Dan's Great Ideas: Corporate Responsibility

In the world as it stands now, corporations get away with a lot of nastiness. Because they are legal entities set up specifically with the purpose of protecting their owners from legal responsibility, and with the sole goal of making a profit, they are effectively actively encouraged to break laws and exploit people when they can get away with it.

My solution:

The Shareholders Should Be Responsible

Since the measure of a company's success is its share price, and since people should be held responsible for evils at their request, then if a corporation kills someone, then the shareholders (who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the killing) should be the ones that go to jail. If a corporation deliberately poisons a town, the shareholders should be the ones to serve any prison terms (along with employees who made the decisions).

This would have the immediate effect of making corporations start behaving better, because any misbehaviour would have the effect of destroying the company's share price. Proper corporate crimes like monopolistic behaviour could be handled as they are now, but actual felonies would result in people being responsible.

Dan's Great Ideas: Justice

While chatting with a friend who is studying law, I had an epiphany. It's currently the case that people who can afford better lawyers have justice tilted in their favour. What needs to happen is:

Lawyer Handicaps!

The way this would work is that every lawyer would have a rating, initially based on his/her university marks, but as his/her career progresses it would be more based on his performance as a lawyer in court. When two lawyers go head to head in a case, the one with the lower handicap (ie. the weaker lawyer) would get less time to talk, be allowed to call less witnesses, etc. If the handicap difference was really large, then the better lawyer would get more interruptions from the judge, or might have to wear a funny hat or Groucho Marx disguise, to even things up. Objections from the weaker lawyer would carry more weight. If one side had more lawyers, you'd add up their handicaps according to some clever formula.

In this way, the current system whereby you just the best justice you can afford would be made fairer.

Late night quiet

One thing I don't get a lot of these days is quiet. It's weird right now. Nearing midnight, and it's officially quiet. The revheads down the street aren't revving, the kids and Jen are asleep, the TV, movie player and stereo are off (rare occurences), and I'm noticing how noisy the quiet is - tick-tocking clock, whir-hum of computer fans with an occasional grumble of hard drive access, high buzz of distant crickets and low buzz of a child monitor , and the occasional cheep-cheeping of birds of some description. And the clatter of a keyboard being used for indulgent reflection. And yet, I'm feeling a pressure on my ears, unused to the lack of noise after a day of work and children and life.

Big Ol' Update

Birthday Season is over, and D's was a big one. He turned 7, and his mum reckons it'll be his last big party for a few years (we'll see about that...). It was a Superhero party, so crime was fought and was evil vanquished. There was much silliness, three Ben 10s, an exceedingly self-satisfied Captain Underpants, plenty of food and games. All the kids had a grand time.

Little Bell is now walking up a storm - she's not a crawling baby any more - she's walking all the time, chasing cats. Starting to talk more. A partial vocabulary:

Buh = Bird
Bih - Biscuit
More = More
Bah = Bath
Ssshh = Fish
Dada = Dear Father
Mama = Mama
Nana = Banana
Nana = Nai Nai (milk from mama)

And it's growing all the time.

A is no longer The Angriest Toddler. He has mellowed out quite a bit and can be quite a delightful little boy. He has The Cutest Laugh In The World. His language is improving a lot, and he's starting to follow his brother's hobbies more. Both of them love their cheap $2 shop knockoff pokemon cards. Dante's into the Bionicle stuff - he's got most of the latest batch of bionicle, which he lugs around the house in a big tangle and defends valiantly from the depredations of his siblings.

I've been reading more; recently finished Tim Powers' Declare (awesome) and Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors (good in many places; a short story collection, so it's expected to be uneven). And I've got a pile of books to read.

I've also been liking my Macs more and more. Of the three machines I use on a regular basis, two are now Macs, and the other will become one once the budget can be stretched that far. And I'm keenly awaiting the release of the bloody iPhone in Oz. It's getting to be a rather tedious wait.

Well, that's enough bloggage for one evening. I've got Foot Cat craving attention, and a pile of Easter Eggs that aren't going to eat themselves and bunch of TV that isn't going to watch itself.

Toodle Pip.

Party Etiquette, Second Grade Style

D (the eldest kid) and I read "Where Did I Come From" last week, and I've been impressed with the maturity with which he has taken this new information on board. He's been quite sensible about it, and is yet to embarrass us publicly and hideously with his newfound knowledge. Though this evening he did suggest that Mrs. B and I have a bath together this evening so he could have another little sister.

But this morning I found out his thoughts about birthday parties, and invitations. We walked into school, and bumped into one of his friends, who he had invited.

D: "Are you coming to my party?"
Friend's Mum: "No, sorry, we're going away that weekend."
D: : "Well, can I have the invitation back?"
FM: : "Ummm... I didn't bring it in today, sorry."
Me: "Dante, you're not supposed to ask for invitations back."
D: "Well, you can bring my present in to school before you go away."
FM: "..."

So I explained to him that people who don't come to the party aren't expected to bring presents. He seemed disappointed. But I could see that somewhere in his head there was some equation that read:

INVITATION = PRESENT

and a notion that there was a finite store of invitations, which he had given out, so they needed to be recycled to ensure he got the appropriate number of presents.

PS. I've decided to drop the Primus, Secundus, Tertia thing on this blog. Annoyed me too much. They're D, A, and E.

PPS. E is walking! (A more precise description would be shambling, but it's still very exciting).

Sad news

Well, I'm about 3 months behind the news, but I found out today (by pure chance, while random web browsing), that Erick Wujcik is dying of cancer. I only met him once, at Necronomicon a couple of years back, and he ran a fantastic game about Pi that we didn't get to finish, but even so it was one of the more memorable games I've ever played. Apparently we (well, I) got more mathematical theory into the game than most other teams had.

It's sad news. He seemed like a really nice guy.

Spoiler: I had a grand time busily theorizing about the set of all possible machine languages that would be able to execute Pi as a program that actually does something, and cheerfully expounding about the various different infinities. I played a character called Alain Connes, named after one of my favourite mathematicians (for whom I had to completely invent a biography, because I know only of his mathematical work).

Stayin' alive

Decided to take fridays off this month. I've been taking Secundus in on the train to childcare each day is hard work. Uncy Joe's nom de crimefighting for him, The Angriest Toddler, is quite apt. He doesn't like people lookin' at him funny, or smiling at him when he's cute (and when he gets cross he's still being cute, which can become a bit of a vicious circle).

Been working on a secret software development project at home, which is lots o' fun. It's gotten to the point when it looks like it might just be useful.

Also, 30 Rock is very funny. I've been watching a lot of it lately.