Fun

There is some fun stuff to be found in the files in /etc:

if [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ]; then
EXEC=”/etc/init.d/net.${INTERFACE} –quiet”
else
logger -t wpa_cli “I don’t know what to do with this distro!”
exit 1

Cute, “I don’t know what to do with this distro!”!

In other news yesterday I went to Portmerion with my friend so I am a bit worn out, recovering from that today, And uploading the pictures to flickr as we speak. I’ll link to (and post some here) them when it’s done.

Flikr link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49738859@N02/sets/72157624178715901/

LOL, more fun in /etc

#
# Eeek, this seems like too much magic here
#
if [ -z "$XKB_IN_USE" -a ! -L /etc/X11/X ]; then
if grep ‘^exec.*/Xsun’ /etc/X11/X > /dev/null 2>&1 && [ -f /etc/X11/XF86Config ]; then
xkbsymbols=`sed -n -e ‘s/^[     ]*XkbSymbols[   ]*”\(.*\)”.*$/\1/p’ /etc/X11/XF86Config`
if [ -n "$xkbsymbols" ]; then
setxkbmap -symbols “$xkbsymbols”
XKB_IN_USE=yes
fi
fi
fi

That comment made me LOL.

A Rant About Immigration

I am irritated by the discourse about immigration. Rapid demographic change is a dangerous destabiliser to society, this is a fact, but the way people have talked about dealing with it is so… messed up.

First of all, the scapegoating of asylum seekers, is absurd. Asylum seekers make up an absolutely miniscule portion of all migrants to the country, miniscule. We could be FAR FAR less strict in who we let in and still it would only be a blip (except in the sense that looser criteria might encourage more applications). Asylum seekers are here for a reason, we should be compassionate to them, the process as it is is humiliating and cruel. If we are going to limit immigration it is not here we should be looking. Most people who complain about “Asylum Seekers” just mean immigrants anyway, the whole asylum seeker issue is a distraction.

But the other thing that really irritates me is, like when Gordon Brown said he will only let in highly skilled workers that the country needs. Ok, from a purely selfish perspective that has a logic to it, but it is purely selfish. Skilled, especially highly skilled workers like doctors and lawyers and so on are exactly the kind of people who whether they like it or not are NEEDED in their own countries to build up infrastructure and improve quality of life for everyone there (thus reducing overall the need for economic migration). They are also the people least likely to actually need to economically migrate in absolute terms (that is they are less likely to be suffering severe poverty in their country of origin). If we are going to let economic migrants in it should surely be the ones who NEED to migrate to make a reasonable living, but who are not needed in their countries of origin, therefore basically unskilled workers.

Of course you can argue that letting unskilled workers in has more problems than skilled workers, unskilled workers can drive down wages in the unskilled sector, a sector which is most likely to have low wages in the first place. This is indeed a problem… but its just a reflection of the fact that globally wages are low, the answer is to encourage higher wages worldwide (thus reducing the need for economic migration in the first place) – something which is undermined by taking skilled workers able to develop their countries of origin from their countries of origin and do already developed countries. The second problem is that the lower educational attainment of unskilled workers makes it harder for them to integrate in general to a new culture and into a post-industrial western European culture specifically. There is not really a good answer to that unfortunately, problems with integration will always be an issue with immigration though. That is ignoring the point of whether or not they OUGHT to integrate, because while abstractly lack of integration causes social instability, there are significant problems with contemporary culture that could even be rectified somewhat by the presence of people with different values (maybe WE should integrate a bit with them…).

An argument that is made against this kind of thing is basically “if we let poor people into the country then statistically the country is poorer which looks bad on international measures”. Basically though all that has happened is that poor people who were poor in one place are now poor in another place, the rich people in the country have not lost anything by that, the problem is purely one of on paper statistics looking bad. Prettying up the appearance of our statistical achievements on paper is hardly a good aim of government.

Immigration policy should be realistic, we cannot let in everyone who would be better off here and seeks to be here, this is just a sad fact, any one place can only absorb so much stress. It should however be moral above all. We should not base our economic policy on purely selfish concerns, but think about what is best for the world as a whole – cheesy as it sounds, what is good for the world as a whole is ultimately good for us as well.

And now that everyone thinks I’m an evil internationalist communist I will for now be quiet, leaving you with a link to my flickr account bearing my pics of my trip to Constantinople: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49738859@N02/

Soon

On Thursday I am, volcano permitting, flying to Istanbul for a wedding (not mine!).

For this reason I shall almost certainly not be posting anything in the time from then till I get back on the 28th.

What I learned at the student-staff colloquium

I don’t want to be an academic historian. Whatever else.

Wanderlust

I have decided to stay up all night (a decision I may or may not revoke about 2 hours before I am supposed to wake up…). I have so decided because I want to go somewhere, but I cannot go somewhere, and I cannot sleep unless I go somewhere.

I don’t want to go… somewhere.

I don’t want to go anywhere, I want to be going. I am desperate to set off on some kind of Journey, not to anywhere, but a journey for the sake of journeying. It used to be, when I was little, I would from time to time “run away from home” – not because I was discontent at home, just for the sake of an adventure, and adventure that would somehow be lacking if I thought that I would ever come home… even though I always came home (sometimes shamefully soon).

There is nothing wrong here. There is nothing to run from, but, nothing is not enough for me, it’s cliche I know, but I want to see the world. I want to get to know humanity, from its best to its worst. I want to learn who we are. I want to be confronted with the harsh realities of the world, away from my sheltered little den of comfort and safety (even though I would never truly be able to forget, that if the worst came to the worst – and I remained alive despite it – I could always come home to my den of safety and comfort).

I am at a dangerous point. Although I have been here many times before and will be many times again. I don’t really care about university, I did when I signed up, but the reality of it confirmed me in my disdain for the academic world. I have no place in this place, but I cannot just quit, not this time, not again. I have to prove to my mother and myself that I can finish something, then after that I can be as fickle as I like, because I will say to her if she laments it “what about my degree! I finished that didn’t I!” – of course she won’t listen, of course she will sigh, she is my mother of course. But how much more will she sigh if I do not do this. So I must. It’s only another year and a half.

Another year and a half before I can pack my bag, start walking, though I do not know where I’d go, and when the time comes, all the better if I still do not know.

…I’d like to go to Romania. I will head in that direction. The EU will make it easy for me to cross the borders on the way. It won’t matter if I don’t make it there, but that is the way I would go, on foot, but how will I pay my way? I wish I had a skill, something of value to mankind to offer in exchange for bread and bed.

Maybe when I finish university I will be too mature to entertain these desires. If I hope to travel perhaps I will want to do it by plane, by boat, by car, by train. Why walk when the modern world offers such convenience? But I am not going to a place, I want to find mankind, to look into their souls, to watch them as they laugh and cry and play and die.

“And can you not do that here?” says a little voice…

It’s true, and a fair point. Yes and no. Because here I have my little den of comfort and safety, a place I always instinctively run and hide, and there I have nowhere to hide, nothing to do but live. And here I have the media inflicting upon me it’s blows, and there I have no time for such things. And here I am one of “us” but there I am a stranger, fragile and dependent on the goodness of man.

So… no, it is not the same, because of my weakness. I need to leave my comfort zone in order to truly live, in order to truly see my fellows. Or at least it seems so to me now.

And how can I sleep? How can I sleep when my soul calls out to leave, to love? How can I lay down in my bed when the world about me stands awake, vibrating with energy? And how can I waste this precious time, so short, with unconsciousness?

The morning swiftly comes, she comes as a guest to the door, bidding to be welcomed in. What kind of host would I be, if I were to sleep while she knocks, if I did not welcome her in from the cold?

People my own age

I don’t like being around people my own age. They are too cool. I don’t mean that I pour scorn upon their coolness or that I deride their following of trends and youth culture. No, it’s worse than that, I feel inferior. Whenever I am around people my own age I get a sense of inadequacy. Especially in a group. Everyone but me it seems knows how to cope, everyone but me can have a good time in a group of their peers, laugh and chatter so fast I have no idea what is going on, listen to music I find atrocious, talk about things I know nothing about excitedly. So I sit on the sidelines feeling overwhelmed and inadequate, and my natural response is to sink into myself to escape it all, and then it is as if I am miles away, watching my “peers” from afar rather than among them, which only intensifies the feeling that I am unable to relate, unable to connect – that I have something fundamentally wrong with me, that they do not have wrong with them.

In truth I know it’s not just me, there are others, but we, those of us who find the fast excitable pace of youthful social life incapacitating, we don’t tend to get out there, so we don’t tend to come across one another. So we each feel alone, we avoid other people for the most part, but sometimes, in hope we branch out, “maybe this time it will be different” – and if only we did it all at the same time it might be, but we never do, so the introverted go out into the den of extroverts and come out once again disillusioned, wondering “what is wrong with me?”
At least I hope that is it… and not some primordial flaw, some deep seated disorder…

Someone asked me to go to this “youth camp” thing – oh and I am loath to accept. The idea horrifies me. All my failings will be out in the open there, I will not relate to the people of my own age, they will not relate to me, at first I might try and make up for it by working hard, but as time goes on my brain will short circuit and all I will want is to escape, to hide, to go off and be somewhere where no-one will find me and talk to myself and recharge and renew in the safety of isolation. People will say “you should go, it will be good for you” – maybe it will, maybe it will.
I don’t want to go. People, when I am there will say “this is supposed to be fun” I already resent them for that, even though I am not there and they’ve not said it yet, I want to tell them off, to explain how angry it makes me that they think I should have fun in the functional equivalent of hell, that I will endure it for some noble goal if they give me one, but that I cannot endure the audacity of trying to imply I should have fun in such a place.

So I am become Sartre? Ugh, how dull.