Human's are what computers have for lunch.

If you’re interested in economic philosophy watch, “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” BBC2 TV Monday 23^rd May 9pm. (on BBC iPlayer, series to follow)

It’s not light viewing but wherever you are on this globe of ours you’ll be suffering the consequences of its content. Apparently Ayn Rand, a Russian woman writer proposed in the 50’s the moral merit of selfishism under the slightly more acceptable title of Objectivism. Though dismissed at the time her philosophies were taken up in the 80’s by those in economic power and the world ran with them, or at least ran along behind them shouting, “Give us our money back!” In time Rand was spurned by her lover and became a rich ditched bitch: Some things never change. Anyway Rand’s ultra rational strand of irrationality suited the burgeoning world of computers and in a sense they became her children spreading the lore and lure of digits across the globe. Now the human brain has been likened to a computer but it’s not. Computers simply perform an externally provided intent fast. The brain on the other hand creates its own internal intent. Where a computer produces garbage from garbage the brain, when presented with garbage produces rational stupidity. There’s a big difference. So the series goes on to show how the human race is competing with computers that are devoid of rationality. We’ve already had one world wide economic unhinge so what’s next? I suggest you use your iPad wisely, it may be your prize possession and look pretty but it’s only as intelligent as a plank of wood. It’s simply you very own portal to somebody else’s intent.

Heroism: A Wife's View.

After a pleasant forty minutes in Pounstretcher Mothermouse and I are approached by the young woman in the next car. She tells me, note ‘me’ not my matrimonially connected co-shopper, she can’t get her car started and could ‘I’ help. MM suggests the steering lock but I am on a mission to save a damsel in distress and temporarily deaf to such obvious suggestions. I manfully assume the driver’s seat and try the key. Nope, won’t turn. I open the door and close it again, lock it and un-lock it as every good software engineer knows to do. Nothing. I try the key again. This time there is a strange sort of snuffly gurgling sound from the back of the car. Ah petrol, maybe an air blockage or a malfunctioning pump causing cavitation in the fuel supply. I try the key again. The same sound. Very strange. I wondered, could a sensor strategically placed in the petrol pipe be triggered by an electrical malfunction that cuts off the ignition so as to avoid the car bursting into flames? In desperation I yanked the steering wheel and the key at the same time and it turns, and the car starts. Hero 1; Vauxhall Astra 0. As I exited the car in triumph I turned to notice an eighteen month old in a kiddy seat in the back suffering from a cold and watching my every move. I’d like to think in the years to come he will remember this time and he too will rise to his moment of heroism. Meanwhile I have to continue home to the sound of Mothermouse reminding me, “I said it was the steering lock didn’t I, I mean that’s what I said it was, try the steering lock I said ….” 

Dead Elephant Anybody?

So it’s party house cleaning time, it being my birthday tomorrow, and good reason to take a heap of crap to the tip from its septic corner by the shed. I put it in Dorothy, our Renault Scenic. A lovely sunny day, what could go wrong? Well it transpires a small amount of festering water from this crap dribbled onto the boot carpet and gave forth an eye-watering, nose abusing smell that, had my nose been a small child, would have spent many years in prison. That such a small amount of liquid could produce such a rank odour is truly remarkable. Returning from the tip I removed the carpet and power washed it with bleach while an unsuspecting Mothermouse took Dorothy to Sainsburys. On her return she complained she could hardly drive because of the smell. This was becoming a difficult situation: A mechanically perfect new-ish car one can’t drive yet could never sell either. It’s like finding yourself with the ripe carcass of a dissolving dead elephant on the drive. Well not so much a drive, more a ‘d’ in our case. I’m thinking my only option is to put it on e-bay and apologise for having a particularly bad personal body odour problem on the test drive. It’s humiliating but what other option do I have?

Smile Crime.

It is not a crime not to smile. I just want to say that. In fact the majority of life’s concerns, involvements and even joys are not the stuff of smiling. When one old jazz musician talking to another old jazz musician put the lines on his face down to laughing the other commented acidly, “Nothin’s that funny.” No, we’ve been duped brothers and sisters. Since the early days of TV our lower facial muscles have been coerced into action by sit-com laughter machines originally designed to make mid-west housewives feel less lonely while their husbands worked 24/7 for IBM. But as our viewing hours have increased over the years from zero to over 50% of our spare time we have grown to believe if life isn’t transacted in a constant state of mild amusement it’s time to see a therapist. One is not depressed when one is not smiling! In fact quite the reverse. If one has to maintain a constant grin from watching Friends in order to stop one self-arming one very well might be. No there’s a lot to be said for apparent grumpiness, it gives your face a break and can bring a deep sense of satisfaction. It’s like when the charge hand of the pattern makers had an almighty row with a lippy youngster. Forman admonishes charge hand for shouting and using bad language, “Now I’ve got to go and sort this out and quieten him down.” The charge hand waited in the foreman’s office till he heard more shouting and the sound of the foreman’s fist smacking into the youngster’s jaw. No one smiled then, even though a rich feeling of pleasure permeated the place. I mean when I tell a joke no one laughs but my grumpy faced inebriated wisdom is apparently hilariously funny. No, life is not a sit-com and I’m not going to smile until someone tickles me on my birthday, which is tomorrow. 

Fun with Numbers 7.

So the gov want 50% of young people to go to university right. In time that will be 50% of all of us i.e. around 35 million. Now currently there are 29 million employed so that would leave 6 mil graduates unemployed with no hope of paying off their student loan. At £30,000 each that’s £180 billion debt for the gov to cover. And if the graduate Class of ’08 is anything to go by a good percentage of the other 29 mil employed graduates will be behind a Blockbuster counter in Wolverhampton on min wage so they’ll only be paying back a shilling a week. And as most of us will pair up and produce kids at some point, which take a fair amount of looking after, I’d guess around 40% wouldn’t pay off much of their loan. That’s another 14 mil and £420 billion. Total £600 billion the gov will have to cough up to pay off unpaid student loans. Of course that’s over a fair few years but it’s still a lot of money. Even so it will lead to 20 million graduates either unemployed or in demoralising jobs; rather disappointing when you were led to believe a degree would be your key to a comfortable middle class existence. It’s rather like building a four-lane motorway to a back street in Solihull. Now I’m not an expert in traffic management but I’m fairly sure that would lead to road rage of epidemic proportions. It’s all about flow as in 7 trickles make a stream, 15 streams make a river and so on. But here’s the difficulty: It’s easy to give students loans because most will graduate and the gov will appear successful in achieving its objective, but funding industry and creating employment is a dastardly difficult thing to do without getting egg on your face. It takes a vast amount of industrial knowledge, experience, foresight and management skills that the gov don’t have. So a failed investment in industry of several million will provide a glaring example of their incompetence whereas losses of several billion in unpaid student loans will appear the successful meeting of targets, they all got a degree didn’t they? It’s like Tom Leira’s line, “Vonce za rokets are up who cares vere zy come down, zats not my department says Verna Von Brown.”

Libraries are Dead.

Why on earth in this age of the internet, Google, Kindles etc do we need libraries and librarians? They’re fusty and musty and only fit for the crusty trying to keep warm. On an iPad you can see everything you ever dreamt of and rotate it with a flick of your finger. This surely is the future of our information rich society. Then I read the information rich Guardian Guide. Page 1 took a satirical look at a Nescafe ad alluding to the need for coffee after a night of undergraduate three-summing. After briefly considering applying for yet another degree course having the requisite coffee already in the cupboard I considered the ‘information’ I was taking onboard. Yes it was words and sentences but it was illusory allusion not information. Being 67 going on 68 it probably wouldn’t work in my case. So how much of our burgeoning barrage of information is in fact information? Could it be our meandering clicks across the internet is only providing us with a torrent of misleading unstructured gossip?  Could it be we plaster it onto our brain cells in some meaningless fashion so we end up in a spin of fact-less emotional and prejudicial ignorance? Could it be the manipulative arts of our marketing industry have changed the fundamental colour of what we consider is information? Maybe now more than ever we need a calm reflective place where what we receive is structured to being useful, informative and accurate, a place where we can grow our understanding rather than simply acquire reams of information garbage. I know, we need a library.

Class of ’08.

My son’s longstanding girlfriend listed for me at the weekend the whereabouts of her fellow English graduates of 2008. Three years on their careers have taken off in multifarious directions;

1-     Shop assistant

2-     Tamworth Ski Dome bookings clerk

3-     Receptionist x 2

4-     Trainee midwife

5-     Barmaid

6-     Blockbusters counter staff

7-     Ladbrooks counter staff

8-     Taking a PhD

9-     Teacher x 3

10- Upholsterer and wedding invite maker

11- Considering being a burlesque performer

However comforting it is to know the person taking your bet, or passing you a DVD has the capacity to engage you in an interesting conversation about James Joyce’s Ulysses or take their cloths off tastefully should you have a spare moment one wonders if it’s worth the three years study and £30,000 worth of debt. One did briefly write for a local free newspaper but left finding her talents were being used for immoral purposes. Laughing said girlfriend also added the consequences of her degree;

1-     Loss of interest in reading

2-     Pain of rejection

3-     Debt

4-     Feeling of inadequacy

She added with a hint of venom, “I wish someone had told me before I did it.”

I wish universities would state in their prospecti, “This course will provide you with the opportunity to work at a crap job for minimum wage or, if you can still afford it, retrain in something more useful.”