron saint for England (part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) a country made up from Celts, Scots, Picts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Vikings, Normans, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, African, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Russian and many other peoples.

There was once a Prime Minister who wished to forge a special relationship with a President; but then he must be a real President. He traveled all over the world in hope of finding such a President; but there was always something wrong. Presidents he found in plenty; but whether they were a real war loving President it was impossible for him to decide, for now one thing, now another, seemed to him not quite right about the Presidents. At last he returned to his terrace house in Downing Street quite cast down, because he wished so much to have a real President for his partner.

One evening a fearful tempest arose, it thundered and lightened, and the rain poured down from the sky in torrents: besides, it was as dark as pitch. All at once there was heard a violent knocking at the door, and the iron lady, the Prime Minister’s predecessor, who just would not leave, went out herself to open it.

It was a President who was standing outside the door. What with the rain and the wind, he was in a sad condition; the water trickled down from his hair, and his clothes clung to his body. He said he was a real President.

“Ah! we shall soon see that!” thought the old iron lady; however, she said not a word of what she was going to do; but went quietly into the bedroom, took all the bed-clothes off the bed, and put three little peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty mattresses one upon another over the three peas, and put twenty feather beds over the mattresses.

Upon this bed the President was to pass the night.

The next morning he was asked how he had slept. “Oh, very badly indeed!” he replied. “I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through. I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and am all over black and blue. It has hurt me so much!”

Now it was plain that the man must be a real President, since he had been able to feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. None but a real President could have had such a delicate sense of feeling.

The Prime Minister accordingly made him his special friend; being now convinced that he had found a real President. The three peas were however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be seen, provided they are not lost.

Wasn’t this a President of real delicacy?

Mostly By Hans Christian Andersen.

Con-stitu-tion – ‘the basic law or laws of a nation or a state which sets out how that state will be organized by deciding the powers and authorities of government between different political units, and by stating and the basic principles of society. Constitutions are not necessarily written and may be based on aged customs and conventions, as is the case in England’

Yey or ney – you decide.

If – Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

The Guardian asks if blogging is more than vanity publishing? The article contains the usual arguments about what blogging is, should be, could be etc…I dunno – for me this site is very much a blank canvas for me to experiment with. Many people draw, paint or write for no reason other than they enjoy it, blogging (for me) is somewhat similar, a place where I can put down my musings about the world. Let’s not over define the issue, it is as it is, expression.