Cultures, vultures, and the problem of free will...

Several things have come to the Beard's attention recently... unrelated things mainly, or rather things related only by the fact they are made up of human experience... as are indeed most things... apparently... Indeed, the inter-relatedness or otherwise of things has long been of interest to the Beard, as those who have had the misfortune of talking to the beard in the pub will attest... or not attest, depending on their attitude to attestation.. but I digress.... But then again, what is the world of human experience but a digression, the most major one most of us will ever experience... or not experience, as the case may be... but regardless, it seems that the topic of conversation in scientific circles is the old chestnut of free will... new genetic research or some such has cast the whole idea into doubt... it seems that we may not have free will after all... again... now, where the Beard, as you may not know, is, if not a believer in, at least a hoper for, free will, his take on the matter is this... in the final analysis, it really doesn't matter... But Why??!!? I hear you ask... or not ask, or some strange halfway house between the two... simply this... whether we have free will or not makes absolutely no difference to our lives... our experiences will be the same, our pasts will not change... all that will disappear is the illusion of choice... and, let us be honest,if free will does not exist, if we are indeed automatons, then we have in the apst been automatons with the illusion of choice... and that means that even if we now know that such choice was an illusion, then we can get that illusion back... indeed, it is probably hardwired into us... but then, carrying on with the whole theme, it must also be programmed into us to doubt our existence, doubt free will, have the illusion of choice and then lose this and regain it... or not regain it.. but the best that can be said is this... that if we are automata, or automatons, then nothing is our fault, and we can at least relax knowing that what we do is all we can do... if, of course, we are programmedto relax... And I think here that we have the reason that all of us desire free will... that we do actually like to be able to blame people for their actions... if we are not automata programmed to want to blame people for their actions.... but as I have said, it doesn't really matter, so I will continue to hope that we have free will, since that is what I was programmed to do... The Beard is a great believer in freedom of choice... not that I believe that all choices are valid, or that people should be allowed to choose to do what they wish... oh no, far from it.... but no, the Berad believes that we all make choices, and that we are all responsible for our own choices.... that's why he has trouble subscribing to the old Judaeo-Christian (a nd mainly Christian, to be honest) idea of the devil being the root of evil... evil, in the Beard's non-too-humble opinion, is simply the making of a choice that harms the majority, or goes against the agreed social code... and thus means that those who do evil are not the poor victim-tools of some supernatural being, but are selfish, odious scum... Take for example the nine men convicted today of running a sex ring in Rochdale... they knew what they were doing, and delighted in it... and now their lawyer is appealing against the sentence... not because he thinks they are innocent, but that he believes that the BNP were behind the conviction, possibly by perverting the jury... now, the BNP are not my favourite party, and this event shows to a certain extent why they should never be allowed to run a bath, let alone a country, but they are not to blame for any of this... it wasn't the BNP that coerced and forced girls, some as young as thirteen, into these acts... and neither was it the Pakistani community, or Islam... neither was it their parents... The race card has well and truly been played on this one... and the faith card... and the "uncaring parents card..." One of the accused even said that if the parents let the kids out on the streets dressed as they were, then the parents didn't value the girls... so why should he?? Peopel have claimed that this is "definitely" a Muslim thing... that Hindus would never do such a thing... but it's nothing to do with faith or race... partly it's a cultural thing, or rather a mistake caused by misunderstandings between cultures... a good muslim girl would never dress that way... or be out on the streets... but there are plenty of Muslim countries where they do and they are.... like the Birka, this is a culture thing... in western culture, showing legs is not considered a bad thing... in Pakistani culture it is... in Malay culture, it isn't... and a lot of them a re Muslim... and, like rude signs, the person brought up in a certain culture interprets the signs differently... when westerners see a young girl with slapped on make up, they think Jordan... when traditional Pakistani men see the same they think prostitute... but then, when peopel stare at us in the street, we see it as insulting or threatening, where I'm told in Pakistan it is jst seen as normal... but more than a culture clash, it is this... most traditional Pakistani men when seeing a girl dressed in skimpy clothes with too much make up would indeed think this girl to be a lower class of person... but they would then either ignore her so as not to associate with something shameful, or they would wish to help that girl get out of the shameful situation she is in... they would not see it as right to rape and abuse her.. and this is where it becomes a matter of individuals... much has been made of the fact that whereas most child abusers are white, they work alone, whereas this was a gang of men who knew each other... but then, there are internet rings of white men doing the same thing... and its not surprising that they knew each other... unfortunately, families are sometimes the worst environments, and people do have atendency to seek out acqaintances with similar interests... if these men had been in a white family, they would almost certainly have done the same thing, and to the same girls... it is mainly white girls who are allowed on the streets late at night, and who belong to a culture that sees alcohol as being necessary for a good time... and are therefore far more vulnerable... the truth of the matter is, there are evil people wherever you look, and this is their own choice... and where it would be nice to get rid of all the evil people in the world, it just won't happen... so we need to be vigilant... and more than anything we need to help people in vulnerable positions, by keeping an eye open for the signs, and butting in where necessary, no matter how rude it may seem... As the beard has admitted, he's not one fro the Judaeo_Christian_Muslim stuff, but the book of genesis puts in quite well, when YHWH asks Cain where Abel is... in essence, we are all part of the same human family, and we should all be our brother and sister's keeper... the maybe we'll all be happier... and please everyone, lets stop blaming bad things on race, culture and faith, and concentrate on the real problem... the selfish, evil men and women who choose to hide behind race, faith and culture, blaming these three blameless things for their own deliberately harmful choices... for without them, the rest of us could live a lot more happily... But my time for digressive behaviour is alost past... an early start beckons, and so does the beautiful Mrs Beard... so it just remains to say that until will is free, and you is me, and land is sea, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hacks, Hackers, Hacking, and lack of Backing...

So, the apparent scandal of the phone hacking continues... now, the beard is no fan of the red tops, being as we all know or don't, a committed reader of the i... but I'm afraid that regardless of it all, and apropos to nothing in particular, I don't actually see the importance... after all, we all know that governments are corrupt, and that papers will do everything they can to get a story, and we all know that Rebekah Brooks is one of those strange women who really really ought to be at the very least fanciable, but somehow contrives to be not so... but does any of it make any difference...??? The Beard thinks not... after all, taxes will still rise, wages will do whatever they do, and most people's lives will remain roughly the same, despite not having that cowards alternative to the porno mag, the News of the World on the shelves... for Mr Murdoch (any of them) is not as powerful and important as anyone wants him to be.. quite literally..

Which brings us to a real scandal, hidden away in a few column inches of the qualities... and this si something that does affect real people... the fact that 5.3 billion quids worth (and yes, that is a b not an m!!) of equipment has gone missing from the MoD stores over the past few years, and that the said supplier of all things military has failed its audit on more than one occasion... now, while this may not be directly related to the other story, that yet another soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, it is at the very least indirectly linked to the appalling loss of life in war zones... an ill equipped soldier is an ill prepared soldier, and even worse is a demoralised soldier... and surplus to this, someone out there is making moneyt out of stealing from brave men who are doing a difficult and thankless task... now, doesn't that put a bunch of millionaires trying to buy a tv station into perspective....???

Of course, News International has supported these men, give credit where its due... so maybe by possibly and maybe though not necessarily provably hacking the phones of these same soldiers the NotW was providing some sort of dubious public service and taking its payment for said help, who knows.. I for sure don't... but I digress....

And talking, or indeed writing, though obviously technically the Beard is typing rather than doing either off the other two, not that it matters in the long or even short run, of dubious public services... a question raised itself in what passes for the brain of your possibly favouritish hirsute blogger... what if journalists illegally hacking someone's mobile phone had, for example, overheard a government plot to cause rioting in the middle east?? Or what if, hacking the voice mail of a hypothetical missing schoolgirl, they had found threatening or incriminating messages from the girl's relatives that implicated them in her disappearance?? Or what if by stealing someone's private emails these same journalists had discovered the identity of a serial killer and stopped said killer in his or her tracks?? If this sort of information had been uncovered, and used wisely to prevent further harm, or solve awful crimes, would we now be hailing the hacks and hackers as heroes??? Who knows.... but perhaps the telling thing is that this defence has not been used... but yet again I get caught up in the whole digression thingy...

Personally the Beard has better things to think of, such as Mrs Beard, Beard junior and the two Step-Beards... and of course the soon to be here Charnwood 2011 International camp, a place of worldwide Scoutery and Guidery... and the fact that the possibly excellent Tori Amos has a new album coming out at the end of the year, on, sort of surprisingly, a major German classical label.... which promises to be good... Now the beard has, as most of you know, except of course for those of you who don't, been a fan of Tori for many years... ever since hearing the disturbing acapella "Me and a Gun" on the Annie Nightingale request show one Sunday night way back in the early 1990s.... this was followed by a close encounter with the was-b-side-later-a-side "Silent all these Years," and the purchase of "Little Earthquakes," the debut solo album... ever since, the Beard has chased Ms Amos, restraining order notwithstanding, acquiring ever more cds, and even managing to encounter the "flame-haired and tempestuous songstress" as she was once described, in Nottingham (scene of a quite well handled security breach) and in Bude... but enough of my ramblings... suffice it to say that I am looking forward to the forthcoming disc of music, and looking forward even more to boring Mrs Beard et al with repeated playings of such... and I'm sure they're all looking forward to it too... or possibly not...

Now, it would seem as though the Beard was about to make some sort of point durring the last paragraph, and, to be honest, I was, but fortunately for most of you, especially those of you who have totally failed to read this far (you know who you are... remember there will be an exam on this at the end of term...) that point was totally forgotten... or at least partially totally, which is an amazing phrase that the Beard actually heard uttered by a member of that class of people known as "management" and pitied by the rest of us...

It is of course a scientifically proven fact that managers forget passwords far more often than most people... which explains a lot... and if recent studies are correct then this problem will get worse and worse... apparently, its not the difficulty of your password that matters, but its length... a random string of stuff such as £$fd>ign is apparently as easy to crack as would be theboss1, or indeed any string of eight characters... the trick is, or so we are now told, to choose a code at least twelve digits long... it would seem that aaaaaaaaaaaa is far harder to crack than aaaaaaaa, despite what our alleged brains tell us... so managers, who often fail to string two characters together consistently, are well and truly... now The Beard, as you would expect, has taken this advice to heart, and is currently changing all his passwords from whatever they were to the entirity of james Clavell's Shogun... the idea being that even if someone does crack it, they will take so long typing it all in, that by the time they get to the bit with Fujiko and the pistol, they'll have decided that it really isn't worth it after all.... whereas normally they would break in, examine the state of my financial affairs and realise that it definitely wasn't worth it... truthfully, the Beard is hoping that someone steals his identity... it can only improve his credit rating....

The Beard is currently working on a script for a hollywood adaptation of the current NotW scandal, entitled Murdoch and the Hackers... and in true Hollywood style, the plot has been changed for dramatic effect, and now tells the story of a mad ex-Vietnam helicopter pilot and A-Team member, and his involvement with a certain British PM who once held the role of Minister for Administrative Affairs... now who should we cast as Bernard Woolley...???

Any way, the hour grows early, and a shopping trip beckons, along with a shower and a session at the other laptop... so it remains to say that until all our words pass, and all our hackers get hacked, and until the day comes, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inspired by Inspectors.....

Now, a week or so ago (really, the preposition in question should be "then", but now seems somehow clearer or more poetic... or possibly not... but I digress...) the Beard, if his paranthesis has not got in the way of your understanding, went to see the imaginively entitled sequel to "The Hangover," "The Hangover 2".... now, I've nothing against the tagging of numbers onto the original title in order to express sequelhood; it must be admitted that it does clear up confusion... who among you would have guessed that "Die Hard" was a sequel to the much earlier film "The Detective"... which technically makes Die Hard 3 into "The Detective 4", but that's by the by... in fact, if done skilfully, it disenables confusion from even reigning in the first place, just as Prince Charles's emittance of Prince William has disenabled a certain other Navally inclined prince from doing... possibly... although, when our American cousins are involved, their ignorance of all things numerical does get them confused... "Madness of George 3," anyone...??

Regardless, as is the way of sequels, the Beard went with an open mind, despite his long held acceptance that sequels tend not to be on a par with originals... the few exceptions that spring to mind are those where the sequel has embraced an entire new genre of film,such as "Aliens"... of which more later... Now, don't get me wrong... I have nothing against sequels per se, but it does seem that quiet a few are made not because the film needs or deserves one... indeed some most definitely do not... "Grease 2" springs horribly to mind... some films stand up better on their own.. "Cube" for example loses rather than gains by the addition of its se- and pre- quels... but rather they are made due to some innate need on the part of film companies to separate people from their money and their homes... the Beard is not alone in believing that the increased length of films these days, coupled with the longer period of advertising in the cinema is actually designed to give the government more time to bug your house and feed the cat while you're away... or possibly I was the only one to believe this... but probably not any longer.... but yet again I digress...

To get back on topic, as I'm informed I must say in this allegedly digital savvy world, "The Hangover" was rather a funny film, involving a particularly bad night out ending in Mike Tyson's tiger, or so I recall... my recollection is hazy... So the Beard arrived at the cinema expecting more of the same, but at a slightly lower standard, and was not necessarily disappointed... the film was, put bluntly, nowhere near as funny as the original... and the Beard knew this before the titles had even finished rolling... "How?!!" I hear you ask... well, with true Beardy benevolence, I will illuminate...

There is one phrase (or possibly a clause, the Beard being unwilling to consult his grammar book) that, when sighted at the beginning of almost any production, be it film, tv show, book or stage play, should cause the heart to sink, and the bottom to rise from the seat in search of a new pursuit... and that is the dreaded "Based on Characters and situations created by..." This invariably means that the original writers realy didn't want to do a sequel, and have been convinced by the sweet talk of money or the legalism of a badly worded contract to allow the sequel to be penned by several people who saw the original when drunk and didn't really get it at all... It is worse by far than the far better "Inspired by characters, etc...." This lattermeans that someone has taken someones work, and changed it into something that they think will be more amusing than the original author's attempts... for example, Patrick Swayze in King Solomons Mines, inspired by Rider Haggard but moved forward in time slightly and turned into a Saturday afternoon romp... fine... any modern day relocation and reworking of Sherlock Holmes... the list continues... but Based on... that means that someone somewhere wants a sequel doing quick and doesn't really care about the result...

A favourite case in point is Inspector Morse... now, the Beard is actaully a fan of Colin Dexter's morose copper, and was pleased when John Thaw portrayed him on television, despite them youthing Lewis and making him Geordie, and changing Morse's Lancia into a Jag... such things, along with showing the episodes out of order, can be coped with... when the Beard soured on the series was when, for various reasons, the producers decided to get people to write new stories for the series... all of whom got Morse's character wrong!! They had obviously seen a few episodes, not really understood anything other than "does crosswords, drinks beer, bullies Lewis, chats up a younger woman, solves crime..." and then wrote an episode... a bit like Peter Jackson claiming to be a Lord of the Rings fan, then changing or omitting THE most important bbits of the book... Elves at Helms Deep??!! No Scouring of the Shire??!!! Very much a WTF moment, or so I'm told such things are called in the vernacular... but yet again i digress, which must be a record even for oneself...

But anyway, when the Beard sees such caption, the Beard immediately knows that the film will be a half hearted copy of the original with no real understanding of it... a bit like the US presidency, perhaps... surfice it to say, the Beard really ought to walk out on such films, and dreads the day when he sees the words, "based on blog posts created by Wisebeard.." They'll probably be attached to some dire comedy film about Vikings and half of a comedy double act, and the main character will be hairy, wise, insightful, witty and charming... as I say, it will get the main character totally wrong... but anyway, the hour gets late, and after a night of babysitting and the Dirty Dozen ( but thankfully not babysitting the Dirty Dozen) with the beautiful Mrs Beard, and with a rather horrifying concert by the rather less horrifying "Notorious," one of whose players is a definitely non horrifying (dare I say otherwise!) lawyer of the Beard's acquaintance, to look forward to, all I have left to say is that, until our lives are all inspired by rather than based on, Wisebeard Salutes You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!