Your opinion is irrelevant

The problem with lawyers is they think all laws are open to interpretation, including the laws of mathematics. They think they can always get the answer they want if they just ask the question the right way.

They are wrong.

74 million is less than 80 million.

74 million has always been less than 80 million.

74 million will always be less than 80 million.

There are no circumstances under which 74 million could ever be more than 80 million.

This is not opinion. These are objective facts. 

When an electoral system states that the candidate with the most votes wins, then the candidate who received 80 million votes beats the candidate who received 74 million votes.

If anyone would like to lecture me about the distinction between the popular vote and the electoral college vote, then I simply invite you to go back to the top, replace the number 74 million with the number 232, and the number 80 million with the number 306.

That’s the beauty of maths. It always works. Even a Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich (this is a real thing by the way) will not change the answer.

Your opinion is irrelevant. Your feelings are irrelevant. Whether you believe it, is irrelevant.

The problem with people disputing the result of the 2020 US presidential election is their argument boils down to nothing more than, “I don’t believe it.”

Lawyers prosecuting the case that Donald Trump won the election keep trying to change the question in such a way as to achieve an answer they are comfortable to believe. But no matter how they try to interpret the law, they will never make 232 add up to more than 306.

There have been many credible allegations of electoral fraud in US elections in the past, but not this year. Even Trump’s lapdog Bill Barr has been forced to admit the facts are not on his side. Facts don’t take sides. Facts are facts. People choose whether to side with the facts. This decision is of course irrelevant.

Many years ago, I was in an OHS course where one of the students kept wanting to argue the legislation with the trainer. At one point, when he said, “Well, I don’t agree,” for the umpteenth time, our trainer just gave up and said, “I don’t care whether you agree or not. I’m telling you how it is.”

Although the modern world has allowed many people to create their own realities, there is still such a thing as objective truth. You may agree or disagree with the second part of that statement but it doesn’t matter.

Facts are facts. Truth is truth. Your opinion is irrelevant.

  

Black Friday Bam-a-lam!

 

Dear bands, singers, musicians, and other assorted recording artistes as appropriate:

If you must go in for this Black Friday nonsense – and I get that market forces probably mean you have to – do you know what I would really like to order from your online store?

A CD.

Not a hoodie.
Not a denim jacket with a patch bearing your name sewn on the sleeve.
Not an infant’s onesie.

Not your latest album spread across ten 7” picture discs.
Not monogrammed cigarette papers.
Not a download with extra tracks. If I’m going to pay for a download, it had better be at least 48kHz, 24-bit lossless or GTFO!
Not a pair of socks.
Not Christmas tree decorations.
Not a 250g LP in 4-colour spattered vinyl because that’s the only physical medium you chose to release the album in. Hey, I love vinyl but I’m not a fetishist.
Not a scarf.
Not a pillow case.
Not a water bottle.
Not a mug.
Not a teapot.
Not a cassette. I like retro technology but cassettes sucked even when they were the best option available.
Not a dartboard.
Not a jigsaw puzzle.
Not a hip flask.
Not a pint glass/shot glass/bar set.
Not a tote bag.
Not a tea towel.
Not a lithograph of a concert poster which was never used for the original tour anyway.
Not a CD which has been bundled with a vinyl record, T-shirt/jacket/hoodie, and art print.

Just a plain old CD.

Actually, it doesn’t have to be plain.

I love beautiful packaging, so long as your idea of beautiful packaging isn’t a massive hardcover book bound in virgin ostrich leather which will take up 25% of my shelf and cost somewhere in the vicinity of a flight to Thailand.

And it doesn’t have to be old.

I’d prefer some new music to your most popular album remastered by technicians at Space-X under the supervision of the original tape-op because somehow the four previous remasters still didn’t get it right. And that slight remix to strip the original album of the production values which didn’t remain fashionable? Not really necessary. I know they didn’t have Pro Tools in 1970. That might be why the original records were so good. If you took all the gated reverb off the snares in those 80s albums, would we even recognise the songs? And in situations where the principle artist is no longer around to approve (or disapprove), it’s getting dangerously close to musical fan-fic.

Just one further request:

Could you put ALL the music on the CD please? Don’t hit me up in another 6 months to buy the version with all the tracks you forgot to include the first time around. And if you want to do a coffee-table book edition – so called because it’s roughly the size of an actual coffee table – that’s fine for those who like that kind of thing, but please don’t expect me to invest in this massive slab of furniture just to get the bonus live disc. That really isn’t fair. DVDs are cool too. Include them by all means but the same rule applies: don’t make the DVD with all the bonus features only available to those willing to shell out for the version that comes in a ¼ size replica pyramid with certified used guitar strings and a lock of the singer’s hair.

I am more than willing to pay a price which, averaged out across the print run, will compensate you for the time and resources spent writing, recording, mixing, manufacturing and distributing the product, with a reasonable profit margin.

Is that too much to ask?

 

The five levels of Trump delusion

No-one really gives a shit that Donald Trump himself is denying all reality. 

He is just being who he has always been and doing what he has always done. 

It's not as if he didn't telegraph the fact he would dispute the election result way back in the middle of 2016. When someone starts making excuses for losing well before the game has even started, that ought to tell you something, but here we are. 

Whether or not he concedes is irrelevant. Whether or not he refuses to leave is irrelevant. If Trump is still in the White House at 12:01pm on January 20th, he will be a trespasser and treated as such by the Secret Service. Their duty is not to Trump but to the duly elected president of the day. I, for one, would pay to watch that

His backers like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and anyone remotely connected with Breitbart, who have used Trump as a front for their own crypto-facist ambitions, don't give a rat's whether the election was free and fair or not. They would probably prefer it wasn't. To them, democracy is simply an unavoidable (for now) impediment to their objectives. 

They may or may not believe their own bullshit. It hardly matters. It's all a means to an end for them.

Trump's children - who would be irrelevant if not for their high places in the administration and campaign - probably don't know any better. Their partners, who have also been given senior positions in the campaign and/or administration have less of an excuse. They joined the cult rather than being brought up in it so their denial of reality is either wilful participation or terminal naivety. 

When you've been raised with Donald Trump as your moral compass though, what hope do you have? Invanka, Don Jr and Eric can almost be forgiven... Almost.

Media shills like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, et al are playing to a particular audience. They are reactionaries with no ideas of their own. All they know is if "teh left" are for it, then they're against is and if the left are against it, then they are for it. Of course, this is from a mindset where anyone who is slightly more liberal than Mussolini is a "radical leftist." 

If Joe Biden - who by any objective standards is a centre-right moderate if ever there was one - said the Earth orbits the Sun and grass is green, these people would say he's wrong and find some de-registered crackpot to come on all their shows to agree with them. They have no other thought processes. 

As for the likes of Alex Jones, he is just a big bowl of chili way from claiming it's all a plot by the alien lizards. Anyone who listens to him deserves to. 

But it's the modern-day Quislings, Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell, and so many more, who history will judge the most harshly. Each of them is on the record either decrying Trump directly or at least the kind of behaviour he revels in. And they all threw whatever principles they had away and accepted Trump's hostile takeover of their party for the sake of short-term political advantage. 

Donald Trump, having never had to take responsibility or face consequences in his life, was always going to be a 74-year-old infant. Those who demonstrably knew better and still chose to roll over and say black is white, up is down, and Trump won the election, must be shown no mercy. 

Vote your conscience

 

When Trump defenders tell you it's not about the personality, it's about the policy, they're lying. Even to themselves.

The truth is, it's not about personality or policy. It's about toxic, rusted-on partisanship. 

 

How else do you explain them switching from clutching their pearls over Bill Clinton getting a knee-trembler from a consenting adult, to supporting someone who has bragged about his infidelity and being about to get away with sexual assault?

 

If it were actually about policy, Hillary Clinton would have won in a landslide because she's the best Republican candidate there's been all century. 

 

Huh Bill! Shows what you know! Hillary Clinton is a Democrat, stupid!

 

Okay then, you want to talk policies? Let's look at Hillary Clinton's policies:

 

She's never seen a war she didn't want to join.

She loves Wall St money.

Her entire platform was essentially manifest destiny.

She obviously doesn't understand modern technology.

 

Add it up! Hillary Clinton is a Republican!

 

The only actual reasons Republicans had to dislike her were her surname, the D that came after it, and possibly her vagina. (Change my mind).

 

If you've decided character no longer matters, that's your own prerogative. Just be honest with yourself and admit you were either wrong then or you're wrong now. It's okay to change your mind.

 

If you'd rather vote for a sack of shit on the Republican ticket than a flawed but policy-sound candidate on the Democratic ticket, that again is your prerogative. Just be honest with yourself about it. 

 

Vote for whoever you want.

 

 

"Not all cops"

It's all very well to say Not All Cops but it's like saying Not All Men.

No-one is saying it's ALL cops or ALL men. But the people with reason to have a rational fear of either men or cops (and if you need that explained to you, what a lovely rock you've been living under) can't tell who are the good ones just by looking at them. So they have to be wary all the time.

If you're not one of those people who has ever needed to fear men or cops, then that's what privilege looks like. And no, I'm not saying you've had an easy life - I'm sure you haven't. I'm just saying it hasn't been hard for THAT reason of what you look like.

If I happen to be walking behind a woman on her own at night, I know I'm not a threat, but SHE doesn't.

Call me a cuck if you like, but I think her right to feel safe overrides my right to the comfort of not being considered a potential rapist.

Likewise, if people who have done nothing wrong still fear police harassment, there has to be a reason for that and we need to think honestly about what that reason may be. Sure, any individual officer in any given situation may be no threat whatsoever. Indeed, that's probably the case in the majority of situations, but the how are the people on the receiving end supposed to be sure of that?

Who is John Galt? They all are now!

You might remember – although you probably don’t – a time around ten years ago at the height of the Tea Party cult. (By the way, whatever happened to them?)

Around this time, a whole lot of loudmouths who thought they held the world together – the bankers, the stockbrokers, the hedge fund managers, the lawyers, the talk radio hosts, the columnists, the talking heads on news channels – were threatening to “Go Galt.”

The expression was a dog-whistle reference to a character in the novel Atlas Shrugged – a libertarian masturbatory fantasy aimed at the feeble-minded – who removed himself from society. One by one, he took similar elites with him until, somehow, society collapsed without them. In 2010, they were essentially threatening to strike, although the word smacked far too much of workers’ rights for them even to countenance using it.

I always wished they would. I said at the time, they should go for it. If withdrawing such services was going to teach the mean old socialists a lesson about who keeps the world turning, I still say they should have done it. I think the lesson would have been the opposite of what they expected, so I’m sorry they never quite got angry enough to test their theory.

Cut back to present day, and a funny thing has happened: Due to spatial distancing and self-isolation requirements to reduce the spread of Covid 19 to manageable levels, they have all been forced to withdraw their services.

And they’re pissed about it! What’s more, nobody misses them.

The true heroes in these challenging times are just who any reasonable person would expect them to be: Doctors, nurses, paramedics, truck drivers, shelf-stackers, checkout operators, cleaners. You might notice a few minimum-wage positions in there.

This may be a naïve hope but it some good can come out of this global crisis, it might be a reassessment of what we value. It’s at times like this we begin to see the absurdity of betting on the price of crops that haven’t even been planted yet. Even the staunchest of free market rationalist governments have suddenly stopped regarding unemployment as a personal failing on the part of those affected by it.

Let’s try to keep up this new understanding of what’s really important.
  
 

10 reasons why the best rock stars are nerds

Being a rock star is of course the coolest thing you can possibly be. But it doesn’t mean everything about you is cool. In fact, some of the biggest rock stars you know are nerds just below the surface.

Jimmy Page

Page started his career as a session guitarist and can be heard on dozens singles that would be deemed far too poppy and cheesy for any Zep aficionado. Led Zeppelin themselves dropped several references to The Lord of the Rings into their early songs and Page is such a fan of Aleistair Crowley he bought Crowley’s former home.
Nerd score: 7/10


Brian May

The Queen guitarist is a Doctor of Astrophysics, a passionate campaigner for animal rights – particularly badgers – and plays a guitar which he built himself as a teenager out of timber from the family fireplace. With a sixpence!
Nerd score: 12/10


Metallica

Their image is heavy but Metallica are music nerds at heart. Their rhythms are meticulously crafted and they will never play eight bars of 4/4 where a mix of 5/8, 3/4, 12/8 and 6/4 will suffice.
Nerd score: 8/10


Frank Zappa

Although the bulk of his lyrics were aimed at frat boys, Zappa’s music was all nerd. Auditions for his band bordered on the cruel. Applicants were required sight-read ridiculously complex parts and then improvise over bizarre time signatures like 11/8. Having learned from his father, Dweezil has said that 4/4 is the hardest rhythm for him to play.

When Zappa discovered he had a namesake in ’cellist and composer Francesco Zappa, Frank made an album of Francesco’s work by programming it into his Synclavier – an instrument he used for composing parts that were practically impossible for a human to play.

In the early 90s, Zappa had planned to set up a consulting business to facilitate trade between former Soviet Union states and the west. Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel had named him Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism but the appointment was nixed by then secretary of state James Baker.
Nerd Score: 10/10


John Lennon

The working class hero was never really working class. He was brought up by his middle-class aunt and went to art school. He published two volumes of absurdist verse, prose and cartoons in his lifetime and another was posthumously published.

Having once described avant-garde as “French for bullshit,” he fell in love with conceptual artist Yoko Ono, and embraced her experimental style on the albums Two Virgins, Life with the Lions and Wedding Album.

Later, during his house-husband years, he would take Polaroid photos of the loaves of bread he baked and send them to friends.
Nerd score: 8/10


George Harrison

The Quiet One discovered Indian music almost by accident while filming the move Help! He took to it with a passion and studied the sitar under master Ravi Shankar. His interest in non-western instruments influenced almost all of late 60s music. He signed Radha Krishna Temple to Apple Records and inadvertently invented WOMAD.

He was a supporter of the Natural Law Party, a political offshoot of the Transcendental Meditation movement.

A lifelong Monty Python fan, he appeared as a reporter in Eric Idle’s spoof The Rutles, and financed Life Of Brian after big studios balked at the subject matter.
Nerd Score: 7/10


Jeff Baxter

The Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarist has probably the most interesting side hustle of them all: he is a consultant to the US Defence Department, with a particular focus on missile defence. Stemming from an interest in how objects can be used for things they weren’t designed for, he wrote a paper in 1994 about how an anti-aircraft facility could be adapted into a missile defence system and passed it on to his representative. He’s been on the Pentagon payroll ever since.
Nerd Score: 7/10


David Bowie

Bowie’s earliest releases flopped at the time, and it’s probably just as well. He later admitted that if his first album had been a hit, he would probably have ended up in West End musicals. His first album is pure music-hall, with songs the likes of Uncle Arthur and She’s Got Medals that make his novelty song The Laughing Gnome sound positively hip by comparison.

Bowie was also a keen reader who could easily drop Philip Larkin quotes into an interview. He played the lead role in the cult classic Labyrinth, and in the 90s, set up his own internet service provider so subscribers could have their email address @davidbowie.com.
Nerd Score: 10/10


Art Garfunkel

Garfunkel is a voracious reader and keeps his books in chronological order of when he read them. He once walked across America by getting a friend to pick him up at the end of the day, drive him to the nearest motel, and drop him off at the same place the next morning.
Nerd score: 8/10


Sting

Gordon Sumner’s day job was as an English teacher. He practices tantric yoga (among other things if you believe the rumours), and learned to play the lute for an album of 16th century British compositions, released on Deutsche Grammophon.
Nerd Score: 14/10

We actually need celebrities to be political

The world destroying itself either through accident or design was not enough to completely overshadow something as really important as an awards night.

And ZOMG - did you see Ricky Gervais? He totally flipped call-out culture. Amazing!

Well, up to a point...

"You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world."

And Gervais does? He says "you," not "we," so I'm assuming he thinks he does.

And it's not as if Gervais himself doesn't do a good line in lecturing the public about animal cruelty - which I completely endorse. It just makes me wonder why he thinks he's different to the rest of them.

Predictably enough, the hit-and-miss Jonathan Pie has chimed in with his defence of Gervais, hitting a few more easy targets.

Now they both make a few good points. No-one denies that celebs who constantly bang on about some political hobby-horse can be pretty bloody tiresome. But the truth is, we need them.

We need them because there were people watching the Golden Globes who can spell Joaquin Phoenix without Googling it, and can list the entire Kardashian family tree from memory, who have no idea who the prime minister is.

If Gervais and Pie were half as in touch with "the real world" as they would like to think they are, they would understand this. Or perhaps they do, and are just using it for their own self-promotion. They're celebrities too, after all.

But what the educated elite (in which I include Gervais, Pie, myself, and you too most likely) need to understand is that these slightly embarrassing, not always well-informed speeches are not aimed at us. They're aimed at people who can recognise who designed Nicole Kidman's dress but not what party their representative belongs to. They're aimed at people who can dispute the legality of a touchdown or an LBW, but not of the government's actions. They're aimed at people who vote every week on Dancing with the Stars but never in an election.

They're aimed at a president who is a TV addict, and known to tune in to these shows just to live-tweet how boring they are, and it might be the only thing he hears that comes from outside his own echo-chamber.

Pie rightly suggests that Scott Morrison's views on global warming are more important than any celebrities. But let's take a look at Scott Morrison meeting a voter at a time when Morrison had been all over the news:

MUST WATCH: Geelong fan meets Prime Minister @ScottMorrisonMP for the first time, not knowing who he was. 'What’s your name then?' he asked. 'My name is Scomo.' #9News pic.twitter.com/fI0gSGozI1

— Nine News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) September 7, 2018

Now if Gary Ablett had spoken to this bloke, he might just have paid attention.
 

The GG will not save us

Since the prime minister’s ill-advised holiday timing and his government’s mostly inadequate response to a quarter of the country being on fire has prompted some people on Twitter to demand the Governor General – or even the Queen – step in and remove the government.

To all those making such calls, please stop embarrassing yourselves. That’s not how it works and you (should) know it!

The reserve powers of the Governor General do not include sacking the government for being a bunch of dills, nor should they. We had an election seven months ago. We as a nation need to own the fact that collectively, we chose this mob.

If you want to take it up with someone, take it up with your mate who fell for Morrison’s daggy-dad schtick.
Take it up with your neighbour who thought Bill Shorten was arrogant.
Take it up with your relatives who have never owned shares but managed to get spooked over franking credits.
Take it up with the students who re-elected the people who cut their penalty rates.
Take it up with a generation of renters who will probably never own property who were convinced changes to negative gearing would be bad for them.
Take it up with the shops and taxis that play 2GB all day, the airports that show Sky News, the cafes that provide the Herald Sun.

You may not have voted for this but enough of us did. We need to learn from it.

What we need to learn is you don't get a do-over whenever we feel like it. We’re stuck with this shit show for another 2 and a half years because of decisions we made last May. Remember this in 2022. You might also remember this next time people start advocating 4-year fixed terms.

The only way the Governor General could justifiably intervene would be if Labor and the crossbenchers combined in the Senate to block supply, forcing a 1975-style crisis. There are several problems with this scenario:

1: Labor would need to grow a spine. It would also force them to abandon their sense of injustice over 1975.
2: All the crossbenchers would need to resolve to work together with the opposition.
3: Parliament would need to be sitting, which is hardly ever these days.
4: Most importantly, it’s not a responsible course of action to throw the country into a constitutional crisis at the same time as we’re fighting a bushfire crisis. The government would much rather be playing politics than addressing the real crisis, and the first thing they would do is spin it that the opposition is blocking funding for emergency responses, which would actually be true.
Morrison as prime minister can be replaced, and he possibly will be if he doesn’t lift his game quick smart. But who would replace him? Dutton? Frydenberg? Porter? They would all be worse.

Your vote is for three years, not just a weekend.