kevingillan.info

Suddenly seeing your website on a machine that doesn’t include your favorite fonts can leave a bit of a sinking feeling. But the information is all out there to compile sensible font-families, here’s a quick guide. (more…)

EasyPHP is a set of the most useful software known to the web: apache , mySql and PHP. Together these come in a package of less than 8Mb. Here’s my really easy guide to setting it up. (more…)

You’ve probably heard a little about citizenship ceremonies. Here’s what the Home Office induces us with. Is it the encouragement to become a part of a wider community in which you love and respect others and recieve love in return? Does it have the imagination and excitement required to bring people into the social and political community in an active way, in the full knowledge that they can make their country a better place? Does it bugger. <!–more–>

According to the front page of the Home Office’s British Citizenship website, its bureaucracy stupid.

1. To become a British citizen you will need to apply for British Nationality.
2. Once you have been granted British citizenship there will be a ceremony to attend.
3. After your ceremony, the local authority will inform the Home Office of your attendance. You are then eligible to apply for a British passport.

Pretty awesome huh? And what happens at the ceremony I hear you cry. The picture of stonehenge on the website conjures images of dryadic ritual, barefooted, and crowned in ivy, a dance of equals inviting the newcomer in. A long night of hedonic ritual to follow during which all eventually bow to the British psilocybins. Oh no, turns out its an oath of allegiance to the Queen. To the Queen?! Count me out.

Oath of allegiance

I (name) swear by Almighty God that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law.

Affirmation of allegiance

I (name) do solemnly and sincerely affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law.
After the Oath or affirmation, you will take the citizenship Pledge

Pledge

I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen.

The Superintendent Registrar will then present you with your citizenship certificate and an information pack. There may be an informal celebration with light refreshments.

With the election behind us a few voices are at last crying foul - and this time its not just the Lib Dems. But the issue of electoral reform goes way beyond who got how many seats.

The image on the right, from the Independent tells a striking story. Under proportional representation our parliament would now look very different, indeed the Liberal Democrats would hold the balance of power with neither Labour nor the Tories able to form a government on their own. Their analysis needs some serious qualification: PR is unlikely to be sprung upon us, after we’d cast our votes, so our knowledge of our direct effect on the power of the different parties would change voting behaviour in marked and fairly unpredictable ways. We can, however, be certain both that more people would come out to vote, and that tactical voting would diminish (or even become meaningless). (more…)

“Pessimism is the mood inspired by a reasoned conviction that only a revolutionary change can ward off the consequences that are implicit in the tendencies in contemporary American society, but that such a revolution … is neither possible nor prudent - if by revolution we mean launching a campaign of violent insurrection or civil war. Revolutions of that nature are plainly pathological under contemporary conditions of interdependency.

Democrats need a new conception of revolution. Its text should be John Locke not Karl Marx, because the problem is not to show that a social class should seize power - no social class in an advanced society can pretend to the universality of right which Marx presupposed in the workers of his day - but to reinvent the forms and practices that will express a democratic conception of collective life.

Locke is best remembered for the argument that when those who rule seem bent on acquiring ‘Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties and Estates of the People’, their power, which they hold on trust from the people, reverts, and the people are free to fashion new institutions. The right to revolution is not solely a right to overturn and destroy institutions but to fashion new ones because those who rule have perverted the old ones. The right to revolution is the right to creat new forms.”

Sheldon Wolin (1992) “What Revolutionary Action Means Today” in C. Mouffe, ed., Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Verso, London.

A Paper Presented to the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference, at Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2005

The first aim of this paper is to explore the current state of knowledge represented by the framing approach to social movements. The second aim is to describe a particular approach to understanding the political significance of cycles of contention in terms of the way activists come to understand the world and their place in it. What I will term ‘relational frame analysis’ (RFA) is a conceptual structure that aims to develop that side of the framing approach that aims particularly at understanding the ideas and debates represented by movement activity. I hope to explain the merits of this approach in terms of its ability to pull together a number of key concepts for understanding movement culture, and to give a philosophically coherent understanding of the connections between various levels of analysis. (more…)

Cognitive linguist, George Lakoff, has been looking into the way that conservatives and liberals in the US think. It all come’s down to models of family life he argues. And for a bit of shock value he quotes a number of books on raising children, written by Christian repulicans. So, here’s the worst of ‘em

When youngsters display stiff-necked rebellion, you must be willing to respond to the challenge immediately… You have drawn a line in the dirt, and the child has flopped his bony little toe across it. Who is going to win? Who has the most courage? [1]

The spanking should be administered firmly. It should be painful and it should last until the child’s will is broken. It should last until the child is crying, not tears of anger, but tears of a broken will. [2]

Obedience is the foundation for all character. It is the foundation for the home. It is the foundation for a society. It is absolutely necessary…
Obedience is the most necessary ingredient to be required from the child. This is especuially truue for a girl, for she must be obedient all her life… the boy is being trained to be a leader, the girl is being trained to be a follower. [2]

Spare the rod and spoil the child… a number of rods should be kept throughout the house, in your car, and in your purse so that you can apply loving correction immediately.[3]

Cute huh? Those references:

1. J. Dobson, 1992, The New Dare to Discipline.
2. J. Hyles, 1972, How to Rear Children.
3. L. Tomczak, 1982, God, the Rod, and Your Child’s Bod: The Art of Loving Correction for Christian Parents.

(From September 2002)

Amidst the propaganda build up to another seemingly inevitable Gulf War a peace protester finds moral certainty in the facts of modern warfare.

There many good reasons not to re-invade Iraq. Given that Saddam Hussain is an intelligent self-preservationist (albeit a vicious murdering one) why would he use weapons of mass destruction against anyone unless his own survival was already threatened, as it is now being? (more…)