Ups and downs 2

Stanislaw Lem died yesterday, which is sad, although it might have been sadder if he hadn't lived a long time already.

I was reading Peace on Earth earlier this week and actually checked out of curiosity that he was still alive. So maybe it's my fault.

I like Lem. Best of all I like the fact that there are plenty more of his books to read- they are not addictive in that "go out and buy them all way" but they are always pleasant to come across in the library.

Little other news. Family all at home ill with bad colds. I need to rewrite my Plato essay because I'm not happy with it. I just wrote the most amazingly bureaucratic paragraph ever for work and didn't even notice I had done it until I'd finished. And then I decided that it was technically accurate so could stay. My soul is possibly dead.

Watched Pom Poko last night. Very, very odd. No, odder than that. I shall never look a raccoon in the eye again.

We went to Stratford on Sunday afternoon and Son and I rowed up and down the Avon while Beloved went in search of coffee. I bought a paint by numbers set of penguins (for a massive £1.99) and that has been keeping me happy. Just the white bits to go now. I don't believe I ever had paint by numbers as a child- I suspect mother thought crayons had less potential for mess. I have to admit there is a lot of paint strewn around the lounge by now.

Stratford reminds us of York, only more Shakespeare. Yesterday I went to the travel place and picked up every bus leaflet for journeys out of Solihull. I feel trapped here sometimes- it just has such a total lack of places I want to be (library excepted) and you can't leave by train until 10:15am on a Sunday and then only to Birmingham. I think I'm living in the wrong place but there's very little I can do about it now. Bad few days- couple of panic attacks- but better now.

Tomorrow is day off. Going into Brum to pick up a RPG book for Son- he could have ordered it but I haven't been to Waylands Forge for a while and I need an excuse to get out of the house. I might see if the second hand book place is open too.

Son made me a splendid card for Mother's Day with many llamas. And I got a bar of chocolate which looked suspiciously like one of the 6 bars he was given for his birthday two weeks ago. But it is very nice- it is keeping me going through some particularly slow days at work.

Gov't unveils their alternative, which appears to be pretty much identical to the original, except that you get to apply to a tribunal straightaway (but how long before you get one?) rather than after 28 days.

And the stuff about advocacy has gone.

But I can still be legally forced to take medication.

Someone will no doubt explain why this is an improvement shortly.

Gov't are not proceeding with the Mental Health Bill.

In other news....

The Party is an absolute doddle compared with having 10 teenagers hanging around the house for three hours. Each brought Son a large bar of chocolate so we are eating some of it for him to save his health. They were all polite and well behaved (some of them even played football in the garden for hours) but it's definitely not like having children round. I did get them to sing Happy Birthday to him though, once they'd all been rounded up into one place. I gather the Geeks came tobogganing with us on Saturday (there were three of them- odd but charming) and these were the Slightly More Mainstream of Son's friends, hence the football.

We fed them pizza, crisps, M&Ms and chocolate cake and they went away happy but queasy. Then we tried getting chocolate out of the carpet.

My second essay is just about finished- Plato and why he's deeply unreliable as a source for history of maths. Tutorial on Saturday and then I must press on with the coursework. What with the Budget I've been just a tad busy (and lazy). Been playing Cities a lot (Cities.totl) as well as various games online.

Watched Howl's Moving Castle on DVD. Had read all the mixed reviews but thought it absolutely wonderful. Liked dissecting it- the plot very DWJ (even though it diverges a lot), the soldiers very HM, the ambiguity in the alignment characters spot on for both of them. And Howl was lovely.

Louise may not be mad after all!

Got the results of the various tests today- MRI and ECG were thankfully unexceptional but from the EEG there are apparently signs of a lower resistance to epileptic seizures in both temporal lobes. (Temporal lobes are the area that would be expected for mood changes results.)

Which may be an artefact of the lithium but is sufficiently interesting to the consultant that I am to be wired up for 4 days with significant sleep deprivation in the near future.

Not sure what to make of it as yet; guess I will have to wait and see. Fairly astonished that they found anything at all.

Utilitarianism is a good first approximation to the right thing to do, if you happen to be a government. It ought to get you decent schools and hospitals, a reasonable welfare state and out of the sillier wars.

Unfortunately like democracy utilitarianism has no protection against the harsh treatment of a minority in the interests of the majority. For example

Chopping up prisoners for organ donation

Stopping and searching young black men in sports cars

Refusing treatment for Granny’s bad hip because she’s not going to use it for long and the money could be spent elsewhere

Suspending low achieving school children for minor offences to maintain academic standards

Taxing millionaires at 95%

Forcibly medicating people with major mental illnesses because a small proportion could be dangerous

Banning people with particular views from expressing them in public

And of course

House arrest for people you think might be connected with terrorism but against whom you have no evidence.

Utilitarians tend to claim that abuse of a minority cannot in fact fall within utilitarian principles because the unease and fear that it causes the majority stops it being for the greatest good. However it is blatantly obvious that people are remarkably good at failing to extrapolate from the treatment of groups that they don’t directly associate with. I don’t read about the policy of stopping young black men and worry that it could be middle aged white women with long hair next. For any one of those policies there is probably a good case that the end result of that single case would genuinely be the greater happiness of the greater number.

Fortunately there are so many examples, covering such a wide range of groups, that everyone can find something that they are deeply uncomfortable with as a policy. Hence the introduction of civil liberties which say, basically, "it might be for everyone else’s good but you still can’t do it". It’s a tit for tat system- I might not care about Granny’s hip (because I am callous like that) but I do care about chopping up prisoners. You might be the other way round. Neither of us might be able to win our cases on our own but we can both sign up to the general notion of civil liberties which protects both Granny and the prisoner from being a pawn sacrificed for the benefit of everyone else.

The question is not one of individual liberty vs the state but of which approach best guarantees most liberty for the largest number of people. Tony Blair

Discuss.



I am recovering from a seafood paella on Saturday evening that disagreed most forcibly. Hopefully I should at least have lost some weight :-)

One space available for a game of Dune on this Sunday afternoon/evening, just in case anyone's free.

I suspect I'm a bit high this morning. Evidence;
a) it is 9:20am and I have cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen floor
b) it is 9:20 am and I'm not still in bed
c) when I heard that Tony Wright was chairman of the Commons public administration committee I doubled up laughing for several minutes (that should save a lot of time in hearings- by the time he finishes introducing himself the matter will be settled!)

I had a dream last night in which I got furiously upset because David Irving had shot himself. All Spouse could say was "Who's David Irving?". So I told him about it this morning and guess what he said?

Still baffled about that one.

Son announced his plans for his birthday, involving huge numbers of teenage boys, tobogganing and LAN networks, last night. Having negotiated him down in numbers, at least for the expensive bits, I an now frantically trying to organise everything despite the lack of hurry. Fortunately teenage boys all eat pizza as standard. And I was under the impression that he was a bit of a loner. Just goes to show how teenagers enjoy surprising you.

I am going to go and do some maths now. Got my first essay back, felt smug. Next one might have to be more than 600 words though.