Pale blue dot

A new Earth has been discovered! This is what it would look like, if we could see it (this is a picture of Earth taken by Voyager). Beware though, this is not the first time this star has yielded an Earth-like planet. Subsequent estimates of Gliese 581c suggested it'd be more like Venus than Earth. Minor note: a radio message has been sent from Earth to Gliese 581c. The earliest possible response will come in 2049.

Anyway:

Unlike the previously discovered planets, Gliese 581g lies squarely in the region of space were life can thrive. "We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone — one too hot and one too cold — and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said.

One side of the planet is always facing the star, much as one side of the moon constantly faces Earth. This means that the far side of the planet is constantly in darkness. The most habitable region of the planet would be the line between the light and dark regions.

"Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," [Steven] Vogt [astronomer at the University of California] said.

The interesting thing, regarding the Rare Earth debate is:

The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 percent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy.

One of the factors in the likely rarity of Earth is our unusual moon. Amongst other things the Moon stabilises our climate by keeping Earth's orbit and angle of rotation in relative check. Gliese 581g is tidally locked with its star (as the Moon is with the Earth). Gliese 581 is an M-dwarf star, very common in the known universe not to mention long-living. If planets such as Gliese 581g are also common this massively cuts the odds for life in the universe.

The downside of this is, of course, before long someone'll be selling real-estate futures in Gliese 581g. There'll be a tremendous housing boom, followed by a crash, after which David Cameron will sell the planet off to Balfour Beatty and News International. We're all in this together, even the aliens.

Relevant to Yr interests

Let's begin. London's firefighters are approaching a very important struggle, one which is on a knife edge, as the GLA are threatening to sack all firefighting staff who do no sign up to new contracts by the end of this month. Here's why this matters:

The important thing to grasp is that the shift system at the moment—a nine-hour day and a 15-hour night—effectively means that fire cover in London is the same 24 hours a day.

The truth is 12-hour shifts open the door to “flexibility”, and therefore to cuts. If they decided to close ten fire stations they could cut maybe 300 jobs.

But if they want to get rid of 1,500 or 2,000 jobs in the London fire brigade over the next five or ten years, they can’t do it just by shutting fire stations.

They’d have to shut so many that people would notice the damage to the capacity of the brigade and our ability to keep the public safe.

But if they can have staff working where they want them when they need them, then it’s easier for them to reduce the number of fire engines on duty at night time...

In the day it’s not so bad, because people are awake and usually the alarm is raised in good time. At night, fires can go undetected for longer.

People can find themselves trapped at the top of their house, or in a block of flats, where the fire is below them and they can’t get out—that’s if they’re woken up by a fire alarm at all.

They can quite easily die in their sleep.

There’s no doubt that a fire at night poses a much bigger risk.

That’s why cutting night time fire cover is such a scandal.

The firefighters were stunning during their 2002-3 dispute. They were badly burned by their leadership demobilsing the strikes - which will make it doubly hard for them to come out now, but they almost certainly will. Anyone willing to plunge into a burning building to save your life deserves your support.

Europe is currently molten with this kind of rebellion. In the last week there have been general strikes in France and Spain. The question there is how can we get beyond one-day events (even weekly one-day strikes, like they have in France). This is a deathmatch we are involved in. It's them or us, and despite the crowing and snide remarks about unions having 'residual power' our rulers are deeply, deeply afraid. Hence, for example, the fear and loathing of the result of the Labour Party electing slightly-pink Ed.

Can we have the same action in Britain (we certainly need it). Yes, we can, but it'll be a quick, steep climb.

Down with Bono-bashing?

Apparently "Ridiculing the U2 singer only makes it harder for any band with ideals to stick their neck out". This is Bono displaying his ideals:














This is Bono being idealistic about mobile phones:



And Ipods:



And finally, this is Bono being idealistic about imperial genocide:



This is a deeply joyless world. If we can't bad-mouth this wonky old sell-out what can we do?

Tedious union bashing: pt 2534...

Ed Milliband only won the Labour leadership race because of the unions, but then the unions only formed the Labour Party to further their cause in the field of politics. Oh to live in the fantasy land of Nick Robinson (Pavlov's newshound), where unions are this powerful, ever malign, evil presence waiting to pounce on our neo-liberal paradise.

And, Ed Milliband, at least at this point, is being honest. He is not left-wing.

A little something...

Some industrial disputes you can see coming. Others are a surprise. Some are a revealation. Read a little about the struggle at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Edmonton:

“People are angry at the way they cut our numbers and work us harder.

“The best part of half a million bottles go through my area on a 12-hour shift. Between us the workers here produce millions of bottles.

“Yet we take home about £120 for a shift—about £10 an hour. We do a shift pattern from hell to get that. The plant runs 24/7. Our lives are built around these shifts.

“In the high period, when summer or Christmas are coming up, we go onto our long hours shift pattern, where we work 168 hours in three weeks.

“In a shift you do 12 hours, and you get four breaks—two 15 minute breaks and two half hour breaks.

“It’s a long shift.

“And it’s very, very stressful, because if you make one mistake you’re in the office being disciplined.

“We’ve had people sacked recently for making the most meagre of mistakes.

“The last woman who went left some cases on the line of a previous product when the next product was coming down, so the wrong product was packed onto the pallet. And she was sacked just for that.

“You can make mistakes easy as anything, and you’re penalised massively.

“The stress levels in there… on a 12-hour shift, at 4 o’clock in the morning on your fourth night, you’re zonked—you don’t know who you are. You’re just so tired.

“You’re jetlagged all the time.

“We go through all this and we accept it. But what we’re not going to accept is bad pay increases any more".

At this present time strikes over pay are rare, but they are always welcome. The workers there should feel proud, standing up for themselves in the face of a ruthless corporation. Send messages of support to yourunite@hotmail.com

The political effects of electric communication

Some of them... The point about written communication is it consists of assembling abstract objects, letters into words, words and punctuation marks into sentences and paragraphs. This accustoms people to a spatial, logical, linear mode of thought: idiomatic examples, one has a train of thought, if you lose the meaning of what someone is saying you don't follow them. Teach a child how to read and write they will, in part, grasp other concepts, such as syllogism or the factory process.

Electric communication speeds and and integrates human perception. Film, for example, takes the still picture and speeds it up to the point where fluid movement appears. Once you add synchronised sound you have a realistic, instant picture of humanity. Electric communication reduces abstraction and distance. There is no longer any periphery to society. Whereas before you might have read "the Gaza strip is suffering under a brutal siege" now you can see a boy chucking rocks at a tank. This depth of involvement is a tremendous boon to ideas such as solidarity and internationalism.

Anti-colonial and civil rights movements may well have taken off in the latter half of the twentieth century regardless of technology. TV and film can only have helped such movements.

A different effect is the modern organisation of consent for rule. The gigantic amount of information available to the average citizen. This necessarily reduces the purchase of each piece of information. Overstimulation produces numbness as competition produces monopoly.

The stalinist method of ideological struggle (the method of struggle in non-stalinist societies) has been taken up by the ruling class universally. Instead of denying citizens access to information the ruling class bombards information at us. A typical debate over a subject of national importance will involve as much irrelevancy, insult and lies as possible. Did you know government budgets have to be cut because "there's no money left"? What, in the whole of Britain? How much does a canard cost these days?

Back to the Gazan example. When a ship carrying aid was boarded by Israeli commandos, who promptly killed several unarmed passengers, the Israeli government saturated the world's media with a party line story, including out and out lies (the ship's passengers did not yell anti-semitic insults, they were not smuggling weapons). The relentless turnover of news stories meant a lasting impression was cast in many minds by the Israeli government, long after the facts of the party line story were refuted.

Mild interest of the week

Jon Stewart, the arch-liberal US news satirist, is planning a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington next month to draw voters to an anti-extremism demonstration sold on witty irony. He's calling it the Million Moderate March.

See more here: "I Disagree With You, But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler". A potentially large, left-inclined movement in America would be a welcome event. But, in the same way that the allegedly new atheism fails to dent religion, I'm not sure countering insanity with logic and moderation will have much effect.

The Tea Party movement is, of course, funded by billionaires, backed by 'news' outlets like Fox. The movement's make-up too is a lot less "grassroots" than is usually made out. The movement is firstly a right-wing wedge, being used to destabilise the Obama administration. More broadly it is using the crisis of the recession as means to shift the political climate ever rightward.

Though Obama is hardly a radical (certainly not a socialist, or fascist, or muslim) his triumph was signficant in that: (1) it mobilised a great number of people who can only be described as left, although his campaign has subsequently demobilised them (2) it blew a visible hole in Nixon's southern strategy for overturning the gains of the civil rights movement, and (3) the combined fall of Tom Delay and the election of a new Democratic congress hampered the K Street Project (to further rig lobbying and funding in favour of the Republican party). A number of the things Republican leaders for years took for granted, political calaculations, were whisked away. Their sense of entitlement was dealt a hearty blow, hence their furious indignation.

I don't know what American lefties (organised lefties) should do. My instinct is the left should pitch into any movement to restablish democratic sanity. The added dimension is they can talk about what used to be called social democracy, the social question, which mainstream Democrats are incapable of addressing.

But, hey ho!

More Camden

Another daybreak. Half light is filtering through thin curtains. A young woman is sleeping soundly, gently snoring in her bed. There is noise, vague activity coming from another room, what sounds like a child's voice. It does not disturb the woman's sleep. There is a sound

Noise: Beep! Beep! Beep...!

Without opening her eyes the woman, sleeping on her side, lifts an arm and slaps it down on the digital alarm clock. The noise continues. The woman grumbles, opens her eyes and clutches the alarm clock in both hands. She presses the off button down firmly, sits up in bed, yawns and arches her back.

Voice: Lucy.

A child's voice is calling her name.

Lucy: Coming.

Lucy gets up out of bed, reaches for her dressing gown, hanging on a hook on her door. She puts on her dressing gown. The child's voice calls out again. Lucy responds.

Lucy: I'm coming, I said I'm coming.

Lucy checks her breath before heading downstairs.

…

Lucy padded down the stairs, she could hear her little brother Daniel was already up. It was his first day of school, proper school. Their Mum was one morning shifts, so it was Lucy's job to get him to school.

Daniel was in the living room, unpacking his school bag.

“You're keen, it's six in the morning” said Lucy. “What're you doing?”

“Where's Mum?”

“I told you, she's working”.

“When's she coming back?”

“She'll be back tonight, Daniel. Why're you unpacking your stuff?”

“I want my ruler”.

“You want you're...? It's in...”

Daniel found his ruler and began twanging it over the edge of the nearby coffee table.

“Come on” said Lucy, “pack your stuff up”. Lucy helped Daniel pack up his pencil case, put it in his bag. “Now, let's make your lunch”.

“Jam, I want jam”.
“Daniel?”

“Jam please” said the little man, remembering his manners, flashing a winsome smile. The pair made Daniel's packed lunch together. As it was a special day Lucy let Daniel butter and spread his sandwiches. He put lots of jam on, so much, when Lucy folded the slices together it oozed out over the crusts.

“You've put too much jam on, haven't you?”

“No”.

“Yes you have, look”. Daniel could only just see over the work surface. Lucy plucked up Daniel by the waist so he could get a better look.

“No!” said Daniel, giggling.

Lunch box packed Lucy fitted her over her brother's shoulders. She straightened him up his uniform a little. “There you go. Have you remembered everything”.

“I forget” said Daniel.

“Uniform?”

“Yes”.

“Shoes polished?”

“Yes”.

“Pencil case, books packed?”

“Yes, Lucy”.

“You've got your lunch box... Then we're ready to go. Let me just get my keys”. Lucy bundled back upstairs.

“Don't forget your box” shouted Daniel.

“I won't” Lucy shouted back from her bedroom.

Two minutes later they were off into the brightening day.

…

Lucy and Daniel took the overland shuttle to get to Daniel's school. The shuttle had only recently been upgraded, linking the south pole residential areas with the equatorial urban centres for the first time, 25% quicker than with the previous fleet. Even so, it would still be an hour and a half to two hours before they got there.

Daniel was an apt child. Without quite knowing it he had passed his preschool examinations with flying colours (1), and was off to school in Central Camden; Marcuse Road, a highly recommended primary. On the way there, to pass time, Lucy quizzed her brother.

“What's six times seven?”

Daniel answered immediately, “forty-two”.

“Correct. Now, what's five times nine?”

“Forty-five”.

“Right. So, what's thirteen times eleven?”

Daniel thought for a split second. “A hundred and forty-three”.

“That's right...!” said Lucy, smiling. The other passengers were looking at the pair. It was still quite early, the first rising curl of the rush hour. The carriage was getting busy, slowly filling with tired and testy travellers, people on the way to work, though there were still a few seats left. Lucy paid the gawkers no regard. “Seven-and-a-half times five-and-a-half?”

Daniel counted for a moment, waggling and tapping his fingers slightly. “Forty... one-and-a... Forty-one-and-a-quarter”.

Lucy tested him on some other subjects. Daniel liked talking about atoms and chemisty, so she asked, what's the chemical formula of water? (H2O). What's the density of liquid water? (1 gramme per cubic centimetre) What's the density of the planet Erin? (2.4 grammes per cubic centimetre) What does this mean? (Erin is a rocky planet partially covered in water) On they went, until they reached Presidents Cross terminal, where they got off.

…

Lucy saw Daniel up to the school door, hand in hand. Letting go she felt a little lump in her throat. Daniel was dear to her, almost like a son. Being the baby of the family, everyone felt protective toward him. Daniel wasn't even two (in Erin years) when his father was killed. For six months after he toddled round the house looking for Daddy; when is he coming back?

But Lucy choked back when she saw her brother's face, excited, beaming, not a trace of awe or fear.

“Bye, bye”.

Lucy waved, Daniel ploughed into the stream of kids, reception class; through the door and he was gone.

A woman standing who happened to be standing next to Lucy spoke. “I'm so proud, we've been looking forward to this day for three years now”. Lucy could not see but she seemed to be speaking to her. Lucy turned to look.

“Hmm”.

“Oh, I say” said the woman, who clutched her chest in mock surprise. “You're awfully, awfully young to be... Are you his nanny?” She was in early middle-age and well-dressed. She was slightly taller than Lucy.

“No, I...”

“Au pair?”

“No...”

“Well you can't be...”

“I'm his sister”.

“I see, ha!” said the woman. “I'm terribly sorry. Well, you know what they say, never assume, it makes an ass out of you...”

“And me” Lucy added, who began tugging anxiously on the sleeve of her cardigan.

The woman asked, “is his mother OK?”

“She's at work”.

“Oh, I totally understand. Sisters are doing it for themselves these days, eh?”

“Yeah...” said Lucy, who used the pause to turn and break off the conversation. The woman began to walk with her to the school gate. “We're keeping our options open at the moment, obviously we've booked our boy, Nathaniel, that's our boy, we've booked him into a prep school in Bromley, Schopenhauer's, you might have heard it, but where next, that's the thing. Camden has some great faculties, but... you know?”

“I don't know” said Lucy, blankly. The pair reached the gate. They stopped for a moment, facing each other, Lucy slouching slightly, the woman quite poised.

“That's, uh, quite an accent you have, Miss...”

“Lucy, I was born on Camden, but my parents were from Erin”.

“Oh, marvellous. What brought them to Camden?”

“Work, I guess”.

“Really?” the woman was turning a little quizzical.

“My Ma's a cleaner, my Pa worked at the port. He's dead now”.

“Goodness” said the woman, outwardly shocked. “How did your son...?”

“My brother...”

The woman corrected herself. “How did your brother get in here?”

“He passed the test, he passed with flying colours” said Lucy, “top five percent”.

“Good for him” said the woman, recovering some diplomacy. She began looking around. “Well, I'd offer you a lift but I'm probably going a different way to you”. With this the woman leaned over Lucy and squeezed her on the arm in sympathy. The woman then flashed a smile, turned and walked off. Lucy watched impassively as she rounded the corner of the street, looking back occasionally.

(1) The Camdonian education system is setted from the beginning of primary school. The preschool examination was supposed to be a non invasive assessment, based on observation by inspectors and submitted written examples of a child's work. The education system is unevenly funded (and generally underfunded). Even at this stage there is hot competition for good schools (25% of intake can come from non-catchment children). More affluent Camdonians are known to hothouse and prep their children to gain an advantage.

What's the Welsh for "nobody likes a Tory"?

The government has proposed the Welsh language channel S4C make a voluntary repayment of 5% of its annual grant. Are we suppose it's voluntary in the same way protection payments are 'voluntary'? If it's voluntary surely the channel is free to refuse.

There aren't many wholly admirable people, institutions or things left in British public life. The revival of Welsh is wonderful.

All across Europe branches of Gaelic language have been retreated, withered through neglect or abuse (or a combination of the two). Until not so long ago Welsh was not taught in schools, effectively banned from public life.

Today it is one of the most subsidsed languages on earth, one a few minority languages on the rise. It may look and sound utterly bonkers to the saxon mind, but it is an essential part of cultural heritage. If Gaelic is lost then we lose too.

Where yr neighbours live

Media 'n' messages etc

The medium is the message: Marshall McLuhan's most well known statement. It is a materialist statement, therefore we feel affinity with it. Human activity is mediated. The significance of any new medium far outweighs any message carried by it (McLuhan includes 'messages' brought by such media as houses, weapons and factory machines). Most often the medium determines the message.

Simple examples: look at the evolution of music, without the medium of the music score there could be no orchestral music, without sound recording no pop music. Psychedelic rock is impossible without the fuzz box and LSD, rave could not happen without the 808 and ecstasy.

In Understanding Media, McLuhan makes a telling point:

In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago, General David Sarnoff made this statement: “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for those who wield them. The products of modern scienced are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value”. That is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose we were to say, “Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value”. Or, “The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value”.

Quite so. We might add, after a recent internet spoof of an NRA slogan, “guns don't kill people, people kill people... with guns”.

McLuhan was not politically active, at least not on his writings about media. This is probably for the best, as we can see McLuhan's materialism is that which mirrors metaphysics, good up to a certain point. We can all spot the difference meanings of smallpox and apple pie, but what does, for example, a factory mean?

The factory system is a super efficient medium for labour, producing an abundance of goods. Right now this system means superb wealth for the class of factory owners, for the class of factory workers it means tedious, grinding work, low pay and structural unemployment. For our current society it means periodic economic crisis, pollution and long term decline. But the factory's abstract property, labour saving efficiency, should mean the opposite of this. Something else, some other medium is determining the message of the factory. The medium is clearly the society we find factories in.

One of McLuhan's most interesting chapters is on weaponry. Clearly some weapons have none other than a reactionary meaning. No revolution can wield an atomic bomb. The rifle is a different prospect.

The true meaning of the rifle was discovered during the 19th century revolutions. Warfare was an elite skill for centuries, knighthood being its pinnacle. The bow and arrow did equalise things somewhat. Even so, compared to the rifle, it still requires a lot of skill, not to mention brute force. The French revolution was the first with truly mass participation. When it came under attack it had to be defended by the people, not a private army. The rifle was perfect for the job. After the rise of Napoleon to emperor he had to retain the essence of the bourgeois revolution to win consent for his conscript army.

As much as one we want to one day do away with killing and violence, there are some weapons, such as the rifle, whose meaning is determined by whomever is using it.

Reinstate our right to march past the Tory Conference

Add your name here.

On Tuesday 24th August a delegation from the Right To Work campaign met with West Midlands police and a representative of Birmingham City Council to discuss the route of the protest march outside the Tory party conference on Sunday 3rd October.

West Midlands police stated that they were happy for RtW to march past the conference centre and confirmed that centenary square, the square directly in front of the conference centre, would not be a “sterile zone”. A route was suggested by Birmingham City Council and West Midlands police and the delegation accepted the offer to walk the route being proposed.

The Police have now reneged on the proposed route citing security reasons. They are denying us the right to march past the conference centre.

We are asking everybody to sign the following statement:

“We are alarmed to be informed that, despite earlier agreements with the Police and Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Police are attempting to stop the trade union demonstration against public service cuts from marching past the Conservative Party conference at the ICC on Sunday 3rd October

The march has been initiated by the Right to Work Campaign and is backed by three national trade unions (the PCS, NUJ and UCU), the Labour Representation Committee and a number of local trade union and campaigning organisations.

We feel that this is a violation of the right to freedom of speech and our rights to protest peacefully against the Government. Peaceful protest is a vital part of a democratic society and people have taken their opposition to Government actions to their conferences for decades. The decision of the West Midlands Police takes that right away. We note that Centenary Square will not be a “sterile zone” and that people will be able to access the area freely. By not allowing the Right to Work campaign to march past the International Convention Centre we are concerned that West Midlands Police is attempting to make political decisions about how visible protests against the cuts can be and are denying a basic democratic right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

We believe that West Midlands Police should permit the demonstrators to march past the Conservative Party conference on Sunday 3rd October.”

Add your name here 3rd October route protest letter


Signatories


Ed Balls MP
Katy Clark MP
John McDonnell MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
John Cryer MP
Caroline Lucas MP
Derek Simpson UNITE General Secretary
Len McCluskey UNITE Deputy General Secretary
Jeremy Dear NUJ General Secretary
Mark Serwotka PCS General Secretary
Billy Hayes CWU General Secretary
Tony Kearns CWU Senior Deputy General Secretary
Jane Loftus CWU vice president
Christine Blower NUT General Secretary
Kevin Courtney NUT Deputy General Secretary
Matt Wrack FBU General Secretary
Colin Moses POA national chair
Pete Murray President National Union of Journalists
Joe Marino Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union
Paul Kenny GMB General Secretary
Mary Turner GMB president
Tony Woodley UNITE joint general secretary
Sally Hunt UCU general secretary
Mary Bousted ATL general secretary
Ken Loach Internationally acclaimed film director and member of BECTU
Billy Bragg
Paddy Hill
Stephen Deans Unite the Union Scottish chair
Ian Allinson UNITE EC member
Martin Mayer UNITE EC member
Mark Lyon UNITE EC member
John Sheridan UNITE EC member
Sharon Hutchinson UNITE EC member
Alice Robinson ATL senior vice president
Cllr Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham Labour group
Cllr Pete Lowe Lye and Wollescote Labour Party
Cllr Robin King Labour
Ken Livingstone
Tom Miller Young Labour south east representative
Mark Bergfield NUS exec
Lee Jasper Black Activists Rising Against Cuts

Easy, easy target

But man it hits home. The only downside is the dickheads will love it, like they loved Nathan Barley and Loadsamoney.

Science... blah... blah... blah... TV... Etc...

I am so happy (or as happy as I can be about a TV show) BBC 2 is currently showing the Wonders of the Solar System on Sunday evenings. It is a marvellous, albeit short series presented by Dr Brian Cox, fast becoming the star of popular science. In terms of is TV career this is justified, Wonders of the Solar System is on a level with the best Attenborough.

Linked with this and another recent series on the Atom, I've stumbled across the discussion of the Anthropic principle. The discussion runs thus:

(1) The universe is governed by four basic forces, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak atomic forces.
(2) Said forces are very highly tuned, so much that a slight alteration in any would destroy the universe as we know it. For example, if gravity were any stronger galaxies, solar systems, planets etc would collapse in on themselves, if it were weaker matter would be dispersed.
(3) We can draw two basic conclusions from this, the Weak and Strong Anthropic principles.

The book I read concerning this dismissed the Weak Anthropic principle as boring. The Weak principle states the universe is fine tuned enough to produce life intelligent enough to grasp this fine tuning. If it were not then we would not be here to observe said tuning. Boring: maybe. Conservative: definitely.

Meanwhile there are two versions of the Strong Anthropic principle. If there reality consists of one universe then the odds are against a universe fine tuned for intelligent life to arise, this suggests a conscious design (oh, dear!). If reality consists of a multiverse then this shortens the odds of a fine tuned universe to make it a natural inevitability.

All in all, this makes me prefer the Weak Anthropic principle. The problem with the first Strong interpretation is obvious, the notion of a supernatural intelligence is absurd. The problem with the second is it is currently untestable. There is a plausible suggestion black holes, which condense matter and energy to a singularity, are the seeds of new universes. In the midst of a multiverse, the only 'universes' that can be made are those with black holes.

But, as far as I can see, there's one other problem with the Strong principle, that the universe is actually 'fine tuned'. Clearly the universe is habitable enough to allow one spot of intelligent life. The trouble is we don't know for sure how life arose on Earth.

From what we do know there is a fair possibility of life on Europa, Enceladus, Triton, perhaps Mars and, at a longer shot, Titan (if we find life on any of those bodies we will be able to deduce much more about the origin of life). The evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life is pretty sparse. Considering the turbulence and toxicity of the known universe is it too much of a leap to suggest the universe is actually poorly fitted to accommodate life, let alone intelligent life?

Artists for war and carnage

No matter what you think of the average LMHR line up, the We Love the War concert (Help for Heroes, surely?) boasted Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, Enrique Iglesias, James Blunt, Alexandra Burke and Pixie Lott... Some people don't deserve ears. They should get some of their heroes to chop them off.

Loving music, hating racism and so on...

I have been privy to an interesting discussion about Love Music Hate Racism. I think the debate should continue in three glorious dimensions.

It is important to note LMHR's primary mission, bringing Black, White and Asian kids together to listen to live music, is simple, essential and something LMHR does very well. The rest almost (stress, almost) takes care of itself. Its second mission is to get into scenes where the nazis try to win influence and head them off. Poor Kate Rusby can count Nick Griffin as a fan so, for everyone's sake, Folk Against Fascism was set up.

There is a weakness in LMHR, not really of its own making. LMHR line ups tend to be either new, untested groups or rather jaded heritage acts (the acme being Jimmy Pursey's mauling of White Riot at Victoria Park two years ago). I heard the problem described to me a little while ago. A punk/metal band that has recorded with hip-hop artists was approached to do a gig. As I was told several of the band were keen, some less so, but it was the manager who squashed the idea.

The popular music industry is institutionally racist. A recent manifestation has been the de facto ban on hip-hop gigs in Greater London. Look at two key breakthrough artists, Dizzie Rascal and Lethal Bizzle, neither has really done so on their own terms. Both have pitched at a crossover. Lethal Bizzle worked the indie circuit especially hard. Rock kids do want to listen to hip hop. Bizzle packed out the NME stage at Reading last year, 10,000 capacity at least. This year Dizzie Rascal and his band were an even bigger festival smash. Though LMHR probably can't claim all the credit, but its mixed bills can only have helped such a fusion take place.

There is much effort and worry about the declining vitality of popular music. One of the lasting illusions of the 1960s, when everything seemed better and brighter, was that music was the spur for wider cultural and social revolution. People, especially music critics, tend to put the cart before the horse. There is no point waiting for the new Beatles/Stones/Pistols/Clash to come along and light up our lives when the process happens the other way round.

Mike Davis has an exceptionally good routine (which he has made into articles but should turn into a book) on youth riots in America, in particular Los Angeles. In Riot Nights on Sunset Strip he describes a junction in history when, at least in terms of the West Coast scene, there was a flowering of new, powerful music within a still parochial setting. Bands were not yet distant icons but intimately familiar with each other and much of the audience.

The Sunset Strip riots began as a conflict between different wings of the local chamber of commerce. The old nexus of gambling prostitution and organised crime had been cleared out and largely replaced with youth venues. The police crackdown on teenage 'loitering' (a prelude to the return of the adult entertainment business) provoked a movement of Southern California's youth to Free the Strip. It not only drew in local rock musicians (stop children, what's that sound?) but also their managers and agents, AM DJs, local venue owners and such kind.

Certainly the Jacobins of the music industry saw the movement differently from the Sans Culottes on the strip itself. There were, however, attempts at the base to broaden out the movement to include gay and black working class youth, also subject to police arbitrariness and brutality. Attempts to reach out to Watts and East LA were outward flops, although according to Davis Black and Chicano youth later attempted to integrate the strip.

The point was, there was a short period in the mid-sixties when pop music was electrified was by world around it. The effect was to draw the audience, the musicians and the apparatus close together. Many expect musicians to be leaders, organic intellectuals almost, and the industry a kind of hegemonic apparatus (the strip was more or less freed in the end because of the economic superiority of the music industry over adult entertainment). If pop stars are supposed to speak for the young the young have to give them something to say.

In the end we come back to Gramsci's critical renovation of consciousness. If we want exciting, innovative culture we must have an exciting, innovative world: we need revolutionaries.

Planet Camden - another story

Lucy had been on Camden for longer than she cared to know. In fact she had been on Camden all her life (except for a few away days on the moon, Soho). Her parents brought her to the planet. They left behind their home world, at that time suffering a jobless blight, and came in search of good work and a better life.

They left the Planet Erin, third planet around Dubhe, shortly after Lucy was born. Erin was a beautiful, green, growing world. At one time it was a major exporter of fine food. Lucy's Dad, John, was a freight pilot for Erin's extensive port network, her Mum, Cynthia, had been a nurse, but they met (as many young people did) when they were fruit pickers on an asteroid farm. Though Erin's capital seemed an appropriate, broad and urbane civilisation, they were boggled by the wholly urban Planet Camden. How could it work? How was it sustainable?

That aside, there was clearly money to be made there. John got a job on the public transit system, Cynthia found several jobs as a cleaner. The plan was to spend five years on the planet (they both booked up for a five year indenture), save money and come home all the richer. One month's wage on Camden could take up to three months work on Erin. Though the family made enough to get by, saving was a difficult task.

Lucy, of course, was a growing girl. She needed to placed in a nursery. There were plenty about, but all of them charged for their service (unlike on Erin where it was free at the point of use). Lucy's family, like a lot of immigrants, settled on the south side of Camden. The nearest affordable (but not too shabby) kindergarten was half way to the equator, a hefty round trip, especially after the transport company took away free travel for employees family and spouses. There was clothes, shoes, baby food to deal with. In time Lucy found a spot in a nice, local school, which was free at the point of use. The school books and uniform were not, however.

It was the little things, cropping up every now and then. Camden had a sales tax, not unusual, most planets had some sort of tax on general purchases. Camden was usual in that it charged buyers after the fact. All legitimate transactions were carried out on credit or debit cards. Each quarter citizens would receive a bill for purchases made, all apart from exempt groups like students, university academic staff, registered artists, musicians, writers, public officials, visiting dignitaries and special permanent citizens. But rates would vary and could be varied at fairly short notice. This would catch many people out.

Things were not looking up on Erin. More of Lucy's family and friends tried to emigrate. Those who made it abroad would often send money back home. Lucy's grandparents had to move to a retirement home after their municipal apartment was compulsorily purchased. Their children helped make the cost of moving, and then of staying in the home.

There were many of these little costs, each adding up. The end point, after five years toil, was Lucy's parents did not have enough money to leave. They had to sign on for another five years, and another five after that. John took an extra job, working on the garbage removal system. He died when Lucy was almost a young woman. They had almost saved enough money to return. John was taking a routine shipment of of toxic and metallic waste up to orbit when a freak solar ejection knocked out the Camden's pilot system. The resulting crash was described by many as “beautiful”. Fifteen ships were either damaged or destroyed. John was rescued but died later in hospital.

As well as the pain of losing a father, Lucy now had to go to work. Lucy was an excellent student, one of the top 5% in her year across the planet. She had been on track for a scholarship, a special leg-up system for Poor students. She turned sixteen and dropped out of the school system. She found work at her Mum's place, as a cleaner for the University Grand Library (1).

Many years of grey labour passed. The dream of returning to Erin faded, despite the fact it was undergoing a tremendous boom (2). After a while the grand library was not so bad for Lucy.

Lucy and her Mum would arrive for work nine every evening, punch in and get assigned to one of the vast rooms in the library; get busy. First job would be to shoo the last remaining bookworms on home, easier said than done when you had several square kilometres to comb. Many accidents (and thefts) resulted from people getting locked in overnight. Lucy got to know a few students this way, mostly postgraduates but some who were her age.

In the occasional spare moment sometimes on a lunch break, she'd grab a book to read. One student in particular took a shine to Lucy. Juan Von Liebneckt was a first year student when he met Lucy. He came from the planet Colombia (a terraformed body orbiting Mirach) studying Eastern Post-Colonial Literature, a favourite of Lucy's. Despite being from a wealthy background (his family owned a number of asteroidal haciendas) Juan was involved immigrant rights campaign. He loved to visit Poor areas of Camden, to see real life as its lived, and was planning to move down south during his second year.

Juan began lending Lucy some of his books, then his library card. Juan knew some of the librarians. After a bit of persuasion he got Lucy a fake student ID so she could take out books on her own account. Every night Juan would stay to help Lucy with her job and they'd talk, and talk. They'd compare books they'd been reading, the latest academic papers, galactic news and current affairs, the surprising linguistic roots of their respective local languages. It was a matter of time before they fell in love, and they did.

Juan stayed on during the three month break, temping as an office clerk to pay his way. He took Lucy to poetry readings, art exhibitions, gigs, sun-flooded picnics on the Hemestede and so on. While their different backgrounds led to confusions and the occasional row they both loved and respected each other. Juan went out of his way to encourage Lucy to get back into education, although he never understood why Lucy couldn't just borrow the money she needed to study.

Shortly before the university was due to reopen Juan received a message from his father. He had been transferred to a prestigious Yanqui university (he was also going to switch to an applied mathematics major). Juan's father had made connections in Yanqui funded real estate and energy concerns. He was to spend a year making friends there, firming up the family links. Juan argued with his father. He suspected his Dad got wind of his affair with a Poor girl, though he never brought it up.

Juan eventually had to leave for Yanqui after his allowance was cut off. Lucy and Juan parted with sweet sorrow. Juan promised to return as soon as he could. Both promised to stay in touch, but both knew it would be very difficult. Before leaving Juan made Lucy promise to get back into education and to use that library card whenever she could.

(1) The Grand Library is another of the many prides of Camden. Officially a branch of the University, since it was opened, over 1,000 galactic cycles ago, it became an impressive undertaking of its own, effectively autonomous, a state within a state. The library (as people now know it) was largely founded by two former graduate students.

John Murray was a Pictan. He initially came to Camden as an applied mathematics and exotaxation student. After university he stayed on at Camden and put his minor to good use as a band manager and, eventually, record label director. In his time he became a rich, powerful, not to mention respected, man.

All successful graduates were entitled to use the University's basic facilities, restaurant, bar, recording booth etc. John was a book collector, it was his special, non-industry hobby that he liked to do on the quiet (only mentioning it in TV, radio and magazine interviews when asked). John was so depressed and frustrated by the state of the library, which back then was little more than an automated depository with a mere 2 million volumes in either hard or electronic form, he publicly quit his job and sold all his shares in Shining Path records and started a one man campaign to get the library up to scratch. After persuading the University and local authorities to grant him a budget, John quickly assembled a staff of devoted librarians and philologists, found an office and got to work.

The official galactic publishing industry was fairly slack. John decided to bypass its bureaucracy and send out appeals to all inhabited planets, through their press and broadcast systems. Please send any and all books, collections, journals, magazines, newspapers all publications in all languages to Planet Camden for copy and collection.

As time went by the project developed. John built a team of officers with permission to search all vessels passing through Camden space for printed or electronic documents, which were again confiscated and copied before being handed back. John's library team expanded through the website operation. Copies were sent by amateur collectors, often with translations, often without the library asking for them. A prolific contributor was W.C. Minor. Though John and his team never met him, they knew Minor to be a doctor from the Boreal planet Yanqui, halfway across the galaxy. When John sent someone to finally meet him it turned out he was an inmate in an asylum.

The library today covers several million cubic kilometres, holding just shy of two hundred and ten billion titles. The library employs over 100,000 people in all capacities, uses approximately 3% of Camden's water and 9% of its electric power. The main building is visible from low orbit.

(2)Based on property speculation, Erin underwent a huge building boom, which kick started the rest of the economy. For the first time in many years people immigrated (often wealthy galactic citizens looking for a second home) while local currency was swapped for galactic goods. The boom has since slowed to a stop. A local banking crisis saw huge amounts of credit withdrawn.

Tony Blair - the British Nixon

Mo' strikes

While the Evening (Hurrah for the Blackshirts) Standard has the gall to compare the RMT to the Luftwaffe, here's some actual strikers speaking for themselves:

Strikers at Monument station told Socialist Worker, “Because this is a strike for safety many passengers support us.

“This station, which is linked to Bank, has six lines and ten platforms. In an emergency we have to get people out from the lower levels. We have been trained to do that.

“Would the managers in there today be able to evacuate the station properly”

Taimoor, a striker at another station, explained, “Every morning there are passengers ill on trains or security alerts. We are trained to deal with those situations. What will happen if there are less staff?”

“They’re making these job cuts now so that they can get rid of us all in the future,” added striker Nicky. “They’ll make it like the DLR or national rail stations where there are no staff on stations.

“The Tories are even talking about having driverless trains.

“At the moment, disabled and blind people are helped by staff members. There’ll be no one to help them in the future.”

“If jobs are lost it will mean a decrease in safety,” said Gavin, an RMT rep. “In 2005 there were 10,700 reported crimes against passengers on London Underground.

“The number of staff increased after that and by 2009 there was a 23 percent decrease.

“Staff members noticed a man entering Moorgate station on 28 August with a samurai sword and other bladed weapons. He was later found to have had loaded guns.

“What would the outcome have been if there had been no staff to observe him when he entered the station?”

Strikes 'n' stuff

The RMT are currently in a number of disputes. The big one, to borrow a phrase, begins tonight. Both the RMT and TSSA station staff on the London Underground are walking out at 5pm tonight, with drivers and signalers coming out at 9pm.

Boris Johnson described the strike as "pointless and politically motivated", a fair amount of projection can be safely assumed. The headline in most papers is about 800 staff being cut and ticket offices closed. But this is not just about ticket offices, TFL want to cut back on the frequency of safety inspections. Station staff have already been cut to the bone. Through my own personal grapevine I know Kings Cross, home to seven lines, currently operates with two, count them, two platform staff. There is also the strong rumour of £1.2 billion being cut from TFL's budget in October.

These are the first blows of a crucial battle. The RMT in particular is a strong, proud union. Those who want to see a fightback against this government's economic and social vandalism should support these strikes. The alternative is this:

The transport secretary, Philip Hammond, said: "A tube strike will be bad for passengers, bad for business and bad for London.

"At a time when public finances are under pressure, any strike by tube workers will be seriously damaging — undermining the case we are making within the spending review for continued investment in the tube."

Bullshit drizzled in honey. The Tories will run down a vital public service in order to destroy a trade union: pointless and politically motivated.

Some stuff etc

As I mentioned earlier, my rough estimation of Richard Dawkins was that he is (1) a great popular scientist but (2) constrained and disturbed by the end consequences of a philosophical outlook that is more or less basic materialism. There is a very interesting footnote to The Selfish Gene in which he warns against using the idea of genetic programming of behaviour as a moral guide (as an aside he also forswears adding political barbs to scientific works, a mistake he made in the first edition of the book). In other words, just because out genes may promote a particular form of behaviour doesn't mean we have to follow that impulse. He also adds genetic determination is not a law but a statistical prediction, citing the proverb "red sky a night, shepherds' delight". A red dusk does predict fine weather the following day, but it does not determine this will be so.

In my own highly amateur way I think its worth adding that humans have gone a long way beyond genetic determination. Human beings share roughly 98% (or thereabouts) of their genes with chimpanzees. Humans have the same needs as chimpanzees. The way we go about fulfulling them is drastically different.

This is where Marx and McLuhan are useful (I think Marshall McLuhan's theories could be critically absorbed into Marxism). Human beings are defined by their medium, which they themselves consciously create. McLuhan said the medium is the message, the medium through which human activity is performed is far more important than any individual message or act. A new medium introduced alters humanity's relationship with the world, it extends particular aspects of humanity. The wheel is an extension of the foot, the telescope an extension of the eye, the radio an extension of the voice and so on.

In the last few decades alone the earth has entered a new geological age. A bare-forked human alone can move only a handful of earth at a time. Thanks to extensions such as dynamite, hydraulic power, the combustion engine and so on (not forgetting combined labour), human beings now shift more earthly material than the combined forces of erosion and plate tectonics. We are living through the anthropocene age.

A chimpanzee must find everything it needs within the capabilities of its own genetic inheritance. Human beings on the other hand are only constrained by the limits of their technology.

There are limits to McLuhan's analysis. Objects are not value neutral. The ultimate medium is society. The way our society is organised determines the limits of what we can do. We can currently solve world hunger, cure most diseases, end all war and drastically curtail climate change. The limits of capitalism won't allow this.