"The problem with Occam's Razor is that you can't actually cut someone with it."

I have an issue with conspiracy theories. The issue is not so much that they exist (that would seem to be an inevitability, especially in the age of the internet), but that I have repeatedly seen otherwise intelligent, rational people become completely drawn into these theories without ever apparently noticing the faulty logic and massive confirmation bias required to sustain such ideas.

I can see the initial attraction that some of these ideas hold. They form a gateway to a world full of mystery and intrigue, where covert Government agents fly the disguised Roswell spacecraft into the twin towers whilst Illuminati Reptilians fuck JFK to death on the set of the faked Moon landings. Or something. While it may seem more exciting to live in a real-world version of Deus Ex, the problem is that there is no significant quantity of reliable evidence that can back these claims up.

Which is not to say that there are no such things as conspiracies. They happen all the time, but the key point to note is that they are all relatively simple as far as the relationship between effort and payoff goes; Guy Fawkes and his companions plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament, industry executives paying experts to mislead the public about the nature of their product, or even a group of friends planning a surprise birthday party. What is clear in each of these examples is that there is an obvious and simple motivation for engaging in the conspiracy, a clear and not overly complicated solution for achieving an outcome, and a reasonable amount to gain from success.

If you take a popular modern conspiracy theory (9/11 Truth, or faked moon landings for example), you will tend to find that these things are conspicuously absent. Why the US Government would wish to stage a "controlled demolition" of an important landmark and economic centre, killing thousands of citizens in the process, is unclear. Their supposed methods for achieving this, and the various ways in which they are supposed have "covered up"* this attack are convoluted and bewildering. It could reasonably be said that what they gained from all this was a pretext upon which they could invade Iraq, but given that it seems fairly obvious that they were already going to invade anyway, and the flimsiness of the pretext upon which they did eventually invade, it seems a fairly outrageous suggestion that they would go to such confusing lengths to do it, including attacking their own military headquarters in the process (I'd have thought it fairly important to have an intact, functioning military HQ if you're planning military action). Add to all this the constant shifting of goalposts and absurd requirements for the evidence that would convince them that the accepted version of events is closest to the truth - take, for example, the refusal to accept photographs of debris outside the Pentagon as containing aircraft parts, despite, well, obviously containing aircraft parts.

What this all boils down to, is that none of these conspiracy theories are actually proper, functioning theories. A decent theory takes all the available empirical evidence and unifies it into a well thought-out explanation. Whereas your average conspiracy theory will take the issue and tear into it, raising question after question after question that requires explanation. Their version of events then seems to be taken as a de facto answer to these questions, without actually having any evidence to back it up.

Now, I'm not saying that the standard explanation of events should be unquestioningly accepted, but it is important to go where the facts lead you. Having an open mind is a virtue, but it shouldn't be so open that your brain falls out.

* Although it can hardly be considered an effective "cover-up" if a fourteen year-old with a YouTube account and a webcam is able to "expose" it.

Dear The People

We can't apologise enough for the complete lack of content here over the past few months.
However, we have not been idle. Although they've been slowed by a traumatic computer crash, duodenum-splinteringly exciting new projects are on their way.
Not least:

* A 6-part radio comedy series, with sketches, music and funny noises to boot, entitled Rust

* A new Fearful Symmetries album, entitled The Apocalypse Tree. In the meantime, the Fearful Symmetries and their new recordings can be found here

* A vastly expanded [rhexisFEATURE] section containing the best of previous articles, and some new work that's not been posted here yet.

* Repeated references to David Cameron as "wee mad davie".

* Continued renovation and improvement of Rhexis services, including hopefully organising a streaming player for the [MUSIC] section.

* Something approaching regular, lucid content.

* A webcomic entitled "The New Adventures of Dracula".

IN THE MEANTIME, please feast your thinking-organs on two recent pieces, one about cameras and the other about fascists.

Be seeing you.

~THEM

Propaganda Frequency Jamming

The above is the slogan for the Tory Party Conference in Bournemouth. "A New Direction". Say it. Say it again. Roll it over your tongue. Sounds a bit like something a bit rude, doesn't it? In fact, now I think about it, it sounds EXACTLY like "A Nude Erection". Right. Let's try a very simple attempt at a bit of a meme here.



This is David Cameron. He understands the working man's plight, having undergone intensive training for government at Eton and The Bullingdon Club. He is the leader of the Conservative party. He wants to show you his nude erection for the Conservative party.





"Would you like to see my bold nude erection for the Conservative Party"



How do you feel about this man's nude erection?



Well?


[My theory is that the PR firm hired by the Tories has many employees whose parents were miners, and this is their understated way of getting revenge. Spread this. I hate the smarmy git]

Shut up. The Media is a Force For Good.

John Stewart compares UK and US Town Hall Meetings


This is more of a test to see if I can get embeds to work in Blogger's special, special brand of html than an actual post. Also to tell you hobbledehoys to go and read the rhexisCOMMUNITY, because there are large articles and fiction going down there.

Don't Run Your Country Like A Company, Mrs. Walmington

I had a very interesting argument the other day. I was attempting, on the behalf of a friend of mine, to persuade the gentleman in question of the disturbing implications of a National Identity Card system, and, disturbingly, not doing very well. I brought out all the usual points - the general iniquity of the current administration, the violation of the right to privacy, the fact that it's unclear who gets access to the centralised database and when - but kept getting rebuffed by the assertion that these problems with the proposal simply meant that it was a waste of money, rather than a Bad and Terrifying Thing. This is emblematic of a creeping commercial moronism and needs to be Stamped On.

EXPLANATION: Because, in the benighted U of K, we now lack any kind of real ideological opposition between the Labour Government and the Conservative Opposition, and both espouse a neo-Thatcherite, crypto-fascist* communitarian philosophy, while presenting a broadly corporate-branded front, condemnation of political or public-service failures is no longer political, but practical. That is to say, based on efficiency. Recently, I believe, there was another of the perennial news stories in which someone refuses to pay council tax and gets banged up for their trouble. However, in this case the reasoning was the interesting bit - the person in question was refusing to pay because there was rubbish in the streets (amongst other things) and therefore the council wasn't doing its job, and therefore it didn't deserve its "fee". Equally, criticisms of the NHS claim that it's not fit for purpose and would be better off run by private concerns. This is Filth and Lies. The whole point of a public service is that you put money in, and get Heatlth and Education out. You're not looking to make a profit, or meet targets - your job is to make people better or teach people things, wheras a private firm's job is to make as much money as possible, and any teaching or healing that goes on is a side-effect. Which is why (if it is indeed the case) public services are in such a mess, because if you try to treat an organisation designed for essentially non-commercial means like a corporation, it doesn't work.

And exactly the same thing is wrong with British politics.
I'm frankly uninterested in who can play the "Centre-Right Middle England Authoritarian Warmaker" game best, because political parties aren't meant to be machines for governing - if anything, that's what Parliament is for - the parties themselves should ideally be some sort of Hegelian dialectic, where politicians of all persuasions are forced, in the crucible of debate, to justify their shit. At the moment, there can be no ideological debate because the current nature of Government is being taken as axiomatic - the only game in town, if you will. Corporations operate on a different ethical level from more or less everything else, in that they exist to produce money for the people that own them, but mostly to create money for themselves (which is why they outlive their creators and shareholders - the people involved are entirely contingent).

Moreover, the demands of a corporate entity can excuse some fairly unpleasant acts of bigotry - insurance rates are can be determined by race and gender, and it's entirely allowable to refuse to employ people because they don't fit the "brand" as a metonymic** excuse for exclusion by class. This is, I suppose, the end result of a full-fledged capitalistic system; that everything is judged by commercial ethics. So what we really need is an actual opposition who will take our rulers to task over their amoral antics, rather than agree on the goals but quibble over the method. Why, for example, has no-one cornered David Cameron on his abhorrence of "yob culture" and unrepentant membership of the fucking repulsive and inexcusable Bullingdon Club? Why has the Prime Minister, a man who seems to have an almost pathological aversion for the truth, not been eviscerated (either figuratively or literally; I don't care which) over his illegal wars, appointment of various fascist nutcases as Home Secretary, lying to the public about more or less everything and systematic destruction of the educative process in schools? It's not that he's "not doing his job properly" or he's "wasting our money", it's that he's an amoral monster who will do anything for approval and power and has repealed most of the basic legal rights posessed by citizens in this country and needs to be stopped right. now. It's simply not a case of "things can't possibly go wrong, because if they were, then people would be dealing with it" : the system is sick and needs fixing. Things are going very wrong indeed. I'd tell you to as Jean Charles de Menezes, except, of course, you can't.

The only possible thing to do other than fervently hope that somewhere, a minister will grow a spine, is to be the conscience that Government lacks. Maximum political action on behalf over everyone who doesn't find the idea of neo-Thatcherite authoritarian bondage appealing is the only way to deal with the corporatisation of government and the ills that stem from it. Because it's not going to fix itself.



* O for the days when "crypto-fascist" used to be an insult in public discourse.
** A metonym is where part of something stands for the rest of it: "The Crown" for "The institution of the Monarchy", for example.

Notes from Cowley Road

Swallowed my prozac wrong again this evening, leaving a small, acid lump at the back of my throat that makes it fuzzily difficult to swallow. Nonetheless, I am tentatively sipping sweet, black coffee, trying to stab my mind more awake, sting myself into writing the first scene of the new play.

Outside the window that won't open, deep shadows are gouging out the contours of the little terraces on the bullingdon road, the sun is burning down parakeet pink-and-blue over cowley, the sweet stink of takeaway and warm dustbins.

What a strange evening, strung out on nowhere like the lyrics of a song you half-remember. Listening to my favurite unsigned bands from when I was fifteen, turned up as loud as I like, as, in the house I am temporarily inhabiting, everyone else has gone home, and I am left to feed the rat and turn off the lights, my laptop glowing and humming soft and comforting in the deepening gloom.

I'm a fugitive in this house; somehow, strangely, I wish the window did open, because some primal part of the mind is half-expecting the regimental rap on the door, and I want there to be another escape route. It would take me thirty seconds to throw my whole life into the suitcase behind me.

Darkening rapidly now, outside, the shadows of the houses lengthening and gathering to consume the entire sky in a clutch of deep purple-laid-orange and a prickle of unseen stars.

Music from the house next door pulsing through the pebble-dash; I am alone tonight. Old disturbances beat upon the brain a heart's breath away, urgent and ever so close. Things with wings and many-eyed faces are chittering in the high corners of the brain, walls are thinning and draining into cracked layers through which the edging cold seeps; ever so close tonight. Ever so close.

Fugitive. Coward. Addict. Pervert. Lunatic. Writer. Liar. All of these things and, above all, half-naked nineteen-year-old girl with house to myself, I pad across the hall and switch on the kettle, the roar and little red glow like a home beacon flashing far away into the darkened kitchen.

Kettle. Mug. Teabag. Milk. Sugar. Teaspoon. Dishcloth. Kettle. Tea. Back at the desk now, my fingers aching with frustration, the steam clearing my head and cutting through the white noise.

BEGIN.

Scene 1: A kitchen-come-living area in a rather grotty student house in London. The near future. The lights are down; A kettle is boiling. Upstage is a wide sofa with a dirty coffee-table on it, which has upon it several dirty cups and a laptop, closed. Enter CHRIS, a 20-year old student, tall and dressed unprovocatively, with a bandana around her head. Chris goes to the sofa, opens the laptop and, as if typing -

CHRIS: Swallowed my pills the wrong way this morning...

rhexisMUSIC presents: I LOST MY FIRST LOVE TO THE NIGHT.

Withiel and rhexisMUSIC present a 2.5 intarwub single release from the forthcoming album Mr. Atomy's Blues Hypothesis:



SIDE ONE: I LOST MY FIRST LOVE TO THE NIGHT.

SIDE TWO: THE MORNING AFTER THE END OF THE WAR.

SPECIAL BONUS YAY: SUFFRAGETTE CITY (Bowie cover)

[This music is copyright "Withiel Black", 2006, but you're free to download and distribute it amongst as many friends, acquaintances and enemies as you like with acknowledgement of the originator and (preferably) a link back here or to the Rhexis.]