The Writing of Serious Stuff (by sarah)

I has been wanting to write about news events and serious things for a while but I am finding it hard, I used to write what ever I wanted and pop it on here but I become increasingly worried about offending people etc... It is really lame and very sad so I want to get back to writing what I feel needs to be written rather than worrying about what people want.

Part of the issue is that I have been told I sabotarge myself - by bringing up political stuff etc... but really I can't just ignore stuff. Sometimes I have not had the energy to tackle a subject, not had the time to research it as much as it needs to be etc... Part of the issue is that I am also bored of having/listening to the same arguments again and again. It's like philosophy - it got old at university and everyone just moves in circles and it drives me nuts!

Anyway I want to get back to writing my little ranty essays even though it means I will probably be going in an ever decreasing circle and be called Ozzel Um.

Having said that - there is now a Snobberlink Category on Wiggly Pets full of daft comics 🙂

Horse Meat and Food Standards (by sarah)

Ok so everyone has been going on about the horse meat in the beef burgers and there have basically been too reactions 1) Oh my god! and 2) hahahahaha.

The first one tends to be along the lines of 'oh no I ate poor horseys!' which for people who eat meat is a bit silly. As has been pointed out they are moaning about the wrong animal being minced up for food. Is a horse really more valuable than a cow?

It could be argued that the horse is more intelligent but the people arguing this will nearly always be bacon eaters too and pigs are really intelligent. The other thing is that this seems horrific to the English but the rest of Europe eat horse! All the time not just when there is a cock up.

People need to assess what they are actually eating rather than burying their heads in the sand. I have friends who don't like the idea of the animals being killed but will not give up meat - they just buy bits that don't look like animal and try not to think about it. Maybe if they thought about it a bit more things like this wouldn't slip in under the radar.

This is interesting as Alaric doesn't even eat fake meat as the idea is alien to him. And this brings me to the point that though I think the reaction is silly, there is still the matter that people where choosing to by minced cow and not minced horse and the choice should be there. Not just for ethical reasons either - now I am not a vegitarian but have issues with cow fat. They make me sick weather in milk or the meat so for me a mistake like this could have serious health consequences. Say I was buying lamb burgers and they happened to contain cow - I would be getting sick and not know why. This is a safety issue.

Also if they have managed to put the wrong meat in there what else has accidently slipped in?

This mess is also going to result in a hell of a lot of food wastage at a time when people are queueing at soup kitchens and food banks are struggling to supply what is needed for all the families in crisis and that makes me want to cry or throttle someone. I know it would seem like a solution to give the patties to them but that would only work if they could be guarenteed safe otherwise you might be making a bad situation worse.

Lets hope it ends up in the bacteria vats for gas and electricity production than in landfill.

Shemsa’s Dogs and Cats (by sarah)

This post isn't about the big stuff but about one murder and a legacy.

My friend has spent the last year trying to help her friends in Tripoli one of whom was sadly murdered. The lady was called Shemsa and was a kind and loving person who looked after and took in all the strays. Her death has left her friends with the task of rehoming and looking after the animals she had rescued.

You can follow their efforts on their FaceBook Page.

Volunteering (by alaric)

I've always wanted to change the world for the better. I'm not sure where this impulse comes from, but it's probably something to do with reading a lot of science fiction and adventure stories as a child. It's always seemed natural to me that the world is a place full of problems, and that they can be solved with a mixture of ingenuity and dtermined hard work.

You can do a lot of world-saving on your own; indeed, that's often the most satisfying kind, as you can see the direct results of your actions in isolation. But it's hard to find opportunities to do so. Problems that have a chink in them a single person can exploit and solve them are rare. Most problems are large and don't have an easy fix (even a cunning one), and a single person's effort against them would be like trying to divert the wind by waving your arms.

So the most immediately rewarding means of improving the world is to join up with others who have a similar idea on what to do, and volunteer to work together with others as a group. This might mean forming a loosely-coupled team, like the contributors of an open-source project; or it might mean joining a more formal organisation.

As it happens, I do both.

On the loosely-coupled team side, I'm involved in the Scheme programming language community, and the Chicken Scheme sect within it; and I have a bunch of open-source projects I publish on my site, Kitten Technologies. Ugarit might help to save the world by helping it to keep better backups and manage its files better, Tangle might help the world not get confused with its cabling, Simple Graphics might make a tiny contribution towards teaching future generations to do awesome things, and if I ever have the time and money to really put some effort into it, ARGON might provide the world with a vastly more awesome platform to build software systems upon.

And on the formal organisation side, I'm the Cub Scout leader for the Cub pack in the village I used to live in. During school term time, every Wednesday I spend an hour in the village hall with two dozen kids aged eight to ten inclusive, trying to broaden their minds and teach them useful life skills. They are a lucky lot, in that that's all I do for them; some Scout groups give children an escape from abuse at home or other terrible situations like that, but my lot come from relatively secure backgrounds, and are well loved, well fed and well educated. Once a year or so I organise a camping weekend, too, where they can learn a bit more self-sufficiency, and have an exciting adventure with their friends.

All of the voluntary stuff I do is very rewarding. When I think about the sorts of things I'd do if I was rich and didn't have to work, a large fraction of it is voluntary work. When I had more money in the past, I actually hired somebody to write open-source software for me, and I'd do it again if I could. I suppose my interest in wearable computers is driven more by my own interest and desire to sharpen my skills than in any benefit to the rest of the world, but I'll still be publishing my designs for others to take inspiration from or to just build their own copy! Volunteering is also a great way to gain new skills, gain confidence, and meet new people. It's my default suggestion for people who feel lonely, bored, or stuck in a rut.

I'm under no illusion that I'm some saintly figure laying down my own interests in order to help others, either. I just happen to enjoy making other people happy, and also enjoy tinkering with certain kinds of technology that happen to be very easy to share, thanks to the Internet. My contributions to the world have generally been insignificant compare to many others, and I often feel sad about that - I feel I am spending too much of my time just keeping my family safe and fed (which is my first priority), and that the kinds of things I'm good at are unfortunately only useful in narrow niches (distributed data storage technology isn't going to solve world hunger on its own). But such is life! This year I am setting aside two weekend days every month for my own projects - for January, this is going to be spent on my infrastructure rather than anything directly useful, as I need to repair the roof of my workshop as part of the ongoing process of making it into a more usable work area, but if I have any time left after that I'm going to work on Ugarit some more (on the sofa in the house - getting an Internet connection down to the workshop is a project for next month).

Volunteering can become unhealthy, however.

I'm struggling with running the Cub pack right now; I am the pack's only leader, and it's more normal for a pack to have two or three leaders. I have helpers who come along on the Wednesdays, which is invaluable as I couldn't safely run the meetings alone, but I still need to organise something every week, and then be there to run it. If I need to take a week off for some reason, I still need to either organise somebody to take over and prepare the required information for them, or contact all of the families to tell them I'm having to cancel an evening (which I really, really, don't like doing). I skirt the edge of a vicious circle - doing something because I feel I have to, and fearing the consequences if I don't, takes the fun out of it; and after executing all my other responsibilities of the day, I often lack the energy to do things I'm not fueled by enthusiasm over, so put them off. That in turn increases the unpleasant stress and pressure the next day until I end up rushing it all at the last minute!

Volunteering where you sit down and do something you feel like doing is safe. Taking on a responsibility is a little more dangerous. I am under no real obligation to keep running the Cub pack - there's no contract - but without a backup leader, if I leave, the pack will collapse, and I don't want that to happen to the lovely kids. Not to mention that I'd miss the little blighters! So I press on, providing a rather less exciting programme than I'd like. I think that it's not a good idea to take on an ongoing voluntary responsibility alone; it should be done as a group, so that the workload can be shared more easily, and when a group member is overloaded with other pressures, they can temporarily or permanently reduce their contribution without major disruption - and otherwise tedious planning and preparation can be fun when it's done as a group. However, sometimes you start doing something as a group and end up doing it alone, or (as in this case) start something with the expectation that others will join you once it picks up some momentum, but they always want to join as helpers rather than taking over from you to some extent - or, alternatively, that you're bad at delegating because you're scared of putting too much pressure on them and losing them.

Speaking of which, I need to go and prepare something for the Cub meeting tomorrow...

...actually, I can do it in my lunch break tomorrow, and go to sleep now instead, as it's forty minutes past my bedtime already. A MUCH better idea. Surely.

Child Benifit 0.o (by sarah)

Thankyou government for giving me a mini mental break down tonight - the issue is not that our Child Benefit is being taken away, as we no longer need it for food (which we have in the past) but more the complete lack of notice and the only reason we knew was a random thing on the radio sending me into a panic.

So now I have completely mis-budgeted for the year, feel like a complete waste of space, had a worse panic attack that I would be done for fraud as I have no idea what my this and that numbers are and there is now not time to find out.

Another issue is that I now can't afford the child care (that is already arranged) that I need to launch me back into the work space. Poor Jean overheard things and came down to ask if she would still be able to do Ju Jistu and the answer is I don't know.

Alaric has had to calm me down and help me with the form and site as it was the classic dyslexic's nightmare. Now I am sitting here with my decaf coffee, sense of nonentitlement and pain from yet another balls up nhs palava - a cardboard box has been destroyed whilst a string of bad words such as 'I hate F..... Politicians and cr.. how are x, y and z going to manage - they need it for their rent'

I have never before declared that I hate a section of society and this makes me feel bad and worse. 2013 was going well but to be honest tonight I feel like I've just had the rug pulled out from underneath me.