The Bewilderness

Extreme gamer

Online games have real consequences: a boring but necessary truism. Bizarrely, the latest report comes from France though you would have expected such an incident to arise where MMORPGs are far more popular, the Far East.

The psychology behind the story is very predictable. The criminal jailed was so attached to his character that, when it (not he!) died, he tracked down the rival gamer and attempted to kill him. This is not a story about individuals unable to distinguish between fiction and reality, the ongoing criticism of role playing games. This was a more sophisticated act: where the criminal's identity was bound up in his character and trauma of the 'virtual death' required expiation in real life.

What level of immersion is required to reinforce identifying with the game's character. The psychological loyalty to the trauma was such that the criminal spent six months plotting his rival's death; though the 'intricate plot' was nothing more than a frenzied knife attack (One wonders if frustration with an elaborate death ritual boiled over into a spontaneous assault?). Julien Barreaux appears to have been an extreme gamer, one of a number of profiles within the gaming arena. He spent his waking life in the game: 48.5 hours, which is more than you are allowed to work in Europe.

Now jailed, he will have to make do with chess or soap on a rope.

The debt in Spain causes more and more pain

Tomorrow will open with a judgment on the current state of Spain's banking system. Only then will the full effect of Fitch's downgrade on Friday, announced to avoid an immediate market reaction, take hold. (As an aside, ratings agencies are acting to avoid political ire. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are set to establish new rules that could curb the independence of the ratings agencies and allow politicians to regulate what information is used for market judgement).

Throughout the weekend, Caja Madrid has been negotiating to merge with five smaller rivals and facilitate continued access to the bank's rescue fund. Spain is making a fundamental mistake, and copying Japan's response to debt: merging bad banks to crate bigger bad banks.

Spain does not have the political strength to carry out austerity. The paycuts, welfare cuts and tax rises will prove an expenditure of valuable political capital when haircuts are required.

The Girl who never grew up

Imagine that there is a girl who never grew up: who remains forever a child: trapped in her body, never growing older, except for genetic damage. The girl is aware and has a happy fife in her own limitations.

But for the rest of us, she may be a signal of why we age as we do.

“We think that Brooke’s condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of ageing,” said Richard Walker, a professor at the University of South Florida School of Medicine, who is leading the research team.

Only the unusual breaks that nature provides: the different, the defective, those who die young, can give us answers to the system that builds us.

Relief at Portaloo

One can tell how one government differs from another in terms of the small matters. Is it not a hallmark of Labour's lack of decency that they just did not care: no empathy, no understanding and an arrogance of office designed to further separation.

I have personally been promised by someone very close to the new Prime Minister that a portaloo will be introduced - and she even said she's trying to organise a supply of tea and coffee for the hacks in the street - though we clearly do not want the latter without the former.

The small details provide as much of an indication of a government's ethics as the policy drives. A pity Brown never faced the battle of Portaloo.

The normalisation of America

The sovereign debt crisis has come home to Europe's roost. Accompanied by a blatant and tyrannous attempt to limit parliamentary rule by the European Commission, economic necessity is wrenching the Eurozone into a protostate for now. Will Club Med countries will themselves into 'protectorates': the new term for their predicament?

The unrest from Greece and the delay of riotous assembly from 2009 will test this rigging of democracy. Lacking the backing of force, Europe's farcical extension of power will founder before the awesome dislocation that it created. Will the Euro endure? That is the question passing across commentaries in May.

Neither the United Kingdom nor the United States are immune. Britain's problems, disguised during the election, clearly seen afterwards, have been trawled for some months. Barack Obama's deficient response to the deficit is rising slowly in his country's awareness. According to the IMF, the US structural adjustment amounts to approximately the UK's annual economic output. Such an adjustment will only take place under crisis conditions.

One of the consequences of the Great Recession is the normalisation of the US economy and the end of its exceptional status.

After a long hiatus, busy sorting matters out on my new home,  I avoided commenting on the many changes in our politics. The changes have been broadly welcomed by the mass of English voters and rejected in the other countries of the Union. What this portends for the future of the union is unknowable but it strengthens fissiparous tendencies. The record of this coalition will become clearer quite soon.