So glad to see the last two years were a waste...

Note: I swear a bit in here. This isn't indicative of GCSEs being dumbed down somehow or 'yoofs' being inarticulate. It's more indicative of me being absolutely pissed off with this crap. 
 
So, Gove's decided to scrap 'dumbed down' GCSEs and revive O-levels (Mail-link), the qualification so out-dated that the Conservatives decided to scrap them in the 1980's (I am aware that this is arguably ad-hominem, but still, my point is that they were scrapped for a frickin' reason). Or possibly because Gove simply doesn't get GCSEs.

I've blogged about that aspect before.

I have to say I wasn't pleased about this news. At all. It's fucking bullshit. While, okay, a few of my exams have been a bit easy (well, basically maths, but (to humble brag) I pwn at maths, so yeah), these claims that they're 'dumbed down' are just wrong. 69.8% of GCSEs are passes at the baseline level of A*-C (the idea is that everyone gets 5A*-C, somewhere down the line we've forgotten this), but that's because people who are more likely to get good GCSEs are entered into more subjects. I'm taking 11, whereas most people at my college take 10, some might take less than that. I'm predicted straight As and A*s (edit: I didn't quite get that, but still did really well). People like me (to be a humblebragging-humblebragger again) tend also to be entered for more, hence the apparently obscene A/A* pass rate.

Of course, I can see this only having negative effects. You know the good thing about modular assessment (which I'm in the last year to experience)? It means you get a better understanding of individual topics, and it tests your ability to work in a sustained manner (if you're into that "education is for jobs" stuff,), or, alternatively, it means that it isn't all or nothing. Final exams (which I finished literally 2 days ago (well, yesterday as of writing this sentence, but I'm looking at an all nighter)) were stressful enough without that bullshit to be frank. To the point where I ended up having a random panic attack (as in, one entirely removed from the situations where they normally happen).

That aside, this pretty much consigns anyone who has old-style GCSEs (like, for full disclosure purposes, I'll have in just over a couple of months, in case you haven't guessed) to the scrap heap. Who the fuck would want to pick the kid with the 'dumbed down' qualification? And, heck, I'm doing well in them, but that's because they're worthless. They're dumbed down. All GCSEs are piss easy, and everyone can pass them, and we're all a bunch of fucking layabouts. At least that's what Gove's saying with this, as far as I can see (not intentionally, but still). It makes me feel like shit.Unless it goes the other way, and O-levels are considered to be a load of crap, in which case Gove can still go fuck himself over this bullshit.

EDIT: Oh yeah, this not even getting into the inherent segregation. O-levels are for the 'top 75%' only. This means that either way this turns out, 25% of kids are going to lose out mega style, being consigned to a scrap heap, all to fit some ridiculous agenda (props to @SzeitBlom for pointing this out (I got distracted by the crap which personally affected me)). Also, the unfairness inherent in the splits? Too much for Thatcher's Government (GCSEs were created in 1984) the first time round.

Of course, GCSEs are already ignored once you get A-levels. Guess what else Gove's mucking around with!  [Mail Links; I think they might be getting the best scoops here, for some reason] Yeah, the Mail actually says it best

"The new-style tests would be given a different set of grades to enable tutors and employers to tell them apart from existing exams.

The reforms would effectively create a two-tier system; old-style A-levels and new versions with beefed-up content, a greater emphasis on essay-writing and a strict limit on exam resits." (emphasis mine. At least the Mail's being honest about the impacts; check out the quotes on this Guardian article on the same topic which state that the use of a different grading system will actually somehow prevent a two-tier system coming to fruition)

These reforms? Start coming into place... well, it doesn't say when, but I dare say that it they won't be happening in time for September. Even Michael "Cultural Revolution for our schools" Gove  (no, I am not going to ever let that one go, especially since I actually did my History controlled assessment on the Cultural Revolution) isn't likely to make things move that quickly. So I guess that's another 'dumbed down' qualification that'll be regarded as shit that I'll have to spend 2 years on. Oh joy. I mean, school's okay and all, but I'd like to think that the slip of paper at the end is only semi-worthless.

Not to mention that they're making everything based off how well you do exams. Again. I suppose actually analysing stuff is no-longer a useful skill then, but regurgitating knowledge? Coolio by Gove, apparently...

This even outdoes Gove's other shit to do with education which happened in this month alone. I know that the state will always try to twist education to its own ends (heck, one of my courses was pretty much Keynsian propaganda, and don't get me started on the pro-FDR bias of History...), but they're moving towards some bastardised blend of Steiner schools and stock right-wing educational policy. Basically, taking the (shit) stance on science of the Steiner schools, replacing teaching of the Scientific method with a focus on nature, statistics with algebra (I love algebra, and learning it in primary school (well, early secondary school, since Leicestershire is dead weird like that) would have been a dream come true, but come on), and then deciding that forcing kids to recite poetry and memorise spellings is a good idea (although the choices of words the Graun chose to represent is a bit amusing: "bruise, destroy, ridiculous and tyrant". Also, languages, which I suppose is less rubbish (assuming that anyone actually speaks said languages and they aren't, like,
Latin). As is teaching kids how to debate, if such a thing is actually a thing you can teach, it's okay. But it's mostly crap, possibly as a way to get schools to become Academies (/speculation)...

Back to the main topic though, I'm actually thinking of maybe following up with a response to what I'd do, and you know what? I'm skeptical that Labour, populist shitbags that they are, will be any better. Actually, I'm sick to death of education being used as the ball in the political ping-pong of education between the two parties. I'll be willing to bet quite a lot of my peers (God that sounds pretentious) are as well.  We're all human beings, not political capital. I swear, the sooner this entire system is trashed so we can do away with qualifications, the better,

tl;dr? Gove's planned qualifications reforms are crap, as is quite a lot of the curriculum stuff, and kids in my year are screwed (or possibly the kids coming up in 2013.. Also, I'm really frickin' petty and pathetic.

PS I have come to the conclusion that the Daily Mail can go fuck itself. Although it appears that it already is in the process of fucking itself over this, given how excited it is about this crap.

EDIT: I'd just like to add. I'm lucky that I'm still doing 'academic' courses. Vocational courses are being increasingly devalued, and are basically the favourite punching bag of the educational Right. Even more so than 'dumbed down' GCSEs. This is a massive load of horseshit too.I've never really done BTECs, but just because there's less of a focus on exams (from what I can gather exams are involved now or something) doesn't make them any less valid. As for equivalency, maybe we should be taking our cues from Finland (best in the world in a lot of areas to do with education) and scrap league tables altogether.

Wanted: Free Labour for Tesco

Edit: It would appear that the "permanent" part was some sort of error on Tesco's or the JobCentre's part. They aren't forcing us into permanent posts yet. The whole thing is still bullshit though.


Edit 2: Tesco have pulled out and started their own scheme.Tesco still suck, but at least they're paying their work experience bods. And pissing off the Torygraph to boot (it "undermine[s] the Coalitions own efforts", apparently).
 
Tesco, and anyone complicit in this, should go fuck themselves. There are several more articulate ways that I could have phrased that sentence, but none of them would have quite had the impact appropriate for a response to a call for someone to work in a permanent post 6 week stint for their Job Seekers' Allowance (back up link in case the actual advert has since been removed, (credit to @latentexistence for the screenshot)) The title of this post was only mildly hyperbolic, if that.


Did I mention that the post was permanent? (it turns out it isn't, it was just a mistake)

Of course, this is only a particularly egregious development (although probably not a unique one) in the ongoing attacks on what Tory rhetoric calls a "something for nothing culture" on the part of people. meanwhile, they're sweeping the fact that "something for nothing" probably applies more to companies under the metaphorical rug.

For instance, from May to November 2011, 24,010 people were forced into unpaid placements for a month. On pain of losing benefits for 1/4 of a year. Because, y'know, it's not like the placements at, say, "high-street chains" would have been suitable for anything other than government-subsidised unpaid labour or anything like that. (charity work is also an option (still a rather dodgy one considering it's forced), but charities aren't the ones getting the contracts).

In addition to this, there are cases such as the one of Cait Rielley, who ended up on a two week placement at Poundland stacking shelves (for 'training'). Of course, Poundland could have really needed the help, for example their Christmas sales went up by 25% last year. You can't expect them to actually pay their workers, can you? Anyway, why's she moaning when some people have placements of six months. That was sarcasm in case you haven't guessed.

It might be worth making a note of the 'logic' behind forcing people to work for well below minimum wage. The idea is that paying companies to take on free labour will get the people forced to work into the habit of working again, as "a sanction" for 'sabotaging' attempts to get them jobs (warning: Mail link, and it's one of their really dodgy ones as well). Sometime down the line, this will magically get them an actual paid job (of which there are, of course, no shortages). 

Actually, the point the 'Coalition source' made to the Mail about workfare being a "sanction" ("But is it meant as a sanction? Yes – and we are convinced it will have an effect") may well be hitting straight to the point about why the Government is doing this. The idea of people getting jobs at the ends of it is secondary to a vindictive rage at those who have the misfortune to be unable to find a job (when there are 6 people looking for every vacancy, it's not exactly fair to ay that unemployment's down to being 'workshy'). There's this twisted logic that trying hard enough will cause a job to materialise.

The really ironic thing being that, if anyone's sabotaging people's attempts to find work, it's the Government giving companies free workers. Why the hell would a company hire someone (even for under a living wage), when they can get someone to work for them for free? I'm not some sort of economics expert (my knowledge runs to Freakonomics and intuition for the most part), but I don't think you have to be one to realise that - if workfare was ever really intended to get people into work without a great deal of doublethink being applied - something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Unless there's some fancy counter-intuitive economics thing I don't know about (which I'll concede as being a possibility).

Of course, to answer my rhetorical question, public outcry could force companies to at least vastly reduce their 'employment' of people on workfare (it worked on Sainsbury's and Waterstones), and there's a day of action on the 3rd of March. Because, seriously, this whole thing is bullshit.

See also:
Boycott Workfare
A Latent Existence: Who benefits from the Work Programme
A Latent Existence: Government work placement schemes little more than slave labour
Edingburgh Eye: The ideology of workfare

A History of Science: By @The_Activists

I really should be more aware of what I'm like, sometimes. I came on the internet a few days ago intending to do my Humanities and design homeworks, and ended up checking on The Activist Socialist Party to make sure they hadn't done anything too ridiculous and/or similar to The Party recently.

It was a bad idea.

As you know, a while ago they wrote something that, functionally speaking, denounced Relativity as a capitalist plot. I wish I was making that up.

Remember that? Well somehow they've done it again. But worse.

I present to you my analysis of "Theoretical Physics: The Mythology of Materialistic Capitalism" by the Activists Science Collective. Warning: side effects of reading the article itself may include: rage, confusion and a complete and utter loss of coherence.

The central conceit is given as it being "no accident that Newtonian mechanics and capitalism arose at the same period in history" (in the 17th century/1600s. I want you to hold that figure in your heads). This is similar to the protestant reformation for some reason, and thus follows a short, extremely Mind Screwy, history of capitalism and the Lutherian movement. I think. Anyway, this brings us up to the present day with sweatshops in Asia. This bit is actually slightly less bad than it sounds (but only because of me making it seem extremely bad - that it took me 3 reads to get my head round is still somewhat telling), but it isn't really the point of this article. Although the bit about "the individual entrepreneur, the industrialist and the secular scientist bent on taking apart and controlling the world" who were apparently created by the Reformation was a nice touch (never mind that newton was a devout Christian. And that secular scientists would have no interest in a religious ideal).

What is the point, is the sheer utter mind melting shit that follows.

Ready?

Here goes...

"Every age requires a myth. With the rise of the industrial age came the myth of the ‘detached, disinterested’ scientist, the cold objective observer who sees the universe exactly as it is. Strange considering that classical mechanics grew out of the very heart of ‘enlightened self-interest’, that they had a very *interested* view of the universe. With the onset of modernity we see yet another transformation of the physical sciences. The first is the *democratisation* of science with Einstein’s theory of relativity in 1905. Now everything, including even time and space, is dependent upon an observers particular point of view. What’s true for Jack might not be for Jill, very expedient as a political force. And is it merely coincidence that quantum mechanics, with its inherent strangeness, followed hard on the heels of surrealism and dada in the 1920′s?"

I honestly can't say about the industrialist era, since I wasn't there and don't know much about it, nonetheless, I don't recall that ever being the main myth. And "myths" can change. They actually vaguely half got it right on the whole "God helps those who help themselves" thing being the biggie. At any rate, how society views scientists isn't necessarily their conscious fault.

As for classical mechanics growing from the "very heart of 'enlightened self interest'". Um, how? I don't get how that works.

And, um, do they know what "democratisation" means? Because I don't think it means the concept of subjectivity. Furthermore, relativity doesn't work that way. It isn't a political concept. yes, the passing of time is relative, and there are small scale distortions in mechanics caused by gravity. But in ordinary life these things aren't exactly noticeable (notable exception: GPSes, but that's related to how they do their navigatey thing). At any rate, there are far many other things which have an effect on perception to a greater extent than physics. As for the quantum mechanics thing, yes, probably. Plus, what was that their last article was called*? Oh yeah "fact is stranger than science fiction". Furthermore, from what I can gather (admittedly based on about.com), Dada started out as a protest against the sort of stuff those guys hate. Talk about irony.

This said, you think that's bad? It gets worse.

"The truth of the matter is that science did not begin in Europe in the 17th century but began about 1500 years earlier in Greece. For it was Pythagoras (570 B. C) who discovered that the natural harmonies of a stretched string correspond to the series of whole-numbers. Before this, the Greeks believed that number and nature (for harmony was considered as being a natural product) where separate. By discovering their connection, mathematics and experience became intertwined and science was born. After this discovery, Pythagoras was reported to exclaim “everything is number”"

Using the definition of "science" to refer to "bad stuff", everything started to go to hell 1500 years earlier than the 1600s, in 570BC,  when Pythagoras invented numbers and science. Right. That makes perfect sense.

If you don't mind me I'm going to go bash my head against the wall. Repeatedly.

And there's more. Christ... This is going to suck...

"And with a strange twist of fate, all of the evidence of modern science points to the fact that the universe *is* wave-like, not particle-like, in character and that the harmonia of Pythagoras was correct after all. Believe it or not, the fundamental principles of the maths is essentially the same."

Right person was right? Yeah, how very strange. Never would have guessed that. Although the universe is both wave and particle-like. In addition to this, in stuff like string theory, the basic mathematics isn't necessarily the same, since it relies on extra dimensions not covered under Euclidean Geometry (the exact number of dimensions varies between 10 and 11 in what I've read, even though apparently the maths can only ever be 100% consistent in 10 and 26 dimensions [1]). I think. But I suppose this is the stuff there's evidence for, and the whole thing is very timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly. But still, the universe is both wave like and particle like in nature. It's just that sometimes those waves are extra-dimensional and those particles are infinitesimal.

"However, theory has not caught up with practice. Theoretical physicists still proclaim that the universe is composed of well-defined particles."


As in, the standard model? Well yes, the particles wave. So of course theoretical physicists say that (well at least concerning the 4 dimensional one (3 spatial dimensions + time) which we inhabit).Hell, the wavey stuff is actually the more theoretical one from what I can gather (officially speaking I'm a high-level GCSE student, so there's always the caveat that I may be very wrong). So this is wrong. And we haven't defined all the particles yet! Also, the technical term is quanta (which are discrete packets of energy, e=mc^2 and all that).

"In other words, it is still essentially based in mechanics. "

 Uh, sure. Not sure how wave-particle duality contradicts that, when one considers that mechanics can be explained as interactions of stuff.


"In Einstein we read that “If we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time”. From this he goes on to  prove his famous time dilation effect. However, according to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, such an operation is impossible. It is not possible to know both the motion and the time of a particle simultaneously." 

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle doesn't work that way. <takes deep breath>. It's actually <looks up on Wikipedia> a "fundamental limit on the accuracy", i.e. "the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled, determined, or known". Specifically, the properties in question are the location (not just in time) of a particle, and it's wave function. Which is actually somewhat different to "motion and time". Plus, the main issue is with accuracy.


"Then why do scientists still teach Einstein’s relativity if it is no longer correct? How is it that scientists are given millions to build ‘particle accelerators’ at CERN when this would seemingly violate uncertainty?"

We still learn relativity in the Einsteinian sense because, on all levels above the sub-atomic, it's still correct. And particle accelerators do not violate uncertainty, because uncertainty, as I've mentioned before, doesn't work that way. We can never be 100% certain, sure, but we can get so certain that it probably isn't worth checking any more.

"....If we admit that the universe is wavelike in character, then all of the myths of time travel and so on are debunked, as are the cliches of the lone genius or the absurd belief that science could somehow control time and change *history*."
Because mechanics enables those claims? And how exactly does it debunk "the cliche of the lone genius"? I know the ASP is opposed to the idea of individualism, but come on. At least have some good arguments. At any rate, wasn't it Newton who said that "we stand on the shoulders of giants". No one who claims that they can change history is treated seriously any more (AFAIK).

Space-time itself becomes identified with wave motion and theoretical mechanics, with all of its materialistic undertones, is now revealed for what it is; the myth of industrialists. In contrast, waves suggest an underlying interconnectedness in everything, even a spiritual connection since our very thought processes are dependent upon them."
 Mechanics is not a myth. Mechanics is not some sort of bizzare concept directly opposed to the notion of a wave like universe. Mechanics is the observation of the interaction of those waves. At any rate, why would industrialists seek to promote it? The underlying interconnectedness of the whole wave thing (hold up... isn't that theoretical?) is probably a part of mechanics (I can't say I'm 100% certain, but I think it works that way). 


And that's that. And it also took way too much effort. To the Science Collective, on the off chance that you're reading this, just stop. Please.

[1] I think this is in Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, but don't hold me to that.
*It's pretty clear that this is the same person, xe may be writing under the name of a different collective, but there are stylistic quirks it shares with the earlier piece (for example *this* kind of emphasis and the use of British English for the most part), and there is a thematic continuation.

(NB: As before, the proviso that I may have made some mistakes still stands, feel free to point them out.)

No, @The_Activists, relativity is not some sort of capitalist plot

I don't like the Activist Socialist Party for a wide number of reasons: they're Stalinist; they run polls where the options are "I agree with the party line", "I believe in the party line" and "I am a strawman" (sometimes not even that; in one poll the options were all permutations of "Trotsky's good, but should have joined the Bolsheviks earlier", although one added that "Stalin whooped his ass" which is a nice touch); they post some really bad stuff (to the point where I sometimes feel like I'm falling for an invocation of Poe's Law); they seem to focus their energy on creating "revolutionary information flows", such as twitter accounts which offer facts without bothering to check them and Michael Jackson and Jesus fanfics.. Oh, and I forgot the American nationalism, but, in short, they're a combination of every bad stereotype of lefties that you've seen. That's just here for full disclosure issues.

Anyway, "The Activists Editorial Collective" has published an article denouncing science as being corrupted by "hyper-capitalism". This is all very well and good if we're talking about arms research, which probably counts as science, albeit a form I want nothing to do with. But no, the targets of this piece is, I shit you not, the theory of relativity. It's a long article, so I won't requote all of it here (here's a link if you want to read it [trigger warning: it contains an ableist slur]), but there are several bad points made therein.

The first paragraph, which introduces the conceit that scientists have focused their ideas towards what can get them funding, isn't too objectionable, I suppose, but there is still the issue that it dismisses out of hand modern science as chasing "science fiction" instead of "the truth". Something weird in an article titled "Fact is Stranger than Science Fiction", but I digress. The idea being that capitalism caused this because "science fiction sells".

The Second paragraph cites Stephen Hawkin's A Brief History of Time in support of this. Specifically, it cites the "obligatory" chapter about the theory of Special Relativity which "all patronising “science for the layman” books" have (what even the biology ones?) as science fiction. The reasoning for this?

"Here we read for the umpteenth time that “time is relative”. This, we are told, is because moving clocks do not stay at a constant rate. Yet in a later chapter (I no longer have the book because I threw it out), he speaks about the “estimated time since the the big bang”. So the question arises “estimated time since the the big bang *relative to whom*?"

 *ahem* Relativity does not work that way". Want to know what we measure the passage of time relative to? Us*. 
*Well, the observer. i.e. us.


That has to be the easiest counter argument I've ever made in my life. And I haven't even read the bloody book in question! (I'd quite like to, but I haven't really seen it around in any of the bookshops I've been in recently).

The article may then argue that the two stock responses are "1. you simply don’t understand the math, or 2. our logic has been designed to deal with phenomena at the very large or very small scales of the universe" but maybe there's a reason for that. Although the brain fart which construes most of the parapgraph which follows probably helps prove point 2 more than anything. I'll just reproduce it here:

"But if what these “scientists” say is true, then apparently our logic *has* been designed to understand it. Furthermore, this is not a testable scientific statement. There is *always* the possibility that our logic might be wrong and how on earth could we measure the extent to which our reasoning was faulty without using reason itself? And whereas modern science claims to be able to undo time and history, it still speaks of its own history as if it were immutable. It is hypocritical. In fact, it doesn’t take us long to find exactly where Einstein went wrong with his maths. What he calls “time” and represents with numbers on a line is not a measure of “history” at all but a measure of the frequency *of* the light waves used in the measuring process. In short, these are nothing more than the megalomaniac fantasies of geeks and social outcasts. The latest chapter is the search for the Higgs-Boson “God” particle at the CERN particle accelerator. Despite the efforts of many legitimate mathematicians and scientists to undo this damage, Einstein, the poster-genius of physics, is just too damned profitable to question."


 Where do I start here? Let's see, first of all, this is claiming that the way human logic works is not a verifiable statement, which rebutes the 2nd stock response, but fails to do anything about the first and is probably a rather shit argument. Also, if, say, I was to accidentally and briefly think that "2+2=5", and this lead to me getting, say, a maths question wrong, then I can probably reason that I'm wrong and where I went wrong.

Secondly, claims of time travel are floated as a possibility, but dismissed as unlikely. No one claims to be capable of rewriting time, let alone erasing it. Truly changing the past is impossible. Given that Michio Kaku (who'll appear later) gave time travel the designation of "Class II impossibility" (something which, basically, isn't likely to happen for thousands of years, even if it's possible) in his book Physics of the Impossible, I suppose this aspect of science fiction is integrated somewhat into science though.But any changes are more likely to result in the time traveler becoming stranded in the wrong timeline or create a paradox. If such a thing is possible. Which, honestly, I have to say I highly doubt, but can't entirely rule out. One more likely theory (and possibly one compliant with physics) is that, even if we made a time machine, we could only 'go back' as far as it's creation. At any rate, this discussion is somewhat redundant since Stephen Hawking (aka the guy who this part of the argument is meant to be aimed at) has also come out and said that the fact that we aren't overrun by time tourists means that time travel probably won't happen. For more information I might as well recommend the Wikipedia on this.

So no, thinking that possibly maybe time travel could happen does not make believing in history hypocritical.

Next up, there's the whole "Einstein's maths was wrong" bit. Basically the author claims that since time =/= history the maths was wrong. Except it isn't really once you remember that in this case time is considered the fourth dimension (I think). Not the frequency of the light waves. We use the frequency of the light waves to work out how much redshift there is. A larger amount of redshift indicates that the thing in question is further away and thus older. Ironically enough, Einstein did think he'd gone wrong with his maths. I don't really understand the maths to be honest (I'm a GCSE student in maths, albeit a high level one, and, hell, Wikipedia tells me that Einstein had issues with the tensor calculus which forms the foundation of it all, Einstein), but I can recall reading in, uh, some book (I think it was one of the Horrible Science ones, but don't hold me to that), that he spent a lot of his life attempting to disprove the idea of the expanding universe. So yeah.

Chances are then, relativity isn't some "megalomaniac" fabrication from "geeks and social outcasts", it's an actual theory. That was a large chunk of my life that I won't be getting back.

That leaves the search for the God particle. I have to admit I'm fairly certain that, at this point, searching for sub-atomic particles is turning into a turtles all the way down situation, only with different species of turtle and a few zebras thrown in for good measure, but there is evidence to suggest that the Higgs Boson may actually exist. So it's not some sci-fi fantasy. I'm not entirely certain what the use is, but it looks like there's a good chance that it exists. And this is a science experiment, so you can suck on that for a bit.

Anywho, the next target is Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future. This is also a book I've not read/TV series I've not seen. Nonetheless, I'm fairly certain that this bit, in response to the alleged inclusion of the claim of there being bad times economically in the next 20 years resulting from Moore's law being finished by "single atom transistors" giving way to "quantum states":
"Moore’s law is supposed to be some type of estimate of scientific progress but is merely measured on the growth in computer speed taken over the last few decades (as if the two were synonymous)."
 Uh, Moore's law is more like an estimate of technological progress. It's the number of transistors which can "inexpensively fit onto an integrated circuit". And it's a law in the way that Godwin's law is, except in this hypothetical a large section of our economy relies on everyone comparing their opponents to Hitler.

I'm just going to swap to line by line rebuttal for rest of this rubbish starting after "During this part of the TV show they cut in footage of mobs fighting mounted police carrying guns and battons, no doubt from an actual revolution." Which I can't judge on, having not seen the show.

[Trigger warning for the next couple of paragraphs: Ableist slur]
































"Are these so-called scientists retarded? “Oh, I was expecting to buy a 16 gig computer this year but one hasn’t been invented. Ergo, must kill wife and kids!”."
 .... what.

 For starters, "retarded" is not an acceptable word to use. I must confess that in real life I'm a total coward who frequently fails to call people out on using it, but nonetheless there are a lot of reasons why it should be cut out of your lexicon.

As for the nasty strawman, are you suggesting that revolution is analagous to killing your wife and children? (way to assume gender identity and/or be heteronormative there (and probably a large number of other privilege denials that I've missed), BTW). Because you're definitely hinting that their logic means, to them, that their predictions turning out to be false leads to revolution, but here you have the scientist wanting to kill their family. So, revolution = killing your family? If not, what is the point of this strawman? Where the hell did it come from?

"Where does one start with such hubris? First of all Moore’s “law” isn’t a law. It’s merely an observation. Computers are not natural phenomena but a simulacrum of 0′s and 1′s. Are these people so detached from the real world, so self-delusional that they honestly believe their own failure would create world revolution?"

 Yeah. Believing that a stop in unsustainable growth which is overly relied on will cause issues in the economy, probably because capitalism relies on expansion, and thus social unrest (not necessarily revolution). Truly they are full of hubris. Everyone knows that revolution only comes through the creation of "revolutionary information flows", such as pretending to be Jesus. Which isn't hubristical at all. Got it.

Also, appeal to nature is a logical fallacy, and in case you can't tell, people use computers. I'm using one now. You used one to write this. So maybe they're just a little integrated into our culture. I must admit Kaku's argument is rather odd, but come on. If anything it highlights a shortcoming in capitalism. You know, the thing we're meant to be against?

"No, these are the bourgeois fantasies of a parochial elite and Kaku is merely their celebrity spokesman. In contrast, there are millions  of real scientists working on legitimate problems like curing disease, increasing food supply, creating more sustainable resources of energy and so on. These people often work on or below the breadline. They will be the at the forefront in the new regime."

The "No True Scotsman" thing is another logical fallacy. That said of course, there is absolutely nothing useful about GPSes and navigation. At all. So yeah. Plus, science often has unintended bonuses, just ask anyone who's ever used a microwave.

So, it would appear your "new regime" would fail to take it into account. Just as well that I sure as hell don't want your revolution then.

In short, you, The Activists Editorial Collective/The_Activists, suck. I probably wasted my time writing this, but I suppose it's not just enough to ignore something. Nah, you've got to "deconstruct" it and render it worthless ;P.


NB: I might have made some mistakes in the science. I did gloss over a bit of the Special Relativity fail to avoid this (sorry, but it's getting late and I really cannot be arsed to teach myself tensor calculus), but if I've made any mistakes I'll be glad if you'll correct me.

A is for Authoritarianism...

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local Police.” - The Griffin Briefing 29/07/2011

My views are now, illegal, apparently. Or they're going to be, at any rate (they're already demonised anyway).

Why else do the local police want information on me?

Admittedly, they don't know that they do; most people I know in real life know that I'm obsessed with politics, but think that, if anything, I'm a Marxist (maybe Maoist (I really, really am not)). Not to mention I call myself a “Libertarian socialist” in my Twitter bio specifically to avoid the stigma around anarchism.

Of course, this call for information is still pretty worrying, but it is worth noting that the police want ANY information relating to anarchists.

ANY information, with no apparent clause to make sure that the anarchists you're snitching on (anyone who replies to this request as it is intended is a Grade A knobhead BTW) a) are, have been and/or will be in the local area, and/or b) alive or active. Not to mention that, although the request is in an anti-terrorism briefing, the kinds of information that they want isn't specified.

Who says it has to be relevant information? (Well, the law might (I honestly don't know), but since it's a matter of when, not if, anarchists are going to get rounded up now, I think that this isn't the most pressing concern)

I mean, the number of digits we can recite Pi to (around 40 in my case /boast) may well prove to be the key which cracks our evil anarcho-terrorist cells. As well as our jam preferences and favorite type of iguana (assuming there are different types of iguana, I'm a bit fuzzy on this). I mean, it can't really identify anyone, but it sure could come in handy.

Not to mention anything about that Mikhail Bankunin, or that Emma Goldman... I mean they're really influential and stuff, if the police could just capture/kill them then the grip of anarchy over this fair land shall be broken!...

Oooh, and I could swear that the Daily Mail, the Sun and the like have a ton of articles on anarchists. I should send them directly to my local police!

There, now we should be really safe from the non-existent anarcho-terrorists. Sorted.;)

An A-Z of illogic

If you haven't read James Delingpole's atrocious Telegraph article from today [15/05/2011], I strongly suggest you don't as it will probably end up destroying whatever faith in humanity you have (likewise, whatever you do avoid the comments). If you have had the misfortune of seeing it, here's my response/letter-thing to his frankly ludicrous 'A to Z of Political Correctness'.

“A is for 'A-Levels'”

Which, contrary to popular belief, are not in fact just given away free with cereal, but require 2 years of work. Whilst the pass rate is pretty high (over 90% A to E, and yes over 25% get As), to make it look like this is due to a lack of effort on the part of the people taking A-levels and that A-levels are thereby worthless is pretty damn breathtaking. See also, 'Y'. P.S. If you think that people only go to University to get a self-esteem boost I strongly suggest you slap yourself in the face.

“B is for 'Bumper Cars'”

Not 'dodgems'. The Butlins guy explained it, come on. You were just pretty desperate here, weren't you.

“C is for 'Climate Change'”

Which there is, in fact, evidence for. From NASA, NASA. And anyway, we're running out of oil. We need to stop wasting energy to delay that too. If I find out you disapprovingly refer to people as 'deficit deniers' I'll... um... point out the disrepancy... on Twitter! Wait... that's a really shitty threat... never mind.

“D is for 'Drowning'”

There's no denying that Jordon Lydon's death by drowning was immensely tragic, and, had the PCSOs been trained, could have been prevented. However, I doubt it was Health and Safety rules which prevented them jumping in rather than said PCSOs being unable to deal with such a situation. Also, considering that the media is fostering negative attitudes towards immigration and multiculturalism, having a degree of knowledge concerning how to help reduce that is important (especially for a Police Community Support Officer).

“E is for 'Edinburgh, Duke of'”

An old man who makes not particularly funny jokes. Said jokes being non-PC has no bearing on the fact that they're shit. Also, I'm I'm fairly certain that the real 'greatest bastion of political incorrectness' is in fact another 'E': the 'Encyclopaedia Dramatica'.

“F is for 'Feminists, and Our Sense of Humour'”

Which is odd, as feminists aren't one homogeneous group. Nonetheless, I do recommend following @MediocreDave on Twitter, since he certainly has one (actually everyone I follow generally does, even Philip Davies MP (albeit a small one)). Also, the joke you stuck here was actually less funny than some of the Duke of Edinburgh’s.

“G is for 'Golliwog'”

An outdated, and possibly slightly racist, character. The suspension of two Conservative party activists after a complaint about them posing with one on Facebook (after being warned by the local branch that it didn't look good) being analogous to the censorship under the Soviet Union (you don't directly make this comparison, but it is certainly implicit (he refers to a couple of other probably racist things as being 'verboten' (German for prohibited, possibly utilised to produce Nazi connotations) and 'samizdat', apparently being unaware of what the latter term actually means). )).

“H is for 'Health and Safety'”

Which has absolutely fuck-all to do with political correctness, moving swiftly on...

“I is for 'Islamism'”

Which appears to have been conflated with Islam insofar that it isn't PC to offend people of other religions (at least deliberately offending people will be met with opposition, unintentional offence should really be met with an explanation of why something is offensive in my opinion). Also, I believe that this is the story you were referring to in your piece, so yeah, I'm actually inclined to take The Daily Mail's word on this and assume that you've managed to get your wires crossed in his head.

“J is for 'Jon Snow'”

The Pub, specifically... um, people should be kicked out of pubs because people complain about their sexual orientation. Wait a second... isn't the point of that article that people being offended isn't a reason for this sort of stuff?

“K is for 'KFC'”

Which only sells halal chicken in some of its 'restaurants' [citation needed] because it wants to have Muslim customers. Likewise, some Domino's Pizza have stopped selling pork products [citation needed], including pepperoni. Of course this is the truth, we should just take the good solid word of James Delingpole for it. EDIT: We actually should; he was half-right (KFC and Domino's did try the halal thing, but they stopped after it hit sales badly), well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day...

“L is for 'Llantrisant, South Wales'”

Where apparently £190,000 has been spent on making sure that dormice don't get killed [citation probably needed]. Um... what's that article meant to about again? EDIT: Delingpole was also right here, this being the second time a day he's right. Although it's still unrelated to the topic at hand really, and he missed the opportunity to bring up the nationwide cost (which is only tangentially related to the subtitle of the entry, but hardly dissimilar to what he's done on a large number of entries).

“M is for 'Motor Insurance'”

Because correlation doesn't equal causation, women have to pay the same as men when it comes to this. This is bad since women are 10 times less likely to have an accident (even though correlation is not the same as causation, and chances are it will pay off in the insurance excess instead). Unrelatedly, the EUCJ ruled that men and women should get paid equal pensions per year. Honestly "P is for Pensions" would have been way better than "P is for Peppa Pig".

“N is for 'Nigger'”

An indisputably racist term. Nonetheless, you seem to mourn being able to use it. I do have to agree that changing it to 'slave' in Huckleberry Finn isn't the right thing to do though, due to it being an artifact from the social-historical context in which the book was written.

“O is for 'Offence-Taking'”

“Which we have become so skilled at it should become a new Olympic sport”. I'm quoting out of context, but see 'Jon Snow' for an example of someone taking undue offence.

“P is for 'Peppa Pig'”
Who has been redrawn to wear a seatbelt because not wearing seatbelts offends Muslims or something. Alternatively, it's an attempt by whoever makes the show to avoid showing Peppa breaking the law.

“Q is for 'Quangos'”

Such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is bad. Because, um, human rights are bad? (Mind you, I wonder who's been put in charge of drafting the British Bill of Rights... if it's them you're going to end up eating your words for sure).

“R is for 'Rover'”

Who is presumably not a human since we apparently have to refer to him as a 'companion animal' rather than a 'pet'. Seeing as this is literally the first I've heard of this, the PC-brigade is obviously far too ubiquitous./Sarcasm

“S is for 'Sooty'”

A mildly racist nickname for the Prince of Wales's friend Kuldip Dhillon, which he apparently doesn't mind, and is probably not meant to be derogatory, but, since I don't know how he acquired it, I can't comment, so yeah.

“T is for 'Twitter'”

Apparently run by the 'Twitter Taliban' (read: people like me), who pick up on anyone who isn't PC and scream at them until they shut up. Or, y'know, use the block button.

“U is for 'Unreliable'”

Because I don't think you understand that people who are disabled have good and bad days, and thus are unreliable. Hereby, advertising for someone who is 'reliable' is being ableist (albeit unintentionally).

“V is for 'Vegetarianism'”
Which is a real pain for you since you really cannot be arsed to cater for guests who partake in such eating fads as having a gluten intolerance, the politically correct bastards.

“W is for 'Winterval'”

A fake festival in the way that the PopStation is a fake games console. What you doesn't realise is that Winterval isn't even that.

“X is for 'The Cross'”
Um. No it isn't. I'm fairly certain the 'Cross' begins with 'C'. Don't be lazy.

“Z is for 'Zoo'”

Which should really be in plural since we're moaning about the fact that they don't have any big animals in them any more, like in Twycross, what with their elephants, tigers, and apes. Also, I'm fairly certain that humans are the only animals with guns, so yeah, we are the most dangerous animals out there.

I am aware that I've skipped out 'Y', because I want to reserve the worst until the last.

“Y is for 'Yoofs'”

A. It's 'youths' not 'yoofs', and yet my generation is the one which has been dumbed down, go figure. And B. You know what, I'm going to let Delingpole do the talking here.

“Who, thanks to our failing education system’s “all shall have prizes” ethos, believe that the world owes them not only a living but also three taxpayer-subsidised years of rutting and drug-taking at university. Tell them it is unaffordable, and they riot around the Cenotaph. This is the generation whose parents were too caring to say “no”.

Actually scratch that. Because you know what? Yes GCSE pass rates are high, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING! 5 GCSEs A*-C is considered to be the benchmark, and far too many kids aren't getting that. As for the 'taxpayer-subsidised years of rutting and drug-taking', just because you, Davey, Boris and co. spent your uni days slacking off doesn't mean most kids do. Most kids have to work, and as for the 'all must have prizes' bullshit... what prizes are there to be had? I'm genuinely curious. The sad thing is, in my experience this isn't a fitting depiction of the generation I'm in, it's one for yours (well, for people of your class at least... yes, yes I am a bit bitter, but can you blame me?). 

Concerning edits: Thanks to @DickMandrake for giving me the info. 
By the way, his take on it can be found here: http://dickmandrake.blogspot.com/2011/05/a-z-of-delingpole-being-twat.html