I’ve posted on the Transport Blog about private railways and government contractors.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Transport at 6:48 AM EDT

No Comments »

A friend sent me an email containing the following phrase:

one of those Red book things you get free from the government when you have a baby

The government is a criminal organisation. It is made up of people who think it’s okay to routinely steal half of your money. If you don’t keep quiet and pay up they’ll threaten to steal more of your money, and ultimately send around goons to kidnap you.

They are intent on growing their organisation, but like all criminals they are cowards who can’t admit to themselves they are evil. They avoid feelings of guilt by inventing a series of imaginary hobgoblins that the populace then clamour to be saved from. Salvation, of course, lies in more government minions whose pay justifies yet more extortion.

Not content with mere extortion, they also want to tell you how to live your life. There is no limit to this. They will tell you what to eat and drink, who you may and may not do business with, the manner in which you may do business and what you may build on your property. This is partly so that they can be seen to be doing things to solve problems and justify their existence to the cowed populace, but mainly because along for the ride are the type of people who enjoy telling others what to do.

But the real power is in the future, and the children are the future. The government, composed entirely of people you haven’t met and didn’t choose to associate with, wants to be intimately involved in your life from cradle to grave. There are red books. There are strangers who invite themselves into your home to snoop on you and your baby. There are day prisons that children are forced to attend until a predetermined age that is forever being increased.

No organisation has ever taken such a complete interest in your life.

And yet they are inept. These are people whose track record of childcare includes abducting teenagers and allowing them to be molested by perverts. They never achieve their stated aims, except when those aims are to expand their own interests. Their crowning achievement is to meddle so thoroughly that the populace expects it, believes that their business is helped by the government’s meddling in other people’s, and asks for more of it.

I object on principle to the idea of strangers telling me how I should raise my children, and that these *criminals* pretend I should be grateful for their advice on the matter is an outrage beyond polite description.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties, Introspection at 9:16 AM EDT

No Comments »

Steve McIntyre has been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about his discovery of errors in NASA’s temperature record. Scroll to 17m30s in. Points he makes:

• There are jumps in the data in 2000 because two different versions of data were used, one with adjustments and one without.
• These adjustments are often as large as the trend
• No-one is releasing details of how they calculate the adjustments. That doesn’t sound scientific to me: how are people supposed to verify the data?
• Now that NASA has corrected the error, the 1930s are just as hot as the 2000s.
• Many of the weather stations do not meet recognised standards. The weather station showing the largest upward temperature trend in the USA is in a car park in a city in Arizona.

Steve is very scientific and is careful not to make wild claims before he has all the information. But it is looking increasingly like the adjustments are not accounting correctly for the urban heat island effect. You can often predict which stations are urban and which are rural just by looking at the trends.

I’m going to make a prediction: most of the measured warming will be caused by confirmation bias in the way the adjustments are made. It’s probably just urbanisation that’s causing the upward trends in surface data. The actuality of climate science couldn’t be farther from the media consensus. The surface data is flawed. The satellite data doesn’t go back far enough and doesn’t match the models. The ice core data doesn’t prove that carbon dioxide causes temperature rise without ridiculously contorted reasoning. Climate models just model the modellers’ assumptions. What’s left?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism at 8:08 AM EDT

No Comments »

These guys are hilarious. I’ve written previously about the adventures of a friend who doesn’t own a TV. Now they’re having some fun with me.

I recently bought myself a Topfield Freeview PVR from an online retailer, and thought nothing more of it. Then, a couple of weeks later, this came in the post:

Dear Mr Fisher

We have recently been advised that you bought television receiving equipment in May 2007 from Empire Electro Centres. However, we have no record of a TV Licence in your name for the above address.

Using TV equipment to watch or record television programme services without a valid licence is against the law.

The letter goes on to describe the various ways I can get a TV licence.

The funny thing is, we have a TV license. I’m holding it in my hand right now. It has on it the correct address and is valid until 31st December 2007. It’s just not in my name. The TV Licensing website is quite clear that you only need one licence for the household.

Yesterday I got a second letter:

I wrote to you a few weeks ago regarding your purchase of television receiving equipment in May 2007 from Empire Electro Centres. However, we still have no record of a TV Licence in your name for the above address.

The letter goes on to threaten me with court and a £1000 fine. Nowhere in the letter is there a suggestion that there might exist a licence for my address in someone else’s name.

A cynical analysis might be that they are deliberately trying to harass people into buying more licences than they need. But perhaps Hanlon’s razor applies.

What strikes me is that anything government does comes with all sorts of enforcement baggage. It’s not simply a matter of paying £135.50 and watching TV. Bureaucratic infrastructure is needed to collect information, send letters, detect and threaten. People who sell TVs are threatened into passing on the personal details of their customers to the bureaucracy. Otherwise voluntary interaction is thus perverted. Meanwhile, I feel a forboding sense of being watched: the government knows and cares about an innocent online purchase I made. It’s spooky.

Update: A colleague has just received the same letter at work because he ordered a TV tuner and had it delivered here. I’d like to see an enforcement “officer” turn up here…!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties, TV Licensing at 11:13 AM EDT

4 Comments »

The original Fraggle Rock is being shown on British TV on a channel called Boomerang. I loved that show, mainly because of the Doozers. Perhaps it is the Doozers that got me into engineering — although they were civil engineers and I’m not… I’m sure I remember there being lessons about the work ethic to be learnt from the industrious Doozers. At the time I was mainly impressed by their constructions.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection, Links at 9:06 AM EDT

2 Comments »

How about me and my girfriend make our own agreements, and Stuart Bridge, the Law Comission and innumerable “ministers” I’ve never met and don’t know mind their own damn business?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 10:52 PM EDT

2 Comments »

Via Robert Hinkley, I found an excellent video on YouTube of James Randi debunking Uri Geller. The best bit is 5m40s in when Geller appears on the Tonight Show to demonstrate his powers, but Randi has set up some controls on the experiment and Geller squirms, knowing his tricks won’t work.

In another video, Randi appears on a show called What’s My Line and makes a psychic called James Hydrick squirm and come up with excuses. Randi even repeats one of his tricks involving a pencil right in front of him. It’s worth watching the whole thing.

Here he is having a go at a cold reader. Also a lecture about homeopathy. Keep following the YouTube links, the man is a joy to watch.

On a related notes, some posts about a psychic who supposedly helps the police look interesting.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 10:33 PM EDT

2 Comments »