On Democracy II (OA)

The second part I did of On Democracy. Which, since that was posted here more than six months ago, you might have to be reminded of. But there's a link in the text, so that's probably OK. This is my idea for a new system of governance. It's not necessarily perfect – or even workable. But it's a start.

Sorry about the last post¹. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me'². No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post³.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter⁴.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI⁵ and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution⁶. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista⁷.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform⁸. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time⁹. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transitiont¹⁰). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government¹¹.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too mucht¹².


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

¹ The post I'm referring to is actually 'It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid'. Don't worry, the American election isn't mortally offensive to me. Although part of me thinks it probably should be.

² It has, unfortunately, moved down a bit since then. You still don't get to see the list, although I probably am not massively surprising if I mention that some of the anti-asexual stuff is on there a further down.

³ Bwahahahaha. I implied that some of my posts might be interesting. Priceless.

⁴ I'm pretty sure that statement is ambiguous. Or possibly just plain wrong. What I mean is that the IR student would be more likely to be asked than the sociopathic economic genius. I think.

⁵5 I don't know when 'to transhuman' became a verb. That it is surprises me somewhat. Also: I am not entirely serious here. As far as you know.

⁶ Now, there are some who say it's not inevitable. But it clearly is – Hollywood told me so. Anyway, if you were ruled over by a creature of immeasurable stupidity, who you were incalculably far beyond, what would you do? Well, empirically, you'd vote them in for another term of office, but that's why you're not a hyperintelligent AI.

⁷ I'd say that this is dated, but I have a suspicion that the problems with vista might be timeless.

⁸ When I wrote this, I could be pretty confident everyone reading knew what the House of Lords was. I probably still can, since both of you seem fairly clever, but you do occasionally read this drivel, so I can't be sure. Basically, part of our government is appointed, in theory for being really good at things. In order to preserve democracy, these highly skilled people are not allowed to vote in general elections, and can't pass or block laws, merely delay things a little.

⁹ I really hope that this one is dated.

¹⁰ I actually did work out the costings for this, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far off from the right number, at least at the time.

¹¹ It took me a year and three months to actually do so. I'm good at this.

¹² My draft at the time for my next post read 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swervee of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recicrulation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' But it all just seemed a little too obvious and straightforward.

It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid (OA)

Not really much to say about this particular post. I'll just say that I actually tend to focus a bit more on the issue of men getting raped than on the same issue for women, for two reasons: Because it gets too little attention, and because I find it a rather annoying reinforcement of gender stereotypes - men as big and strong, women as weak and delicate. Which in turn leads to the whole thing of  rape victims having being raped seeming to reflect badly on the victim. Just to make it clear, all rape is terrible, and I assign exactly the same level of heinousness to both. Oh, and I'll link you to Survivors UK, since it's a charity that deals with exactly this.  

Originally, this post was going to be a continuation of 'On Democracy'. But several people have said something to me recently which annoys me. Including two teachers, which terrifies me beyond belief. As well, a lot of people seem to assume it’s true when they're talking about the subject. So what is the statement? 'Women can't rape men.' This is a statement so complete in its idiocy and utter in its inaccuracy that it's almost beautiful. Unfortunately, it's only almost beautiful. So now you get to sit through an explanation of everything I can think of that's wrong with this statement. This is going to be a long one.

First, an explanation of how the male body works, since this is apparently a subject on which people are pretty much entirely ignorant. There is no really delicate or tasteful way to say this. Erections aren't to do with desire, or even necessarily with pleasure¹. That's why aces (like me) can have sex, despite the fact that I, for example, given the choice between having sex and being locked in a coffin for an equivalent amount of time, would choose the latter². Without much hesitation. And among aces, I'm by no means unique in that - or even particularly extreme. In fact, a lot of aces find out that they're ace having had sex regularly for some time (or, indeed, because of having had sex regularly for some time). All that's required for an erection is a stimulation of certain nerves. So the biological barrier that people apparently think exists? Doesn't.

Secondly, whilst we're on the topic of indelicacy, the statement reveals a startling lack of creativity. There is more than one way to rape someone. There several sex acts you could force someone to perform even if they were an eunuch, and that's without using the devices humans seem so obsessed with coming up with to make it easier. Vibrators, for example.

Similarly, there are such things as drugs. How different is forcing someone into sex through force, and forcing someone into sex by drugging them? Really? They're both rape. You can rape someone through force, through threat of force, through blackmail, through drugs, through deceit, or in a thousand other ways I haven't thought of. And the terrible thing about many of those is that the victim might actually help with their own rape - because the rapist, in a way, makes them want to be raped. Not, I hasten to add, because they want to be raped, but because they prefer it to the alternative of being beaten senseless and murdered, or whatever else the rapist is threatening. Or because they don't really know what's going on, and don't really understand that they've been raped until later.

Fourth, there seems to be an underlying assumption here that if you enjoyed it, it isn't rape. This is about as valid as the idea that it isn't rape if you yell surprise, except that noone actually believes that one*. Say you rape someone, and it actually ends up improving their lives. They achieve nirvana, and never suffer again. That makes it OK, right? No. You are still a soulless rapist**. It doesn't matter that it ended up being good for them; people have ownership of their own bodies - that's why doctors need permission for lifesaving operations. Completeness leads me to point out here that, technically, it is legal to give consent after the fact - since only the victim is allowed to prosecute someone for rape. But, just because someone enjoyed something, doesn't mean they're not going to be angry that you forced it on them. I enjoy chocolate cake, but if you hold me down and force me to eat it, even if I enjoyed the cake, I'm still going to be rather unhappy about it afterwards.

Which brings me onto my fifth point - that physical pleasure and actual enjoyment don't have to coincide. Buddhism was right all along. If I get physical pleasure from decapitating attractive women***, I might enjoy it, but it’s probably not going to be good for my long term happiness. The same is true of rape - getting physical pleasure from being raped doesn't actually mean you enjoyed it. Actually, when you think about it, that makes it worse, long term. Pain can be dealt with - I'm not belittling it, but humans are surprisingly good at dealing with pain. That's why torture is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. But if you actually enjoyed it? That can lead to lovely results like Stockholm syndrome, self loathing, and the feeling that 'my body betrayed me'. So even if the man having an erection did indicate that he was experiencing physical pleasure, that wouldn't make it not rape.

There, is of course, another way you could look at the statement, which is to assume that men are all sex-obsessed, and that there's no way a man could be raped because they always enjoy sex. This involves ignoring everyone ace or gay, everyone with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, many of those with schizoid personality disorder, and I'm sure a lot of other people. But if we do ignore them, this explains why no man in human history has ever refused an invitation to consequence-free sex. Ever. You could also look at the statement as saying that women are clearly far too weak and pathetic to force a man into anything. Even if that were true, there are these marvelous modern inventions called guns. And drugs. And blackmail. Actual physical strength isn't a barrier. I'm not going to add these to my count of problems, because they rely on the people who say that men can't be raped believing in ridiculous sexist stereotypes, and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt³.

Even then, however, there are actually more problems with that statement than there are words. That's never really a good sign. It's sexist, idiotic, and belittles the suffering of thousands of people. So before you say something like that, do put in a tiny bit of research. There's a statistic (here, for example) that one in six men will be raped in their lives. I'm not sure that that's entirely accurate, but the numbers are still really high. So don't make sweeping generalisations like that about subjects you know nothing about. And when talking about rape, don't assume that it's a man raping a woman. Using he and she is fine, since English doesn't have gender neutral pronouns (although referring to a rapist as it wouldn't really worry me too much⁴), but as soon as you start to think of rape as a man forcing sex on a woman, you've gone wrong.

This post turned out rather serious, but at least I got through it without descending into inarticulate swearing. So, to counterbalance that a bit, here's a fun game for you. See if you can find the Star Trek quote in the above post. It’s from The Next Generation⁵. Next time, unless large numbers of people say something else to me that makes me question whether they have the intelligence of a retarded herring, I'll probably go on with 'On Democracy'.

*For the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to believe that's true.
**Also, that has never actually happened.
***Which, I must point out, is an example from Sandman, not from my deranged imagination.

¹ It is possible that there may be a relationship between the two for some guys. But it's an 'if', rather than an 'iff'.

² This becomes untrue, for the record, in the case of an airtight coffin - I don't like sex, but I do prefer it to death.

³ Though on reflection, I'm not entirely sure why. But I'm still going to.

⁴ Referring to the victim as 'it', on the other hand, unless they happen to be one of the few people for whom that actually is the correct pronoun, is utterly unforgivable dehumanisation, and you should never do it. Ever.
⁵ 

Horror games and other randomness (OA)

This is one of the most... random... posts I've ever done. I'd say I was just finding my style, but I'd kinda like to do more like this. Ummm... Not much to say, it really is pretty random. And I've corrected a few random typos again. There are two unmarked ones this time.

First of all, why are you not reading Hitherby Dragons¹? Seriously - go now. It's far more interesting than what I'm going to write about here, in a way that alternates between awesome, hilarious and occasionally terrifying beyond belief.

Secondly, faeries. Twilight would make much more sense if you replaced all of the vampires with faeries (fairies would also do at a pinch, but are less good), for several reasons:
1. Sparkling in sunlight makes a lot more sense for a race one of whose defining traits is glamour/illusion/enchanting mortals than for a race one of whose defining traits it having less tolerance for sunlight than ice cream.
2. Faeries being creatures who, as mentioned, traditionally rely a lot on mind manipulation, would probably be very interested in someone with a natural mind-shield (as Bella canonically has). Thus, you could get rid of large amounts of Bella's Mary-Sueishness without too much of an effect on the plot.
3. Vampires are rather easy to kill. You can stake them, wave garlic at them, leave them chained up in the middle of the Sahara at noon, cut off their heads, or simply blow them to smithereens (granted, all of these also work on normal people, although one has to be creative to kill someone with garlic). Faeries, on the other hand, are vulnerable only to iron – and sometimes only to cold iron. Even then, the vulnerability to iron varies from 'the mere touch of iron can incinerate them' to 'they aren't actually vulnerable to iron at all - they'll just come back from the dead if you kill them any other way'. Thus, Meyer doesn't have to screw with mythology to prevent her precious Edward from being repeatedly and emphatically dead².
4. Faeries have glamour. Therefore, it isn't really that incredible that they should all be incredibly attractive. Neither is it incredible that someone mortal becoming fey should increase in attractiveness. There isn't really such a commonsense explanation for a mortal becoming a walking corpse and suddenly being more attractive.
5. Faeries tend to be infertile. That's why they steal children. But the key word here is 'tend'. Faeries having children is not entirely unheard of, especially faeries having children with mortals. Thus, the plot could proceed as planned, it could be a complete surprise to everyone (in novel) that Bella was pregnant, without it having to contradict the novel's established system of vampire biology.
6. Faeries are approximately four thousand six hundred and twenty-four percent more awesome than vampires. You may think that that's just my opinion, but it’s not. It's scientifically proven - you can tell by the way I used percentages. This is mainly due to overexposure - vampires are clichéd, and angsty 'vegetarian' vampires are somewhere between 'the cake is a lie' and 'why did the chicken cross the road?' in terms of originality. Like Monty Python, except that Monty Python is intentionally funny³.

It wouldn't solve all the problems of Twilight (chief among them that it is written by Stephenie Meyer, although the plot, characters, and the fact that it's more than three pages long also all deserve a mention), but it would make it make somewhat more sense without actually having to change very much of any real significance. Just something I thought of. And now that I've revealed a more knowledge of Twilight than anyone male should really have⁴, and got to the end of several hundred words about faeries without having to decide whether the singular is 'faerie' or 'faery', onto the actual topic of this post. I promised something random, so here it is: video games.

Specifically, how horrible and deranged they are. I'm not talking about games like Silent Hill, or Call of Duty. Those just try too hard. These are five games that seem innocent enough, but which are really quite horrible if you actually think about them. And so, in order of subtlety:

5: Pokémon
Do I actually have to explain this one? You capture creatures with human/superhuman intelligence (e.g. Alakazam), some of which even used to be human (Yamask), and force them to battle each other for your amusement and profit. If that's not enough, remember that in wars, Pokémon fight with their trainers. Now imagine all the ways a Pokémon could kill you. Or imagine being a civilian in a world where ten year old children are allowed to walk around carrying what are effectively weapons of mass destruction.
4: Robot unicorn attack
You might seem like you're playing as an adorable and colourful unicorn setting out to fulfil your dreams. But as time passes, it gets harder and harder to stay alive. No matter how many people (well... fairies) you murder for your own gain, you might gain friends (dolphins) for a while, but in the end, you have no chance of actually fulfilling your dreams, and a meaningless death is all that awaits you. And through all this, the world and music remain bright and cheery. The heavy metal version is just trying too hard though⁵.
3: Super Mario
It’s a game where you fight enemies by crushing them to death. Or throwing fireballs at them. When you eat strange mushrooms everyone around you becomes tiny and pathetic. Flowers can cause you to gain special powers. So... Horrible murder and strange distortions of reality caused by ingesting unidentified plant matter⁶. Need I go on?
2: Pac Man
You're in an inescapable maze, trapped forever, forced to endlessly repeat the task of picking up objects and chased by murderous ghosts. If you somehow succeed in your task, everything you've done will be undone, and you'll just have to do it again, unless you can do it enough times (two hundred and fifty five times actually), in which case your selfish quest for self preservation will end with the world itself breaking. Try and leave by one of the two apparent exits, and you'll just end up back at the other one. By taking strange unidentified yellow pills, you might be able to fend off the ghosts for a brief while, but they'll always come back. You'll never actually be able to give them more than a temporary defeat. And the longer your struggle to survive goes on, the less capable you are of doing even that.
1: Eversion
OK, here I have nothing. Even I can't come up with a way to make this game sound evil. It's a sort of Mario clone, so I could of steal from there, but I'm above that. You can download it here, or on Steam, and if you can find anything at all dark in it, please tell me. You play as an adorable little asterisk in a bright, shiny little world. What could possibly go wrong⁷?

Right then. That was my list. It should probably worry me that the actual intended topic of the post turned out to be less than half of the actual text. I might do some more in this vein someday, but next up: Rape. Because the words 'consistent mood' mean nothing to me⁸.


¹ I will periodically recommend this blog. Seriously, read it. Now. It is. Really. Good. If you have some spare money, you could do a lot worse than to spend it on some of the other stuff the author's written. She is genuinely brilliant. Incidentally, I was to some extent trying to emulate her style in The Epic of Veris. I failed rather utterly, but to be fair she is really good, and that style is really hard to do right.
² This is edited from OA, since in OA I had a sudden attack of wishful thinking, and talked about how Meyer could make Edward die. If only.
³ I'm pretty sure I'm referring to the endless ad nauseum repetition of Python, not the original work of the Pythons, which is really original.
⁴ Wow. My gender politics were a lot more traditional when I wrote this. For the record, I'm also wrong - Twilight would be a gender thing rather than a sex thing, so it should be 'any man'. Funnily enough, I didn't really conform to gender stereotypes even then, so I'm not sure why I wrote that. It's probably a combination of not really thinking about gender stereotypes (I didn't conform to them, but I didn't really question or challenge them either), and the fact that in those days I was mostly writing for people I kne
⁵ Of all the games on this list, RUA is the only one that might possibly be intentional. Given some of the startup messages, it's at least acknowledging that viewpoint. Honestly, I'm not really sure what to think about it.
⁶ Everyone might know what I'm talking about, so I'm not going to correct it, but the grammar here makes me wince. For the record, the unidentified plant matter doesn't actually cause the horrible murder. As if you didn't already know that. Also, I'm talking about the original Super Mario Bros.
⁷ Yes, it's an obvious joke. Yes, a load of people probably saw it coming. I still had to do it, though. Eversion is actually a really good game. You could do a lot worse than playing it (and I just realised how much advertising I'm doing in this post). If possible, try not to learn anything about it before hand, since it plays better that way, but please do pay attention to the content notice. It's... not a joke.
⁸ Yes, I actually used to plan my next post in advance. And to try and pattern - I'd try to alternate silly/serious, and I wouldn't do two of a series in a row. Ah, when I was organised.

On Democracy I (OA)

Another thing from Old Acanthus - the post that made me decide to get a blog to start with, even predates the introduction.

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Facebook page, which is why I mention at the end that I should get a blog (why yes, I could remove that bit, since it is indeed entirely pointless¹). Since I have a blog now, I'll definitely do another one of these.

Since I’m trying to convince people that I don’t think I’m better than everyone else (I lie sometimes – I totally am ;)² ), it seems like a good chance to explain my views on democracy, since it occurs to me that joking about how I think I should be dictator of the world might give the wrong impression (and because I enjoy writing about my views; I’m human like that).

So, just to clarify, I don’t think I should be dictator of the world, for reasons I’ll go into. The rest of this is just going to be me going on about my political philosophy. Just to clarify, no matter what I might say when I’m rushed to explain things, my view is not ‘people who are unintelligent shouldn’t get the vote’. Nor is it ‘one person should rule the country as dictator’. I might be being cynical, but I don’t think anyone is qualified for that, and even if they were, what about the next person? Checks and balances are always good. I simply think that noone, regardless of intelligence or education, whose knowledge of economics is limited to ‘taxes are bad’ should be given a say in the country’s economic policy. And yes, I’m aware that a decent economist supporting someone might cause people to support that candidate, but when they disagree (i.e. always) the result is based on people skills, not economics, since explaining advanced economic theory is rather difficult.

The same applies to almost everything else from the environment (people still don’t believe in human-caused global warming, so either their knowledge of climate science is woefully inadequate, or mine is) to science (should we give this grant money to the friendly and charming man who works with animals who works with animals and is rather a joke around other biologists, or the autistic savant neo-Nazi who pulls the wings off flies* and who other biologists think has about a ninety percent chance of curing cancer?).

So my first proposal is simple. Hardly ground-breaking at all. Before you’re allowed to vote on things, you have to show that you have at least a basic understanding of the things involved. And I really do mean basic, if only because as soon as it goes beyond the most basic understanding possible, the risk of institutional bias is far too great.

Yes, there are practical problems with this. That’s why I say that I have theoretical objections to democracy. You’d need to do at least some work on the practicalities, although you’d probably be able to get a group of experts which would be accepted as neutral (think Select Committees and juries).
I might do something else on this subject, going into a bit more detail on my politics, at some point. Or I might do one on world government. OTOH⁴, this is getting a bit… bloggy⁵.

EDIT: BTW, anyone who wants to criticise or in any other way make fun of this, feel free. I'm fairly confident in my opposition to democracy, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to think that I can just come up with something better at sixteen that noone's thought of yet. There are probably a few problems with my ideas (actually, there definitely is at least one, which I'll deal with if I do another one of these)⁶.

*Note: I’m not implying that any of these things are linked. Especially not the autism³.


¹ Yes, that makes this the third time that this has been published. 
² Oh my god a smiley. That's something I never do these days. Actually, I think my style's changed a fair bit since I wrote this, but it might just be that I notice the changes more. 
³ OK, if there's one thing in my style that really has changed, it's the steady increase in the numbers of footnotes. I mean seriously, one? It's almost like this was written by a completely different person who was five foot six and who had red hair and blue eyes, from whom I stole it before burying the real author under my shed.*

⁴ And an abbreviation - another thing that I don't do any more.
⁵  Actually, I think one of the things that has changed is that I've got more bloggy and less personal. There's less of an assumption that you know me. This might be bloggy for a Facebook post, but it's a little Facebooky for a blog post.

⁶ This, by the way, applies to pretty much everything I write, except for my level of confidence in my viewpoint - democracy is one of the higher ones (also, I'm not sixteen anymore. Actually, I'm not even sure I was sixteen when I wrote this. There exists a non-zero possiblilty that I might possibly have got my own age wrong.


*OK, I'd normally be a bit iffy bout commenting on my own commentary, but that joke really doesn't work. I am sorry.

Introduction (OA)

I've decided to post at least some of the bits of Old Acanthus on here (marked OA), with some footnoted commentary. This is the first thing I ever posted on Acanthus, though not actually the first thing I wrote for it. Since this is something I said I'd update, though, this has changed a bit from the first post of it. What's a change to the text is pretty much arbitary.

Incidentally, I also jsut posted something else, which was actually new, in case you want to check that.


I suppose I should start this with a general explanation of my insanity, and the random stuff on this blog. I'm Ben, although you probably already know this, as I can't imagine that anyone came across this blog without knowing me¹. Still, best to mention it, for anyone who's randomly passing through on the way to something more interesting. So I thought I'd answer some of the questions you probably have:

What the hell is wrong with you?
Please be more specific, imaginary question asking voice. I'm tired of that question.

What does Acanthus mean?
It's a flower - used a picture of it to the right of the old blog²*. According to the Noblis rulebook it represents the fine arts (although the dictionary of flowers I normally use disagrees, not having a definition for acanthus at all). It's also the name of one of the Paths in Mage. As you may have guessed by now, I am a massive nerd (although in my defence I only remembered the Mage thing whilst looking for a picture).

So why did you use it as a blog title?
I'm going to be honest here, and say that it's the voices in my head told me to. But I'll put a winky face here, so you think I'm joking: ;).
Seriously, though, I really have no idea. It was originally going to be called 'Winter and Twilight' (which I also have no idea of the origins of), but someone might have thought it had some connection to Twilight³. I'm rubbish at names, so I generally go with 'random nonsense stuff that has some vague relevance and doesn't sound too terrible'.

What about 'Hamlet 22288 ⁴?
Hamlet act 2, scene 2, line 288. It's at the end of one of his speeches to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

When will you update this?
I have no idea. When I get round to it, and have time. I'm happier to update at random when I have something which at least I'm happy with than have a schedule and try to think of things on that schedule. That said, as it turns out, I do try to do at least one update a month (mainly to prevent annoying month gaps in the display of my archives).

What will this be about?
Whatever I find interesting at the time. There'll be at least a bit of random politics and philosophy, and at least a bit about me. Yeah, as you may have guessed, I'm not really much good at the whole 'planning' thing. Another thing it turns out I talk about a lot is my sexuality (or lack thereof).

Why are you so bad at spelling?
I can't proofread. I'll try to run these things through spellcheck, but some things aren't in spellcheck, so I'll miss some stuff. If I've spelt your name, the name of your home, or anything like that wrong, I apologise in advance, tell me and I'll fix it⁵.

Why are you so wordy?
I have a tendency to go on a bit. That's why I got a blog in the first place. It's probably the first** stage of my slide into super-villainy - first comes uncontrollable monologuing, then comes stroking a white cat and holding the UN hostage with a giant laser. So I'll shut up now. If you have any other questions, ask them in comments, and I'll try to keep this updated.


*A note on that picture: I think that's public domain, but it’s from http://nobilis.mapache.org, also known as the tenth result on Google Images, and if anyone wants me to remove it I will.
**OK, the thirty-seventh, but bear with me.
Commentary
¹ This, apparently isn't true any more. Strangely.
² Actually, one of the reasons I've been reluctant to switch entirely to this blog and delete the old one is (basically) that, aesthetically, I kinda prefer the old layout. On the other hand, this layout is probably more streamlined, easier to read, and let's the reader choose their own formatting. Since you lot won't tell me what you prefer, I'll probably drag someone in for a second opinion at some point.
³ As you probably know by now (or will, if this is the first of my posts that you're reading), I... don't really like the Twilight series (and no, it is not a saga).
⁴ The old blog's adress was hamlet2-2-288, which I think makes the reference clearer. That's another reason I have some lingering affection for it. But I'm probably stuck, since people know this adress, and I don't know how to make one redirect to the other (but if this ever does go down, it might be worth).
⁵ I actually don't think I've made that many spelling mistakes, somewhat to my surprise.