Citizen's Override

So, this is another suggestion on how we can improve representational democracy from the giant mess its in, to something which is actually 'for the people'. As you may have surmised, I'm not a large fan of this political system for many reasons.

A quick summary to this idea is simply giving normal citizens the ability to call referenda without needing to go through parliamentary discussion, nor needing parliamentary members to vote for it.

In some cases, parliamentary members take decisions which are contrary to the country's best interests - or are driven by motives other than the greater good. The problem is that there is no mechanism for the people who get the short end of the stick (aka the civvies) to undo this damage - nor to direct them in a forceful manner to the right decision.


You could argue that unpopular decisions mean that the party won't get elected next time. That said, in reality this won't be the case unless they mess up something huge constantly and consistently. For one, large political parties have a large buffer of mindless drones who will always vote for them. For the second, there are many reasons for voting for a party. What if it made a horribly unpopular decision and many good ones? Do we want to remove a party from power because of that? Shouldn't there be a more efficient manner? For the third point, elections happen every 5 years or so. This is a long time. 


Also, there are certain decisions which are for the good of the people, which no politician will ever support - because it affects him/her negatively in a personal manner. Here are two real-life case studies to explain my points.


(Case Study 1: The transport minister made a mess of the public transport system. A vote of no confidence had (almost) all his party vote in his favor and all the opposition voting against him. If the people were allowed to vote on it, the guy would be out of there like a rocket)


(Case Study 2: Parliament members got a large pay rise, even though some of them own companies and rarely turn up at parliament)


A third problem is obviously that sometimes the politicians are subject to 'lobbying' (also known as bribes) or other such things. The Greeks found a solution to bribes in their courts - they used to have hundreds of Archons - so bribing a majority was difficult and expensive. Lets apply this solution.


So what's the band-aid over this gaping wound in democracy? Give the people the chance to make laws themselves. Bypass the parliament. The idea is that if a person succeeds in getting enough agreements on his petition, then instead of passing through parliament where it will be forgotten/ignored - it will be drafted into legalese and a referendum take place to determine whether it passes or not.

This is different from petitions and lobbying, as the vox populii directly modifies the laws, and bypasses the representatives. People who don't want to risk pulling their favourite party out of parliament can vote against them, because they're not losing anything.


Of course we can take this one step further and implement what I call Technodemocracy - which I'll talk about later.

The Llama.

Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

So, last time I was having a think about crime and how society punishes it. And the fact is, that it doesn't really do a good job of it - when there is an obvious solution to it all.

The most common punishments which are reported on the news are jail time or fines. So lets start with Jail time.

Firstly, someone is paying for the incarceration. That's right, its the taxpayers. So we're paying money to keep people who have done some crimes fed and kept an eye on.

Secondly, it causes a lot of negative effects to other people. The prisoner's family suffers because of the fact that their family member is in prison. If the prisoner is a breadwinner, the entire family will have to live poorer because of the fact that s/he committed a crime. Letting other people suffer for the crimes of an individual is unfair.

Thirdly, it doesn't do the prisoner any good. Lets face it, prisons are there to act as a deterrent, they don't really 'fix' people. There was a statistic somewhere which asserted that when someone is sent to prison, there is a large chance of him going back to prison again. Apparently in California, 7/10 of prisoners return to prison within 3 years. This is for multiple reasons. As you can imagine, putting social pariahs in the same place to keep each other company won't make them better people, they'll pick up bad habits, get assaulted and won't really help out society when they're out. Also does anyone want to employ a previously incarcerated person? Not really.


So jails don't really work. Not for people within the system at least. Allright I recognise that some people need to be locked up so the rest of us can feel save. I don't want a mass murderer running around in my neighborhood. But those are the exception.

So what's the other popular alternative ? Fines.

The problem with fines is obvious - the value of the fine depends on your income. If laws set the fine too high, poorer people can't pay it, but then rich people won't care. You get fined (say) 50 euros for overspeeding - if you're a student who just bought the car and are under debt, you're going to sweat blood for that money. If you're a hotshot businessman and over-sped with your Audi, big deal - the waiters at the restaurant can get a smaller tip next time.

The ideal solution to these problems is simple. Put them to work doing something for the good of society.

There are tons of jobs around which are hard work and which need to be done - and which can be done by unskilled people. Instead of locking someone up for 15 years for sneaking drugs in, give him 780 days of such work. He can still support and provide for his family, he doesn't have to be in the company of delinquents, and he can spend his own personal free time once a week making society a better place. It doesn't have to be breaking rocks in a quarry, it could easily just be sweeping up the roads, or collecting garbage or planting flowers in the middle of roundabouts.

This sort of thing works exceptionally well for large companies as well. The company does something illegal? Instead of fining the company what is essentially a rounding error on their profit margin, grab the CEO and board of directors - and put them to work. The idea of a billionaire hotshot cleaning up garbage will be so deliciously humiliating that I'm pretty sure the company will straighten up VERY quickly.

And there you go. This sort of punishment is sometimes given out but not as frequently as I might like. Maybe if they handed it out for everything, society would work much better.

The Llama

Facebook Voting

Yeah I'm blogging about this now. Sometimes I need to do the really simple stuff...

So, lets first describe what I'm calling "Facebook Voting". Basically a company, group or whatever decides to have a competition which the public will vote on. And this vote will take place by placing the photos, or quotes or whatever on their wall, and people "Like" them to get votes. These are most common during christmas, valentine's day or something like that.

Example: "Llamas'R'Us is trying to see who has the nicest llama. Take a picture of your llama and post it on the wall so people will vote on it. Winner will get a free alpaca starter pack"

So, in theory it works well. Why not use a popular social network to see what the public in general likes, and collect votes using the simplest method. 

But what happens in practice? One Most All of the competitors will toddle off to their buddies and tell them to vote for them. So in the end the winner will be the person with the most willing friends. So when they have a competition, they really shouldn't bother with asking them to post pictures or whatever, they should just count the friends.

So, why do they still do this? Fact is that its all they really want. They're not interested in your picture of you with your girlfriend on valentine's day, what they want is people on their mailing list. Fact is before you can vote you have to 'like' their page. This automatically subscribes you all the updates which they'll produce - advertisements or whatever. its a total win for them.

So - how do you get the good stuff without the bad? The simplest solution is to tell your friends to stop asking you. Otherwise, if you really really like your friend you can :

a) Like them. Vote. Wait until your friend wins. Unlike


b) Like them. Vote. Open the newsfeed options and add them to the block list.


Simple.


Llama

Are domain names important?

[Warning: Slight ICT nerdiness ahead]

So, those of you who have been following the news will know that the .xxx domain is starting registrations. The idea is that Adult sites can have .xxx at the end instead of .com, .org or whatever. Already larger companies are trying to bag either own domain to prevent other people from using it. For example disney.xxx would be registered by Disney just to prevent someone making disney-themed adult content or something.


So, this leads to my question - Are domains still important? Is it vital to 'own' a particular domain, any similar spellings/mispellings or stuff you don't want people linking to your company? (The first one is called typosquatting, while the latter, to give an example - "atarisucks.com" is owned by Atari and redirects to their website).


In my opinion, the answer is no - and that it doesn't really matter anymore.


Before it may have been important. Search engines weren't so good at all, so if you wanted to visit an online shop, you're just go to h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot shop dot com or whatever. Your friend told you of an awesome website? He hands you the URL and you type it in yourself.


How many people still that sort of thing nowadays? If I'm looking for a website on llamas , I won't manually type in "llama.com" "llama.org" "llamas.com"... or whatever, I will open my favorite search engine, type in "llamas" and determine which websites seem most reputable by the blurb. The only times I type in the URL manually is if I know it by heart, or if I've visited the site before (so FF gets it from the history)


So in this day and age, we don't really need to have bagged a particular URL, since people are going to use a search engine to find the site anyway.


A funny note I'd like to end with was that I once bought a bottle of Gatorade, which upon its neck had "Google: Gatorade" written on it.


So, if you disagree, please Discuss.

Judgement

So, recently I've been seeing a lot of posts on why we shouldn't judge people. Generally these come with a number of case studies which make Occham spin in his grave so hard we could generate electricity. Instead of arguing about those (which I've done, repeatedly), I will instead suggest that judging people is necessary for society.

So, firstly, in order to ensure there's no misunderstanding, we're not talking about legal judgement. We're talking about people looking down upon a person or set of people based on a particular trait, by linking that trait to a negative label. So for example a teenage mother would be promiscuous, or whatever.

Now I'll explain my point. It is my opinion/observation, that judging people is an integral part of how society ensures its values remain static. Because the judged set are treated negatively, they will attempt to move out of that set. This can be a good way of keeping certain things down.

Does it work? Lets me an example which I hope will show that when something becomes more accepted (aka less judged) things will increase.

50-100 years ago, if you happened to be female and happened to become pregnant before you were married, you would be judged eight ways to Sunday (what a silly expression). The main policy over here in Malta was to either get married real quick, or to disappear to Gozo and give birth in a place where nobody knew you. My grandmother knew a woman who used to carry around a pillow under her dresses because her daughter had gotten pregnant and they wanted to pretend the future baby would be the mother's.

Nowadays, we have cheap access to contraceptives, more effective contraception and sex education in school. And yet the amount of kiddies born out of wedlock is increasing, to very large amounts.

I believe its because having kiddies out of wedlock is no longer shameful. In fact a certain tv show on a particular crappy channel which should have stuck to music, seems to glorify it.

Same thing for other things, more accepted they are, the more common they are - even though they are bad for society. See also: Divorce Party.

So I think allowing everyone to do whatever they want without judging them, is a good way to loosen society to a number of individuals pulling their own ropes.


Now I'm not suggesting we judge people for things they can't change or things they're not in control of. There's no point in judging people over the colour of their skin, or background. But there is a point in judging people who cross the line socially.


Discuss. I'm quite interested to hear what my local anthropologist thinks.


Llama

Idea: Mass Feeding

So here's an idea I had a while ago which I am going to share with you, maybe someone wants to execute it.

Lets take a look at something. Assume there are say 500 people living around you (by some metric), divided in 215 families. Every day, at least once, at least one member of that family takes food out from storage, wastes some time preparing it and feeds the family.

If we accept the assertion of 215 families, we realise how much of a waste of time, money and resources it is to have 215 different storage, purchasing and preparation units every day. So the idea is to centralise it.

Imagine you have a 'subscription-based' take away of sorts. To join in on this you pay some money every month. In return you're guaranteed a meal (two?) a day. With the money the company could afford to buy in bulk, hire a professional chef and offer a balanced diet. Theoretically, if enough people take on the offer, the cost required to purchase, store and prepare the food will be less than if everyone made it themselves.

"But they already invented that," I hear you say, "It's called a restaurant". Well this idea is different in two ways.

Firstly this idea is non-profit and intended to save the community money. Its a more efficient way of doing things, and it'll save people time.

Secondly, restaurants are there to offer attractive food as a form of entertainment. This idea would offer well-cooked balanced food instead of fancy stuff which is bad for you and which would be eaten irregularly.

Please feel free to Discuss.

The Llama

Economics

Once upon a time, a new species came upon this earth. Didn't have too many special abilities to survive, except for its larger brain. However they formed communities and tribes and they survived. A large part of this I believe was the ability to work in groups - they could hunt larger creatures and survive against predators. Unfortunatly once they mostly settled down, they started to prey on each other instead.

The way economics works is a brilliant example of how we prey and abuse each other for our own personal gains.

A 'rich' person is one who has a lot of money. You need these magical pieces of papers to get food, lodging and other things. Assuming that the world has a fixed amount of magical pieces of papers (ignore inflation or other things). Therefore whenever you are gaining some money, someone else is losing money - a zero-sum game. So by extension, there are ALWAYS going to be poor people, there are ALWAYS going to be people who can't afford anything, and we like it that way.

Lets take a theoretical example. You have a group of poor people living in a country. They lack basic sanitation, food and water. While many people would hate to live there, and feel sorry for the people there, they are a necessary part of the economy - they can be given rubbish jobs for poor pay. If they were richer, they wouldn't want to do those sorts of jobs - so they shouldn't be paid much either, we don't want them to crawl out of that hole. So when people collect money to save children in Africa or whatever, they're not treating the cause, they're slightly treating the symptoms. And the economy doesn't want those causes to be changed.

While as technology increases certain basic things will become affordable, there will always be people desperate enough to work for rubbish pay.

And this situation isn't likely to ever get any better. Rich people like staying rich, and rich people spend money on things which gives lots of profits to richer people - while a poor person might spend the money on food, a rich person will buy items which are produced by larger companies and which have a larger profit point - think about how expensive a luxury car is - how much of that is the actual cost of the materials and labour?

Sure you could argue that wealth will 'trickle down', but lets take some real life values - a particular company had the following values last year:

Revenue: $ 65.23 billion

Profit: $ 14.01 billion

So, lets take a look. The Revenue is the amount of money that people lost to buy this company's products and services. The difference of course is the amount of money it gave to its employees in return for their services. The difference is still a significant amount - where does that go ? To the pockets of shareholders who are already very rich.


So we can see the economy as a partition between the richer and the poor. The rich absorb more of the world's money - both though buying/selling of services amongst each other - and by giving not-so-much to those who don't belong in this special group.


And we fight and bicker amongst ourselves instead of living as a society which cares for each other.


Llama

For the People

(Note: This article is based on my experience in Malta, it may be different for other countries, so YMMV)

Elected Politicians have a tendency to be rich. There are many reasons for this, not-in-the-least the pay they get for doing their job (they got a nice pay rise a few months ago over here). One could argue that becoming an elected Politician requires money, which would imply already being rich. Bribery or 'lobbying' or 'donations' or whatever is the fancy word for it these days helps already. Either way, the end result is that Representatives (I will be using this term instead) are generally much richer than the people they're meant to represent.


Now this raises a question. In Representational Democracies, they are meant to represent the people. But the majority of people don't live in villas, don't have a private chauffeur, nor do they have large amount of shares or their own companies. So how is a Representative supposed to understand the plight of his people? If there is an increase in the price of a basic good, a rich person will not be effected, while the majority of the population will.


So in my opinion, if a person wants to Represent his people, he should live lie his people. He should suffer the problems that the people suffer, and he should work out what needs to be fixed. You don't understand your people from behind the tinted windows of a Limousine, you understand your people by spending 15 minutes waiting on the bus stop in the sun.


So in my opinion, elected officials should be forced to live like the lowest of low. Minimum wage, public transport, and a small house. This way I'm positive that many of the problems which plague us will disappear. In addition, this sort of sacrifice requires true dedication, and you can assume that this person will be enticed to help the country (by raising the bar) instead of helping himself.


Of course this has no chance of happening ever. If only citizens were allowed to pass legislature. I would be very content to see the prime minister waiting for the bus next to me.


Llama

Free As In Market

[A short story I wrote after reading too much 1984. The names were assigned pseudo-randomly and are not related to the person's character or opinions.]

FREE AS IN MARKET

“Today we celebrate 15 years of Freedom...”, spoke the loud voice over the microphone. The owner of the voice was a fat man dressed in a hand-made silken suit, with neat golden buttons and a bright red colour – a stark contrast to the mass-produced dark coloured rags everyone else in the room was wearing.

The speaker was the Manager of the local WeSave, the largest supermarket in the parts. In fact the only supermarket left in the country. To be exact the only food market of any kind left. The crowd in front of him was pretty much everyone in the village, including a particular young lady named Chantelle.

She wasn't there because she wanted to be there. Saying she was forced would be too hard, it was a free world after all. However at these sort of events they generally handed out coupons, so it was always worth spending 20 minutes cheering and clapping.

The speech went on for longer than expected, but the crowd never ceased its feigned interest. He went on to speak of how much better the world was without government interferences, about how much content the world was when the government signed in the “Freedom of Economy” act, which greatly reduced the power of the government. Nobody had seemed to notice that the Honourable Dr Byron was the owner of the largest Telecommunications company in the country. It was the first time in history that both political parties had agreed that they both liked money, and they would be able to make much more without pesky interferences. Of course this was not part of the speech, the speech was all about how now everyone was free to live their own lives, and how they now had a choice what they wanted to do.

Finally the speech was over, and Chantelle, not feeling much more comforted, walked over to her car. She drove a Walzbach – same as a third of the population. A few days after the Freedom of Economy act, the Union of Car Manufacturers had a meeting.

Within this meeting, the three largest car Manufacturers reached an agreement. Research and Development, and producing different styles of cars was too expensive. Moreover the market was already big enough to divide amongst three without needing to waste additional money trying to compete. And so the three companies produced a car each, and pulled the rest out of market. There was no difference between the cars – equal price, equal specifications, equal body. The only difference was the symbol on the front of the car. Of course there were people who would bet anything that the Walzbachs were the most fuel efficient, and others used to choose the rarest car in their neighbourhood so they'd be different – but the truth was,they were exactly the same inside.

She got into the car and sighed deeply. Fuel was running low again. It was always running low. She decided to go to the supermarket and cash in her coupon, she could use the food anyway, and there was still an hour left until she was needed at her job. She pulled her car into gear and drove off the the local WeSave.

She reached the store within a few minutes. A large sign bore over the entrance “WeSave : The Only Place to Shop”. It was true, literally and metaphorically. All the other shops had be bought by the WeSave company a while back. Those which resisted were undercut with special offers and coupons being handed out. That's how progress works of course. If you can't compete, you disappear into nothingness. That was also part of today's speech of course.

She walked in. An exceptionally large queue each register caught her eye. It seemed as if everyone chose the same hour to go shopping. Around the shop stood a number of private security guards, keeping an eye out for shoplifters and those who were banished from the shop. A large wall of shame stood near the entrance, with photographs of those who were disallowed entry. Chantelle spotted one such character being dragged out of the shop by a pair of security guards. A third was walking behind them and having a loud conversation with the man who was none too happy at being dragged outside.

“Sir, you're not allowed entry for this week. Its your own fault for complaining about the queue the other day. Next time if you shut up and just waited like everyone else, you would be able to get your groceries. If you don't like our policies you can just go to another shop, or start your own. That's how the free market works.”

The man being dragged out yelled loudly back, “There is no other store for 30 kilometers, and the closest store after that is another damned WeMart. As for starting my own, when Mr Andreas tried to do that, no supplier wanted to give him anything, citing exclusive agreements, and you kicked him out of here for life.”

The guards finished dragging him out of the building, and the chief security guard muttered “Troublemaker” to himself as he modified the length of the banishment to account for this latest event.

Chantelle sighed a bit. She had seen it happen tons of times already so she wasn't impressed. Eventually they'd all go in, beg for the general manager to forgive them, or turn to stealing. Anyone found giving foodstuffs to one of those banned ones would be banned themselves, though there was a minor black-market for such goods.

She found the bakery section and picked up some WeMart branded Flour. It was the only brand available, and was composed mostly of chalk – apparently an unpublished scientific article discovered that adding chalk minimised a large amount of Medical Problems. WeMart themselves had paid for this research of course. It was a good thing too, she thought to herself as she placed it into the basket, for she couldn't afford the hospital if she got ill.

At least, she was free. Free as in Market.

Floppy Awareness Week

You're a few years in the future. You're working on a document, and you come to save it. You're on a Windows machine. You look for the icon, and you wonder...

What is this strange symbol you're pressing. A blue box with a white box in the middle. How confusing. And its all over the place too.


With the death of the floppy disk, how long before this situation happens? Will the next generation know the strange symbol they are clicking on?


Therefore, Kevin and Myself are declaring this week to be Floppy Awareness Week. To raise awareness for this great future problem.

On Funerals

So, I was thinking about this for a while...

In life we are born, we live for a period of time, and then we die. What happens after we die isn't certain, but we are at least certain of what happens while we live. (More on life as a process at a later blog).

And at the end of it all, you generally have a funeral, but during that period you're dead. Now, funerals are generally tied to spiritual things. You wish the soul or whatever to do well in the next life, or afterlife or oblivion or whatever the beliefs are; and you stay musing upon the person's memory and mourning the loss.

Now here's the problem. The only person not being effected by this is the person being celebrated. Even if you believe in an afterlife, there is no guarantee that the person is watching, is able to watch or wants to watch. Maybe he reincarnated already, maybe he's enjoying permanent happiness and doesn't care about the affairs of this world, maybe the afterlife doesn't let you see what's going on. We don't know.

So here's my proposal to turn it into a humanist ritual. This doesn't have to replace the current spiritual funerals, and both can be done. This requires the subject to be alive at the time, so it can't be done in certain cases, but where death may be predicted its possible.

So, you call upon the subject's friends, family and well-wishers. You place him in a large enough location - it doesn't matter where. The person then gets to meet his friends and people who care about him - which should make him feel happy or comforted. You then place him in a location where all can see him - the head of a table, a platform or whatever, and a list of all the person's achievements are read out, and appriciated by the crowd there.

These achievements could be anything, and depend on the person's own philosophy. They could range to the jobs he performed, his academic achievements, creative ones... The idea is to show what a full life the person has lead, and for those present to appriciate what the person has done during his life - while the person is guaranteed to see it.

Of course you can have an additional spiritual funeral later. At least this way the person is alive to see how his life fared and whether it was all worth it.

Llama

Tanning

Its that time of the year again when men and women absorb a bunch of UV rays in order to make themselves look more attractive (for some reason).

So, would someone kindly explain to me while looking like someone from a different (darker) ethnicity is considered more attractive than looking your usual colour? It gets even worse when in this brilliant country of mine, men appear to have an inkling towards white-coloured foreigners and treat pretty much everyone else with suspicion. I'm not trying to pass a racist remark here, its just the way things tend to be.


It gets even worse when you realise that getting tanned isn't good for you. Nope its not. Yes you can get cancer, or skin which looks like leather (hrm, curing leather is called "tanning"). Granted its not nearly as bad as staying away from the sun ALL the time, but I'm talking about doing it on purpose. Like going on a nice beach somewhere, or even worse, using one of those machines.


Meh, but I'm sure you've all heard this rhetoric tons of times. What you might not know is why tanning is considered 'attractive'. Predictably its one of those social conventions which started out borderline logically. So here we go:

Originally (Ancient Times) tanning was thought of as being ugly. Because it meant your family was poor and you were labouring in the fields all day and getting sunburnt. You inferior person. If you were rich you'd be at home all day doing whatever rich people do all day. Play the equivalent of modern computer games presumably. This meant you had white skin.
Then the industrial revolution came. This moved workers away from the fields and into factories which did not have the sun on them. Now the working class had white skin. Now if you were rich you wouldn't want people to think you were one of those lower class people who work in factories all day, so you'd stay sunbathing on the roof or whatever. You'd have darker skin, and they would have lighter skin.


Given in this day and age where a woman going to work isn't considered bad anymore, and that staying out in the sun too long is bad for you... WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE STILL DOING IT?


Llama

Free Speech!

Last month or so, a particular gentleman made some not-at-all friendly remarks about homosexuals. The answer from the homosexual community was attempting to prosecute him both locally, and through a European Court. Now I don't know what this person said, or claimed, and I'm sure it was quite mean and liable to make people cross - but in my opinion he should have the right to say whatever he wants.

When I talk about free speech in this context, I mean the expression of opinions. I'm not attempting to talk about any other expressions. Threats aren't expression of opinions, neither is swearing. These are outside the context. But, back to the point.

Generally free speech has a limitation on it, namely it can't offend social norms and it can't attempt to remove other people's other human rights. I believe these are wrong for these 4 reasons:

I) Social Norms and likely to change. People who were 'censored' for saying something different one year, might be norm in the next. Around 2500 years ago, a particular person was poisoned for "Corrupting the Youth of Athens" by spreading his opinions. Around 1975 years ago, another particular person who was spreading teachings about loving each other was nailed to a cross for offending social norms. 375 years or so ago, someone made the audacious claim that the earth moved around the sun and almost got himself burnt at the stake.

What the above examples aim to illustrate is certain people who were killed for their beliefs turned out to be 'right' or have effected social norms to the point that they're celebrated. So why bother putting such a limitation?

II) If the spreading of the opinion is 'bad', then by extension you'd assume that holding the opinion would be 'bad' too. But should there be such control over people's opinions? Can't they be free to believe whatever they want? If I want to believe that people who's names start with Z are idiots, then what right does anyone have to intrude in my brain? 

III) We need different opinions to reinforce and adapt our own. Discussion is an important part of noting whether are opinions have holes in them, or whether they can stand up to cross-examination. If everyone needs to hold an opinion which is 'community friendly', then who's going to argue against it? Who's going to point out that we're doing something wrong?

IV) It can be used to oppress people. Been done years upon years. You leave a small clause, a fall-guy who gets punished for speaking out of line for something properly offensive, and bit by bit the rights get worn away. Yes its a slippery slope argument, but its happened time after time.

So in my opinion, all speech should be protected, no matter how offensive, different or weird it may be. People should have the right to believe anything they want, spread this opinion and have it cross-examined and modified.

LLAMA

Horrifying News Story

Malta, LNN - Antonia the ant succumbed to her injuries today after being gassed with InsectAway (R) while wandering around in a house. Antonia was found face up around a week ago in the home of Mr Joseph Borg, who claims to know nothing about this horrifying murder. "I was just gone to the shops, when I came back I found this brutal murder had taken place. I would never harm such an innocent creature. And anyway, why should I hurt it? It just an innocent cute little thing".

The Location where Antonia was found

Antonia was rescued by the Foundation for Understanding Special Statuses (FUSS), who immediately posted pictures of the horrifying incident on VisageTome. "This way people can have something to whine about if their lives aren't depressing enough, or they're tired of the divorce debate and aftermath". From then on, Antonia became a paragon of survival and a mascot for animal cruelty, in fact her body will be placed in a special room in the Museum of Caring, where an exhibition detailing her life and death will be presented by Mister N. Obody. 

Immediately after her death, crowds blocked the streets to the capital city, throwing rocks and chanting slogans. "What sort of society would allow this sort of thing?" said protestor Michael Ellis, "I don't care about the people dying of hunger, just make sure that innocent creatures like these are protected".

The "Lets Remember Antonia" fund has also reached a new high. Experts say that the money collected could give clean water to a number of 3rd world children, but instead it will be used to "Find that hooligan who did this, then we'll strap him down and gas him to death".

Readers are reminded that if they want to help out, these majestic creatures are always available for adoption, but it takes less effort to post links in Social Networking sites then it is to get one's hands dirty.

In related news, stocks for Insect Away (R) took a dive after a can....

A Question of Probability

A while ago I spotted my mother reading a newspaper. I spotted this very interesting advertisement on the front cover.

I would like to point out that we have a population of around 400 thousand, and its only June. That's quite a few mugs. Note that these are winners. What this cheerful advertisement fails to explain is how many people scratched a loss. Its obvious that this number must be larger than the winners, otherwise its not a profitable enterprise.

So lets talk a bit about gambling. Even at prima facia its obvious that its all a giant scam. For one, its run by a business - the business' goal is to make money. If it didn't create additional money, they wouldn't keep offering it. If you look at giant buildings called Casinos, some of which are incredibly large buildings with swimming pools and gold everywhere... its quite easy to see who's winning in this whole ordeal.

So what's the reason people keep falling for this very obvious scam. There are three reasons. I don't know the technical words for the first two, but I'm sure my psych party-member could furnish us with them.


Basically, regardless of probability, you'll always get the feeling that you're special. You're very special. In fact, if the chance of winning is 1 to 42C5, you're still going to beat the odds and win. It's kinda like magic.


The Second reason is the idea of investment. If you invest in something, there is a tendency for you to continue investing in it, even if there is a better option. You throw away a ton of money at a casino, and you want your win. You've invested too much in this already.


The third reason of course is the media. How many films include people winning a new life at a casino or something? 


So basically, somewhere along the line someone noticed that mugs love probability and are willing to give up money for a tiny chance to win much more money. And this tradition has continued on today, and the largest winners are those who offer the services.


The Llama

The Debate Drinking Game!

With the divorce debate still irritating us, I present to you all the Debate Drinking Game.

Basically it goes like this - get a friend and a whole lot of water (or any other liquid), and watch some debate on the television. You and your friend takes opposite sites. Whenever any of these 'bad arguments' occur, the person siding with the party which made them, takes a dose of the liquid. See who dies of water poisoning first.

Works well with other debates to!

[ ] Think of the Children
[ ] Religious Attack ("Fight the Good Fight! Our victory is assured!")
[ ] Personal Attack
[ ] Reference to something which happened in the opponent's past
[ ] Attempting to show Opponent is a Hypocrite
[ ] Godwin's Law (Reference to Nazism or other extremists)
[ ] Reading From the Bible
[ ] Misreading/Misinterpreting something from the Bible
[ ] Bringing up Statistics which don't make sense
[ ] Bringing up Statistics which are misinterpreted
[ ] Making up Statistics as you go along
[ ] Extended Metaphor which makes no sense
[ ] "I can't counter your argument but choose not to agree with you"
[ ] "You have your own opinion and I deserve mine"
[ ] X is a human right
[ ] X is a FUNDEMENTAL human right
[ ] Celebrity agrees
[ ] Some Important Person Agrees (Dr/Lawyer/whatever)
[ ] Political Party Agrees
[ ] Slippery Slope Argument ("If we give them X today, they'll want Y tomorrow")
[ ] Reference to the year ("Its 2011")
[ ] Reminder of the country the debate is taking place in
[ ] All Catholic Priests are pdfs
[ ] Circular Argument
[ ] Us or Them argument "People who believe in X are all [bad thing]"
[ ] Liberalist Creed statement "We should have the right to decide for ourselves"
[ ] Conservatist Creed statement "Its worked in the past"
[ ] No True Scotsman ("If you were a true [member of group], you would agree with me") - S.C.



I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list. But you should have enough to unbalance the Sodium in your brain.


Llama

Petition to Save the World

Petition to save the world

So, there appears to be a 'new' phenomenon in social networking sites these days, which appears to be a logical continuation of the 'email petitions' that used to be common a while back.

Generally they take the following form:

"[Request that people put this up for an hour]
[Messsage Goes Here - generally its either about raising awareness or putting it up in some groups' honour]
[NumberOfPerson% won't repost this statement, emotional blackmail to repost goes here]"

Example:

"Put this as your status if you know someone who has Mad Llama Disease. I wish that people would cure this horrible disease. People who have Mad Llama Disease look for LOVE & ATTENTION. 92.135% won't copy and paste this. Will you make it your status for at least one hour?"

Now I've seen a ton of these, for reasons including cancer, homosexuality and some law in Uganda about killing gay people, asperger's syndrome...

Now, for the most cases these things are useless. For certain cases, they are actually worse than doing nothing at all.

So lets start with 'useless' ones. The world doesn't function through democracy or through wishful thinking. If 1000 people sign a petition for there to be democracy in Libya, there won't be democracy in libya.

Petitions and stuff like that work when:

a. Someone is actually giving the results to the right person
b. The right person actually listens to the results (for example is a politician in a DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY)
c. The change is easy to do and the only reason it wasn't done was because there was a perceived lack of interest in it

Most importantly, pharmacutical companies don't work through democracy either. They work through the movement of profits. So a petition to cure mad llama syndrome - if its not going to be profitable, is going to be useless.

Now lets talk about "Raising Awareness". This is a common excuse. "Yes I put this message up in order to raise awareness about mad llama syndrome".
Awareness is such a funny word isn't it? Lets see what it means: "The state or quality of being aware of something". So I would assume "Raising awareness" means "Making people who weren't aware, now aware".

So, what a nice idea. So you'd expect that 'awareness' will teach information that most people don't know. Now I don't think within a 250/100 character limit you can teach too many people, but I digress. So, did you know being homosexual is neither a choice nor an illness? I sure didn't know this very obvious fact until I saw it in one of these posts.

So when does Awareness work? When you have simple information, which most people don't know, and which could be important - "Did you know that after the age of 102, you should test yourself for Mad Llama Disease by performing this method? It could save your life"

Allright, so now we see how most of those are useless. Now in certain cases (as explained earlier), they do more harm than good. Lets explain why:

People like feeling happy. Sometimes certain things cause feelings of guilt - such as the emotional blackmail which comes with each and every message. Now, signing/spreading this sort of thing, gives a cheerful feeling that you're actually doing something helpful. In reality (as above) you're doing nothing. Now, this feeling of having done something could very well stop you from doing something which could actually help.

Case study - Yesterday I helped Mad Llama Disease Sufferers by 'raising awareness'. I don't feel compelled to help in another way such as by sending money to research facilities, which could actually help someone. When the emotional blackmail appears to push you to spread the message around, you will obey that. You won't be doing anything useful.

So use your head instead of your emotional centers of your brain.

Llama.

For Posterity...

(Or - How we're ruining the past for the future)

Unlike what you may think, this post isn't about divorce or anything else. Its about something else.

So, last time I was watching television (yeah really) and as I shot through the different channels, I spotted one showing "Tom and Jerry". Now I used to love that show when I was younger, so I decided to watch it. However instead of the happy memories of my childhood, I got to saw a CGI piece of rubbish which was totally different from what I was expecting.

This was a disappointment to me. And the problem is that it happens all too much. What this problem is, is simply that people are 'recreating', or 'remaking' popular tv shows or movies in the past, and trying to sell them again to us. The problem is of course, that generally this attempt is half-baked and its horrible.


Lets give another example. I love Star Trek. There are quite a few things I like about it, how 'scientific' it is, how deep and riveting the story is... et cetera. So when they pulled out a new "Star Trek" film a couple of years ago, they obviously kept the same theme. Wrooooong. It happened to be a generic "Action Movie" in space which was 'branded' with the star trek name. It conserved unimportant things like characters, but changed the style and the theme completely. While original star trek had logical and 'scientific' plots, this rubbish was about using red matter to create black holes to suck up supernovas which destroy galaxies.


So what happens in 10.. 20 years. You mention Star Trek to someone, and he'll automatically think about this film. The awesome series of the past has been 'wiped away' by the latest thing.


So why do they insist on ruining our childhood? Simple. Money. Brand Recognition. If you can start off with a popular franchise, you can get more interest, even if its rubbish. Yep, lets go for the quick buck. And its done constantly. Very few series' are safe from the quick buck.


I will end this post with one single, powerful proof. "Star Wars Prequels".


End of discussion.


Llama

The Free Market to the Rescue!

The title is a sarcastic quip which I use frequently whenever topics on corporate misbehavior comes up. This blog attempts to explain to you people why the "free market" concept does not work in this modern world, and why keeping 'gubberment intervention' out and waiting for the people to 'vote with their wallet' in order to regulate the market is a stupid idea.

So, lets explain what the Free Market is all about. To explain simply - the government doesn't interfere in anything. It makes sure of certain things - such as that crime doesn't interfere - but otherwise companies are allowed to do what they like, and the market will fix any problems.

So here's an ideal case where the free market actually works:
You have a small village of say 100 people. You have 3 shops which sell bread. They are the only source of this bread, and the village is the only place they can sell the bread. Someone discovers that shop A is adding chalk to its flour and making poor bread. He tells everyone else, and these 100 people avoid going to shop A. Shop A goes out of business, or must otherwise change its habits, in order to avoid this. If Shop B raises its prices, then people will go to Shop C, and B will be forced to lower it again.


So here's why this system doesn't work in real life:


1. Patents - Companies love them. But in effect this breaks the free market, since its a government interference in the system. So when a company which has a collection of patents argues against government intervention, it's being very naughty indeed. Recently a company got a patent on a frequently used drug. Where it was once sold at 50 dollars or so, now its sold at 3000. Its totally legal in the free market.


2. Exclusivity - This may be caused by patents - however the main problem is that people are egoists. They won't sacrifice anything if they don't gain anything for it. So, lets say that a particular company is selling an exclusive gaming platform which has a bunch of nice games. This company then does some immoral things, such as putting rootkits on cds, or using the law to get large masses of information on people who visited a hacker's website [if you're not following the rules lately, this is pretty much what is happening to Sony]. The free market would tell you to boycott them if you dislike them, and they'll change. It'll be pretty easy to avoid buying certain things, tons of companies make televisions or other electronic media. But if you want to buy an item which only they can sell (such as their gaming console) - you'll have to go without. For an abstract idea. Nobody is going to do that.


3. Mega-Corporations float too much - Huge corporations make millions and billions of profits every year. You think that getting 5000 people to boycott them will make a difference? It'll cause a rounding error drop in their profits. It won't work. And even then, other companies could still trade with them. Sony makes the iPhone 5 cameras too. Do you boycott that as well?


4. Companies communicate and fuse. Small companies become large companies. Companies agree with each other and keep prices high on purpose. Companies will form their own monopolies through agreement. Companies will buy each other and larger 'harder to sink' companies come out.


5. Start-up is expensive. In our ideal free market, companies pop up all the time to replace the ones which died, and to add mixture to the market. However in many of our most important sectors, this is very difficult indeed. I can't just wake up tomorrow and start a car-making factory, or a telecommunications company, or a public transport company. So we'll get naturally monopolies in certain areas.


6. Information is hard to get - if a company does something very bad, it can usually cover it up. It can advertise the opposite or put a spin on it. People will eventually forget how your company started a civil war, how you supported a fascist dictatorship or how you shoved illegal software into your products.


I'm sure there are other reasons, I just can't remember them right now. But the idea that the market will sort itself out... is stupid. We need a powerful force to watch over things and ensure that everyone plays ball.


Llama

Mass Produced Music

(Special Thanks to LMF for having triggered this one off)

Once upon a time, music was a creative 'art'. An expression of what the person was feeling in a way. If you were happy, you sang something cheerful or whatever. Bards would sing tales and add their own special touch to them. Artists would compose music in the form of musical scores, which other people could play and add their own feel to things.

But then music turned into a business, and it all went downhill from there. When i say "Business" I mean it turned into an enterprise for which extracting money is the only goal. While beforehand it was primarily a creative and entertaining process, now it is literally mass produced. Scores of people work on a single 'song', which is crafted in such a way as to earn the most money.

Previously, when you had an artist, the artist would have been the song's creator. Nowadays, when you say that you like a song by [artist/band], the person in front of the camera probably has very little to do with the actual song. In order to prove this point, I attempted to see the credits for particular famous songs. Unfortunatly this proved difficult - so i picked up the last Mainstream cd I own, and looked at the credits. By the way its a 1997 "Aqua" album. So lets look at who wrote the very famous "Barbie Girl" song.

So, according to this it is "Produced Arranged and Mixed" by 4 people.None of them are the band members by the way. Turning to the back page credits we have the 4 member band. That's 8 so far. "All tracks mastered by..." is another person. There are 7 backing vocals and 3 "Guitar" (not the band members either). If we also add the "Styling", "Hair and Makeup" to the group - that gives us the grant total of... 20 people. There is also a page of "Thanks and Special Thanks". I didn't count Management either. Lets compare this to the very famous "Beethoven Symphony No 6." which is a 4 hour symphony written by 1 person. See what I mean?

What an artist adds to the whole thing is simply the "Image". Its the friendly face in front of the mechanical process. There aren't too many things this person must have, since autotune and editing has removed most prerequisites. They simply need to look attractive or attempt to put a sensual touch into things. An alternative (especially for males) is to be eccentric or otherwise infamous - such as taking microphones off people who have won an award. Note that this is mostly relevant for 'pop' music.


Lets look at the top 10 songs at this present moment. The Source is this site here, and its for the week ending 26th March.

So lets gauge the appearance of this people in the charts shall we?


1. Lady Gaga
2. Cee Lo Green - Exception?
3. Katy Perry , Kayne West
4. Rihanna
5. Jennifer Lopez
6. P!nk
7. Bruno Mars
8. Enrique Iglesias
9. Britney Spears
10. Ke-dollar-ha


Theres an image of each in the link, which can help to clarify and prove my hypothesis.


In conclusion - music isn't a creative process, or an art anymore. It is simply an Assembly Line kind of thing, where the product itself is a mixture of the talents of many people who you probably never heard of, and the packaging is the artist itself.


Money is the goal, it is both the sinews, the means and the end.


The Llama

I Predict....

A few days ago I was checking the maltese Times website for updates to the war in Libya. As always, the most entertaining part is the comments, which triggered off this blogpost.

For those who aren't familiar with the quality of the comments on that website, imagine this - You put 1000 monkeys with typewriters in a room, however 33% of the monkeys are political zealots, 33% of them are religious xor anti-religious zealots, and 33% are uninformed or just plain stupid. The rest are normal. Note that these sets are not disjoint.

Anyhoo, on an article about the War in Libya, two different people posted two different Nostradamus prophecies which appeared to predict what would happen. Now this gave me some thought, why are there still people around that believe him?

This raises a number of problems with believing predictions or prophesies -

1. You are assuming that the predictor has enough cosmic knowledge to simulate/model the cosmos enough to make the prediction
1b. You are asserting a fatalist universe and denying the existance of free will
2. You don't know anything about probabilities
3. Prophesies can be interpreted in different ways generally - this adds onto 2.

So, I'm not going to go into 1 and 1b too much, I will leave that for a future blogpost.

2 is quite the kicker really. I did some wikipedia research on Nostradamus. Apparently he died in 1556, and predicted what I understand to be around 950 units. So you would assume the probability that he was right in at least 1 of them over the past 450 years should surprise no-one. Even if there was only one way of interpreting each prophecy, the probability of a particular event happening is very large, especially over 450 years.

Now 3 I decided to show using a slightly humorous method. I thought of some text I could bring up which is written in a 'prophetic' style and which has no predictions or nothing to do with current events. After some thought I decided upon the Book of Mozilla. For those who don't know what that is, its a humorous long-term joke which the firefox developers put quotes from in their software (about:mozilla), it details events about Firefox in an elaborate manner.

Anyhow, I chose this interesting quote:

"Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children"

I will now proceed to interpret this piece as having to do with the current Libyan civil war.

Mammon is personification for Greed. Being a dictator for 40 years in an oil rich country is greedy. Since the libyan people were using the old flag which gaddafi had removed, its 'the beast reborn'. Its spreading over the Earth through the UN resolution, and the numbers are large enough. They cunningly took over half of Libya. The rest of the prediction is the future, where the 'sacred words' are the promises of freedom.

See? And you throught that that piece was about Netscape, IE6 and Microsoft. Foolish Mortals.

Llama

Bloaty Software

So, was updating my Yahoo messenger just today (yes I still use it). So I downloaded the installation file and ran it. Now, just to be clear - the installation file is just for the messenger, and not like the Windows Live Essentials one which has a bunch of stuff you can install. So anyway. Here's the first page.

Yes, I just want to install the IM client. So, lets see what happens if I choose "Next". I get an add-on to my browser, my homepage changes, my default search engine changes and.. oh look, there's actually some Search Protection which will stop me from changing the search back to what it was before.


Woah. Oh look, hidden behind there is another link - "Custom". Lets see what happens when I click it.

Oh look, Yahoo Toolbar was going to be installed as well. I didn't want that either. Good thing I spotted the custom link at the top, because even if I was careful enough to uncheck all the junk, I'd still the Toolbar.


So, what do we learn from this, aside from Yahoo trying to sneak a ton of rubbish on my PC? If you're installing something, DON'T press NEXT, NEXT NEXT. Lots of idiots people do this, and this is the reason why a company tries to sneak in as much rubbish as possible when you want something else.


Now certain companies do this because they get sponsored - but Yahoo doesn't need a sponsor, I wonder why its doing it. Maybe it likes splashing itself over your PC.

Llama

First!

Was going to write a blog on the evils or DRM software, but while thinking about it in me head, I reached an interesting, separate state conclusion, so I'm going to blog about this instead.

Namely - what's all this fuss about being the first to own the latest technological device or software?

This happens frequently when something is truly hyped up. There were people standing outside for hours to get themselves an iPhone 4, and the same thing happened with the latest iProducts.


The problem with this, is that you could just be buying yourself something less than perfect. Shouldn't you at least wait until reviews come out which properly describe the product you're buying?


You could be disappointed, even if the earlier products were great. Lets take a proper example - DragonAge 2 came out last week.


Metacritic gives it an 84, with a 4.1 User Score
Its the top selling game in the UK at the moment, no doubt bolstered by pre-orders or people who lined up early. (To compare, Dragon Age Origins had a 91/8.3 score).


This sort of 'everyone buying at the beginning' is the norm in software (Hi there Zipf). However if you rush out and buy it before everyone else, there are additional problems with software:


1. Software has a tendancy to become cheaper as time goes by, so you're paying extra for nothing
2. The thing you rushed out and bought could be a load of crap, or less good than you would have expected from the trailer which had 0 gameplay in it.
3. The thing you bought could be buggy as 'ell. Yes this happens. Isn't that right Rockstar?
4. There is no real 'bonus' for you having played the game earlier. Sure you get some extra trigger-time if you're going to play online I guess.

(Added:) Just remembered something else. Some games are now even offering to give you the ability to beta test them if you pre-order or buy another game (DoW2:R and DNF respectively did that recently). This especially highlights the concerns up there. We are now so directed to wanting to play the game as soon as it comes out (or even earlier as is this case) - that we are offering to beta test the game for free (or rather you pay for that). Forget wanting stability, latest patches or whatever. Alright granted, in Beta most bugs would already have been cleared out - but really... Of course you will pay a price larger than those who buy it after a few weeks, so you don't get any discounts for helping them do their job.

Feel sort of silly now don't you? I'm only recently playing the Half-Life series because one of them was on sale a while ago. I didn't have to pay 60 euros to be one of the first to have this experience - because its still a fun experience now - and at least if it had any bugs in it, they're all patched by now.


The Llama

Democrazy Part 2: Represent This.

So, last Democrazy post (which is here by the way), I complained how the entire process of asking the mob what the best decision is, is flawed.

Now today I'll be speaking about how Representative Democracies (the most common type in use today) are an even worse case.

So lets start with some basic background. A Representative Democracy is one where the people elect 'representatives' in order to take the decisions for them. So you have a parliament, or an important individual - and the people choose who gets the very important position of taking care of them.


Now this has a huge amount of problems, most of them stemming from the fact that the Representatives are human and may have ulterior motives. So lets start enumerating the problem shall we?


1. People are Sheep

This is a fundamental problem especially with political parties. You generally have a number of 'die-hard' voters who will always vote for a particular political party, even if the party leader was caught eating puppies and drinking the blood of orphans. This happens ALL the time and EVERYWHERE. For US readers think about "Red States" and "Blue States", for Maltese readers you should all know what I'm talking about.


Now this generally isn't much of a problem, these values even out and then its all up to the 'floating voters' to decide. However, this ends up forcing a two-party political system, which is horrible. Think about it, with many votes always guaranteed for a particular party, in certain cases, floating voters won't have enough number to get a seat for a member who isn't one of the parties. Malta has never had a parliamentary seat which wasn't given to one of the two main parties. Having two parties makes things stagnant and it always turns into "At least THEY'RE not in power".


2. Doing it for the vote


Alright, in theory its allright. You serve a term, and then if people liked what you did, you get more votes and get another term (or whatever). Unfortunately this then turns into a tactical decision to determine what gives you the most votes - and not by making the majority happen. Lets give an example. Hunting in Malta is all about shooting small birds as they fly over the island - we don't have any large game and you're not expected to eat what you shoot. Now its practiced by a subset of the population. However, the amount of people who find hunting offensive, brutal or just plain unsporting is larger than the amount of people who enjoy hunting. So you would expect that hunting is heavily regulated - since the will of the majority dictates it.


However, the hunting 'group' and their families and friends are worth quite a bit of votes, no politician wants to lose this amount of votes, so nobody will touch this issue with a standard 5 foot pole. There would be a net voting loss if hunting was regulated, as the people who think hunting is brutal are still going to vote for the party if it continues. Note I'm not making an argument against hunting here - I'm using it as an example of how 'tactical vote collecting' works.


3. Lobbying, Bribes and the Puppet Masters


I could talk about this topic until I turn blue in the face. Since these people take important decisions, its a good idea to target them, since if you get one of these people on your side, you can shift decisions and laws.


And its done (totally legally) through the use of lobbies. And in many cases, the lobbying will be all in favour of a small subset, and all against the general public. I can bring up tons upon tons of laws which only came into play because some large company wanted them to be implemented. Most overly-active copyright laws for example, animal testing for cosmetics still legal in Europe, the fact that the new Maltese Power-Station will pollute the crap out of the island...


4. They may have ulterior motives. This happens especially in countries with a large corporate presence. These people have a tendency to be rich, and so they buy stocks/shares in companies or in resources. Nobody wants their s/s to lose money, so better ensure that since you're in a position of power - you give little pushes to ensure that your money keeps growing.


5. They play dirty. I will give two examples of this - Secrecy and Riders.


Secrecy is pretty much censoring or withholding information which they know would cause an outcry (and loss of votes) if they became public. Tons of examples of this, wikileaks is one example of hiding information which can cause a ton of damage. And for the latter, the ACTA agreement is a perfect example of it. Few people knew what was going to be about exactly - simply because it had so many clauses which the public would hate if they knew about it. So better hide it away, then bully smaller countries to adopt it (yes that was the plan).


Riders are another example of a mess which is actually legal in certain countries. They work like this: Lets say you have an idea which will be shot down in parliament - lets say you want a law which "Forces Llamas to be shaved twice weekly". So, you wait until someone else is writing a bill for something important or time critical say - "Giving more money to the people in region X who have been hit by an earthquake". You know that this bill will pass quickly, and urgently, so you add your little clause to the main bill, even though it has nothing to do with llamas or shaving. However the main bill will have to pass, since its urgent and if its rejected you waste more time - so the whole thing passes, and you get your clause put in. No I am not joking about it, this childish act is actually legal in certain countries. 


Meh. If you don't agree, feel free to discuss.

Llama