First I sold a suit; the suit my mom had bought me for my uni interviews, and which informed a lot of my suit tastes. Oh, the times I had had wearing that suit. What’s more, it’s more than ample fitting proved to me I’d at least managed a little weight loss at some point.

So the suit’s value is in reminding me of a few well learned lessons, and being the hook for some stories that are now a part of the tapestry of my life; I try to avoid being a big anecdotalist, and a pared down set of the stories I told myself seems wise; these things have become tacit. Off the suit went, and a load went from my shoulders. Getting rid of stuff is easy.

As Sam Hughes at Things of Interest puts it:

But it may make you happier. It is not a weight off my soul, but it is a weight off my mindnot to have too much to worry about.

I have very little storage space, so, the less stuff I have, the more room I have for myself.

I can’t stand clutter, so the less stuff I have, the more space there is on the table for works-in-progress, and the easier it is to clear it entirely in preparation for a meal.

Cruft is what comp sci people refer to as when a piece of software slowly builds up distracting and confusing code; stuff for handling edge cases that never occur now, weird dependencies and utility classes filled with cryptic comments and version control artefacts. It’s, arguably, why Apple made such a great decision when they went to OSX, and why Vista failed; way too much cruft to support older applications that the whole OS was too slow. (Here’s the jargon file entry)

But cruft, as a concept, has wider implications. Think of it as ‘accretion’; the slow building up of barnacles on the hull of a ship that, at some point, necessitate dry dock, scraping back to bare metal and some new means to stave off the inevitable biofouling for a few more months.

It’s possible to deal with cruft in an ongoing fashion, sure, but sometimes a good refactoring is what you need, whether it’s your code base, your ships hull, or, indeed, the pile of crap you lug from rented house to rented apartment. Which is what I’m doing.

Unfinished projects; I’ve got ‘em. What to do with the vintage electric thing that could/should/might become a clock, or the scattered few breadboards for proof of concepts. Also, the unfinished books, half sewn things, half hemmed trousers and other debris of someone who is, frankly, better at starting than finishing. These things are the worst; guilt, staring at me from the top shelf of a wardrobe and the stacked bits on the side of my desk. Triage, I suspect, has to be the answer here. Sit down, work out the big rocks and the small pebbles, leave enough stuff to finish something useful and/or awesome, and ditch the rest. Maybe I didn’t need that nixie tube clock anyway.

It feels good to have a clear out. Cathartic, not painful, and potentially lucrative, if I can work out the ebay tides. Storage is cheap, leaving stuff at your parents even more so. Get rid of the big stuff first, keep anything small that makes you smile and rip any media you can.

And of course, some acquisitions are more fun to get rid of than others.

I was dispatched off to great western wines before my shift one night, the local good booze pusher, for supplies, and decided to grab myself a bottle of this. Because I was fresh to this game and thought different might be better than definitely good, I went with the odd bottle the staff were evidently having trouble shifting (and what a lovely bottle it is, too). Which was a lucky guess in this case, as the Sotol is lovely; like tequila, but without any of the roughness and much, much more complex taste. Makes a fine margarita, too.

Get some at Vintage House in Soho:  (and ignore the comments about the staff, they were lovely when I went in)

Drinking a gorgeous margarita with this stuff now; remember, no flavor crap, just straight up (also, not frozen); 2 Tequila, 2 lime, 1 triple sec.

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, on the CPS’s lack of proceeding against the officer, one aspect that causes concern is his alleged chequered history? According to press reports, he left the Met under a cloud, was re-employed as a clerk, successfully applied to Surrey constabulary for a position and then transferred back to the Met. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman advise us, in his knowledge, whether that aspect of Metropolitan Police Authority recruitment policy is being examined as part of the process in respect of the prosecution, and whether, if there is a lesson for the Home Office on inter-constabulary transfers, that matter will be brought to the attention of the House?

My MP has replied to the letter below:

Thanks for the e mail Mr Cohen. I’ll let the relevant people know how you feel,
Best Wishes, Jim

Dear Jim Fitzpatrick,

It is with great dismay that I read the outcome of the ongoing investigation into the unfortunate death of Ian Tomlinson. My sentiment is that the actions of the CPS and Metropolitan Police in this case demonstrate a clear and unambiguous desire to protect police officers and avoid the application of justice from a jury.  A catalogue of errors and dubious behaviour has taken place, including, but not limited to:

• the appointment of Dr Patel as coroner

• the behaviour, public pronouncements and equivocating of senior police staffers in dealing with both the Tomlinson family and press after the event.

• the withholding of evidence of assault until a day after the statue of limitations for the charge had passed

• the opacity of the police disciplinary procedure

• the institutional behaviour of the TSG in covering identifying badges and wearing masks.

• the unacceptable delays in the CPS’s announcement

It is clear that the IPCC and CPS are riddled with biased and compromised individuals and institutionally incapable of effecting justice in cases such as this.

I ask that you raise this issue and campaign for the establishment of a transparent, public body for the investigation of police criminal behaviour, as well as the abolishment of the Territorial Support Group, who behave more like the Basij of Iran than the police force we expect and deserve in our country. I appreciate that the Houses (rightly) do not have powers over the Police, however, I feel that vocal objections, questions in the house and a change in the way that the forces are regulated is the only way to restore faith in the police in this country and to allow the family of Ian Tomlinson to receive the justice they need.

Yours sincerely,

Felix Cohen

Summer’s here, and I need more mint. Also made gomme specially for this; lots of sugar, vanilla and boiling water. Should come in handy.

Other than that, it’s just bourbon (Heaven Hill), bruised mint and (lots of) crushed ice.

And the view…

We sailed away on a winter’s day
with fate as malleable as clay;
but ships are fallible, I say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades

And I can recall our caravel:
a little wicker beetle shell
with four fine maste and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to’ve seen.

The sight of bridges and balloons
makes calm canaries irritable;
they caw and claw all afternoon:
“Catenaries and dirigibles
brace and buoy the living-room –
a loom of metal, warp – woof – wimble.”
And a thimbles worth of milky moon
can touch hearts larger than a thimble.

O my love,
O is was a funny little thing
to be the ones to’ve seen

That second verse being possibly my favourite lyrics ever; Caravel and Lateen, are really rather obscure and ‘old’ sailing terms that are perfect for this song.

doesn’t it just make you think of the Owl and the Pussycat too?

Let me tell you a story.

When I was 11  I attended a school in Bromsgrove, a parochial little place near Birmingham. As part of some lesson, we were encouraged to write to a local MP about something in the local community. I chose to write about the weed choked and dirty stream that ran near the stream, and was, if memory serves me, chockablock with rusted bikes and trolleys.

That local MP wrote back to me, and, after another letter, the stream was cleaned.

Which made a great impact on me, as a young lad. Here was a system where people in charge genuinely cared about the things that I wanted changed, and, I felt, would act as a conduit to the people who could, and would, change the things I and others felt needed changing.

I was 11. I didn’t have the moral subtlety to appreciate that, well, that’s not always possible. But it started a fire.

Over the years since then, I’ve been deeply political. I’m ashamed to say my first ever vote was for Jacqui Smith, which turned bitter when she voted for tuition fees, and sour when she became Home Secretary and saw whatever godawful ‘convenient truth’ presentation turns reasonable, boring Labour Ministers into oppressive bastards as Home Office Minister. Still,  schadenfreude, right? Nonetheless, I’ve always engaged with the system, and felt never allowed myself to feel hard done by when politicians made alternative decisions; I do have the moral subtlety now to appreciate the difficulty of governing.

But what I’ve really stood for is the right for people to have a say. I realised a long time ago that all of you I disagree with hold your opinions as strongly as I do, so who’s to say I’m right, really. Let’s get pluralist.

I’ve stood for elections, lost some, won some, and had a great time. When I’ve been in an elected position, I’ve taken the time to talk to everyone I could, and had to make decisions and support positions that I didn’t agree with, but constituents did.

And that’s not easy.

What is easy, though, is to allow yourself to be influenced by lobbyists and powerful, rich companies and individuals. It’s easy to allow yourself to be swayed by people who will offer you employment when you leave politics. It’s easy to kowtow to corporate interests because they’ll make sure, through various fronts, that you get enough money to win another election. It’s easy to decide to finance your party with contributions from a man who has crippled an entire country to play at cronyism and favouritism. And Labour, it’s easy to pay lip service to workers, while really supporting people who have grown indulgent and self serving in the unions.

The world turns when people with strong opinions get together and make awesome things happen. Compromise has enough negative connotations, so lets say synergy, which is bad-ass. Party politics used to be about strongly held opinions, and sharp divides in the Houses, which infused change and growth and development and experimentation in society. Don’t get me wrong, things have been bad, but they were getting better most of the time.

To return to that 11 year old boy. I was inspired then. Many things still inspire me now, but rarely the elected representatives that so awed me as a child.

I’ve had enough of the petty attack politics, the splintering of the opponents position. The boring, wishy-washy, policy-less PR politics. I would love to see a glimpse of what Obama allowed America; not the parroting of change that everyone the UK parties offer now. But mostly, I’d love it if you stopped treating me like an idiot and allowed me to make a real decision.

I would love to see a single genuinely progressive policy, and a promise to implement it. I would love to see some chutzpah and some genuine differentiation, not just this nauseating jostling to be elected or reelected, policy be damned.

It seems so obvious that most of you want more than a job out of this, and that saddens me. I have no respect for most of the politicians who have ever served me, or who are currently patiently waiting the opportunity to really get their claws into their opponents throat in a election. Show. some. fucking. dignity.

Most of them. Please don’t take this as too much of a broad stroke. There are amazing and inspiring politicians in both houses (and especially in the judiciary!). You know who you are, and you’re awesome.

No, I don’t mean you, Mandelson, That gnawing empty feeling inside means you’re doing a *bad* job.

So this was all leading up to me renouncing my vote and saying that I just couldn’t face voting for any of you. But, a couple of days thought, and some conversations with friends, and I’m not going to disenfranchise myself.

But I’ll vote for any of you cats who will put their balls on the line and promise something genuinely progressive. Including the Tories.

And yes, that means I’m giving up the chance to help unseat Jacqui.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the Lib Dems, and won’t be stopping that. I’d like them to show some fucking balls though.

What we’ve seen recently is the usurpation of sense by greed; the traders, oil barons and CEO’s deserve nothing but our contempt for their obscene consumption, and, lest we forget the lesson of Frank Goodwin, that is one of the reasons they are paid so much. When it all goes wrong, these are the people who will be made to be pariahs; the mega bonus culture has much to learn from Dr Faustus and Midas; if it seems to good to be true, it is, and the wager in this case is that when you screw up, you have been paid off in order to end up a pariah.

MP’s expenses, meanwhile, offer a different insight; the entitlement that some feel is their reward for responsibility. While the amounts may be smaller, and the consequences of the fraud much more minor, they have betrayed our trust. I’m certain that this was never intentional; concerns about the reaction to a salary rise led to a lax expenses system, which then became institutionalised. Add to this a growing blurring of boundaries between politicians and big business (oh, it’s just crass to point at Mandelson now, isn’t it), and it’s almost unsurprising that the expenses issue got so out of hand.

Surprising it may be, but once you overcome the dismay, I’m not sure many of these cases are so unacceptable. These are public servants, they are abusing tax payers money and they should be held to account. And that’s all that should be said on the matter; as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know how much of the schmoozing and diplomatrivia that goes on is necessary, but there are established ground rules in place. You don’t take the American ambassador to Little Chef, and you don’t wear jeans to meet a trade delegation. It is expensive and difficult to be an MP, and most of them have been reasonable. Most of them.

The moats, duck houses and house swapping shenanigans seem to lie on the other side of the fence, though. We come full circle back to greed, here; just like the corporate fat cats, these politicians have grown lazy and greedy, feeding their sense of entitlement with more and more treats from the taxpayers pocket.

Why do we let people get away with this? We mostly know that this behaviour is indulgent and unfair. What is it in our cultural make up that lets us shrug it off and get on with our own efforts to make the world a nicer place. Perhaps it is the feting of these people by the media, the culture of celebrity and the despicable idea we are sold that somehow these peoples work is worth 1000 times that of the cleaners they employ; I read recently that the two years with highest disparity between highest and lowest earners were 1929 and 2007, preceding the two largest financial collapses of the last century. Sounds like some people in power need to re-read their Anthony Gibbons; it’s been a while since any of our politicians were in their PPE lectures.Or maybe it’s that powerful social dysfunction, bystander paralysis. Poor Kitty Genovese, murdered in her NY apartment because all those watching thought someone else would call the police, and no one did. Are we all doing this; assuming it’s not our place to call these people out on their actions, but we should wait until the behaviour is legislated away; a consensus is reached on the right way to behave.

Well, I think we’ve tried that, and seen that the powers that be simply don’t care about anything other than maintaining status quo. Institutional paralysis has gripped the government.

“The reason why America is not as happy as it was in 1950 or 1920 or whenever, 100 years ago, is because our priorities are wrong, but it has nothing to do with exploiting the planet and has everything to do with losing faith in God.”

Glenn Beck does righteous anger so well. Those tears! Those puppy dog eyes! And look what he’s accomplished; the radicalisation of a whole strata of society to get angry about, well, nothing really. All that glorious, juicy unjustified rage, just getting sprayed willy nilly against an eminently reasonable health care proposition. No one really seemed sure what the 9/12 protests were about, but as far as torch-waving angry mobs go, they were pretty impressive.

The right seems to have a monopoly in righteous anger; why can’t those of us  in the left/liberal quadrant of the political compass start getting angry? I mean, sure, we aren’t reactionary, terrified of change or stuck in the past, but there’s a healthy undercurrent of frustration at the simple refusal of most of the people, most of the time, to do the thing that is so obviously good/right/correct. We’ve dropped the ball on being angry; ridiculous anarchists became the face of the movement and we left ourselves open to the accusation of not knowing what we wanted, other than fitful unrealistic dreams of destroying the capitalist state from dreadlocked, disaffected children of the leading members of the capitalist state. Well, bollocks to that, I’ve got no interest in destroying the capitalist state; I just want it to work right.

Every time I ended up at an exciting, progressive event, I’m saddened by the inevitable group of what I like to call red fascists outside. I’m loathe to mention specific groups, lest this become linkbait, but I’m looking at you, SWP, and all the 9/11 deniers and other conspiracy nuts that communism attracted to the left. You are worse for the left than any agent-provocateur could ever be.  And these people can, frankly, fuck off. The last thing the (liberal) left has ever needed is this overwhelming shouting about STUPID ideas when realistically, we need to present a united, passionate front around the idea of just being nice to each other. Categorical Imperative FTW.

Indignation at the way people behave is not necessarily authoritarianism. I’m the last person who’s going to proscribe and prescribe the ways people should behave. It’s stupid, it doesn’t work, and it pushes the most egregious offenders to do what they were doing, but underground and invisibly. Instead, we need a international campaign of gentle disapproval, tutting & tsking and calling people out on what everyone knows is shit behaviour. How very British.

It’s not hard; look at what the auto industry has to say about SUV drivers;

“According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.“

I’m not even advocating that you are as mean to these people as the people trying (and more than succeeding) to sell them their conspicuous consumption.

Think it’s all a bit unfair? Why? These are the people breaking the commons; it’s not just a tragedy, it’s an open violation; its open face mining, clear cutting of forests, eating someones last rolo without asking. It is the most shocking statement that they don’t give a fuck about other people, their own children, or anything other than a fat bank balance and conspicuous consumption. The greedy, lazy fat cats read the social contract, tore it up, spat and stamped upon it, and we need to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

How do we do this? Am I advocating that we all get angrier, until we’ve completely atomised society where we all obsess over other peoples actions. Of course not; tabloid culture and spirals of fear and paranioa make it too easy to whip up a swathe of the population over a risk that doesn’t, and never existed. The mob is not the solution to our problems.

We need to say “no, it’s not OK” to the outliers; the overconsumers, the overpaid and the overindulgent. You’re spoiling it for everyone else, and you’re the reason us and our children won’t be able to have nice things. Guilt trip them, call them on their lazy thinking and start to uncool the signifiers of greed.

“Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now, he’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”  – Bill Hicks

People love to see how they compare to their neighbours and peers;  got to keep up with the Jones’. So lets play on that; why can’t good behaviour be a competition? Oh sure, you could be like Mother Teresa and just be good because it makes you feel nice inside, but it only takes a tiny fillip in that feeling to have bad behaviour become rewarding. There’s nothing wrong with giving people an extrinsic motivation for doing the right thing. Even those that would have done it anyway will feel more smug about their good deeds.

Recently, studies have shown that putting a smiley on electric bills that are under a neighbourhood average, and frowns on the bills of the heavy consumers has shown that this quiet disapproval can succeed;

“the bill featured a little drawing along with the numbers: a smiling face on a below-average bill or a frowning face on an above-average bill. After that simple nudge, the heavy users made even bigger cuts in consumption, while the light users remained frugal.”

Hello, operant reinforcement. My friend Dale Lane has a thing for ‘smart meters’, and has taken the data from them and integrated into the Xbox Live system; you can win achievements and level up in saving electricity. How wonderfully nice is that?

And there’s the competitive element, of course. Everyone loves scoring points, and sites like dothegreenthing and thenag have bought a social gaming aspect to being environmentally sound.

We’re circling around a lot of motivation science here, so lets dive into that and see what might be good for helping people do the right thing. You might want to go off and read a couple of papers here:

Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L.; ‘Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivations: Classic definitions and New Directions’,

Klandermans, B.; ‘The Social Psychology of Protest’.

(i suck so hard at referencing)

But, to recap for those without athens memberships; Ryan & Deci are all about external & intrinsic motivations. Intrinsic being “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequences”; having fun, learning stuff, identifying with a movement, personal politics. Extrinsic motivations are a bit more recognisable, having those delicious separable consequences. Money, reputation and, uh, personal politics.

Politics is a difficult combination of intrinsic identification with a movement, the satisfaction of hewing to your own beliefs, but is generally also something public, at least for those where it is a big motivation. So, I’m writing this essay in line with my personal politics, but you’re reading it on my blog, and it was written for other people. Similarly, protest, which is where we can segue nicely to Klandermans.

Klandermans talks about the ‘action potential’, whereby a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations is enough to tip us over the edge and take some action. For some damnable reason, I can’t overcome my action potential to eat healthier and exercise more, but on a smaller scale, I can bring myself to take the time to monitor e-voting elections, or to write this essay. Smaller actions, over less time are a lot easier.

But changing habits is difficult. We do it on a large scale, I think, by dropping the motivations for the bad activities, increasing them for good. Germany does a great job with its recycling, and we’re very, very slowly moving that way on a corporate level, but bad behaviour by the individuals should also be made averse. More council tax if you don’t recycle, perhaps, or disproportionately higher road taxes for high polluting cars. Let’s pull the lazy activities under the low bar of their action potentials, and raise the motivation to be nice. Reward charity workers, make a fuss in the media when a great example is set or, yes, just give people cash for doing the good thing. That, and laugh in the face of politicians and bankers, and spit on every Rolls-Royce you see.

Anger only really seems to cause affront, no matter how clearly right one side is (in fact, often to the inverse of how right one side is). Persuasion, trickery and skulduggery might be the best way to effect the change we want to see the world. Embarassing public figures, exposing hypocrisy and generally discrediting those who are anti- being nice might help us more by devaluing the currency of status symbols and greed.

Now, I suspect that the various API’s I’m going to mention don’t support some of the methods I’m going to be bandying around, so lets call this slightly speculative, though if you can suggest anything to fill the gaps I’d be interested.

Tom Taylor and I were playing with the ideas of text based adventure games earlier this week, and this got me thinking; Twitter is a great platform for a ‘MUD based on this idea; as you tweet/DM new instructions and move around a map, you would find yourself in the same spaces as other players and could talk/trade/fight, which is nice, but not really alternate reality in any way.

I wanted to map this onto the real world in some way; social software is, for me, mainly about people I’ve met, so if I were to play this game, it would have to be played in my milieu; socially and geographically. So lets say the game looks at my my last few flickr tagged photos, and associates me with a ‘place’. Extend this a bit with the landmarks information you can extract from Wikipedia, or perhaps nearest road information from Open Street Map, and you could start to create ‘dungeons’ that are, in fact, based on the geography you already know, and could be populated by people who you could meet, or already know. And aren’t dungeons at all anymore.

We add some hysteresis to the geographical data, so even if you are taking a few pictures somewhere new, the game doesn’t drop you into a new area, and add some options to just play with your contacts on twitter, or everyone in the area, and perhaps take some of foursquare game mechanics; getting/receiving ‘things’ or badges for being somewhere. Of course, objects should be associated with missions in this context, really, otherwise it’s just a gimmick.

But the mission concept is where I’m stumbling; the time aspect of this is troublesome; players won’t move at the same rates, and won’t necessarily be visible to each other. That doesn’t really matter, characters needn’t be integral to the game. Maybe narrative doesn’t matter here; perhaps if it were team based, or around ideas of capture-the-flag it could work.

I should probably re-read Neverwhere, but it could be a bit D&D. I really like Russell Davies’ ideas thoughts on playfulness; here, why we buy fancy watches:

Indeed, we all want to be spies and pilots. But I know my Zimbardo, and that’s not a good idea. But that kind of complex play where you can be as involved as you choose would be perfect. A friend talked about couriering after reading a draft of this piece, and that feels kind of right, in a bit of a Halting State fashion; there’s a potential game where real objects and virtual characters have a bit of a shady co-existence.

Here’s a thought, inspired by this ‘disloyalty card’ for marketing coffee shops around east London. Places where, if you lived there, you might be expected to frequent 2 or 3 times a week (you, being the notional iphone-toting urban warrior the term ARG conjures up); coffee shops have some small RFID readers, maybe just tied to your Oyster ID, and you can store stuff at the coffee shops; it’s the real world equivalent of the RPG shop; you take a step out of gameplay and restock your game character as you drink your macchiato. Perhaps you could also leave items to sell in the coffee shops, or exchange items with others in that shop (this seems a bit too much). And then, between coffee shop visits,  your twitter adventurer is off doing missions and levelling up in the same geography; maybe even interacting in another way with the coffee shops, and levelling up for the next time you have a chance to trade at the coffee shop.