Jim Stewart's Blog

Eddie the Eagle was on television tonight. The story is all about his exploits, leading up to his jump at the 1988 Olympics. Of course he came last, but it is a sugary story of somebody trying to excel against all odds.

Interestingly there was also another film based on a similar story at the same Olympics – Cool Runnings. A film sort of about the Jamaican bobsled team. Again a sugary story of people trying to excel against the odds.

It got me thinking about my trip to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. I spent time chatting to some of the competitors. I met several including one of the Dutch volleyball team, and Josh Davis (USA swimmer) with his three gold medals that he let people try on. They were very down to earth. In act they seemed to be almost apologetic.

The one person I remember best was Olivier Sanou, the high jumper from Burkina Faso. I think the fact I spoke some French was one of the reasons he spent time hatting to me. I chatted to him over either a cool drink or a terrible coffee (can’t remember which – I think it was a coffee). He ended up level with another two jumpers in second last place. But he genuinely didn’t understand why people should think he had done well – we was just 35th in the world.

It really fascinated me that these top athletes never saw themselves as anything other than a normal person – and some of them felt close to failures. I found an interview with some of the Jamaican bobsled team. It gives an idea of the attitude of the people.

One of the things that stands out is the comment about the effect of the applause. And that suggests to me these are people that need reinforcement from others to feel they have any worth. Just because somebody looks like a star, a success, does not mean they are sure of themselves, even if they appear amazing to us.

Just because somebody is “up there” doesn’t mean knocking them is acceptable, wherever “up there” is.

I remember several trips to the USA where I noticed a different approach to life. When you visited people you were the focus of their attention. Once you were gone you were forgotten. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to offend, this is just how some people there have learned to live their lives. I guess it could be related to the big distances there, but it stuck out to me.

BREXIT has happened and I noticed to day that we really have dropped the EU from our news. What are the virus rates in European countries? Are they seeing a peak? Okay, we have one story that has been reported recently – the vaccine problems.

But have you read about the problem with the government issued facemasks that turn out to be potentially toxic?

Or maybe a story that could affect us – what about the Balsamic wars?

I started to wonder about who I had managed to forget because I have spent a year not seeing them.

I took time out to watch Alex Salmond today. It was a very robust performance (but I still wouldn’t buy a second hand car from him).

There were numerous times when he mentioned the documents he had that he was not allowed to share with the committee. He made a good case for a cover up despite one or two attacks.

You don’t need to prove wrongdoing, you just need to show somebody is not being fully transparent (even if they are right to withhold stuff) and you make a good case in front of the public.

He did some very clever sidesteps. He was not permitted to suggest to the committee the questions they should ask, so he told the committee what questions he thought the public would like answered.

But his best attack was to fail to call for the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. On top of that he made a point of being positive about a wide range of people. By doing so he paints himself as a mild mannered chappie to give a contrast to the vicious all powerful first minister.

Whatever side you support in this you need to admit his testimony today has damaged the SNP. And the promise is that this is the tip of the iceberg. Today has probably put paid to a quick vote on independence.

I was interested to see so many news articles proclaiming that the Prime Minister was considering vaccine passports.

I hear him say two things about this. Both times he clearly set out the problems with having such a passport.

What I am hearing is a bunch of people campaigning through “news” to introduce something the government has decided against.

What gives? Well the only way to really have an effective system would be the introduction of ID cards, something the UK has avoided. The last time it was tried was under the previous Labour government, and pressure groups have continued to push for it (the so called “entitlement card” that you would need to show to get anything from the government – like healthcare).

The effect of a system like this on the poorest in society, for example the homeless, has been questioned in court.

As we move toward normality this will be one of our questions – should everybody need an ID card? Do you own the government, or does the government own you?

The battle going on in Australia is interesting. It is being described as the David and Goliath type situation, with the small news companies being supported by the altruistic Australian Government in order to get fair payment terms.

Except Australia has one of the most concentrated ownerships of media in the world. One man owns a lot of it and has plenty of influence in the Australian parliament.

So to me it looks like one rich guy trying to get a government to make another rich guy pay him money.

I don’t think I support either of them.

There are a lot of indexes available like the HHI or GENI which measure inequality. To me the higher the inequality the less stable the world becomes. The lower the inequality the more just the world becomes.

I am so glad I live in a country where we have a vaccine roll out by need, not by greed. I am seeing so many countries where the rich and powerful are first on the list.

I was looking at the results of that court case – you know the one where people say the government let contracts illegally. Actually it turns out there were three contracts used as examples. The one that gets the most press was for a sweet company to provide PPE. Actually the court case was about late publication of contract details.

So I looked in to the sweet company contract. It should have been published in 30 days, but it looks like it took the government department 40 days to publish the contract details. That was the thing that broke the law. The contract appears to have been published way back in late June.

But it was a sweet manufacturer – how come they got the contract – they had never made gowns. Okay – think back. Most PPE was coming from China. There were two types of contracts being let.

One was for home based manufacture. I can remember one of the best protective suits we bought was made by a handbag manufacturer. What you are looking for is the equipment companies have and whether they can be retasked to another purpose. But this wasn’t the type of contract this was.

The second type of contract was trying to fill the gap by importing from China as fast as possible. What they were looking for was companies that could manage import deals. For example a company with good trade links with China might just be able to leverage them to get priority deliveries of alternative equivalent. This was the type of contract with the sweet company.

They had set up an agreement with a supplier of non-sterile gowns from China. It was from a company that had been in the business and had accreditation for supplying PPE from the year before.

So was that what you understood from reports?

What was needed was a review of the contracts, not a review of whether being 10 days late publishing a document 6 months ago was legal.

I would rather the Good Law Project (by the way – check them out on wikipedia – the encyclopaedia of everything – with some notable exceptions) put the focus on the validity of the contracts, otherwise it just sounds like political spin to me.

Tomorrow I have decided I’ll be heading off on a vacation – I’ve sorted out my spare bedroom, and I am going to have a three day trip there.

The announcement today is that we will not be able to travel abroad until at least 21 May, and even then the potential destinations will be limited. Ah well, that’s life.

It was interesting watching interviews in Newcastle. Some people think we are relaxing too slowly, others think we really need to speed up. I found the balance interesting. There was the woman stuck at home afraid to get the virus. Then there were the four students that were missing out on the university experience of going out clubbing. Suddenly student loans are less of a bad idea.

I had a good long walk on the beach today. It was interesting – there are more car parking spaces these days (we have a new car park). People seemed to be taking care not to get in each others faces. But there were a lot more than you would expect on a day like today. People are getting healthy!

I did notice one more change – there were a lot less children on the beach – I wonder if that had anything to do with the amount of sea shells on the beach. I also saw a big group together – they all appeared to be from a single household. But even so they were not supposed to be out together.

People are getting up tight. There is less tolerance around. Today we got a roadmap toward the end of this weird period in our lives. Maybe we can just put up with each other a little bit longer.

If one examines capitalist objectivism, one is faced with a choice: either reject the preconstructive paradigm of discourse or conclude that art is used to reinforce hierarchy, but only if consciousness is equal to art; if that is not the case, expression must come from the collective unconscious. If capitalist objectivism holds, we have to choose between subsemioticist discourse and cultural construction.

The subject is interpolated into a neocapitalist desublimation that includes consciousness as a totality. Baudrillard uses the term ‘the subdialectic paradigm of discourse’ to denote the bridge between truth and sexual identity.

Marx suggests the use of neocapitalist desublimation to attack capitalism. Several narratives concerning the defining characteristic, and eventually the meaninglessness, of patriarchialist narrativity may be found.

But several discourses concerning not theory as such, but neotheory may be revealed. The absurdity, and some would say the meaninglessness, of neocapitalist desublimation.

It is time to take rebirth to the next level. This myth never ends. We must learn how to lead joyous lives in the face of selfishness. We are being called to explore the quantum soup itself as an interface between inseparability and wisdom. Imagine an awakening of what could be. Eons from now, we messengers will self-actualize like never before as we are reborn by the grid.

If you have never experienced this transmission, it can be difficult to grow. How should you navigate this conscious cosmos? Look within and recreate yourself.

We are at a crossroads of truth and suffering. Humankind has nothing to lose. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the grid via expanding wave functions.

Presumably, this selectionally introduced contextual feature does not affect the structure of a corpus of utterance tokens upon which conformity has been defined by the paired utterance test.

I’ve been impressed by the complexity of some facebook posts recently, so I decided to use an auto generator to put together a post for tonight.

It seems that demonstrating the ability to use complexity of language helps prove you are right.

I used to read technical reports, and I loved reading people say “it is obvious”, because then you knew it was anything but obvious.

If you want to impress me with ideas then keep it simple.

I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.

The news continues to report on the problems in Texas. But why is Texas being hit so hard when the colder areas just north of there seem to be surviving?

Well, there a lot of reasons, including the fact that they don’t often get weather like this in Texas so they had not designed the place to work in these conditions. That’s why we talk about climate change these days, not global warming – because the effect we see is weather extremes, not warmer days.

But one of the things that is behind the electricity problems is treating electricity supply as a market place, and a deregulated one at that.

We hear about people not having electricity – but we are not seeing reports here about the effect of the deregulated electricity market on the people that still have supply.

The TV programme “Law and Order” had an episode recently that had a scenario where suppliers shut down power plants to raise prices. You see some contracts have variable rates per kWh. And as electricity gets in short supply the cost rises. Some contracts pass this on to the consumer.

So there are now people with electricity that cannot afford it. Some bills are doubling, and there are even people with bills in the thousands of pounds.

So the next time you hear about “getting rid of red tape” remember red tape is what stops us ending up like Texas.

About 25 years ago I visited Monument Valley. You could drive round if you wanted, but parts of the roads needed a 4 wheel – and a good 4 wheel. All of the tour trucks were out, but I wanted the full tour. I asked around and an old Navaho was found that could take me in his off road vehicle.

He didn’t speak much English, but he gave me a fantastic personal tour. When I got back he found enough English to suggest a tip was needed. I asked him what the usual was. He said 100%. He was scamming me. But I thought, we have scammed them so much in the past why shouldn’t’ he scam me back?

As an aside you can hear a little bit about our scamming on BBC world service (or buy the book with the name of the programmes.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Today I had another scam phone call. I spent a couple of minutes telling the scammer that their brain would fry from the radiation their mobile phone gave out before the phone went dead.

So it got me to thinking – how about a competition for March – see who can keep a scammer on the phone for longest? I’ll buy a cream egg for the winner.