Addicted to the shindig

[tinyjo]

Well, Ruth and I are definitely taking over a Brownie pack together. We went to a Guiders training day on Saturday. Some of it was great but there was a lot of stuff which I think I would have found more interesting/useful if I'd actually got back into running meetings first. As it was, it seemed a bit vague, and it was annoying that the Leadership Qualification session didn't actually go over what you need to do to get your warrent, just various ideas of how you could run your meeting/be a good Brownie Guider.

I managed to take the shine off the day rather before the final session when we were nipping over to have a look at the Craft Bazaar and I managed to slip on the stairs and fell down really hard on my bum. It was quite a shock and of course I spilled tea on myself in the process as well. It didnt' stop the last session being the best though - yay for sing-a-longs!

On Friday, we'd been over to meet some of the parents and see the hall and it's all looking pretty good, actually. The parents were very nice indeed and we're having one helper a week to begin with as well as a warrented guider to keep an eye on us and a Young Leader who was around last year so knows the girls and so on. We're planning a getting to know you sort of week this week and we'll see how we get on, I guess. I'm alternating between scared and excited about it - it's been so long since I was doing any of this!

After all that, I had a blessedly quiet Sunday during which I freaked Alex out by putting books into boxes to start off my packing. I'm not sure if we're going to have enough boxes, even with the ones we got from Jenni, but I'm sure I can always blag extra from Tesco. After that, I just vegged out with West Wing again. It's compelling but disturbing television. I find that the America it portrays is frightening both for the aspects the show deplores and those it celebrates. I've been listening to the election coverage with a gloomy feeling of foreboding. It's bad enough to think that around half the country actually agree with Bush and what he stands for without having it foisted on the world for another 4 years.

I did enjoy the results of the Hartlepool bi-election though, and listening to the anti-europe camp tearing themselves apart between UKIP and the Tories conferences. I dare not speak my secret hope here, but I bet you can guess what it is and things might even have changed to the point where it has a chance. I was listening to an old Jeremy Hardy last night from around 1995 and he was laying into Howard for being a right wing Home Secretary who was introducing ID cards ("and no I don't want one card to be my passport, driving license, credit card, video shop membership and library card because I'd lose it!"). Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

I got my first online case of wine yesterday, delivered courtesy of Richard Branson, which was rather nice. We've had one bottle so far and it was pretty good, I have to say, although Alex prefers a more robust taste, I think. A Cab Sauv/Merlot mix and very smooth and rich it was too. I may just have a cunning Virgin Wine scam, but I don't know for sure yet - I'll let you know if it works out.

Bringing things up to date, I managed to lose 2.5lb this week, which I'm quite pleased with. I also managed to keep my pledge of last week and not eat anyone elses food. This week is supposed to be exercise focused. I went for a run with t__m__i and celestialweasel (if I've got my John's straight) last night round South Park which was actually rather good, but I ought to do more than one thing really. I suppose I could just say "I will do 3 bonus points worth of exercise at least 3 times this week". Next week's run will count for one of those times so I just have to sort out the other two. How hard can it be?

This seems to have turned into several entries run together, but as I'm too lazy to split them up, you'll have to have them as they are.

Comments

Funny

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

"How hard can it be?" was the byword of one of my old bosses in Redditch. He started off with a two-up, two-down Victorian cottage in Birmingham and by the time he moved out, it was about twice the size! All done by him & his father-in-law.
"All the really thick kids I went to school with went off to be brickies, so it shouldn't be too hard for me to do it!" was his (not unreasonable) attitude, and as he paid attention to building regs and so on, he certainly got a better result by DIY than he would have from yer average PicNMix assortment of fine-through-to-cowboy builders.

He had much the same gung-ho attitude at work, though sadly (given that the code was unlikely to fall onto anyone's head) with slightly less lovely results. The functionality was great, you know, the product sold, but on the inside it was written in C-made-to-look-like-Pascal (yikes!). Also, there was the time he got knocked over by a bus less than a week before an external quality inspection and a quarter's worth of project documents had to be hastily faked completed.

All in all though, "How hard can it be?" is a much underrated saying and I shall be forever grateful to him as I learned a lot about the real world from him!

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

I don't want one card to be my passport, driving license, credit card, video shop membership and library card because I'd lose it!

Regardless of the other arguments for or against, this is a really bad argument against an ID card. Losing one card would be far easier to report and replace than losing all of many cards, or even one of many cards, the details of which you can't remember.

Personally, one of the major plusses to an ID card would be the necessity of only carrying the one card. Even better, ditch the card concept, and have only biometric identification...

West Wing and the election

[applez.livejournal.com]

I think you now get a flavour of why I had trouble with West Wing.

As for the election, and the divide. I'm not so sure that it is necessarily a full-hearted belief in Bush that has earned him so much support...I feel it is probably a mix of some of the following:

- Evangelical religious conviction, with some freakish millennarian belief systems that have evolved from the very Puritanical madfolk that Europe smartly sent packing as soon as it possibly could.

- Dogged loyalty to Party, nevermind the consequences.

- An ingrained aspect of American culture that fails to connect personal motivations, personal actions, social costs, and other wider impacts 'far' from the focus. (i.e. 'externalities' in econ-speech). E.g. 'My ambition to better myself inevitably impacts others in my community, and screw them if they have problems with my success.'

- A traditional disposition against 'Yankee' Northerners amongst Southern states. With all the stereotypes played out.

- The stubborn belief amongst some that democracy is a pretty luxury item that should be locked away in a vault guarded by armies to keep it safe.

-----
Reasons not to worry overmuch:

To some extent, there has always been this division in the US, but the pressures on those divisions has grown with the combined stresses of economic malaise and war. Even when war is seen as 'purposeful' (as many now think of the Second World War), there can be considerable domestic stress. If the nation moves off from one or more of these, then these divisions may calm...regardless of the rhetoric. The question is whether the US will, depending on who wins the Presidency.

Also - a Bush victory under these conditions would be very atypical and against historical cases. Then again, Bush has been atypical his entire Presidency. :-/

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am that weasel!

The election...?

[shepline.livejournal.com]

I would like the LibDem's to have a landslide election that thrusts them well and truly into power. However even my legendary optimism has its limits.

What I actually think might very well happen is that Labour will win the election with a greatly reduced majority, and that the LibDem's come in in second place to take their place as the official opposition (or at least a very close third). Either way, it will be a hung parliament or very close to one.

UKip are, in my oppinion, doing a fine job in splitting the Hard Right vote right down the middle. But gee, that Kilroy git is a nasty bit of work...

Helpful for theives too...

[damiancugley.livejournal.com]

... only one card to forge.

Biometric readers aren't going to be cheap, reliable and small enough to be installed in every shop, restaurant, bar, post offic, etc., any time soon, so the card will still be needed, and will usually be accepted based on the photo rather than any high-tech unbreakable biometic scanner. Not that any biometric scanners have been demonstrated as unbreakable yet.

Re: West Wing and the election

[damiancugley.livejournal.com]

In general terms, the taller candidate normally wins; as I understand it, Bush is at a disadvantage here.

On the other hand, he is reported as having won 2000 based on the electorate's feeling that he's the sort of guy you could have a beer with, unlike that snooty overeducated Al Gore. I have no idea if this Kerry guy is going to be able to out-barfly Bush.

Re: Helpful for theives too...

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

But this doesn't change much from the current situation; cards are already easy to forge. For stolen cards, one card could easily be missed for long enough to be abused, whereas if it is THE card, it goes missing, you'll know and get it reported ASAP. Also, you won't have to worry about to whom it needs to be reported, that will be easy.

In the case of cloning the card, it will be far easier to track a cloned card, as it would show up immediately should your ID card be being used in more than one place.