informage

I'm not big into television - in fact these days I never watch it. Except that is for certain specific shows - almost always on DVD or via BitTorrent - that get recommended to me as a notch above average. Recently one such show has been 24 (yup I caught on rather late). The recommendation came, rather insistently, from my friend Callan, as did the first couple of seasons worth of shows. If you haven't seen 24 - and you have any kind of appreciation for visual entertainment - watch it. It is superb, and that's all I'm saying on that.

More recently the rather unlikely candidate of the "re-imagining" of cheesy 70s space opera Battlestar Galactica has hit my radar. I hardly watched the original, but I had some toys and a book and loved the concept. This makes me the perfect viewer of what is seen as a travesty by the dyed-in-the-wool deep-nerd fans of "the original series" (TOSsers in online lingo). The new series takes the basic premise of the original, keeps the characters with the odd gender and ethnicity alteration to add spice, and basically retells the story as though it really happened rather than throwing out yet another piece of hammy space theatrics (*cough* any of the Star Treks *cough*)

The new Battlestar Galactica is to TV sci-fi what 24 is to TV crime thrillers. It has a gimmick (remake of a cult show, rather than the real-time of 24), it has the peerless Edward James Olmos (Bladerunner) where 24 has Kiefer, it has the gritty verité cinematography, it has the "no-one is quite who they seem" mystery appeal, it has top-class acting and character development, and it has the edgy minute-by-minute sense of crisis. In essence both shows manage the conjuring trick of combining a raw down-to-earth documentary feel with epic context and plot. Of course TV crime thrillers have always been a bit better than TV sci-fi, and indeed Battlestar Galactica isn't quite as good as 24. However it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen, and I've pretty much watched them all. Long live Galactica!

I was brought up by a Feminist and a Marxist. This has its good and its bad sides. The good is that I was embued with a deep sense of equality and humanity and a strong critical sensibility. The bad is that it sowed within me a rejection of humans, of humanity, because I was brought up to believe that humans are bad. More specifically I was brought up to believe that men and capitalists are bad, but being a young man living in a capitalist society I interpreted this rather broadly.

When I was around 21 years old, after having been politically active in quite a negative way for some years, I had an epiphany about this. This wasn't sudden; it took place over the course of several years and arose out of a whole range of influences. The epiphany was this: humanity is wonderful.

"I am because we are" is the most elegant translation I've heard of the Nguni word "Ubuntu", where Nguni is the collective name for a group of Southern Africa languages including Xhosa and Zulu. It's a beautiful sentiment, sometimes also translated as "humanity to others", with implications that extend much further. It lies behind much that is deeply appealing about African culture. It's also the name of a new version of Linux.

Crikey - a 6 metre long granny-eating shark is on the hunt here in Cape Town. And who's to say it's just after grannies? Well I think that puts pay to any ideas about taking up surfing again. Or anything else involving any kind of proximity to ocean water for that matter. I can't help but think that the increase in chumping to attract sharks for "cage dive experiences" is making matters worse - shark attacks have increased significantly in the last few years - despite some lame protestations I've heard that it couldn't possible be connected. Yeah, right.

Talking of behemoths, our local brewery - no less than the largest in the world after swallowing those notable Wisconsin brewers whole - seem to have a rather nasty grudge against Justin. I don't know him that well, but he seems like a decent fun guy and certainly doesn't deserve this for having a rather clever light-hearted poke at a completely legitimate target.

Now I am not a black chopper guy, apart from anything else I think that there's enough bad crap out there that's openly admitted without distracting our attention with tenuous stories.

However, the more articles like this one on commondreams.org (amongst other sources) that I read, the more I wonder exactly how "free and fair" this little election the other day was.

Reserving judgement right now, but I'm keeping an eye on this story. (2004-11-08)

UPDATE: Simon responded with a link to a Salon article that concludes "The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud." I don't really argue with that, although the suspicious voice inside me wonders what percentage of actual irregularities the evidence covers. As I said, I'm not a black chopper type, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Whether there was any deliberate wrong-doing, or just smatterings of incompetence and error, it makes the arrogant US attitude that they don't need foreign observers at their elections look even stupider than it did anyway - see for example this BBC article. (2004-11-11)

(by the way, Simon complained that comments are no more here. Well, I got bored of cleaning up spam. Anyone is welcome to email me comments which I will post verbatim if requested to - for those that don't know my email address you'll have to email sean@informage.net and look carefully at the bounce. Sorry about the hoops, but that's the way its gonna be).

Marianne Böjer, one of my Pioneers of Change colleagues, asked me to write a comment on her article 'Changing the Game' (429kb PDF file).

The idea of 'Changing the Game' is that we live in systems governed by old games played according to old rules, 'finite' games involving winners and losers. In Pioneers of Change we believe that we can change the rules of the game, that we can instead play win-win 'infinite' games. My comment considers free software to be one of these new games.

Indymedia have frequently clashed with the authorities, it's an inevitable consequence of what they do. Recently they had two servers seized in London and no-one will tell them why or even who they were seized for. The FBI was responsible for the seizing but they're not talking, the UK government won't say if they even knew about it. The whole thing is creepy as all get out.

Salon have a decent article about the seizure which also acts as a mini-history of Indymedia's legal battles (subscription or daypass required). The perenially useful wikipedia has an informative entry and of course there's Indymedia themselves.

I wasn't at any point convinced that Kerry was going to be anything particularly inspiring, except in being "not Bush" and the slight difference in tone that would bring. Historically Democratic administrations have been at least as belligerent in their foreign policy, if not more, than Republican administrations, and as a non-US citizen this has to be my primary area of concern. (I recognise that for US citizens the difference may well have been less superficial).

I believe that there is a fairly consistent belief amongst those I regard as peers that the change we are looking for is on a much more profound level than the change from Republican to Democrat, from Bush to Kerry. A US ruling elite that believes it has the right to violently impose its will on both its own citizens and the citizens of the world is unacceptable to me. Unacceptable whether the figurehead appears to be an incompetent monkey or a sophisticated technocrat.

This article I regard as relevant because it highlights that a leader like Bush is a consequence of the systemic pressures on the politics that governs us. I don't believe too much blame can be laid at the hands of the people that elected him when their cultural context demands that they judge individuals as either worthy or unworthy of the mantle 'president' on very superficial criteria. When I try and 'redirect' to the kind of assessments the average middle American is making, I can see why they vote Bush. They know who he is, they understand him, they are familar with him.

So, although there is a feeling of defeat and depression around what seems a reactionary election result, I don't believe and don't feel that we should be too demoralised in the struggles and projects we are dealing with day-to-day. I believe they have the same chances of success as they had a week ago, and that those chances are high.