The Bewilderness

National government or national emergency?

The current crisis is distorting the polling records and reinforcing the boosts and name recognition of conference season. Events have a habit of enforcing new paradigms upon the selectorate, but as George Osborne pointed out on Newsnight, the eye of the storm will pass and the voters will reacquaint themselves with the Brown experience as financial meltdown is succeeded by economic recession. The key question is whether the positive results of this crisis for Brown will extend into the downturn. The answer is unlikely.

In such times of potential depression, and its consequences, Brown may look to the past and the creation of a national government to deal with a state of national emergency. As this is a creation of his detested Tories and brought in a decade of dominance, Brown will be unwilling to give up such a momentous opportunity for entrenching Labour's position in government. Will he declare a national emergency, biting his fingernails and reasoning "only I have the intellectual power to guide this country through the crisis". I think that the odds shortened on this scenario after last week.

Labour's long-term downfall

Mike Smithson is quite clear that the Tories face a new and complex situation this week with the current crisis; a crisis that has contributed to the positive shift in the polls for Labour. The narrative has changed by Macmillan's "events" more than. any internal dynamic on the part of the Westminster community. This has provided a positive context for Brown's leadership speech as banking bailouts and prognostications of financial doom competed with conference coverage.

The next eighteen months represent the challenge of economic downturn rather than financial crisis, and Brown's turgid answer of more debt will not stand up to scrutiny. The rise in unemployment and seizure in economic activity will once again focus the gaze of the voter on the architect of his insecurity and the thief in his paypacket. A drip of economic bad news, and it could be very bad, spells a strong headwind reducing Labour's remaining popularity.

Cameron will be half pleased that the air of crisis and Brown's bounce will put an end to potential triumphalism and complacency within the ranks of his followers. The next election is still the Tories to lose. 

The "accident and emergency room" of Britain BC

The first excavation at Stonehenge for over forty years confirms some of the recent archaeology in Britain concerning the longevity of sites and the importance of ritual. The Bluestones were brought from North Wales and appear to have acted as the healing foci for rituals whilst the sarsen stones brought a later taste for monumentalism. The analogy with cathedrals and saints shrines is mentioned.

The length of our history comes into play when you consider that the first rituals can be traced to 7,000BC and festivals may have been carried out on the site right up to the seventeenth century.

Labour jettisons economic sanity

Alistair Darling jettisoned the final pillar of this government's economic strategy by letting public sector borrowing rip, without (ahem) raising taxes. This is a lie. Mortgaging our future to the hilt will need to be repaid at a later date and Labour are wasting our patrimony for their political needs. This was the Labour Conference when Labour put party above the national interest. This was the Conference when they undertook to destroy any reputation for economic competence that remained in a short-term dash for electoral gain.

The Tories first term will whistle a familiar tune: public spending cuts and, if they are foolish, higher taxes.

Promise to improve public services for soldiers to average

The poverty of this government's ambition becomes quite clear. One would think that the act of voluntary serving for one's country deserved greater recognition than the dole parasites that Labour normally values:

Outlining the Government's support for the most seriously injured soldiers, Mr Browne said: "Frankly, because of the leadership that Gordon Brown showed on this issue with the help of the whole Government and the devolved administrations, we will live up to the guarantee that being in the armed forces will never again mean getting worse public services than others."

The armed forces must be so enthused that they have been recognised by the forces of social justice.

Labour bombshell ha not exploded yet

The first days of the Labour Conference have not shed any light on the direction that this slow-burn disintegration is taking. Listening to the voices of the activists and the politicians, the eruption of the economic crisis has given a fillip to the Left by sanctioning the 'politics of envy' and renewed calls for state intervention. In such a climate, the febrile atmosphere of plotting and briefing has given away to lukewarm support and a supposed roadmap of change.

Through the loving embrace of Marr, Broon was able to represent his new stall: "new World, New Solutions". Was this a Freudian slip, noting Broon's admiration for Bush's wholesale nationalisation of risk, a change far more radical than anything the British government could contemplate (thankfully). For this abuse of new, a verbal violence that Labour have subjected the word to for fifteen years, change was self-evidently not on the cards.

Whether nine months or two years beckons for Broon, the stink of denial pervaded Manchester. All Labour would deny the electorate a vote and allow the new leader to bed in, converting to Queen in Parliament at their advantage. Lisbon again? Yet, as the economy shifts into recession at a swift rate of knots, as living standards fall and unemployment rises, none would gainsay a change in policy, a cut in public spending or concomitant increases in taxes. The bomb has not dropped.

The Singularity's 'darwinian default'?

Extrobritannia ran a discussion on the Singularity this Saturday at Birkbeck college, with the usual admixture of strong passion and IT focus. Part of the discussion that threw out a line of enquiry for me was the role that Darwinian forces (the pressures of natural selection) would play upon any artificial consciousness. The original response from other participants suggested that the consciousness would be designed and that Darwinian forces would only come into play if this formed part of the programming.


This focus may tell us about the possibilities of constructing an artificial consciousness without illuminating the forces that may come into play when this consciousness moves into bootstrap phase or starts to design its successors, redesign itself, or reproduce and use of these terms could be interchangeable. Whatever terms we wish to use, the forms of artificial consciousness that come into being can be described as living organisms and will, in various strange and arcane ways, duplicate the phenomena of living organisms: they will self-organise and they will self-produce, possibly reproduce. Could we view a postsingularity environment, with these new forms of consciousness, from an ecological point of view? Would this provide insights that economic, social and political interpretations do not bring to bear?

When I raised this point, my initial view was a 'Darwinian default', with the bootstrapping AI conforming to the agenda of natural selection. Whilst this is a possibility and potentially, a bad and simplistic scenario, there is the potential for new systems of information exchange that are rooted in our understanding of evolutionary change. Our theory of mind, enriched by evolutionary psychology, will form the initial template for communication and exchange.

Circuit breaking autism

There is some evidence to suggest that alternate models of developing intelligence can overbalance our consciousness, with some potential reflections for AI. Autism may becaused by abnormal and quick growth in babies leading to an overwhelming of the developing consciousness by experiences.

According to a theory developed by Swiss neuroscientists, the condition is not caused by a brain deficiency but by a system overload which causes the world to seem frightening and overly intense.

Husband and wife team Kamila and Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, believe the idea could explain the erratic nature of the condition.

"Our hypothesis is that autistic people perceive, feel and remember too much," Kamila Markram told the New Scientist.

Faced with this "intense world" , autistic infants withdraw, with serious consequences for their social and linguistic development, she added.

Too much intelligence may prove just as debilitating as too little if the brain/mind does not have circuit breakers to regulate the consequences.
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Zimwatch: Mugabe joke: he 'shares' power

Our latest zimwatch does not celebrate the power-sharing deal that Mugabe and Tsvangarai signed on Monday. I did not welcome Bob's reversal since the senile old git is a past master at manipulation and oathbreaking. The first hint was his speech on Monday: a random culpa at colonialism It comes as no surprise that Mugabe has started to delay any implementation of the agreement and has started to shore up the ruling party. The core responsibility for security needs to be seized by the Movement for Democratic Change to ensure that they gain a state monopoly of force independent of the Mugabeites The key appointment is Home Secretary and control of the police. If ZANU-PF do not relinquish this key role in Cabinet, then the MDC should walk away and trash Mbeki's reputation.

  

Just give us your money, no questions asked

The United Kingdom Defence Association, the NGO that lobbies for increased defence expenditure and the armed forces, has brought out a new report pinpointing certain inadequacies in British resources. All lobbies for special pleading should be treated with scepticism as they will promote a certain outlook which only the stuffing of gold can suffice. In the waste of expenditure that is the Ministry of Defence, any calls for extra spending deserve hard examination.

Their conclusion that morale has suffered due to worn-out equipment and overstretch is clear for all to see. In terms of personnel, the armed forces are near collapse, as a large number of experienced officers, NCOs and enlisted men resign or mull over their prospects. Yet, the bureaucracy of officer officialdom, the inappropriate direction of expenditure on equipment and the unwillingness of officers to stand up within the MOD against overrunning European nightmare procurements, leaves one cold to the general call of more tax. The problems are more deepseated, and demand that certain services take a more realistic view of their requirements. Fewer frigates, more helicoptors and transport aircraft for starters.