Here we go again

On the front page of today’s paper is a piece about Rudd’s backflip on the same-sex marriage debate. I wish they’d stop wasting public money arguing about this, it’s meaningless.

Historically, marriage was a breeding contract, the primary function of which was to establish inheritance rights for the fruit of the union. That’s what it means for a child to be legitimate: entitlement to a share in the parents’ estates. Bastards had no such entitlement, unless they were formally “recognised” as heirs.

Bible-bashers love to say that marriage is “the union of a man and a woman”. They emphasize the procreation part and totally fail to mention that inheritance and rearing are no longer contingent on marriage.

Modern family law utterly disregards marriage in respect of childrearing responsibility and inheritance. I suspect this change was an attempt by Lionel Murphy and his mongrel mates to force other men to pay for the fruit of their philandering, but that’s incidental. The key fact is that marriage is now largely irrelevant to inheritance.

Even if a same sex union did somehow acquire children (by adoption, for example) childrearing and inheritance are no longer affected by marriage. It’s now wholly ceremonial. Since it’s now simply a declaration of love, with nothing to say about children, the gender of the participants is irrelevant.

If you want a party, have one. You don’t need a certificate.

So that’s why I see this as a legal non-event. The other side of it is the desire of the same sex couples to indulge in the ceremonial aspects. The thing is, they can have all the ceremony they like. They can dress up and test people’s bladders in churches and halls, and they can have a big party afterwards. They just can’t have a contract governing the union of a man and a woman for the breeding of heirs unless they are a man and a woman, in the same sense that you can’t have a contract of sale unless one of you is a buyer and one of you is a seller.

If they want to guarantee the distribution of their estate, they can write a will, like anyone else.

Since the marriage contract is now utterly toothless, I wish the establishment would give them a damn certificate so I don’t have to listen to this meaningless debate again.

Into the darkness of gods and men

The new Star Trek movie seems to have polarised people. It has been described as more of an action movie with a Star Trek theme than “true Star Trek”. I think this is a fair comment, but some people are horrified. Despite mediocre acting, predictable plots and lame dialogue, Star Trek had a Shakespearean quality in that it rarely fails to examine the human condition. This is what Trekkies mean when they say it isn’t “true Star Trek” and complain that JJ Abrams has reduced it to yet another action flick.

Others denounce this view as pretentious twaddle and applaud the movie precisely because it is a glossy action flick.

It has been observed that Into Darkness fails the Bechdel Test, which is to say that it fails to contain two women talking about anything unrelated to relationships, breeding or housekeeping for at least a minute. The original Trek series also generally fails this test, but it does have Lt Uhuru, who within the narrow scope of her duties and allowing for the hierarchy of command, is so consistently treated as an equal that Martin Luther King asked her to continue in the role when at the end of the first season she wanted to do something else (although he was more concerned with issues of race than of gender).

Trek is painted with bold strokes in primary colours. It makes deliberate use of stereotypes all the time, because they are iconic. Cheap special effects and a cast unchanging bar the red-shirts treating a handful of repeating themes (we’re the only ship in the sector – again) mean that like Kabuki, necessary but unimportant operational details are predictable and therefore do not occlude the issues actually under examination.

We’re the only ship in the sector – again!

The multi-nationality of the command deck was entirely intentional, and not at all subtle, especially in the sixties. On the other hand, all that equality notwithstanding, ultimate authority was given to someone who was white, male and conspicuously American. I don’t think Roddenberry intended to push this particular wagon, it merely reflects his prejudices. If he did, it was most likely a sop to the prejudices of his primary audience, who were and continue to be mostly American. It’s important to remember that the series was a commercial enterprise, if you’ll forgive a pun.

And so it is with the latest movie. This one is an undisguised remake of Wrath of Khan. In some ways this is an unsurprising choice: Wrath of Khan is widely regarded as the best of the Trek movies. Yet this guarantees comparison, which is unlikely to elicit favourable results.

The fans love Trek for its Shakespearean quality, even if they wouldn’t articulate it that way. If Paramount wants to turn Star Trek into a generic blockbuster, that is Paramount’s prerogative. The fan base won’t disappear, but it might go its own way. There’s already one Trek movie made without Paramount. They must have had permission from Paramount, because otherwise the copyright violations were legion, and there were actors from TOS, TNG, VOY and DS9 participating, including Chekov and Uhuru! For whatever reasons, Kirk and Spock chose not to be in it, but that just meant that finally there was a Trek movie that was about someone else.

It was called Of Gods and Men and it was the polar opposite of JJ Abrams’ treatment. The production values and acting were on par with TOS. The script was as absurd as any TOS episode, and in fact the villain was Gary Mitchell from Where No Man Has Gone Before, Kirk’s debut, as well as a villain from another episode who causes alternate history before redeeming himself in a giant deus ex machina of the type so common in vintage Trek.

Of Gods and Men is classic Trek

It sounds dreadful, but quite a bit of TOS is dreadful, and no less loved for it. But OGAM is rescued by two things: a stellar performance from Nichelle Nichols, and that Shakespearean consideration of the human condition that I keep mentioning. It was camp, it was predictable, yet through the banality shone the flame of the Trekkies’ certainty that the world can be a better place, and that they want to live in that better place.

Trekkies are fascinating people full of contradiction. They know that technology for its own sake can be a bad thing, and they desperately want to crew a starship (but not in a red shirt). They all think structure and rules are necessary, yet they all cheer every time Kirk chooses personal integrity over orders. They love Spock for knowing that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one, and they love Kirk for adding except when it doesn’t. Trek is irrepressible optimism: let’s see what’s out there!

---

For those who don’t know the lingo:

TOS – The Original Series
TNG – The Next Generation
VOY – Voyager
DS9 – Deep Space 9
OGAM – Of Gods and Men

Invisible hands that touch nothing

While searching for something else I ran across one of those tiresome websites that attempt to muster evidence to defend their faith against the depredations of all those dreadful atheists.

On said website was a page claiming that the philosopher Antony Flew had changed his mind and become a Deist. This worried me, because Flew was an eminent and very capable thinker. My first thought was that it was another deathbed conversion lie of the sort that is popular with bible-thumpers.

When things go wrong, ask your invisible magic friend who loves you to do something about it. Let me know how you get on with that.

It’s not an outright lie but it is a deliberate misrepresentation, and a twisting of the truth that would do any lawyer pround. I found this – from the prelude to which I lift this excerpt:

On 16th December 2004, Professor Antony Flew, British philosopher, well known rationalist, atheist and an Honorary Associate of Rationalist International, telephoned me and informed [me] that the wild rumours about his changed views are baseless. He expressed surprise over the confusion some people have spread and asserted that his position about the belief in god remains unchanged and is the same as it was expressed in his famous speech “Theology and Falsification”. “I find no new reason to change my views”, Professor Flew said.

So what was the position stated in T+F then? If you want it from the horse’s mouth then follow the link and read it. I encourage you to do so, it’s presented as a simple parable followed by some analysis and explication.

The gist is that if god is a gardener then he is an invisible, silent, gardener who doesn’t do any gardening, which is effectively the same as no gardener at all.

He spells out that last bit, which is hardly the argument of someone who believes in god.

As for his decision to describe himself as a deist, this means that he sees god as a force of nature, the force of nature: eternal, vital, as fundamental and as mindless as gravity. In Jefferson’s day it was not safe to be publicly identified as an out and out atheist. Thomas Paine chose this path, and it brought him endless grief.

Deism isn’t faith, it’s a poetic way of saying there is no meaning but what we read into things. It’s a way of sounding just religious enough to keep self-righteous thugs and vandals away, without having to lie or pretend to believe their superstitious twaddle.

The real mistake

Media wankers (aka journalists) like to create news by deliberately misrepresenting comparatively innocuous things. There ought to be a charge similar to perjury for this, but it would be hard to prove deliberate misrepresentation and lawyers would have to refuse to represent dodgy clients. If you tried to bring in such a law the media would misrepresent it and the lawyers would twist it until the media weren’t far from the truth.

Tim Cook (Apple) recently took advantage of pop journalism to misrepresent Microsoft’s efforts with Windows 8. He got it completely wrong, which is funny because there was a related and completely valid criticism he could have levelled. Cook compared Win8 to combining a toaster with a fridge. That’s not a reasonable comparison.

fridge + toaster = cook different

Mobile devices for maintaining low temperatures do exist. In Australia we call this device an Esky because that’s a famous make of the device which was invented here. In New Zealand they call it a “chilly bin” because they just have to be different from Australians (this is hilarious since the brand of the first Australian make of Esky was “Chilly Bin”) and I think Americans call it an “ice box” but I’m not completely sure that’s the same thing. At any rate it’s an insulated box with an airtight lid and a carry handle; you put ice in it to keep it cold, and it can also keep things hot. More expensive variants use metal junction thermal effects to actively cool or heat. The parallel with mobile computing is surprisingly strong: performance is lame and battery life is an issue.

To extend Cook’s metaphor, what Microsoft has done is produce a real fridge the size of an Esky with fairly reasonable power consumption and a snazzy user interface, and update their range of kitchen fridges to have the same interface, with the intent of producing a consistent user experience during the expected incorporation of warming tech into domestic fridges.

This is very different from trying to combine a fridge with a toaster, which is the sort of nonsense Apple would foist on fanbois while telling us to “cook different”. 

Apple insists on being different for the sake of elitist snobbery. Happily, now that iPhones are a commodity item this no longer works for them and consumer backlash has been growing steadily.

Microsoft’s real mistake was the same one it made when it introduced the ribbon to Office: they made it an exclusive choice. There was no reason to take away the menu. You can have both. The ribbon is great once you know where things are, and horrible when you don’t. If they’d just left the menu in place, users would have been eased into using the ribbon. Hell, they could have the menu item select the right menu tab and flash the item. People would have loved it, and ribbon adoption would have been rapid and enthusiastic.

They did more or less the same thing with Windows 8. The start screen is basically the start menu but full screen and obscuring the taskbar. Why can’t it live above the taskbar as a desktop app, a borderless window hosting the universe formerly known as metro? Better yet, they could have used F12 like a web browser, to toggle window chrome (borders, title bar and so forth, versus full-screen client area).

Since the UI formerly known as metro is already designed to scale to differing display sizes, hosting it in a normal resizable window presents no obvious challenge.

I run a dual monitor setup at home, and apart from the inability to host metro apps in a normal window I have most of the above already. I have metro on one screen and normally windowed apps on the other. The taskbar appears on both monitors, which works extremely well. The most annoying aspect is that systray icons appear on only the primary monitor and metro apps often obscure them. I know that appearing in two places could be tricky to do, so whenever a taskbar is obscured they ought to be moved to the other one. Of course metro-in-a-window would solve this anyway, but it would still be worthwhile moving the systray if it were obscured by F12 making an app full-screen. In this scenario it’s possible to obscure the taskbar on both screens, but if they’re both obscured, moving the systray won’t make things any worse.

MYOB

I saw a piece in the paper in which it was suggested that British footballers were “too scared” to reveal their sexuality.

Frankly I don’t think it’s anyone’s business how they get their rocks off, unless you’re

• A parent hoping for an heir
• A prospective sexual partner
• A medical adviser
• Likely to contact body fluids for medical reasons

I don’t feel moved to announce – other than in a specialised context like this – that I like shagging girls, and I’m fairly sure no-one other than my parents and girlfriend cares one way or the other. I’m not “too scared,” it’s simply a private matter seldom pertinent.

In the context of a football team, announcing your unconventional habits serves only to make the other players slightly uncomfortable about sharing a dressing room, since they aren’t sure you shouldn’t be using the other dressing room.

If you think I’m a dreadful regressive person with an unacceptable attitude, ask yourself (a) whether you like masturbating, (b) whether this is ok, (c) whether you feel a need to tell people about it, and (d) whether doing so would make them uncomfortable in your company. Now ask the same questions in the context of your sexual orientation.  The fact that you needn’t be embarrassed about being yourself does not mean you are obliged – or entitled – to parade down the main street shrieking for attention.

My congratulations to the British soccer players for their discretion. It’s nobody’s business but theirs.

On ongoing tragedy

Someone asked me why I don’t go to the dawn service. It was a good question, so I’ll honour it with what I think is a good answer.

The armed services (of every nation) go on and on about chain of command and the honour of service, and they use a variety of operant conditioning to instil the behaviour exemplified at Gallipoli. In a nutshell, they persuade soldiers that obedience is a virtue in and of itself. Thinking about the orders and what they imply is actively discouraged.

Blind obedience underpins the ability of governments to engage in appalling misconduct like the Vietnam war. Without it, they’d never persuade people to go get shot at in a foreign swamp; soldiers would think about it for five minutes and say “Tell you what, minister, send a couple of squads to observe and if Charlie starts boarding boats we’ll all get ready to fight, and if necessary die.”

The brave men at Gallipoli died because another country (Britain) regarded them as disposable and carelessly squandered their lives. That really bothers me, and it’s a big part of the reason I left the service. They got idiotic orders, and they spent their lives executing them to no avail. It was brave, but it was also bloody stupid.

Once upon a time I was a Signalman. We routinely handled the correspondence of mid-level officers, and it came to me one day that they were as much ordered about as we were. Thinking about this, I realised that even the highest ranks are instructed by the government.

Australians regard politicians as untrustworthy, to the point where we aren’t at all surprised when they turn out to be corrupt. Would you take orders from someone you think is a self-serving fool?

I wouldn’t even trust them with my lunch money, so I’ll be damned if I put my life in their hands. If you think this is over the top then remember that every soldier hurt in Afghanistan is there so that politicians can curry favour with another power.

Anzac day marks a tragedy that’s ongoing. If it were just about the memory of the brave I’d be there, but it’s used by power brokers to glorify obedience just so they can keep playing their games. I can’t be part of that.

It would be good if it could…

You’re doing a demo to your lords and masters in another state. In their infinite wisdom they decide that it would be good if the user could export the data from the page.  Never mind that there are six different things that could be exported. Never mind that they’ve just added a whole raft of use cases and testing.

Yes, yes, they understand it will impact delivery schedules.

Of course the next week they’ve forgotten they said that, and there is no written work order for the variations.

Probably the best move is to say “Just so you can be sure you get exactly what you want, best to write it down in an email, along with the main use case. As soon as I you send that, I’ll update the schedule and redo the estimates for approval so you can send the costs with a brief business case to your manager for approval.”

People always think a feature is vital when implementing it is someone else’s problem.

In many cases, the fact that effort is required of the suggester is enough to put him off. If he’s still keen, chances are that in the hurley-burley of a work day he’ll simply forget. If he does get as far as documenting the change requirements for the brilliant idea, he will discover how much work it entails.

If you actually get a change request, it’s probably worth doing. Even then, proposed updates to the schedule will often be vetoed to protect the delivery date or the budget.

The meaning of cheese

The acolyte Dave spent his years in an erratic quest for purpose.

One day, he became depressed from his lack of success, and chanced to ask Zen Master Wone, “What is the meaning of life?”

Master Wone said nothing, but cut a slice of cheese and set it before the acolyte.

The next day, the acolyte admitted his lack of understanding, and Master Wone relented, framing the question for him: “As well to ask the meaning of cheese. What does cheese mean to you?”

Enlightened, Dave took up the cheese and hungered no more.

Gender bias silliness

The gender debate amuses me. If women were completely equal to men in every way, they would be men, and that would be no fun at all. Just as good, but definitely not the same.

One thing about it that doesn’t amuse me is the stupidity of governments requiring employers to make gender an employment selection criterion.

There are good reasons for gender bias in employment.

A profession may impose practical considerations such as disposition or physical size and strength. This is gender selection by a job. In this scenario one gender is better suited to the job.

When was the last time you heard a woman complain that her partner hogs all the garbage removal and drain unblocking, and never lets her have a go?

Or it may be something that a particular gender frequently chooses to do, such as computer programming, or not to do, such as garbage collector. This is job selection by a gender. Either gender could do the job, but one gender is attracted or repelled by it more than the other. Women don’t have to be computer programmers if they don’t want to. Men aren’t obliged to be hairdressers.

Both of these are common scenarios.

There are exceptions. My partner is a real trooper. I bought her an industrial nail gun once and she was  pleased about this. Yet there remains the eternal mystery of the role testicles have in taking the garbage out.

Anyway, my point was that if the ladies don’t want to be computer programmers, it is grossly inappropriate to try to make them do it, or to punish employers for the fact that women don’t happen to like a particular activity.

Granddad’s threads

I was grumbling the other day about await/async.

I asserted that if you release a chainsaw that even an idiot can use, then you will find yourself surrounded by idiots brandishing chainsaws.

Async/await means you can write code as though it were linear with blocking calls, and provided the calls return Task<TResult> and the invocations specify await, then they do block from the point of view of your naïve linear code but they don’t block from the point of view of the UI thread.

All this works extremely well. Too well, I thought – people are going to stop understanding why their code works, and just follow a simple convention.

But it comes to me that the same could be said of variables declared inside a method. The non-trivial compiler inference of stack frame machinery means you really don’t need to know to use it successfully and safely. Now this is true of parallelism.

This isn’t your grandfather’s threading.