Once on a donkey in Tunbridge Wells

Everyone and their brother sister sibling has been posting/commenting about Survey!fail, it seems. linkspam has gone a bit mad with all the post roundups - I really love that community.

I don't have much to add to all the discourse, at least in part because I feel kinda of detached from it all. I spent the three years of my degree arguing with determined morons like the "researchers" who sparked off Survey!fail, and I'm just tired of it. They won't change their minds because they have too much incentive not to - behaving like a decent human being with a reasonable set of morals just doesn't weigh against the incentives of privilege, money, and the desire not to take an honest look at their own behaviour.

However, the response from people in fandom has reminded me of just how intelligent, articulate and insightful so many of the people who participate in fandom, however you define "fandom", truly are. Ignoring everything else, a good part of fandom once again shines with the intellects and passions of the people within it.

Unfortunately, that shine has been somewhat tarnished by those who believe the correct response to the behaviour of Ogi and Sai is some quite frankly abusive RPF and photo manips. Please, just ... don't. Those of you who think it's funny should go talk to people who have images of them being sexual abused circulating on the internet. Saying "it's just a story" or "it's just a photoshop" is missing the point, because the effects are the same: a feeling of violation, exposure and degradation. Yes, I know those are feelings Ogi and Sai have caused in many people. Why does that make it okay to do it back?

It's funny how often I'm both proud of and ashamed by fandom in the same breath...

Edit made approx. 2 mins after posting: By "fandom", I mean the collective body of people who read, write, draw, comment, lurk, and so on and so forth in any community setting (in this case internet-based) regarding something that they are a fan of. Argh, bad grammar, but you get the point - I'm trying to be as inclusive as possible. And yeah, that covers a hell of a lot of ground, so it's not really surprising that I should be both proud of and ashamed by fandom as I have defined it. Doesn't change the fact that I would prefer to be one and not the other. Wishful thinking? Probably. Worth thinking? Definitely.

Edited to change the icon, because this one is AWESOMELY APPROPRIATE.

I've just started reading this HP fic, and I've almost been put off it entirely because one of the first things anyone does in the fic is so incredibly stupid it left me gobsmacked, and yet there's no acknowledgement anywhere in the fic I can see of just how stupid it is.

So what's the stupid thing? It's this:

There's a crash involving a motorcycle and a car. Harry sees it. He runs over to the motorcyclist and takes his helmet off.

I hope that most people won't need any further explanation of the monumental stupidity involved in that action. However, I thought "don't take the helmet off an injured motorcyclist" was common knowledge, in the same way that "if it's bleeding hold it up and put pressure on it" and "don't move someone who might have a back injury" are, and yet it's turned up in this fic. So. I have cause to doubt my previous belief.

If you don't have a clue why this is stupid, I'll tell you:

If a motorcyclist is in an accident, taking their helmet off could cause their skull to cave in.

I am not kidding you. Motorcycle helmets are so enclosed and heavily insulated that there's a pressure differential between the inside of the helmet and the outside of the helmet. Leaving aside the fact that to get the helmet off you'd probably have to move the injured person's neck, which is a big no-no for other reasons, removing the helmet after a head injury can destroy a fragile pressure balance where the helmet is quite literally the only thing holding the person's head together.

Right. Basic first aid/common sense lesson over. >.<

So my pre-emptive hiatus is now ix-nayed, less than twenty-four hours after I decided to implement it.

The reason for the pre-emptive hiatus was that I was going to be a prosecution witness in a trial about stuff that happened when I was a child. The trial was set for next week, and it was going to dredge up some particularly unpleasant memories.

Today, however, I got a call from the witness people saying that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) have decided to discontinue the case.

While I am relieved in a way (because now I won't have to air a distinctly unhappy time in my life in a very stressful environment and be questioned by people whose job it is to make me look like a fool), I am also disgusted at the way the CPS have handled this.

I was first contacted to give a statement about this two years ago. The offences the defendant was charged with were rape and indecent assault on a child (edit: not me, for the record). I was willing to go to court to give evidence for the prosecution because I actually give a shit about getting justice for the victim, and I understand that it takes a hell of a lot of guts for someone who has been the victim of that sort of offence to get the courage and willpower together to accuse their attacker in the first place. It then takes even more courage and willpower to survive through the court process. The person who can do that deserves vindication, and deserves the support of any evidence I can give.

How is it justice for the victim when, after two years of waiting, the trial is cancelled five days before it is due to start.

And let me be clear right now: I don't even actually know who the victim is. I know who I think it is, but there were any number of children it might actually have been. I object to this on general principles, not because of a personal investment in any of the people involved.

Well fucking done, CPS. Well. Fucking. Done.

According to my doctor, I must eat three full meals a day and snack in between time in order to avoid me fainting, developing a migraine, and/or dissolving into a boiling pile of achy unhappy goo, although not necessarily in that order.

Thus far this weekend, I have managed to eat a grand total of two meals, half a bowl of porridge, and three croissants. I had to fight for one of the full meals - after half past ten at night I finally got to order a large kebab from a kebab shop, who then gave me something small enough that I'd regard it as a starter rather than a full meal. And by "this weekend" I mean "from Friday lunchtime until now".

Subsequently, I feel like a pile of crap and may never visit that particular friend's house again. She is well aware of my dietary requirements, but also happens to be a model and therefore doesn't have quite the same idea of a) what "three full meals" constitutes and b) what "eating regularly" constitutes.

(On the plus side, she is lovely, and further on the plus side she helped me figure out that my weird allergy to baked beans' sauce and eggs is caused by tartrazine, because she gets exactly the same symptoms. So twenty-odd years after developing this allergy, I finally know what I'm allergic to. Yay for the NHS.)

Edit: aaaaaand I apparently lost 2kg in weight this weekend. That's roughly 5 pounds, right? So yes, special diet is the only reason I am not a SKELETON.

So many things piss me off at the minute.

But let's take today's issue. Went onto the BBC news website this morning and found this "Have Your Say" thing. It's about the Barnardo's ad and the online survey, about children being demonised. The sheer ignorance of the people commenting amazes me - one person said "many" young people are out thieving and assaulting people.

Let's get something straight. And you might want to consider that as an employee of the Probation Service, I might, oooh, maybe know something about this!

1 in 10 young people in the UK have a criminal conviction. 10% in total.

1 in 3 adult men in the UK have a criminal conviction. One third in total.

And just to make it even more clear, at any one time, 10% of offenders the criminal justice system is dealing with will be women. 90% will be men. 10% will be under 21. 90% will be over 21.

And a third of all men in the UK have a criminal conviction.

Don't even get me started on ASBOs. Okay, wait, ASBOs annoy me enough that I'm ranting about them anyway. ASBOs are just slapped on you in the street - they're used by the police when they have it in for someone but cannot give them a criminal conviction. This means they cannot get them under any of the following:

Causing a public nuisance
Using words to cause alarm/harassment/distress
Being drunk and disorderly
Any of the harrassment ones
Any of the violent ones
Any of the drug ones
Any other alcohol ones

And yet whenever someone says "ASBO", people immediately think of one or all of the above. And it goes on your criminal record. Yes, that's right, something which is not a criminal conviction goes on your criminal record. You don't have the right to trial by jury, because you've not committed a crime! And oh, yes, you can get a jail sentence if you breach it. So you can get a jail sentence without ever actually committing a crime. Nice to know what sort of country we live in, isn't it?

Most of the young offenders I come into contact with are nice lads. (Yes, most of them are men: see above.) For a huge number of them, they'll be on their very first conviction, usually for something stupid like being drunk and disorderly. They'll normally get given unpaid work hours, and they'll get their head down and get on with it and we'll never see them again. Even the ones who have bigger problems are still nice lads - most of them just want a stable home and a stable job. The job part is often the biggest problem, because the number of offenders with learning difficulties is quite startling.

I hatehatehate it when people (usually students or other people young enough to think they know everything HEY IRONY RITE) badmouth Descartes.

Descartes' works are used as target-practice for students first venturing into Philosophy because until the teachers impart certain extra bits of information, you can't see how they'd ever work. This leads to many, many people calling Descartes stupid.

HELLO, THIS IS THE GUY WHO INVENTED THE GRAPH. A RESPECTED SCIENTIST AND MATHEMATICIAN BEFORE HE EVER TOUCHED PHILOSOPHY. NOT STUPID.

And you know why Descartes' works don't seem like they would ever work?

Because Descartes used a different definition of cause to us. This definition of cause was known as the causal adequacy principle. (By the way, wikipedia states that the causal adequacy theory was proposed by Descartes. This is not accurate. I don't know who it was proposed by, but I do know that Descartes used the theory of cause generally accepted at the time. Trying to define causality is haaaaaaard.)

It's too early in the morning for me to go dig out my notes and explain why this new theory of cause makes Descartes' arguments a lot more sound. This has annoyed me so much that I may end up doing so this evening anyway.

This rant brought to you (once again) by morons in a roleplay comm. I take things that annoy me way to seriously. ^^;

Dammit. There has to be someone, somewhere who has actually written decent Sephiroth/Cloud. I refuse to believe that all the stuff on the internet is crap. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

My internet connection is also flaky like a flaky thing, and this maaaaay be contributing to my irritation. Just a little. Maybe.

Furthermore, the overabundance of godawful Sephiroth/Cloud makes me want to write FF7 past!fic and/or timefuck!fic, with the intention of going some way to balancing the crap with something good. Except that I don't like over 95% of what I've written, so this is clearly not a sensible course of action, because I would have to give up all hope of ever finding a decent S/C fic and go live in a cave with moss in my hair.

For some reason, this isn't preventing me from attempting to write decent Larsa/Penelo. Possibly because I haven't been failing in my search for good L/P for quite as long. There's only so much FF7 badfic I can take.