When the bus reached Gulph Mills station this evening the driver, for reasons of his own, got out. I was busy cocking-up a Sudoku and didn’t notice, so it was only when the shouting started that I looked up. As we were driving away, evidently we’d left someone off the bus because many passengers were standing up and pointing out of the window. Once I’d realised that it was the driver who we’d left behind and that the bus was driving itself down towards the steep hill and the oncoming traffic (headed-up with a beautifully cinematic School-bus) I allowed a gentle panic to take over. People had rushed towards the front of the bus to try and stop it, using whatever pedal, button, or lever it is that stops a bus.
By now the driver had acknowledged the situation and ran back like the proverbial clappers. He leaped on, there was some yelping, and the bus violently jolted to a halt.
I later found out that the yelper was a woman he had knocked over and that rather than being stopped by his ninja-style lunge at the brake, the bus actually stopped because it hit a pole.
There was a load of faffing about for around half an hour while we filled in incident reports and the poor sod of a driver held his head in his hands whimpering. Most of the bus seemed to be on his side and tried to comfort him.
Septa, to their credit, had a new bus and a supervisor on the scene rapidly and we continued on our way while the supervisor did her best to upset the driver even further.

Oddly, I didn’t get freaked out by this experience at all. In fact my heart remained calm; much calmer than it has been in moments during the days at work recently.

Meanwhile, 3000 miles away, I know there are a bunch of geeks who are all dangerously close to heart attacks; Rapidswitch, the ISP where my server is hosted (together with my email, websites and everything else) is down. When I say the ISP is down, I mean it literally. The entire ISP is unavailable to the Internet! Even their nameservers are offline!

As a result of this I thought I’d discovered a legitimate use for Twitter; searching for #rapidswitch yielded a bunch of disgruntled people bitching about it. But, it was a false alarm because I found that far more useful information was available via Google, which had up-to-date links to people discussing the issue on bulletin-boards.

So, for the first time since being in the US, I’m writing this in dear-old vi.

The peculiarly American concept of Libertarianism has, as I’ve mentioned before, been a constant source of confusion and bewilderment to me since I moved over here. Last night I was lucky enough to further my education and take part in some “lively debates” with some real bona-fide Libertarians.
Freedy neet is, of course, drinkin neet and in the absence of a friendly local boozer we often go to the nearest bar after work which is in fact a chain restaurant in a large Hotel/Conference center in Valley Forge. Brits are probably cringing at this idea, but it’s not too bad. We also get to mingle with the conference-goers-du-jour which can be entertaining. So far we’ve shared the bar with gun enthusiasts, bikers, salesmen, wedding parties and even knitting fanatics (it took us a while to realise that was what the conference theme was – initially we were convinced that it was the annual meeting of The American Society of Frumpy Middle-aged Dykes…sorry). Last night the conference was organized by Campaign for Liberty which, after a quick Google, I realised was a Libertarian group.
Now, the word “Libertarian” has a lot of different meanings, and it’s frequently applied to political ideologies ranging from neo-nazi to anarchism but from what I have managed to deduce, the core of Libertarianism is solid, well defined, and quite different to the public perception. One thing it is not is aligned in any way with the frothy-mouthed right-wing Glen Beck 9/12 racist teabagger wingnuttery that gets a disproportionately large amount of news coverage.

So, I had a couple of “heated discussions” with some willing opponents to whom I was introduced, by my gregarious and loquacious friend, as “a bloody British Socialist.” The first guy was a pacifist Quaker, the second was a high-school economics teacher. Both were anti-interventionist, anti-war, believed that religion and government should have no connection and firmly believed the free market was the solution.

I learned a lot about the fundamentals of Libertarianism, and after a few simple syllogistic explorations the only thing I can say is “you haven’t really thought this through have you ?”

Some examples follow further down.

There is one area of the debates where we would always hit a logical barrier of belief that it’s probably not fair to discuss because I can’t defend my point of view any more then they can; to me it’s so obviously ridiculous I can’t even entertain the idea. To them, it’s so obviously correct it defies debate. That point is (and I’m paraphrasing, probably unfairly) “The free market failures of the past have been as a direct result of government interference and financial support. If the government stopped propping up big corporations and imposing regulations and restrictions, the free market
would work as it should”. Now I’m all about stopping the government giving tax money to corporations, but really…the idea that if you leave them alone they’ll take care of everything is just…I mean…really ? you really…ok – see we’ll ignore that aspect for now.

The first interesting concept was that of being against the instigation of violence and therefore, because taxes were compulsory and enforceable by coercion, taxation was a “violent act”. So, no taxation. Instead, everything must be done voluntarily. Even at this point I’m on board. But after a few more questions we arrived at a point where the guy was defending the scenario we’d arrived at: where we live like they did in the good old days of the early America where everyone was truly free. The fact that life in America during those times was hard, violent and that the population has massively increased since then didn’t bother him. We all become farmers and stop moving around the country. If you get ill, you die. What if someone comes up to you and nicks all of your food, or claims your land ? That won’t happen.
He genuinely defended these assertions. At this point we shook hands and agreed that our beliefs were too different to continue.

Meanwhile, my other friend had discovered that “these Libertarians have some really hot chicks with them” and was darting from table to table like a randy bee. The Quaker I’d been arguing with noticed how keen he was and gave him a copy of a glossy booklet which turned out to be a calendar featuring the Ladies of Liberty Alliance; basically a calendar featuring some scrawny birds in their skimpies accompanied by captions extolling the joy of the free market. Much like the egregious “News In Briefs” in The Scum. It also contained ads for various Libertarian organizations and swag, several featuring pictures of typical Libertarians out and about. One picture included a guy in a circle-A t-shirt, and this perplexed me. Anarchism is clearly incompatible with Libertarianism [if you disagree with this, we should have a chat] and I wondered how the Libertarians themselves felt about this.

The guy sitting next to me by now was a high-school economics teacher, close to retirement age and we had been exchanging pleasantries, so I asked him what he thought of the guy in the picture’s t-shirt. He didn’t know what it represented, and when I told him he was quite firm: “We’re not anarchists. We’re far removed from Anarchists. We don’t believe the same things at all.” Ah good, we’re agreed on that then. He also told me that no Libertarians would claim to be Anarchists, nor would they claim to be pacifists. I found this difficult to believe, mainly because I have met examples of both. But, OK, it’s possible they are outliers, after all this guy obviously knows far more Libertarians then me.

So, I asked if he would be kind enough to explain the fundamentals of Libertarianism to me, and he enthusiastically got stuck in. As with the Quaker, he started with the taxation as violence argument but with a slight twist; if someone attacks you, you can and should defend yourself. The golden rules is that violence shouldn’t be instigated. Good, I’m still on the same page.

Then it started getting weird. He explained there were six fundamental “pillars” of Libertarianism and began enumerating them. The first was “The Right to Private Ownership.” I had to stop him and ask how that worked because there is a bit of a boot strapping problem associated with private ownership – how do you initially decide who owns what? He didn’t understand what I was getting at until we started discussing land, and the fact that without land, you can’t build, harvest resources, grow food or produce the possessions that you have the right to own. He agreed that land was fundamental, but seemed not to understand the problem of who has the right to claim ownership.
“Well you trade it like you do anything else!”
“But how do you get the land in the first place ?”
“Well you buy it from the previous owner!”
“But where did he get it ?”
“He bought it!”
“But if you keep going back, you eventually have to ask who had the right to the land in the first place, which was essentially a case of people claiming it and defending it by force.”
“Well yes if you go right the way back, yeah”

So, what do you do about that ? How do people initially get the resources they have the right to privately own ? He didn’t want to dwell on the first pillar any more and was getting very anxious to move onto the second one so I dropped it.

I don’t remember the details of most of the other pillars but they were mostly reasonably trite and inoffensive until we got to the free market. I asked how it would be possible to prevent price-fixing, market manipulation and capers like Enron…his answer stumped me:
“Well that’s illegal. That’s fraud.”
“But who is enforcing the law ?”
“Well, the government.”
“The government ? So you’re in favour of a government ?”
“Yes! As I said, we’re not anarchists!”
Evidently not.
“So how is the government funded ?”
“Well, taxes”
“You’re arguing in favour of taxes now ?”
“Yes! We’re not anarchists. We’d need some level of taxation, to pay for the essentials.”
Essentials…would that include Healthcare I wonder ?
“And you’d need laws ?”
“Yes of course”
“All of which would be enforced by coercion ?”
“Well yes I suppose”

Wow.

Judging an entire ideology on two beery arguments in a pub is really unfair, but unless the opportunity arises for me to talk to Ron Paul or some other highly-regarded Libertarian who can put me straight, it really does seem like you haven’t thought this through very well doesn’t it ?

It’s generally accepted that time perception during dreams is totally unrelated to real time i.e. a dream may seem to take place over a period of days or months but in reality you’re only asleep for the maximum of a few hours. But I’ve never been able to prove this to myself until last night when I feel to sleep with a headphone in my ear.
We have a cheap little MP3 player solely for the bed on which we have many hours of radio and stand-up comedy. Frequently we’ll drift off to sleep listening to something, and frequently the audio will break though into my dreams.
Last night, the way it manifested itself in my dream was that the comedian “Spencer Brown” was with me and the others in my dream. Now, his set on the MP3 player is no more than an hour long but it spanned weeks of dream-time. In fact, because I’ve heard this routine many, many times, I was getting irritated that this guy was being seemingly quick-witted about the things that were going on but really he was just using bits of his well rehearsed act. I was pretending that I’d never heard it before and laughing out of politeness but it was getting quite irritating to have him permanently there. One (dream) morning I woke up and he was still there and I was thinking “oh god when is he just going to go away!” Worse was that in reality his stand-up routine was shaping the events in the dream so that he always seemed to have a perfect comment to hand for what was going on. The other people were loving it, but I’d heard it all before…

The main thing that struck me about this was not the audio entering and shaping the dream – that happens a lot – but it was that I was aware of days passing in the dream. I’ve never had that happen before – my memories of dreams are of a long fluid series of events and time doesn’t really have any recognisable divisions.

Alright alright, I just thought it was interesting.

Hey, what did you do with your Labor day weekend ?
If you have an answer for this then frankly I’m not in the least bit interested; if you don’t then you’re probably thinking “huh huh, he didn’t put the ‘u’ in Labour”, in which case please shut up.

Labor Day is an American celebration of Labor – a bit like the English “Labour movement” but without all of the nasty traitorous “new Labour” overtones. Over here very few people realise it’s a Socialist holiday and instead it’s regarded as the real end of summer. Of course to me it’s just another crap Bank Holiday Monday, but here people treat it like it’s a six month paid holiday in Thailand. It’s just a Monday off work! Not only that, but any holiday benefits you had before (like early Fridays) finish afterwards. It’s nothing to celebrate!

If the masses realised that Labor day was a genuinely socialist celebration they would immediately go back to work out of patriotism. Over here the word “Socialist” means “all of the bad things like Hitler, and communism, and you know, terrorists and stuff”. It’s quite sad.

Meanwhile, the true patriots are engaged in the ultimate battle against evil: the battle against a healthcare system that will allow them to get treated when they are ill without having to go into even more poverty. I thought I knew a bunch of pig-ignorant racist arseholes in London, but nothing like the army of porky tosspots who live here.

Sadly the problem seems very simple and it’s what we already knew: the Rightards are pathetically scared of black people. Not only that, but when a black man can stand up in the face of a bunch of shit-for-brains cracker senators and deliver a beautifully well written speech with confidence and dignity, they get terrified! Can you imagine what’s going on in their little pea-brains ?

“I like what he says, but he’s an evil nazi communist, socialist, evil murderous muslim. DOES NOT COMPUTE! Mr Beck says he’s evil and Mr Beck is obviously right because I understand all of the words he uses…and he cries when he talks about AMERICA…so he must be nice.”

If America fails to end up with healthcare-for-all after this, then America doesn’t fucking deserve it.

Rather than rant on about all of the things that have caused my Stressed-Eric vein to throb this week, here is the most awesome thing ever made:

The Roots of Breakdance.

My friend Gary showed me this at work today and it blew my mind. I only hope it’s genuine because it will improve the world.
[ Update – it’s fake, but it’s still an amazing piece of work ]

Euphemism of the week this week goes to Hilary Clinton for: “extending a defence umbrella over the [Gulf] region”, meaning to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

The close runner up is: “Extended Deterrents”, meaning to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

Before you get irritated about the “Hero’s Welcome” received by Abdel Basset al-Megrahi in Libya please remember the one fact that no news network is happy to report:

HE DIDN’T DO IT!

This will probably be news to most people because The News(TM) would never dare report the rigorous, accurate, investigations undertaken by serious journalists at the time. Yes, at the time, serious journalists did exist.
Regardless, the guy didn’t do it. Even Nelson Mandela believes the Libyans were set-up… maybe because he was one of the few that bothered to examine the evidence.
Buy Private Eye’s “Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice”, read it, and then get angry. If you can’t afford £5 then let me know and I’ll let you borrow my copy.

Obama’s outrage about Megrahi’s “hero’s welcome” is either ignorance, or lies. Neither option is a comfort.

The reaction from the Republicans is not of interest to anyone with a brain.

One of the problems with watching downloaded media from overseas TV is that the ends of the recordings inevitably include the continuity announcer describing the enticing wares available immediately to those lucky enough to be watching it live. It really feels like having our noses rubbed in it.

“Next on BBC Four, a programme about all of the things you like, presented by someone cool like Stephen Fry or Alexei Sayle. Meanwhile on BBC3 more comedy with Something Excellent by Sean Lock.”

We’ve pretty much given up on TV over here; even though there are potentially good programmes, the sheer weight of commercials renders them unwatchable. I’d like to say that the commercials are far worse over here, but apart from the quantity of pharmaceuticals being hawked, they’re equally as irritating as the ones in the UK. And that doesn’t even include the crazy fucking frog, which amazingly never made it over here. I’d watch 50 commercials for Viagra if it could spare me from watching one more Jamster ad.

I was off work today with some form of gutrot and the cable box was powered up for a total of two minutes: enough time to look at the schedules, check out the on-demand content and resolve to go back to watching Tron and Outnumbered.

Tomorrow I’ll probably be well enough to go back to work; a single day off has built-up a healthy list of stuff to do, so I won’t get bored by any stretch of the imagination. Just tired.

Pity the poor people in England who are suffering with a heat wave that may reach 90F. For the love of god please discover air-conditioning. It’s been permanently hotter than that here for weeks. Sucks doesn’t it ? I’m so glad not to have to use TfL. At least SEPTA is air conditioned.

And so to bed. Ask your doctor about Veghead’s Old Farts Almanac(TM).

If after reading this blog you experience an erection lasting longer than four hours, seek medical attention. This blog may cause a variety of disgusting and potentially life threatening conditions including oozing and flaking. Do not read this blog if you are in any way normal.

Recent weeks have been busy work-wise, domestically and emotionally. The main downer being the catastrophically stupid behaviour of the mental minority of masochists who think they are libertarian visionaries over here…you know what I’m talking about: healthcare. The anger is still too raw for me to construct syntactically correct sentences.

So – back to the quotidian.

A week or two ago, a friend at work donated one of his ex-projects to me: a dead MythTV box. So, I bought a new motherboard and embarked on a mission to bring it back to life as a useful DVR.
Once the motherboard I’d ordered had arrived I set to work installing it in the attractive case my mate had donated. It didn’t take too long to realise my new motherboard didn’t fit…it was too small. But, being a bloody-minded idiot, I decided that it will fit and got the hack-saw out.
It took me a week to make it fit, but it did fit!
Sort of. And then I discovered that the connector from the front panel (i.e. the power switch, light, hard drive light etc) didn’t fit the motherboard connector and in bloody-minded-move-the-mountain mode I rewired, forced, and glued the connectors until they fitted.
The end result is that we now have a cool multi-media player attached to our TV that plays anything we give it, including our audio and video collection. It is also supposed to work as a DVR but it needs some hand-holding until that particular task is understood fully by all concerned.

I’m mid-way through soldering together a bunch of stuff harvested from broken DVD players, radios, and power-supplies to make an infrared remote control adapter. After this, we will not need the mortal TV service as everything of worth can be viewed via teh internets.

On a less geeky note, we had a wicked time at our neighbours’ “cook-out” last night. To the uninitiated, a “cook-out” appears to be an outdoor party with high quality food and drink. And a barbecue. We met a bunch of excellent people, saw a wasps nest, and consumed way too much. We also got bitten to buggery by little mosquitoes, which is a small price to pay.