A Place to Stand

A Scotsman article HERE discusses the Chinese maintenance of an erzatz Disney theme park full of characters who bear a striking resemblance to the Mouse & friends.

A Disney spokeswoman, Alannah Goss, declined to comment on the Shijingshan park but sent a statement affirming Disney's determination to fight copying.

"Disney values and protects its intellectual property vigorously and takes reports of suspected infringement very seriously," the statement said.

Despite the striking similarities to foreign characters, Mr Yin insisted the Beijing park's were all locally designed.

"Take our Cinderella as an example. The face of Disney's Cinderella is European, but ours is Chinese. She looks like a young Chinese country girl," he said

The reason for copyright of "intellectual propoerty" is that by giving a monoploy for a limited period it allows the inventor to make a serious profit from the time he has put into his invention.

While patent laws, which protect things that actually produce real wealth, are being constantly worn away by big companies we see similar big companies extending their copyright & even moreso "trademark" righta ad infinitum. I do not see that Disney have any moral right to the Mouse, let alone Snow White as characters after all this time.

Further to the previous report on the Ft Dix arrests is THIS from Slobodan-Miloseveic.org which confirms my suspicion that these were Kosovo Albanians, indeed that one of them was known to be a full member of the NATO trained KLA. The battleworthy & non-conscript troops fighting for the "nation" of Bosnia & Hercegovina were overwhelminglt Mujahadden flown in & armed by the US in deliberate brach of both international law & the UN quarantine. After the war many of them received "B&H citizenship" (a clear violation of Dayton) & settled down "as farmers" in a toewnship called Bocina Donja which they had cleansed. This has left western governments with a problem. On the one hand they knew that our genocidal Nazi Bosnian moslem & KLA allies were recruiting terrorists who would not be of obviously arab appearance. On the other hand doing anything about it would show that they qwere perfectly well aware that the genocidal Nazis we employed were genocidal Nazis all along.

Trifunovic said the arrests showed "white Al-Qaeda at work." He compared the Fort Dix plot to a February attack in Salt Lake City when a Bosnian Muslim youth, Sulejman Talovic went on a shopping mall shooting rampage. Six people including Talovic were killed another four were injured in the attack.

Trifunovic, a professor at Belgrade University's Faculty of Security Studies, was the first to develop a theory of “white Al-Qaeda”, which he said was introduced to the Balkans during 1992-1995 civil war in Bosnia when thousands of 'mujahadeen' from Islamic countries came to fight on the side of local Muslims. Many mujahadeen have remained in the country, and are believed to been indoctrinating local youths with radical Islam and even operating terrorist training camps, Trifunovic said, quoting western and Balkans intelligence sources.

Al-Qaeda has adopted a new tactics of using white European youths for terrorist attacks, “because of their non-Arabic appearance,” Trifunovic told AKI.

....Many Balkan terrorism experts have been warning for years that Al-Qaeda had active cells in Muslim-majority Kosovo and a training camp in the village of Ropotovo. Kosovo has been under United Nations control 1999, when NATO airstrikes drove Serbian forces out of the province

....The US authorities said that Abdulahu was a sharp shooter in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) before fleeing to the US. Fort Dix is a training ground for American soldiers and reservists before they are sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in 1999 it served as a shelter for thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo.

Serb immigrants’ web sites noted that US officials carefully avoided identifying the four ethnic Albanians as such, calling them only "Islamic militants from former Yugoslavia."

From a discussion about whether Sarkozy will do well in which the first respondent predicted economic disaster due to his more free market policies.

This is what is called the scientific method. In a couple of years Sarkozy will have put through most of his programme.

Then either we will have seen economic paralysis & a far worse functioning infrastructure or we will be seeing succes. If the former the advantages of socialism will be proved. If the latter Tomoh, Tommy Sheriden, Jack McConnell & all the rest of these political parasites will... be on here to apologise.

Which led to a wide ranging discussion involving the claim that Mugabe was a classic liberal

Mugabe came to power as a Marxist. While the politics of Victorian Europe don't mesh well with the essentialy tribal politics of modern Africa I think he would be astonished to be held up as a free market liberal.

The Irish workers, like everybody else there, are far better off now. They have no desire to be saved from "capitalist exploiters" who make them richer. All arguments about exploitation depend on the assumption that the economic cake is a fixed quantity & that if one group have more another have less. If there is one thing the modern world economy demonstrates it is that productivity is not a fixed quantity & that there is far more to be gained by everyone from enlarging the cake than from trying to grab bits of other peoples plates.

I note Adrian that you are shifting the ground in that "the real point" is not whether he will make the French richer but merely that he is right wing & hence, irrespective of success or failure, wrong.

On this we will disagree. I think the real point of government is to maximise human freedom & wellbeing over time. If socialism, or indeed McConnellism were to do that it would a good thing but even its proponents now implicitly accept that enterprise does this better.

From John Brignal's highly reccomended Numberwatch

The Laws

Langmuir's Laws of bad science

1 .The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.

2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the low level of significance of the results.

3. There are claims of great accuracy.

4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.

5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.

6. The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to zero.

Parkinson's Laws

1) Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion.

2) Expenditures rise to meet income.

3) Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.

4) The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

5) If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

6) The progress of science is inversely proportional to the number of journals published.

Maier's Law

If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries:
1) The bigger the theory, the better.

2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory.

Hutber's Law

“Improvement” means deterioration.

Kingsley’s Law

More means worse.

The Laws of Thermodynamics for laymen

1. You cannot win
2. You cannot break even
3. You cannot get out of the game

Murphy's law

If anything can go wrong it will go wrong (but see here).

Corollary (Sod's law)

The going wrong always occurs at a time that causes maximum inconvenience.



Moore’s Law

The number of devices on a chip doubles every 18 months.

Le Chatelier-Braun Principle

If any change is imposed on a system in equilibrium, the system will change in such a way as to counteract the imposed change.

The Bureaucrat's credo

I cause change therefore I am.

The first law of toxicology

The poison is in the dose.

Gershwin's Law

It ain't necessarily so.

Simon's law

Routine drives out planning: the urgent takes priority over the important.

Law of unintended consequences

The actions of people (and especially of governments) always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. These often outweigh the intended effects.

Brignell’s Laws

The law of league tables

All measures used as the basis of a league table always improve.

Corollary 1

All other measures get worse to compensate.

Corollary 2

What you measure is what you get.

The law of targets

A level set as a target maximum becomes the de facto minimum, and vice versa.

The law of scientific consensus:

At times of high scientific controversy, the consensus is always wrong.

The law of beneficial developments:

The intensity of the scaremongering attack on any new development is proportional to the level of benefit that it endows.

Corollary:

Alternative therapies do not come under attack.

Third law of economic motion

For every opinion from an economist there is an equal and opposite opinion from another economist

The law of experiments

The first trial always produces a result that is bizarre and points to a great scientific breakthrough.

First corollary

The effect never reappears in any subsequent trials.

Second corollary

In fields such as epidemiology and drug testing there is only one trial.

The law of computer models

The results from computer models tend towards the desires and expectations of the modellers.

Corollary

The larger the model, the closer the convergence.

The first law of journalism

Readers have short memories.

The fundamental law of trends

If you can't see it, it ain't there.

To which I would add only Pournelle's Law
Everything takes longer & costs more

UPDATE - 1 1/2 more

Brignell’s law of beneficial developments:

The intensity of the scaremongering attack on any new development is proportional to the level of benefit that it endows.

Corollary:

Alternative therapies do not come under attack.

According to the BBC radio & apparently the rest of the world's media is coincidentally using the same phrasing the US have foiled a plot to bomb one of their army bases in New Jersey. It appears that some of these people are from "Yugoslavia".

Officials said four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one in Jordan and one in Turkey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, 10 miles east of Philadelphia and 20 miles southwest of Fort Dix, Drewniak said.

(The BBC didn't even say "born in" merely Yugoslavia.)

This therefore avoids having to suggest that they are actually our formerly genocidal freedom fighting but now terrorist friends (my guess is from Kosovo not Bosnia & Hercegovina) deliberately trained by us for the practice of genocide. Instead the blame is passed on to a country which we murdered. A country which could be destroyed only because our racist murdering leaders & their lying journalist were willing to exterminate a nation of whose "territorial integrity & unity" we have undertaken to "take no action against".

The recent murders in Salt Lake city by a B&H terrorist was, of course, reported in the same way.

Will we see this being reported as actions by "former employees deliberately trained in genocide by NATO" - only if our media are in some way honest. Of coursec we can rely on the corrupt Nazi filth of the media to continue lying about their friends & indeed their own guilt in the practice of genocide. Monbiot is at it again.

This is virtually the totality of media coverage I got in the election

let us now consider the9% Growth Party.

I met the 9% Growth Party - Mr Neil Craig as he is also known- when went to The Doublet bar in Glasgow to have a pint and avoid elections for a wee while. Craig, whose science fiction book and comic shop Futureshock is nearby, was handing out leaflets.

"No blackouts. No vindictive bans", the leaflet said. I assumed he was talking about the pub: Don't drink so much you have a blackout, but even if you do, you should not necessarily be barred.

But no, it transpired the "blackouts" is a reference to nuclear power, of which the Glasgow regional list candidate is in favour.The"vindictive bans"isa reference to the Scottish Executive's unilateral prohibition on smoking, to which he is opposed.

The leaflet also promised "Double your income in eight years", which sounds a decent enough electoral bribe. In Craig's brave new world, all business taxes and fiscal controls will disappear. And with 9% compound growth, income apparently doubles in eight years.(Well,it does if you are an entrepreneur. If you're on a pension, it might be a little more difficult.) I suggested to Craig that he might have given his movement the snappier title of the Double Your Money Party, but he thought people might get confused with Hughie Green.

Our Mr Craig is not very green. He thinks climate change is a myth; he tilts firmly against windmills; he thinks the Green movement has killed more people than Hitler. (Check it yourself: Google "9% growth party + Hitler".) Mr 9% does have some sensible policies, too. He wants to automate the Glasgow subway with driverless trains running 24/7 and do the same with the Glasgow-Edinburgh rail link. Less convincing is his proposal to build a tunnel from Oban to Mull to make the island more accessible to fans of Balamory.

It says on Craig's CV that he was chucked out of the LibDems for illiberality which, in itself, is quite an achievement.

From Tom Shields in the Herald. Had an 8 year old child with a pocket calculator been available Mr Shields could have confirmed that 9% growth over 8 years does indeed double income for everybody but clearly he does not move in such intellectual company. Beyond that he actually seems to know what I was standing for & is apparently a train enthusiast. The Herald & Sunday Herald declined to publish this response.

I thank Tom Shields for his approval of the 9% Growth Party's proposal for fully automating the Glasgow underground & Glasgow-Edinburgh lines.

He is quite correct that I support putting new nuclear in to replace the 50% of our electricty production which is reaching retirement. This is a matter on which the larger parties have specificly refused to debate. I'm afraid if we lose half our power massive blackouts are obviously inevitable. Burying our heads in the sand, as the big parties do, is grossly irresponsible & will not make reality go away.

The tunnels proposal is based on the Norwegian's achievement of building 740km of tunnels over the last 20 years. A series of tunnels at Gourock/Dunoon & crossing to Kintyre, Bute Arran & as he says, Mull making it a simple drive from there to Glasgow would greatly improve the prospects of all.

Tom expresses some doubt about the effect of 9% Growth. Doubling income in 8 years at 9% growth is how compound growth works. Try getting a pccket calculator & multiplying 1.09 by totaling 8 times & you will see it. Mathematically it is known as the Rule of 72 since doubling, except in very short time periods, requires 72 points of growth. Thus at Scotland's current growth rate of 1.5% doubling takes 48 years while at 10% growth the income of the Chinese will have doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & close to doubled again.

This is part of why getting the economy growing would be so very valuable for all of us, rich & poor, as I hope, thinking it over, readers will appreciate.

That the Green movement has killed mopre people than Hitler is a simple & apparently undisputed statement of fact.

Congratulations to Sarkozy. Seeing a politician saying they should learn lessons from other countries. This compares favourably with the way our politicians & media continously portray France as full of bureaucratic socialist so unlike our forward looking plucky Brits. While it is true that there are Frenchmen coming here because their bureaucracy prevents them getting jobs but they are matched by Brits going there because our bureaucracy prevents us building houses. They may have rules enforcing a 35 hour week but they also have nuclear power & world class engineering which our rules prevent. In size, population & GNP they are almost our exact equals but if they learn from our strengths & we refuse to learn from theirs it will be to only their benefit.

Their turnout suggests that democracy is working in France. During the campaign Royal, at one stage, revitalised her campaign by a 3 hour televised speech which was watched by the majority of the Scots population. This is how elections used to be fought here too. How different from the way our media do a 5 minute interview in which they ask "have you stopped beating your wife" style questions & immediately interupt the answer. UK & US politics have descended to the point where any idea which cannot be fully expressed in a 10 word soundbite is excluded. I'm sorry but running a country is more difficult than that.

The election result is about as close as it could possibly be. The SNP have ended up one vote ahead but, as I had prophesied, it will take 3 parties to form a majority. There is even the possibility that Labour could win their challenge to one seat & become largest party until the SNP challenged in another & so on in the manner of Bush/Gore. However the SNP's moral claim is good in that they have the largest number of votes & that they have clearly broken labour's hegemony in Scottish politics. There is even a probability that some Labour members will be comfortable with being in opposition. Opposition allows a party to reform itself, get rid of the dead wood, work out new policies & lie back allowing the reformers to make a mess of it. The SNP have certainly made a number of spending promises which it will be virtually impossible to all keep. I hope they will be held to their pro-growth policies - cutting business rates & corporation tax, but this is easier said than done.

It is theoretically possible to form a government supported by 65 of 129 members in an coalition between SNP (47), LDs (16) & Greens (2) but this would depend on every MSP remaining both loyal & healthy & would lead to endless ambushing by the Labour & Tories. In my opinion the SNP are being foolish in continuously denigrating the Tories. They are 1 vote larger than the LDs (theoretically they & Margo MacDonald could also form a coalition with the SNP) but the old SNP insistence on being a "socialist" party, quite out of keeping with their Irish style growth policies has defined the Tories as class enemies.

My bet will be a technical minority government of the SNP & LDs with a de facto deal with the Tories - I may be biased because that would also be my preferred choice, far better than any deal involving the Greens, which would make it almost impossible for the SNP to achieve growth & totally impossible to avoid blackouts. Such a government would obviously make a referendum on independence impossible but with the other 3 big parties opposed there just is not anything close to a majority for it.

The other alternative would be a Labour & LD coalition equally supported by the Tories. In some ways this would be more logical, particularly for the Tories who are on much better terms with Labour. However since there is obvious dissatisfaction with Labour a 3rd government led by them would make it seem that the only way to get rid of them would be an SNP majority. Thus the SNP should be given most of the month allowed to form a government to see if they can, or are willing to (seeing their attitude to the Tories) form a government.

As Margo MacDonald pointed out it doesn't have to be settled in a few days.