Blood Diamonds

According to the BBC "There are no more blood diamonds in Sierra Leone".

Interesting statement.

Their extraction in Sierra Leone may comply with the Kimberley Process in terms of the local African situation, but can their journey and impact beyond that country really justify such a statement?

The company that owns the operation, which naturally makes massive profits for itself and its owners, is Beny Steinmetz Group Investments (BSG). It owns BSG Resources, the operations arm for mineral extraction, which in turn operates Koidu Holdings - referenced by the BBC article - who extract the rough diamonds. BSG Investments also owns the Steinmetz Diamond Group. There is undoubtedly a direct line between the diamonds drawn from the earth in Sierra Leone, and the high-end products of Steinmetz, as worn by many celebrities (Steinmetz are proud to lend their products to the BAFTA awards organisers for stars to wear).

As with most companies, the profits inevitably go in various directions. Some is probably kept in reserve, some is perhaps invested in making processes more profitable, maybe investment in new ventures and opportunities, exploring new territories to extract minerals, and so on. Some goes in tax to the nation in which the company is registered, in this case Switzerland. Some likely goes to good causes either for altruistic or tax reasons, and some to the shareholders of the company. In this case the most significant individual beneficiary will be the eponymous multi-billionaire owner, Beny Steinmetz.

Beny does some good works, too, and thus a portion of money goes, either from him or the company or perhaps both, to the Agnes and Beny Steinmetz Foundation (also linked from the SDG web site)- an Israeli charitable organisation.

ABSF, however, alongside work supporting underprivileged youth in Israel, has "adopted" a brigade in the Israeli Defence Force - Givati Brigade - providing them with complementary equipment. Givati Brigade were primary boots on the ground during operations Hot Winter and Cast Lead, operations condemned by the UN as using excessive and illegal force in the subjugation of civilians, and akin to their enemies in Hamas, committing war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity during these operations. The same brigade included soldiers later convicted of forcing a 9 year old boy to open bags they feared to contain explosives, in order to protect their own lives from danger, during these operations.

It is a reasonably safe assumption to make that, as an Israeli citizen, a share of Beny's wealth is paid in taxes to the Israeli government led by Netanyahu, a government which some argue is effectively operating a system of apartheid, and which illegally occupies Palestinian territory.

As a consequence ABSF, Beny, BSG, and thus SDG have direct financial links to the killing of civilians in illegally occupied lands, where collective punishment is perpetuated daily. Perhaps it is time for the Kimberley Process to be brought up to date in order to take into account not only the countries in which rough diamonds are extracted, but those through which they later pass for processing or to which their capacity to generate wealth gives benefit.
If the vast wealth from many diamond producers, and the trade as a whole, generates significant income for a state such as Israel, this surely leaves the diamonds as tainted by blood as they are by being dug from the ground at the point of a militiaman's rifle.

So, are there really "no more blood diamonds in Sierra Leone"?

How to mend F1's broken qualifying system, and give the world a hug.

In 2006 Formula One's knock-out qualifying system was introduced, pretty much as we know it today, with modifications over the years to address increased numbers of drivers competing. Essentially there are three timed sessions with a specific number of drivers being eliminated in the first two sessions, with their grid-slots determined regardless of headline times set in later sessions. The final session determines the top ten.

Controversy has arisen through teams choosing not to compete and set a timed lap in the final session if they believe it is more prudent to conserve tyres for the race, rather than set a hot lap. Sky's pundits have been discussing how this can be fixed, and drivers compelled to set a lap time in the final session to stop the bore-fest induced by half the cars not bothering, or performing little more than an installation lap to leapfrog the other non-competing drivers. I have my own plan. It goes a little something like this.

Take inspiration from the "BMW M Award" in MotoGP, where the riders are awarded points after each meeting's qualifying session in a mini-contest entirely separate from the main riders' championship. The prize is a tricked-up 1 series, and this is awarded to the winner at season's end. In earlier years the competition was run not on points, but cumulative lap-times - allowance was made to protect a rider from the consequences of a terrible session through allowing them to nominate one to drop from the totting-up.

How would this contest work in F1? What sort of prize would make it work? How can a dominant driver not lead to a boring contest?

If points were awarded a-la-MotoGP purely on grid position from first to last, there would be little incentive in Q3 in terms of points-difference between 7th to 10th places for a driver to want to go out for something which is more about bragging-rights than accolades and titles. Little would change. Therefore the system in MotoGP would not simply transfer over. Instead the clock would need to wind back to the cumulative lap-time method used in that championship in days gone by.

In Formula One there is a small problem that makes things tricky - there are three sessions with three different "pole" times being set in each. In theory a driver knocked out in Q2, left in P11 for Sunday's grid, could set a faster ultimate lap-time than the outright pole-sitter determined by Q3. This is where it gets a little bit clever. Stick with me.

Introduce the concept of "Time Behind".

"Time Behind" would mean that the time recorded for any given driver is the precise difference between the time set by a driver and the fastest lap in the final session in which they compete. This is then accumulated across the season. The driver with the lowest total Time Behind wins the prize.
     Therefore if Massa were to qualify in P11 with a 1:32.001, but final pole is 1:32.280, he isn't awarded a negative time to screw it all up. Instead the time set by the Q2 pole-sitter comes into play for him. Let's say Q2 pole was a 1:31.333, Massa's "Time Behind" is 0.668 for the meeting. For those who go through to Q3, the time against which they record a "Time Behind" is the final pole-sitter's lap. The driver on pole, of course, scores zero. In order to compensate for a driver unable to set a time in the final session in for which they were eligible, perhaps due to a crash or mechanical error, a single race meeting from the season could be nominated to be dropped (much as the actual drivers championship used to work in years gone by).

So now we have figured out the system by which competition is generated and measured, how would we compel a driver to take part if it does not contribute to the drivers' championship?

Money.

A prize-car worth $35k may work in MotoGP where the tyres used in qualifying are not necessarily those which will be raced on Sunday, but frankly it is not going to inspire a Formula One driver to set a lap-time on tyres they want to save for the race and potentially score championship points.
     A significant sum of money for which to compete will help grease the wheels a little, and might also provide little interest among the small group of elite drivers in competitive cars who already earn vast sums.

Therefore there needs to be a spark, a very public element whereby a prize fund is established for drivers to take home which is awarded at the end of the season, and another to match it for their chosen charitable organisation which is awarded on a race-by-race basis. I may be being naïve, but the incentive to score significant prize-funds for their favourite cause and simultaneously gain exposure for that cause on global TV is going to be a worthwhile incentive for most drivers who not only want to pursue every possible set of bragging-rights against each other, but do not want to look like utter douche-bags for sitting in their garage saving a set of tyres rather than fighting for their good cause against immediate rivals.

Again this may be my naivete speaking, I believe a drivers' table competing for the season-long cumulative qualifying award that brings with it up to $1m in prize-money for the top driver, $750k for 2nd, and ever-decreasing sums right down to down to $50k for last place, would be fun to see - but a further table of winnings for charity which goes up in value race-by-race, by which a driver can do their public chest-beating and willy-waving would really be the way to end the sight of a driver peering at their cockpit-mounted screen, remote in hand, for ten minutes.
     For the charity money league, lower values than the season-long personal prize would be needed, and would be awarded purely based on grid position and not a "Time Behind" system. Monetarily there would be smaller incremental gaps between places therefore, and as they compete and increase their sums on a per-race basis, such competition would guarantee the possibility of quite incredible sums being generated by the top drivers who consistently qualify in the top handful of grid slots - but a final money-table would be pretty close between drivers on the whole.
     The fact these sums are competed for at every race means that even where a season is dominated by a single driver, such as Vettel in 2011, the spark of competition between those in each lower place is not lost to a shrug of the shoulders that follows a foregone conclusion that the single season-long prize is out of reach. Ifthe "Time Behind" league wasn't very exciting in a given season, the charity league would retain a spark throughout.

And if necessary, back it all up with Sky's suggestion of a mandated run within 107% to make them turn their wheels. The money tables would stop them just scraping through on purpose, though.

How would such a system be paid for? The sums required would be vast. If the per-race charity pots matched the season-long drivers' pots each and every round, then the total would be more than enough to fund a competitive team for a season. In fact, if prize money is paid out for all 26 drivers in the Time Behind tables and this were to be mirrored every round, the charity prize fund would need to be around $150m.

Pie in the sky, ridiculous.

Here's the 'but'... Reduced sums which begin at $250k for the pole-sitter and reduce by $10k for each grid place brings the season total down to "only" $65.1m for a 20 race season. That's still a stupendous amount of money. However, for corporate underwriters who have budgets for both sporting deals and giving to good causes, it represents a way to tie two activities together and would be relatively easy to include in their tax-efficiency strategies that form a pivotal part of why they give in the first place, and would not need to be a burden placed upon one set of shoulders.

Finding a sole corporate sponsor to underwrite this reduced headline sum is still ridiculous. However, a three-name-system could work. This would consist of a  title sponsor whose name appears on the competition at every round. The second should be the individual race's title sponsor  for each round (for example, the 2012 Formula One Shell Grand Prix of Belgium, would mean Shell join the main competition title sponsor - though some rounds do not carry headline sponsorship which is a bump in the plan that needs ironing out!). The final portion should be underwritten from within the sport itself, i.e. Formula One Management (FOM) using the F1 brand so the sport becomes a significant donor.
     I imagine a breakdown being as follows: Season-long title sponsor, 20% of each race's kitty, a total of $13m (tax-deductables!) across the season. The remaining 80% to be split 50/50, so the per-race cost for FOM and the race-sponsor is $1.3m.

For Bernie's FOM this represents around 4.5% of average hosting fees (the fee charged to the circuits for the right to hold a race) which should not dent the coffers overly given that this represents a small part of turnover when considering the vast sums of TV money that roll in, and yet more from app sales, online video packages, and so on... So such sums should not cause much disruption, and of course I'm sure could be included in tax efficiencies.
     For corporate sponsors buying the naming rights to an individual round of the championship season, I may be wrong but I would estimate $1.3m in mandatory charitable donation within the deal for the right to buy in would not hurt them overly, for much the same reasons.

What is in it for the title and race sponsor? Global audiences will see a table of standings at each race for around 30 seconds with their names at the head, thus identifying them as being major corporate givers to good causes. A billion impressions of doing good in the world. The value for FOM of identifying F1 itself as a giver will be positive too, when it often comes in for some stick for being a business that makes just a few men very rich indeed without giving back (rightly or wrongly!).

There is a lot of information to take in, and I would imagine 90% of readers gave up right about when I started talking about prize money and funding. For those who made it this far, and think it's just all a bit too much, imagine this to put it into practice.

Saturday afternoon, Q3 ends, and the anchor in pit lane or in the studio summarises the grid order.
   A second screen now appears with (for the sake of example) the "Tag Heuer Award" standings, a list of drivers and their personal cumulative "Time Behind" for the season so far, indicating who is in the running for a million dollars and a platinum watch for being the fastest driver over 20 rounds of qualifying.
   A final screen comes up showing a money table, PGA style, of drivers with their nominated charity's name alongside their own, and the amount raised by their performances so far in the season. The top of the screen simply bears two corporate names and the F1 logo. The anchor introduces the table as (again brands merely for the purposes of example) "The Santander Formula One qualifying money league, sponsored here in (insert country name) by Emirates".

Sounds a lot more simple and tangible that way, doesn't it.

If the money can be found to underwrite it, imagine the good that can be done. But best of all, imagine a Q3 session with every single driver setting a time, and giving their all. The final added benefit, in a sport where people support drivers passionately, identifying with a charity on such a public and competitive stage and on such a scale, may potentially increase the likelihood that supporters may wish to identify with the charity their favourite pilot also identifies, choosing to donate as an individual too. This would be a side-benefit but naturally a fantastic one that should not be ignored.

I hope you made it to the end, and hopefully have some thoughts you would like to share. Feel free to tear me apart but please be constructive with a little more than "It's terrible" and "It'll never work". Ideas to improve a suggestion would never be unwelcome!

Three farmers. A long post about American tax burdens.

It is possible to change one's status through a combination of work, circumstances, opportunity, and luck, but an absence of one or more of these generally means that change is unlikely or even impossible. Working hard is not enough, otherwise how can we explain the millions of people who work multiple jobs simply to survive. Circumstance allows a person the means by which to pursue improvement, but without the right circumstances they can not do so. Opportunity connects closely to circumstance, insofar as this is what needs to come along to allow those with the right circumstances to pursue it. Without an opportunity, there can be no progression from one state to another. Thus we might consider the circumstance element to be basic financial viability, education, health, credit-worthiness, support from family, or indeed the system in which they live. Luck, largely comes down to all these elements lining up at a time when the individual can exploit them, and see that they can do so.

How does this all relate to taxation? Let us consider three farmers from an imaginary place 150 years ago, in a community of 500 farmers. For the purposes of simplicity we shall assume that the land each one works produces the same volume of output per acre, i.e. 100 gross units of 'stuff'.

We have a small farmer, who has 349 neigbours just like him. We have a medium size farmer with 139 in his subset, and a final large land-owning farmer who is one of a group of 10.

The small farmer has an acre of land, his own labour and that of his family. He is able to produce precisely the amount that he needs to survive, and to cover a contribution taken from him by the local community for storage in case of lean times (15% of gross output). He works every hour he can, and his offspring labour with him to allow the group to survive. They can not afford the luxury of considering their health as a priority over maintaining their circumstances, nor an education beyond that which allows them to perform the tasks demanded by their life. Their entire life demands work to survive. If the crops fail they will be reliant on the community in the short term, and if a long term mishap were to befall them, they are at the mercy of their neighbours.

Another has three acres of land upon which he works. He produces crops sufficient for his own needs and those of his family. He is able to afford to employ others from neighbouring communities to work the land alongside him in order to make use of his land's capacity, thus maintaining his greater level of comfort. He can afford greater care for his well-being, and to buy an education for himself and for his offspring, that they might take over from him in future, or establish their own acreage in a similar model with his support from the wealth he accrues over time. He contributes a slightly greater proportion of his produce (20% of gross output, ergo 4x his smaller neighbour's total), but his greater margin in resources and capacity means this does not limit his personal comfort at all, nor his capacity to generate personal wealth (so that he may support aforementioned successors in their endeavours). Lean times are sustainable on a medium-term basis, and those not created by nature are less likely to befall them due to their greater access to resources that can prevent such situations being problematic (home maintenance, replacing machinery, etc).

The final farmer has thirty acres. He requires the labour of others to make full use of the land. He is likely to have a better education than his neighbouring farmers, which his offspring will enjoy too. He can afford the finest medical care for himself and his family to maintain the rudest health. He does not need to participate in the manual tasks required to produce crops, and instead can either enjoy his time in pursuits to his own taste, or indeed pursue another occupation entirely, which generates yet further wealth. He contributes to the communal reserves a slightly greater proportion of his output than either neighbour (25% percent, ergo 50 times his smallest neighbour and 37.5 times greater than the middle farmer), but will never be left wanting, and proportionally enjoys a far greater surplus which generates wealth. In lean times he has sufficient capacity to produce comfortably for himself, still give some to the community, and to maintain some growth of wealth both through his land's output and his secondary streams of income that his circumstances and opportunities have allowed.

Farmer 1 survives, barely, and is reliant on community for the hard times. His circumstances are severely limited and opportunity rarely or never present. His gross annual contribution to society is 15 units, and he is likely to need far more than his contribution back in an emergency in order to survive. Farmer 2 survives comfortably, may need a little assistance now and then, but can provide for himself and his family to maintain their relative comfort. His annual contribution is 60 units, and in the same emergency he would not need as much to survive if he has successfully created a personal reserve, and if not then his demands are less significant in proportion to his long term input. Farmer 3 enjoys great personal comfort and the trappings of wealth, rarely if ever requiring assistance, and with the personal resources to guarantee survival in all but the most disastrous of catastrophes that lines up not only a physical destruction of his capacity to generate wealth but his reserves too. He contributes 750 units a year to the community, and is, therefore, the most significant provider of resources individually, and would require only a fraction back in an emergency.

The question is to what degree should the community take from each in order to survive lean times, and at what point should the burden be shifted from the smallest producer of economic output to the largest. What is fair?

If we collectively agree to allow the smallest farmer to contribute only 12 units he has a fifth less burden in total, and increases his ability to improve his lot by 3.5%, which can be invested in health, education, personal luxuries, and savings in case of lean times (thus reducing his burden when these occur). It is a minimal improvement but better than a kick in the teeth and never having light at the end of the tunnel.
The middle farmer has sufficient resources to thrive in the good times, and if sensible can survive in the hard times with comfort. He already contributes more widely with his spending power. The collective agreement is to allow his contribution to remain the same.
The final wealthy farmer can not only live comfortably in the good times and enjoy massive wealth, but still remain in relative luxury when things turn sour. To offset the 3 units no longer being given by the poorest 350, he and his nine rich friends must each increase their contribution by 105 units, representing only 3.5% of their gross output to be added to their existing contribution. Certainly this is more than one poor farmer can produce in a year alone, but given he already enjoys the proceeds of an output that affords him wealth beyond the wildest dreams of all his less affluent neighbours, and still have immense reserves in case of disaster, still able to provide employment to those without a farm at all.

Imagine the difference that could be made to the lives of the poor 350 farmers if their contribution were only 10 units. If the middle class farmers are permitted to still pay the same dues, the rich farmers who represent 3.3% of the community only see their contribution increase by a little under 6% of gross output. Their personal life is not impacted at all, their ability to generate employment remains the same, and only their annual increase in personal wealth is decelerated by a small amount.

With greater personal reserves in the poorest class of farmers, increased access to good health and a better education for their children, greater ability to use their new-found spare capacity to save and to spend locally, the personal and local economies are both boosted. They have better circumstances, and are more likely to be presented with opportunity which can actually be taken, thus swelling the ranks of the middle class, and increasing their contribution to a greater degree still. The middle class are unaffected. The upper class are still unimaginably rich, and merely get richer still at a slightly slower rate than before, but still relatively insignificant compared to any other member of society.

But consider this. The richest farmer is not just likely to produce 100 units per acre, as this protracted example contrived to establish. In reality his greater wealth will afford to him greater access to latest techniques and technology in the farming world to increase his output. His greater share of market presence allows him to either generate more wealth for himself, or cut prices and drive his neighbours out of business, buy their land, and increase his output yet further, and thus increase his wealth further still. His power accrues like compound interest because of the the wealth he gathers, and his fiscal dominance over his neighbours. His influence is vast, and can therefore increase the chances of political decisions favouring him over his neighbours too. His neighbours are gradually becoming employees who are reliant upon him, working the land they once owned in return for a wage. It is in his interests to ensure that his neighbours' stifling share of the collective tax-burden is not relaxed. Despite his protestations, this is not a matter of doing so to prevent his own impoverishment, nor to ensure he has sufficient resources to create new jobs (he never will, since there is a greater return in technological investment that strips jobs away - any job creation is as a result of expansion into the land his neighbours once owned, and re-employing them to do exactly as they did before). Keeping his burden low does not allow his wealth to trickle down, but rather enforces the order that sees his dominance increase economically and politically.

This is the crux of the "fair share" argument in the real world's taxation debates. The rich today argue that they are merely 1% of society and contribute 36.73% of the collective coffers total value. Why should they pay more if the bottom 50% only offer 2.25% between them? It's about proportionality to the income not merely as a percentage point value, but the power that the remaining value has to the individual. If the poorest 50% of people cut their contribution in half, their personal capacity to be able to save, spend, be healthy, increase opportunity for their kids, only reduces the collective total by 1.125%. If the richest 1% of people were to cover this 1.125% of national contribution amongst themselves from 36.7% to 37.825%, the impact upon their wealth and capacity to generate wealth is absolutely minimal when we're already talking vast numbers. 50% of the tax-take on $13k (the average income for the poorest fifth of Americans) is a lot to the person who lives on this tiny amount. 1.125% extra tax-take on $1.4m is a drop in the ocean. Is it fair to make the poorest bleed and suffer to pay the smallest amount when the rich can drastically cut that burden and barely be impacted by the change?

Fairness is found in allowing those in the worst circumstances the opportunity to improve themselves, not pushing the boot down on their throats even harder.

To cut taxes for the rich, and cover this reduction in collective resources by cutting the investment that those reserves make toward services that support the poorest half of society means increasing the burden on the poorest to pay toward what cannot be cut, as a proportion of their income, and take away those elements that directly benefit them most (health and education). The rich have proven time and again that the savings made in tax payments are not reinvested into job creation but instead into stockpiling resources outside of the economy, and creating wealth by putting that money to work in accumulating assets for themselves or shipping jobs elsewhere in the world. This is not fair, it is the antithesis of fair.

Resources:
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf

Priority angst

I've never been lucky in love. In fact I've been disastrously ill-fated. Too many long stories and all far too personal to air in public, but I'm sure you've heard them all a million times before from other people. Of course it's only disastrous when it happens to ones self. Poor me, etc.

The situation in which I now find myself is, to me, completely new territory. Rather than my simply having particular crushes which I wish might become more, and perhaps pursuing one or other, I appear to have people actively interested in me. I appear to have options.

I am a man who doesn't "play the field", but rather I choose a path, and commit to that path. I deviate only if the path ceases to lead anywhere (or abruptly ends). With this in mind I have had to begin assessing what my priorities are, what is important in a relationship, and indeed in love. Some paths are more viable than others, and certainly a couple are impossible for varying reasons, though they still raise questions in my mind about what is necessary and what is desirable when striking out in a long term committed relationship.

Without here listing the women and their pros and cons separately (that would be brutally callous, and demeaning to reduce them to such degrees, and particularly without their knowing so), I must confess that, internally, such considerations take place. Each person is so very different in personality, appearance, and temperament, yet it does not come down to preference of one over the other in terms of who they are or how they look. Instead, my dilemmas arise from what I want from a relationship, from life, and what I can give back.

So what are my priorities? To be happy, to love, be loved back, to provide comfort and happiness, be in love, and (hopefully) to give rise to my partner in the romance the feeling that she too is in love.

The confusion occurs in whether or not I have the desire to pursue those with whom there is affection, and a love, to discover whether those factors can shape themselves to my, our, being "in love" (with those who are actually available to be in a relationship) - or to risk letting opportunities pass me by for the one with whom I know already I am in love but do not yet understand whether that love is completely mutual, nor if she would walk away from one life to attempt one with me. The choice of holding on for an outside chance at what my heart desires most, or offering myself to the discovery of what might be, is perhaps the most difficult I have yet faced in my life.

Santorum: The spineless politicking moron.

Following 2012 GOP presidential nomination candidate Rick Santorum's declaration that 'to apologize for something that has happened unintentionally is wrong', in response to Obama's apology to the people of Afghanistan that copies of the Qu'Ran were burned, I have come to the conclusion that this specimen of humankind is not fit to be let loose near a pot of silly putty, let alone a microphone, and god forbid any form of executive power. That he has already been in elected office demonstrates the perplexing mystery with which American politics works.

I suppose this clench-jawed simmering pit of righteous Christian fundamentalist anger, who also believes a raped woman MUST bear any prospective embryo created in that violation to full term and give birth to it, must therefore, surely, extend this anti-apology principle to daily life if it must be considered applicable to the most powerful political office in the world.
    With this I must presume that should his driver accidentally mow down and kill a line of children waiting for the school bus that neither he nor his driver should express any regretful sentiment or apology. After all, it was an unintentional act and therefore one is not only not needed, but to give one would be a sign of weakness.

An apology is not intrinsically an admission of guilt, but an expression of solemn meaningful regret for an occurrence for which the apologizing individual has a direct, implied, or even tenuous connection. It has a personal, social, and political value as a phrase and as an action. It creates space for stabilizing a relationship and enables progress. In this case, as Commander in Chief of a significant contributor to NATO forces, there is a direct relationship to those who made a mistake. Just as the chief executive of a corporation would be expected to apologize for causing grievous offence, it was right and proper for the occupant of the office of President of the USA to offer an apology for the event occurring, and for the role played by those below him in the chain of command.

That Santorum would never apologize for something which he personally, or the office of president, has no direct intentional causative role should exclude him from viable candidacy for that office in the minds of any intelligent person.

Luckily for him, he's running to be the Republican nominee.

Elective Amputation

I have some injuries that I sustained in a road traffic collision over four years ago. The injuries meant I required surgeries to pin and later unpin my ankle, and for skin graft procedures to my shin (it is, in fact, my leg that appears on the present Wikipedia entry for skin grafting - viewer caution, slightly gory). 

I spent eight months on crutches, and have not been able to walk comfortably since. The graft disrupts the lymphatic system so whenever the leg is not at hip height or higher, it slowly fills with fluid. Combined with joint pain in the ankle, I'm left with injuries which mean I can neither sit for long periods (without elevation) nor stand for long.

On many days the swelling is such and the pain within the joint so much that I can't focus well, and spend much of the day with intrusive thoughts, often imagining new and more gruesome injuries being sustained. Sometimes I fantasize about having the limb amputated below the knee. 

Since these fantasies are often sparked by pain, I got to wondering. What if...

Would some of my problems be alleviated if I were to ask, beg if necessary, my GP to refer me to a specialist who could remove an otherwise "healthy" limb? Would a specialist even consider this? Is quality of life a trump card over remaining physically intact? 

I can walk bipedally, and unaided for short distances too (I use a crutch to go more than around 100 yards since then the pain gets too intense and I need it to push on, and to balance, especially when the ankle gives out a little). However, despite this level of mobility which is apparently considered acceptable by some doctors, I can't imagine having to live for potentially 40-60 years more with the kind of pain I have now. 

I know I should count my blessings to be alive and have all four limbs reasonably complete and attached, but I can't help but feel it's simply not enough to live. I need to enjoy living.

Complaints and Herd-Mentality

During the half-time show for Super Bowl 46, headlined by Madonna, British-born supporting performer MIA "flipped the bird" to camera during her brief moment front and centre. It was true "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" television, and I would expect that ninety nine in every hundred viewers who watched the half-time show didn't even spot it. Of those who did, an overwhelming majority will not have taken offence, discussing it only in context of "what do you think the FCC will do? Will they be punished?".

Already it is featured on YouTube (see below), appears on blogs (guilty!), and has been repeated on air on American TV news shows (albeit with the offending digit blurred out. These will be the first times most people become aware that it even happened, let alone have seen it. However, there is bound to be an outcry and a vast number of complaints, campaigns by family and religious groups, and conservatives with an axe to grind over those pesky troublesome liberal artist types.

I expect any likely storm about this will be less reminiscent of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" (<--photo link), which was a little more obvious in the performance, featured the star performers, and feeds into the American puritanical obsession with sex and the body.
    Instead I expect it to be reminiscent of a very British scandal in 2008: The Russell Brand "Sachsgate" prank-call debacle on BBC Radio 2. In this instance few people complained at first. Then, the following weekend, conservative right-wing newspaper The Daily Mail published reports that exaggerated the portion, encouraging its readers to complain. They did, and in record numbers. Most had not even heard the radio show (see Sachsgate link, above).
    Likewise I expect that MIA's poorly judged but entirely predictable bad-girl behaviour will prompt few complaints from those who watched the show, but rather from those who become energised by comment and innuendo after the event. This, I feel, is a most sad state of affairs.
    If this is the biggest worry in your life that you feel the need to complain about it, then you are very lucky and privileged.

Madonna's Superbowl Half-Time Show

No doubt there's thousands of blogs saying how awesome Madonna's Super Bowl 46 half-time show was, and almost as many who hated it. There is sure to be analysis of her clothes, her moves, and the supporting acts. Here is one extra voice to the chorus. And here is a link to the full performance on YouTube. 

Madonna is, in an age of intense scrutiny of any female media personality's physical appearance, looking quite young and attractive; aided in no small measure by keeping those much-photographed and much-maligned arms covered up, reducing the distraction (after all, with so much comment on them, people now look at them as much as her).

At a basic level the show was an enjoyable spectacle, plenty of flash and dazzle, pyrotechnics, and massed ranks of dancers, choristers, and marching drummers. The outfits were big, bright, brash, and memorable. The set-list reeled out some of her biggest and most popular hits of the past thirty years. Despite this, Madonna's show, and Madonna herself, failed to impress. The solo sections were mimed, badly, and the duet sections were flat, lacking personality and, Cee-Lo Green apart, seemed to be tacked in for the sake of promotional purposes with no particular statement to add to the performance.

The highlight of the show? The end. Not in the cruel sense of it being over, but for the anthemic "Like a Prayer", and the big aerial shots of individual lights depicting the world map, and the phrase "World Peace"; two visually spectacular moments.

However it's worth asking this... In what way did the song or performance of it reinforce a message calling for world peace? The song has been supposed by some to talk of a young woman's sexualised fantasies of a relationship with the saints or God, and the video an attack on institutional religion, to a call for racial equality. This last point comes closest to a world peace message, but again it's somewhat confused. Would it not have been better to have had something more specific to the message by means of amended lyrics, and using the big-screen displays to highlight contemporary injustices?

And so for the lacklustre performance, lack of narrative through-line which might have compensated for the blandness, and for missing its own efforts at a message, I'm afraid this performance has to go down as being poor and forgettable - a mere footnote in Madonna's career.

All copyrights to images in this article remain with the NFL. I took them (badly) from the live TV performance by camera phone, but I claim no ownership of them. 

Journalism

Journalism: A profession that informs us of the world around us, shapes opinions, and provides a narrative on life. For better or worse, the work done by the professional writers of the press corps is essential to the modern democratic world.

Not all the writing produced by the collective minds of our media's men and women is world-changing, of course; millions of column inches are dedicated to skateboarding dogs, freakishly large hailstones and kidney stones, local disputes, stolen gnomes, and what a writer or their paymaster thinks is wrong with the world. No matter the metric tonnage of ink and paper spent on such matters, as many are employed in lifting people from ignorance, shining a light on injustices, and empowering readers with the information that holds the potential to make their lives better.

Simultaneously mundane, banal, anal, self-important, yet sublime, educational, interesting, and important, the more I think of the value of this profession, the more I would like to join it.

Thirty Months

Around thirty months ago, I began to blog. I'm afraid to say the blog lasted around five months before I gave up trying to keep it up. This, The (im)Mature Student, is that blog.
Why did I stop? I felt I had little of interest to say, and my university workload was higher than I had experienced before. Why am I suddenly returning to it? I want to put my thoughts down in writing, develop my communication skills, and explore my ability to write for an audience.

"What's new?", I hear nobody but myself asking. Since you ask so nicely, I'll give you the briefest* of updates.  (*Briefest may yet mean quite the opposite). 

I'm now a third of the way into my thirties. I'm living in Portland, Oregon (USA), while I complete the 'study abroad' requirement of my degree program. This is the third year of four. I'm contemplating career options and possibly continuing in academia upon graduation. My personal life has meandered from singledom to being coupled up, and back, with chicanes and road-bumps along the way; much the same as it is for so many people. My family life has had its ups and downs too. Estrangement from my biological father was not the greatest highlight of life, but the addition of a niece to go with my nephew rates very highly; being an uncle is rather good fun, getting to spoil and make giddy a couple of lovely young souls, then hand them back when there is poop to dispose of. 

What about those career plans? The advice I received prior to applying to read American Studies has since become redundant. I can no longer take my degree forward to study for a PGCE in a couple of secondary education subjects, as universities now have such competition for places as to be able to demand a subject-specific degree in both history and English. Primary education would be a possibility, though I'm not sure runny noses, peed pants, and tears over pulled hair is going to be my thing, and I would owe it to the young lives for whom I would have a formative influence to have the utmost dedication and motivation; a career in education is not simply an opportunity to earn a wage! 
    At this stage I am looking into possibilities for postgraduate study that will open up opportunities in print and online media. John McCarthy, a British journalist who became a name known around the world for his captivity in Beirut during the 1980s, was an American Studies graduate. This demonstrates that, combined with a relevant postgraduate degree, the bachelor's degree I will earn is not a dead duck. Broadcast journalism is one option, as is freelance writing.
    My career considerations are somewhat complicated by a mobility disability that limits the time I can spend sat, or standing, and need flexibility in work patterns that few employers will be able to offer in a full-time position. The best options seem to be finding part-time work to cover the basic necessities of an inexpensive life, and carve out the life of writing that I dream of.

It is with these thoughts that I look to the future. In the mean-time the present is priority number one. Complete my year abroad, hopefully with success, then return to the UK to complete my bachelor's degree. In around nine months time I will be able to start casting my net to see what sort of career choices I have. 

Regardless of what the future holds, I intend to write about it now and then. The main body of my blogging will, however, be about other matters of student life, and thoughts on the rest of the world which (according to my ex fiancee, and I think she may actually have been right, however little I wish to admit it...) doesn't revolve around me.