Aquarionics

Politics, Geekdom and a little Comic Relief

So, Mr Bush gave his speech on the state of the union, and I watched the BBC news report of it, in which it pointed out that it sounded more like a sermon than a political speech.

George W Bush is a problem, because he is quite plainly going to go to war no matter what happens. My problem with this is that someone we didn't elect appears to be dictating British policy (Whether the country who have him as Grand High Poobah did is another matter). My problem is also with the person we did elect, whose next job is to convince the 94% of the country that don't believe Mr Bu^Hlair's position is correct. Note that word. Convince. Less than 6% of the country think it's a good idea to go to war without UN backing, and our leader is trying to convince us otherwise. I have a feeling this should be the other way around, this being a democracy and everything, the idea is for us - the people - to put them - the politicions - in charge. When the Minister for Technology is able to install a new hard-drive, when the Minister for Sport has managed a sports club, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a degree in finantial theory, then I might start trusting the political system again (Oh, and yes, there are geeks who meddle in politics. Watch Debian-[devel|legal] if you don't believe me...).

Why are we fighting Saddam? Because he might still have the Weapons of Mass Distruction (Argh!! Irradiated Wafers! Poisoned Wine!) the US (and us) sold him a dozen years back? Because we as Englightened countries have the right to enforce our views on politics? For fucks sake, the UKs last prime minister was recently raked over hot coals for an affair with a co-worker, the last US president too, both have suffered major economic crises in the last few years, the UK has unemployment levels that are just scary and a system for dealing with it that is just as much so (As LoneCat says, if she had been relying on the Jobseeker's Allowance for food and rent she'd have starved to death long ago). This mythical Freedom of Speech thing? The UK doesn't have a divine freedom of speech, though it has the Human Rights act, which says we do, and libel, slander and other laws that say we can't. The legal system is like an os code-base that's been in use and development for decades without a rewrite, There are function calls never used, deprecated (but still occsionally used so we can't lose them) updated to buggery and new functionality tacked onto the end, and enough loopholes for the thing to crash every so often.

Is our system any better? We don't stone people to death, but we do send them to prison for three years of a life sentance before we decide they didn't do it. Personally, I'd prefer the government to put more money into things like the Transport Network, but that's just me.

The argument about archives goes on, too, so it's time to bring out the real guns. I mean, are people still using serif fonts on calenders? I mean, it's so passe, darlings. Go for the sans-serif, or I'll remove you from my blogroll. All of you. That'll learn all y'all.

Comic Relief then. I read too many comics. There is my neatocool Today's Comics thing at my start page which shows you exactly how bad my addiction is. The newest two are a couple I've been meaning to catch up with for some time. The first is Angst Tech, and the second is Polymer City Chronicles. Both are computer-gamer orienated, but I *think* they are both good enough to sustain you though the bits you don't understand if you arn't a gamer. Oh, and Jeff Minter not only has a new game in development, but also a weblog. Yay.