Rights and Freedom

It has been a while since I have posted, and was thinking about just letting this die but have changed my mind. 2 reasons, have purchased my own domain. joshjgordon.com not sure what to do with it, or how to move this across, any one with advice would be nice, but I will look into it after exams probably.

2nd reason, I need a place to be angry and vent. Something made me angry today, so I am here shouting at the Internet.

I have very few beliefs, in fact my only one that I can think of right now is freedom. Weather that be in the case of a free market, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom of education, even freedom of immigration etc. (which I see as just an extension of the free market by the way, to have a free system you need complete freedom of movement internally and externally.) and freedom to be anonymous.

Anyway, shouting..... I have noticed over the past few years an erosion of these freedoms. some have never existed and really should have done and some were never been as strong as they should be.

But what has really gotten me annoyed recently is the G20 protest, a couple of things.

First off to make it clear, I do not agree with what the protesters are saying and generally do not listen to the objections of people with nothing better to do unless they offer decent solutions, but I will defend to the death their right to say it.

I considered going down to have a wonder round the protest just to say I was there and ask some of them some awkward questions. Just for a day out really, not to protest not to case trouble just to be a bit of a tourist. I am very glad I did not.

In the past couple of days I have heard some stories about people doing as I have planned to do, just go down for a look around and then being trapped for hours in a police barricade.

here is quite a good account, http://rooreynolds.com/2009/04/01/on-the-ground-at-the-g20-protests/

there are others but I cannot find the links at the moment.

of people being trapped against their will. Not prevented from accessing somewhere, but completely trapped! The guy from the link above was only able to get out because he flashed his BBC ID card.

Why was this done? Why were protesters blocked in on all sides? It is just asking for trouble, you trap a group of people in a confined space without food or water and they become a mob. It is that simple. I am very very surprised that there were not huge clashes with the police barricade at the end of the day.

Obviously the treats from various anarchist groups to case hassle did not help things, but it is not an excuse! if people case damage or try to start a fight, arrest them and charge them. If they are just standing there being peaceful then what the fuck did the police think they were doing! Is there not a serious case here of one of the articles of human rights, I think article 5 liberty of movement but it has been a long time since I studied law.

Then there is the story Andy brought to my attention, few links

http://aiusepsi.co.uk/2009/police-brutality/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault



Seriously, what the fuck is going on! an Innocent man attacked for no reason! now I normally do not jump to conclusions and if it turns out that this was justified by the police officer concerned I will unreservedly apologise, but I really do not see this happening.

A man not involved in the protest, just walking home from work brutally attacked by a police officer in riot gear. And the most horrific thing is that if he had not have died recently after the attack, no one would have heard about it.

I am normally a peaceful and law abiding man, but if anyone feels like getting dressed up in riot gear and forming a square around Scotland Yard and preventing them from leaving until almost midnight, occasionally randomly beating and pushing to the ground a few of them, I am up for it.

I am seriously really pissed off with what has happened to our laws recently.

ID cards being introduced, several instances of police brutality, restrictions on protesting around Westminster and other places without police approval, 28 day detention without charge ( could have been 42 or 90 days have the government gotten its way on 2 previous attempts), potential databases tracking recording our phone calls and emails.

I mean seriously what the fuck is going on. I am beginning to think that Guy Fawkes may have had the right sort of idea.

running out of battery now, will post more later.

Security

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7877182.stm

normally I am the first person to shout and complain when a new government database is announced.  Not so sure this time though.

Probably because I had assumed it already existed.

I have no problem with this one, as long as what it stores is limited, your name, when you left and where you are going.  Then the same coming back in.  I would also expect it to be run by the police or immigration control or what ever organisation runs this sort of thing, not the 'Government'.

On the other hand I do worry about being watched and tracked, and I do not like it.  I want to be free, and I sometimes feel that I am not.

I cannot one day simply disappear and live in a log cabin somewhere in the woods, just because I felt like it, someone will own the woods, or there will be council tax to pay on the log cabin, I will have to register my new address with no end of agencies.

Don't even get me started on protesting outside Parliament and terrorism laws and ID cards.  I will never carry an ID card, I will go to prison before I do.  And if I get locked up for 42 days under terror legislation for no good reason, I will become the terrorist and take down the houses of Parliament.

Seriously, why do we need all these laws?  Not only does it go against the freedom that we supposedly stand for, but it really does not help.  Nor is it really necessary, do we really need to fear the sort of terrorists than cannot park a car without being towed and fail at driving to an airport?

I mean no offence to the security services, I am confident they are doing a great job at keeping us safe, we never hear of their successes only their failures.  I also understand that sometimes people just need to be taken out, which incidentally is what I would have done instead of setting up the whole Guantanamo bay thing, if people are too dangerous to be allowed outside just quietly take them around back and be done with them.

However then the question is who makes that decision, what about the mistakes that will inevitably be made?  Questions too difficult for me to answer on a Sunday morning, maybe later in the week.

Man Up

http://www.fandome.com/video/109098/The-Longest-Play-In-Super-Bowl-History/?q=c

Now I know American Football is shit and the players are pansies, but I had no idea how much until now.

Fair enough he ran for a bit, threw a few people off him, but then watch carefully at the end.......  He needs Oxygen!!!???  Man Up.

Americans seriously need some better sports, I will give everyone in the world a Big Mac if any of the players in this game needed oxygen at any point.

Then there is the guy who discovered his opponents tooth embedded in his forehead 4 months later, he didn't even notice!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/6902166.stm

There is also a scene I remember from 06 or 07 Six Nations with an Irish player, whose face I can picture but name I cannot remember, who actually had to be sent off the pitch by the referee to get stitches when he had blood pouring all over his face, he just kept on wiping it out of his eyes.  He was back on the pitch within 20 mins.

Dont even get me started on Football.... IF there were ever a game where the players needed to man up! Its football!

Foundation

http://www.filmstalker.co.uk/archives/2008/07/asimovs_foundation_film.html

£5 says that it will turn out to be shit.  Seriously, Hollywood will find some way to mess up one of the best series of books that I hav read.  You would need at least 6 films to do it properly.

Hypocrisy

Pope criticises pursuit of wealth

Anyone else see the giant golden stick?

Stats

So I signed up to a stat counter thing when I set up this blog, just out of curiosity really, and every coupple of months they send me an email with some stats. Here is one of the readouts from the last email.

Now obviously the ones from the UK are expected and the unidentified ones I assume are from the UK also, but there are issues with me seeing where they are, and the ones from the US can be possibly explained by Samir being there a while back. But who is looking at this in Ontario, Tel Aviv, Republika Srpska or Jiangsu????

Seriously, I want to know.

Spore

Spore, so I went down to GAME yesterday morning to buy Spore on release day.

I have been looking forward to spore for ages.... and to be honest I am a bit disappointed.

It started off awesome, developing through the stages was fun and exciting acquiring DNA points and spending them to make yourself better. I have played the beginning stages twice, once as vicious and aggressive carnivore, and then again as gentle soft and cuddly omnivore. Both were fun in different ways, but both very similar, instead of ferociously building things to destroy something you ferociously build things to trade with something.

The space stage was very repetitive and required far to much micro-management, was way to awkward and took far to long to change viewpoints all of which became very frustrating very quickly. And seriously, only one ship? You can get more donated by your allies as the game progresses but they just follow you around and help out a bit. I want several (at least) ships that I can leave places to look after things, so that I can go exploring without having to race back to solve problems every 2 mins. You may get more ships as you travel through the game, but I don't know if I can put up with it for that long.

For a more thought out and better written review read this. I agree with it completely.

It was good and I will play it some more, I want to reach the galactic center, but in a few months/years time and I feel and urge to create a civilization and see it grow over time I think i will always reach for Sim-City 3000.

Things I wanted / expected from spore:

• The Cell stage to be longer (could be optional), there were bigger and better creatures than me when I "chose" to evolve legs, but when the option to evolve was given no matter how much I ate I collected no more DNA points s could not get bigger/better/stronger.

• The triabal stage to be a lot longer, more complex and more like Age of Empires in general.

• The city stage to be a lot longer, more complex more options for buildings, better control for the military/economic options, more options over all really, and in general a cross between Sim City and Red Alert

Notice a pattern? The game was good, but when you break it down into individual stages there are games that are better. Spore should have been at least as good as all the individual games but then linked them together, but it just is not.

EVE

This exactly mirrors my experience with EVE. I was a bit bored a few weeks ago and decided to give the 14 day free trial a go. After 2 hours of staring at tiny buttons with no obvious labeling or organization and deciphering unintelligible sub menus in the space port only to buy missiles that I could not attach to my ship because I had the wrong something (not entirely sure what, attaching skills possibly) I gave up and went back to watching repeats of Top Gear on Dave.

Hancock

I watched Hancock yesterday, and was really really disappointed! I was expecting a lot from the film with all those amazing trailers floating around the interwebs.

I think the main problem with it is the length, it was not given enough time to have a decent story. Seriously, name a decent film that only last 1:20.

Next main issue (spoilers by the way) is the random introduction of the woman superhero / villan / wife.

All in all what could have been an amazing film turned out to be terrible. I would advise torrenting if you really want to see it and not spending any sort of money on it.

Concerned

What is going on in the world? Seriously, one of the new Coldplay songs is not actually that bad.

Expect frogs, locusts and water turning to blood any time soon.

Annoyances

My laptop has developed the annoying habit of turning itself off when it gets hot. This is particularly annoying because after being turned on for an hour it reaches approximately the same temperature as the sun.

Firefox has also developed the annoying habit of occasionally refusing to load any new pages until it is completely shut down and a new window opened.

My right eye is also very dry this evening, but I do not expect a solution to that.