The Quiet Road

Under the new law, which takes effect on Saturday, anyone offering food or drink to a homeless person will risk a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Vegas puts lid on soup kitchens | BBC News

I was watching the TV news this evening. It was dominated by news from the Middle East. But most of it just passed through me like a deadening mist. I’ve been hearing and reading about conflict in that region for my entire life… tonight’s news reports could have been archive footage from a decade ago. Or two. Only the flashy graphics and the haircuts of the reporters gave an indication that this was today and not yesteryear.

I still find it remarkable that the Israeli military can murder four unarmed UN observers and receive naught but a statement of regret from the international community. Can you imagine if Saddam Hussein had killed four weapons inspectors back in the day? That would probably have justified a full US invasion on its own. Apparently though, the west is happy enough to allow its friends murder unarmed civilians and UN observers.

Woe betide anyone not singing from America’s hymn sheet though. They just have to be accused of thinking about building WMD and they get bombed to hell, invaded and plunged into a civil war. Or did we bomb Iraq to hell, invade it and plunge the nation into civil war because Saddam Hussein was a bad man? I honestly don’t know what absurd justification is currently being used to explain the disaster occurring over there.

As the news continued, I listened with a resigned bitterness as aid agencies called for a temporary ceasefire to evacuate the remaining civilians from Southern Lebanon (mostly the elderly and infirm who have been unable to leave under their own steam) and an Israeli minister calmly refused.

I watched with muted outrage as the bloodied corpse of a seven year old girl was pulled from a pile of rubble while her injured father wailed and beat his chest. “Muted” because the images were so similar to the images on the news almost every night now. Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon… US-made weapons of mass murder destroying Arab lives, homes and nations.

And we wonder why a bunch of them are so pissed off?

But it was only when I heard keyboard-player Condi Rice insist that the USA would only call for a ceasefire if it was “sustainable” that I was shaken out of my nostalgia (my Dad worked in Beirut for a while in the 80s, so I got some first-hand accounts and current events are one big déja vu… there’s a funny story involving my Dad and Yasser Arafat as it happens, but this probably isn’t the post for that). That “sustainable peace” line is the same one I heard from “Yo” Blair. A sustainable ceasefire.

I recall the words of Jesus Christ as he delivered his sermon on the mount… “Blessed are the Peacemakers”, He said, “but only if it’s a sustainable peace. Otherwise they can fuck right off”.

It seems to me that getting people to stop murdering each other is pretty much objectively A Good Thing. Even if they only stop for a few days. That’s a few days when nobody gets murdered… where no 7-year old corpses are dragged from charred rubble as their fathers watch in horror. If the USA and the UK could ensure a few days respite from this awful conflict just by asking, then they are complicit in murder by remaining silent. I guess Dubya and Yo now have so much blood on their hands that a few 7-year-olds per day simply doesn’t register anymore.

And then, as I watched the news, a non-Middle East story came on. It was in the “and finally…” slot, but was hardly much relief. It turns out that Las Vegas is the first city in the United States to make it actively illegal to feed the poor. Yup, giving food to a hungry homeless Vietnam veteran (or even a hungry homeless conscientious objector) could now land you in prison.

It calls to mind another biblical quote. This one from St. Paul… “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Unless it involves feeding homeless people of course. God hates that shit.”

Indeed, it’s a little known fact (the Lost Gospel of St. Bastid is the only place you’ll find it) that Jesus ordered his apostles – sometimes known as the 12 Bouncers – to make sure no homeless people got into the fishes and loaves shindig. “All are welcome at My Father’s table”, He insisted, “except the homeless obviously. They smell of pee sometimes and creep me out. Also, property values in heaven would plunge. We can’t be having that.”

A few weeks ago my trusty old mp3 player (in an era of inbuilt obsolescence, four years is considered “old” for electronic gadgetry) began making worrying clicking noises. The sort of noises that presage catastrophic hard-drive failure. Of course if I’m honest, the descent into decrepitude began some months ago when the screen started to fade. But despite the washed out screen and the inability to use the “next track” button without the machine locking up completely and requiring a hard-reset (involving poking a pin into a little hole on the back), I really liked my old player. It was one of the first of the hard-drive mp3 players… a shade bigger and a lot heavier than my old cd walkman, it was an unstylish brick. But it had 40GB of space and played non-DRM WMA files (my preferred portable audio format). Also, it wasn’t manufactured by Apple. A bonus.

I briefly toyed with the idea of buying a new hard-drive and replacing the knackered one (not really sure how easy a job that would be, but I’m sure there’s a tutorial online). But in truth, I’d be spending money to squeeze an extra few months of life out of the thing. If that. The screen would have given up the ghost before too long anyway, leaving me with a new hard-drive in a useless player.

So I bit the bullet as the saying goes, and spent 299 euro on an all-singing / all-dancing new piece of technology. And if you don’t mind, I’ll leave struggling with consumer guilt for another post.

I spent a long time reading reviews and comparing specifications before I made my decision. The criteria were as follows:

• Must play non-DRM WMA audio files (no way in hell I’m redigitising my entire CD collection)
• Must have a minimum of 30GB of space (I’ll be putting 22 or 23GB of music onto it right away, and obviously want to leave some room to grow)
• Must not cost more than €300 (the maximum budget I decided upon)
• Must have a battery life of at least 10 hours of music (to last the whole London-Holyhead coach journey)

Those were the minimum technical specs. Anything that met those would be considered. And surprisingly few did. In the end, the reviews all seemed to agree on one winner, and the fact that it’s made by the same people who made the last one I owned (and liked) is a bonus. So I’m now the proud owner of a spanking new Creative Zen Vision:M.

I went for the white model as the reviews said the black one, while initially the best looking, seems to scratch rather easily, while the other colours look a bit plasticky.

As several added bonuses, however, the new machine has a full colour screen, plays movies and displays photos, can synchronise with Outlook calendar and contacts, has a built in recorder and FM radio and can output audiovisual content through a stereo or onto a TV screen.

And it’s the same size as the video iPod. So no more wearing a jacket in warm weather just so I have a pocket big enough to put my walkman in!

There was a slightly cheaper and more svelte alternative that didn’t have the big colour screen. But in truth, while I can’t see myself watching much video on the thing (quite aside from anything else, the amount of music I have means there’s not much space left for video – even with 30GB), the idea of having a portable photo-album containing all my digital photos does appeal to me.

I’ll let you know how I get along with the thing after I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks.

In the comments to my last post, my old friend Philippe challenges the notion that carbon emissions / pollution from air travel is substantially worse than that generated by road travel (in this case, coach). Philippe used a website called Carbon Debt Calculator and came up with the following numbers…

Dublin – London 300miles
Driving emissions: 160kg CO2
Flying: 130kg
Train: 90kg

This flabbergasted me. It flew in the face of everything I’d been reading about the carbon emissions of air travel. Could it be true that flying 300 miles emits less CO2 than driving the same distance? This didn’t just fly in the face of everything I’d been reading, it flew in the face of common sense! How could it be, that the fuel consumed by picking up a 737 and hurling it into the air at 600kph to a height of 30,000 feet would be less than that consumed by rolling a far lighter vehicle the same distance along flat surfaces?

So I decided to do a little research. I couldn’t verify that Phil’s numbers are indeed the ones produced by the Carbon Debt Calculator (I can’t seem to get it to work… if I type 300 miles into the air travel box and hit ‘calculate’, it responds with “0 tons of CO2”). But based upon barely two hours of internet research and some excel spreadsheetery, I can confidently state that the Carbon Debt Calculator is a total bunch of arse should Philippe’s numbers be representative.

It’s just wrong.

First up: The Coach

The Dublin-London trip is complicated a little by a 70 mile stretch of water between the two. But in the interests of making this a more general (and therefore useful) comparison, let’s assume that both vehicles travel the same distance. In reality I suspect that the 70 mile “piggyback” that the coach receives from the predominantly freight-carrying ferry would reduce the total emissions generated by the journey.

OK… let’s work out the CO2 emitted by the coach on the 300 mile trip between Dublin and London. The vehicle was run by Bus Éireann who use Scania Irizar PB buses. According to the manufacturer, they get 8.15km per litre (let’s call it 7km to take account of potentially inflated claims by the manufacturer). Using a 1:0.62 conversion rate, that’s 4.3 miles / litre.

So the coach will consume approximately 70 litres of fuel during the trip. From here (PDF) we discover that the specific gravity of diesel is 0.88. That equates to a weight of 0.88 kg/litre. So the trip burns 61.6 kg of diesel oil. Remember…

When fuel oil is burned, it is converted to carbon dioxide and water vapour. Combustion of one kilogram of fuel oil yields 3.15 kilograms of carbon dioxide gas. Carbon dioxide emissions are therefore 3.15 times the mass of fuel burned.

Calculating the Environmental Impact of Aviation Emissions | An Oxford University Study (download PDF)

So the total CO2 generated by my 300 mile coach journey is roughly 194kg. Based on 85 passengers per coach, that’s 2.3 kg per traveller.

And now: The Plane

For this I’ll mostly be sourcing my data from the above-cited “Calculating the Environmental Impact of Aviation Emissions”. This is a fairly short report, but I recommend you download and read it. It’s interesting stuff.

With respect to our 300 mile journey, Table 1 of the report allows us to calculate the fuel consumed by a 737 between Dublin and London. Ryanair (they of the 99cent flights) have a fleet of Boeing 737s, so we’ll use them as our plane of choice. And according to that table, the 737 will consume approximately 2,200kg (2.2 tonnes) of fuel covering that distance.

Using the same factor of 1kg fuel = 3.15kg CO2, it appears that the 737 will emit 6,930kg of CO2 (almost 7 tonnes). Based on a capacity of 189 passengers, that results in 36 kg per traveller.

This is not a trivial difference… 2.3kg Vs. 36kg. It demonstrates that emissions generated by flying are a whole order of magnitude greater than covering the same distance by coach. What it doesn’t factor in, however, is the difference between emissions made at altitude and those made at ground level. The Oxford University report spends most of it’s time grappling with this issue and proposing a variety of metrics (multipliers) to take into account the altitude. For instance, it suggests that “the full climate impact of aviation is deemed to be between 2 and 4 times greater than CO2 alone”.

So best case scenario, you’re actually looking at 2.3kg Vs. 72kg per passenger.

Carbon offsetting: A bunch of arse

In the comments, it was also suggested that I could take the convenient and comfortable flight and then offset the carbon emitted either through a payment to a carbon-neutralising fund, or through “good works” of some kind.

Merrick‘s article “Carbon offsets are a fraud“ is a good place to start on this subject. The simple reality is this: Carbon offsetting is a fraud. See? Just like the title to Merrick’s article. The planet has two carbon cycles. One takes place over geological periods of time and includes the carbon locked in fossil fuels. The other takes place over far shorter periods – the life-cycles of plants and animals.

You cannot compensate for the burning of fossil fuels by planting trees. It’s as simple as that.

But even more fundamentally. And this is the kicker. I have a very serious moral problem with the attitude that carbon-offsetting engenders. The suggestion that flying to London is OK so long as I pay someone to plant the trees to capture 72kg of carbon per flight. It’s the whole notion of paying to pollute. Of placing a cash value on environmental damage. Quite aside from it being profoundly undemocratic, it’s just plain wrong.

We don’t own the environment, and we have an obligation – to those that follow us – to minimise the damage we do. One option is to do just that… take the obligation seriously… actively minimise the damage you do (2.3kg Vs. 72kg). The other option is to ignore how much damage you’re doing and hope that by giving someone some cash (based on absurd estimates generated by rose-tinted websites) that they’ll be able to fix the problem at a later date sometime maybe.

Sorry, but that option’s just not good enough.

I recently popped over to the UK for a few days. I spent a day in London, then a couple of days in West Sussex and then returned to Dublin. It’s possible that I may make that trip — to see gigs or visit friends — several times a year, so I wanted to find a cheap way of doing it that didn’t involve the airline industry.

We’ve all got an obligation to avail of less energy-extravagant, and less polluting, forms of transport where possible. Having taken far more than my fair share of flights, that’s an obligation I’ve begun to feel quite keenly. Which is not to say that I’ll never fly again… I still plan on visiting the United States at least once more, and who knows where else life will take me… but where there’s a practical alternative – even if it’s more expensive – then I’ll avoid planes.

And having visited the Ryanair website and seen the advertisements for the 99 cent Dublin-London flights, it’s inevitable that the alternatives will indeed be more expensive.

Or so you’d think. But in reality those 99 cent flights are only available to a select few individuals… people, who by virtue of their peculiar diplomatic status, don’t have to pay the fuel surcharge and airport taxes. Because, you see, those 99 cent flights (or €1.98 return) cannot actually be purchased without also spending over 50 euro on surcharges and taxes. It’s the same for every other low cost airline. The same for Aerlingus.

In fact, it’s not possible to get a return flight from Dublin to London for less than the €51.40 charged by the taxmen at both airports. This is still a scandalously low price, don’t get me wrong, but do bear it in mind when you see a poster advertising flights for 99 cent.

Especially as you can get a coach for €35. And no hidden extras. In fact, it’s possible you may be able to do it even cheaper than that, but I’m a sucker for publicly owned public transport, so even if they don’t offer the best deal I’m going to go with Bus Éireann. I doubt – after all – that you’ll do much better than 35 euro.

12 Hours

Anyways, that’s the problem. It’s a 12 hour journey. And I’m 6’1″… which is too tall to spend 7 hours sitting in the narrow seat directly in front of the hyperactive six year old who throws up near Birmingham.

You see, it’s bearable to have a 7 hour coach trip followed by a 4 hour ferry crossing. The return journey is — relatively speaking — a breeze. Because although the ferry is too bright, too loud, and you can never get properly comfortable; it’s nonetheless a glorious relief after 7 hours cooped up in a coach between London and Holyhead.

But having disembarked from the vaguely hostile environment of the ferry, 7 hours in a coach is a terrifying prospect. Especially when idiotic parents feed their already-wired child with cola and chocolate.

Which is why, next time I make the journey, I’ve decided to get the train from Holyhead to London. It adds an extra €15 to the total cost of the trip (still cheaper than the airport taxes though), and it doesn’t save a huge amount of time (thanks to the faff of changing at Crewe), but trains are far more comfortable than coaches.

So yeah, 50 euro round trip from Dublin to London… coach-ferry-train / coach-ferry-coach. Cheaper than flying, better for the planet, and you get to do some reading. Yay!

NOTE: The environmental benefits of taking the coach are established, and discussed, in this entry.

Some links (update February 2012)

This post is the second most popular one on my blog. So I’ve added a couple of recent links for people looking for information on travelling from Dublin to London without using a plane. I don’t want to give the impression that these links constitute a commercial endorsement of these companies, but they do provide a very useful service for those of us seeking to avoid air travel for environmental (or other) reasons.

• Stena Line Sail and Rail: Offering an integrated ferry and train ticket between most mainline destinations in Ireland and the UK. Approximately €50 for a ticket on the day of travel between Dublin and London (with a slight discount for advance booking).
• Bus Éireann Eurolines: Offering a combined ferry and coach service between destinations in Ireland and the UK.
• Bus Éireann: Bus Éireann website. For coach travel within Ireland.
• Irish Rail: Irishrail.ie. For train travel within Ireland.
• Dublin Bus: For bus routes and timetables in Dublin.
• Luas.ie: For the Dublin Luas (light rail) system.

Hope this helps!

I have quite a few friends who are gay or bi. In fact, for a goodly chunk of my late teens / early twenties my closest friend was gay (the bassist in the band I mentioned in a previous post as it happens). So despite being straight myself, I’ve been on a number of Gay Pride marches and I’ve always been pretty sensitive to homophobia, whether in the media or the world around me.

At the same time, however, I believe there’s sometimes an over-sensitivity to perceived prejudice, whether it’s racism, sexism, ageism or homophobia. This is completely understandable, and I am not levelling criticism here. Groups within society who are on the receiving end of genuine prejudice will inevitably develop heightened sensitivities towards the language used to speak about them. It is a natural defence mechanism, and to expect any different is unrealistic.

So when BBC dj Chris Moyles used the word “gay” on air to mean “rubbish”, there was a predictable backlash. Now, far be it for me to defend Chris Moyles. The little I know about the man suggests that he’s an arsehole. His on-air persona is infused with the “humour” of FHM and Heat magazine. New-laddism (also known as “wankerism”). This isn’t surprising; he’s obviously aiming at the same (depressingly large) demographic. And while fans of the free market will praise him to the roof for supplying the content to meet a demand. Me? I just see it as another nail in the coffin of western culture. Plus, a couple of years back he crossed a picket-line at the BBC. And that’s guaranteed to get my hackles up.

You just don’t cross picket lines. Ever*.

But leaving aside the separate issue of Moyles’ arseholeishness; was his use of the word “gay” homophobic? And here I have to agree with the BBC’s board of governors who dismissed the allegation. I don’t believe it was.

Language changes. And in the modern world of mass-mediation this process has accelerated so that it now occurs at a dizzying rate. There’s an entire generation alive today for whom the word “gay” meant “happy” for a significant portion of their life. And this isn’t a trivial point, because if you look at where this most recent redefinition of the word (gay = rubbish) comes from, it’s the schoolyards. It’s a generational thing. Shifts in language often are. It was the youth of the 50s who shifted “cool” from being a description of temperature into an expression of approval. In the 60s “heavy” changed meaning rather dramatically as did many other words (“gay” among them).

And as the language of youth evolved, so necessarily does the language of those speaking to the youth (dj’s and what have you).

It is clearly true that the root of this switch (gay = rubbish) derives from anti-homosexual sentiment. But the homophobia of the schoolyard is different to that in the world at large. I’m not saying it’s harmless (it isn’t!) but it is different. When I was in primary school, a common insult was “Your mother is a lezzer!” As a nine year old I used the phrase myself (I was bullied at school, the way quiet over-intelligent kids often are, and would respond – usually while blinking away tears – with whatever taunts were doing the rounds at the time). In truth though, I hadn’t the faintest idea what “a lezzer” was. Could I possibly have been being homophobic despite not knowing what homosexuality was?

Similarly, I am convinced that today’s kids – whilst infinitely more sophisticated than I was at their age – do not see any connotations of homosexuality when they describe another kid’s trainers as “gay”. They probably understand homosexuality to a degree, and are aware what “gay” means in that context, but will see it as an entirely separate usage of the word when using it to describe trainers or a car or whatever.

Lame:

1. Disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible: Lame from the accident, he walked with a cane. A lame wing kept the bird from flying.

2. Marked by pain or rigidness: a lame back.

3. Weak and ineffectual; unsatisfactory: a lame attempt to apologize; lame excuses for not arriving on time.

Right now the dictionary definition of “gay” does not include an analogue to definition 3 (above). But I suspect one day soon it will do. There can be little doubt that when “lame” began to be used to mean “weak” or “rubbish” (as it often is nowadays) it was connected to disability. But how many people today – straight or gay – if using the phrase “that’s just so lame!” are being consciously prejudiced against the disabled?

I was watching the TV news last night. From the Middle East came yet another horror story to chill the blood of anyone with an ounce of empathy or compassion. On the BBC website the story is headlined, Hamas militants vow to end truce. The wording of the headline angers me, although the events reported anger me far more.

There’s a trend among right wing mouthbreathers to insist that the BBC has a significant bias against Israel when discussing the Israeli / Palestinian situation. This trend is perhaps exemplified by Biased BBC but by no means confined to them (anyone citing Melanie Phillips as an authority rather than a cautionary example clearly isn’t receiving the medication they require).

I doubt, for instance, that the next deplorable act of Palestinian terrorism will be reported beneath the headline “Israeli army vows new airstrikes”. I suspect, rather, that the headline will quite rightly call attention to the innocent children murdered. So why is a report – the primary content of which is the murder of a Palestinian family by the Israeli military – headlined by a threat of violence from Palestinians?

Perhaps there’s another story somewhere on the BBC site beneath the headline “Israeli military shells Palestinian children”, but if so it’s well hidden. Unlike the one on the site front page.

I’m also somewhat irate about the use of the phrase “apparent Israeli shelling”. I understand of course, that so soon after a chaotic event such as this, there can be no official confirmation of the causes. No investigations have been carried out, no forensic teams have reported their findings from the scene. But within minutes of a suicide bombing, the word “apparent” is dropped from reports. Certainly long before the Israeli government gives its official reaction.

This is because it is obviously a suicide bombing. Eye witnesses confirm it, and the aftermath tells its own story. Is there a tacit assumption that Palestinian eye witnesses just aren’t as reliable as their Israeli counterparts? Is there any reason at all to believe that the Palestinians killed had set up a makeshift bomb-factory on the beach (I’ll bet the sand plays merry hell with the microswitches) and they were a victim of their own murderous intentions? Any evidence that the eye-witnesses who talk about an incoming shell are deliberately covering up the truth?

Certainly the television news made it clear that there was some confusion as to whether the shell came from a naval gunship a few miles offshore, or whether it was army artillery to blame, but there seems no doubt that it was a shell from the Israeli military. It appears that…

For many months, the Israelis have regularly shelled open areas such as fields and orchards in an effort to prevent Palestinian militants using them to fire their home-made missile into crudely made missiles into nearby Israeli territory.

BBC News | Hamas militants vow to end truce

I wonder what the life-expectancy of Palestinian fruit farmers is? (And yes, I know that BBC quote is awful copywriting / editing)

Statistically speaking that’s a policy guaranteed – over a long enough timescale – to result in events like yesterday’s massacre. Whether it’s faulty mechanical equipment or human error, if you spend several months shelling areas, some of your explosives are going to stray off course. It’s what the perpetrators euphemistically refer to as “collateral damage”. What Condi described as “tactical errors”. What many moral philosophers and legal experts would describe as “murder”.

How’s this for a defence in court… “well yes, your honour, I did regularly fire my machinegun into the loft of my neighbour’s house. You see, he sometimes uses that loft to shoot at me. Unfortunately I wasn’t paying enough attention yesterday and sprayed the floor below it with bullets instead. I’m sorry to say that his lodger and her 3 year old daughter were killed. But really, what else am I supposed to do? Killing some of my innocent neighbours is the only way to ensure that my family remains safe.”

For me, blowing up someone else’s child in order to reduce the risk to your own is not an acceptable way to act.

The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people.
– Albert Einstein

There can be little question that the Israeli people are failing that test.

Ah music. Music music music.

About fifteen or sixteen years ago I was in my first band. We were good. No, really, we were. We weren’t “commercial” in any way but the sound we produced had the ability to transport some of our tiny audience to that sacred place where time stands still. It was in the days before CDRs and mp3s… the days of cassette. And it’s years since the last of those demo tapes disintegrated. Now there’s no record at all of the music we made.

I don’t see that as a great tragedy though. We were never that serious about “recording” and those tapes that did exist failed to capture our sound; our philosophy was about connecting directly with small groups of people, about removing as much of the mediation as possible between the act of playing and the act of listening.

Each performace would begin with Pete – the bassist – creating a deep throbbing drone… the bass was routed through numerous filters and distortion devices until it became an unearthly low growl. Then I’d begin to talk… barely audible over the sound of the bass… I’d describe a vision I had one evening after I spectacularly misjudged the amount of Psilocybe Semilanceata that it’s sensible to consume in one sitting. Or indeed, in 8 or 10 sittings.

After three minutes, the rest of the band would kick in… drums, guitar and keyboard… all improvising around the rhythms of my voice and the bass. Sometime before the 10 minute mark, what we called “the click” would occur. Everything came together. By this point my speech had become a kind of chant; each time different; I’d hit upon a series of short phrases in my little mushroom riff and work them into the music. By the end of 22 minutes the room would be too small for the music it contained… as though the hypnotic throbbing sound had expanded the very space around us. Then, at 23 minutes, Alison (our groupie) would unplug all the plug boards. Amps, instruments, microphones, all would suddenly get shut off and the 20 or 30 strong audience would freak out.

We’d take a five minute break for “refreshment” of various kinds, then play a couple of cover versions, a couple of fairly straight songs of our own, and then repeat the 23 minute jam. All in all we’d play for a little over an hour.

Last night I dreamt I was back there. Every detail, every burst of feedback, everything was exactly as it had been. Except our guitarist was Prince.

Fuck it was good.