I’ve been having a discussion around the meaning of slavery, shortly after encountering this interview ^[1] with an escapee from the Westboro Baptist Church. I’m not quite certain whether this kind of domineering upbringing should count as slavery. But I would think it could, unless knowing you’re a slave from the outset is an essential characteristic — but if it were, no-one could ever have been born into the condition.

I find it interesting that the underlying elements of the formative conditioning experienced by the interviewee (as described here and elsewhere) — a belief encouraged in the head of the family and their righteousness, the uniqueness of their relationship with the divine and their church, the importance of obedience, a ‘sacred’ necessity of maintaining the group and its ethos into the future, and of course, ritual assertions of group ideology at public ceremonies — are probably a replication of those experienced historically and currently in the House of Windsor, for example; only with less power and influence, and a smaller congregation; louder screaming, but less bling and guns. The latter institution may be more an example of ‘wealth is a ghetto’ . . . but still interesting.

(Why, yes, I did just discern some common factors between “God Hates Fags” picketing at funerals and the recent Jubilee celebrations. That seems likely to be my high-water mark for intellectual achievement in 2012.)

Cory Doctorow suggested recently that Digital Rights Management and its shoring-up exercises may be only the start of a “War on General Computing” to come — in which various interests, probably more powerful than the entertainments industry, will attempt to control people’s use of computers by requiring that they only operate with built-in spyware to monitor and control our activities — no matter how impossible that is to actually achieve in any comprehensive sense. (And I might add, no matter the problems prohibition and wars always create.)

This sets me thinking: As others have observed, one area this might happen is 3D printing. Right now, we’re in much the same place microcomputing was in the mid-to-late 1970s, with build-it-yourself kits (like the original Apple) being about the most popular way of obtaining them. We have yet to see the 3D printer equivalent of the Vic-20, ZX81, or BBC Micro. That’s not to say that there will inevitably be such a thing. (If history really did repeat itself it would be easier to learn from.) It’s questionable whether there will ever be the kind of demand for 3D printing at home that there has been for computing and 2D printing. But it can be expected that something like the IBM PC will emerge and dominate the market anyway, because that’s what mass-production markets do. And going by present trends, it will have DRM; instead of USB it will connect with something like HDMI, a cable (or at least an interface) which restricts the actions of a computer, owned by anyone, to those permitted by a Luddite industry association. There is no particular reason to think that industry associations in this case will be any less inane than the entertainments outfits, so there will probably be something like DVD region encoding too. Which is one reason why I plan to get in early and get the equivalent of an Apple I (in memory of the days when Apple did not seem like part of the problem).

But that’s not what I came here to blog about.

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But what for do you need paintbrush cleaners, Madam — do you not have the Sea?

Today I notice that some of the fawn specks I thought were sand were really young barnacles trying to live on the paint. I wish I had known, and had a macro lens.

you people are strange digging deep the ground for glittering stones to put on you
(Rana temporaria temporaria)

there are stones called tiger eye . . . but really I think they’re frog eye
(Rana temporaria temporaria I believe)