Et In Arcadia Ego

I am trying to crank this creature back into life. To get back into the swing of being inappropriately personal on media owned by a corporation who will one day use this information against me, I present this year's playlist. A hobby I've kept up for a few years, as an invaluable aid to memory. These are the songs I was listening to, in chronological order; nothing else should be assumed.

1. Giddy Stratospheres (the Long Blondes)
2. And That's Why (Kenickie)
3. Affirmation (Savage Garden)
4. Wildflower (Cee Lo Green; or Brighter Lights; or Fuck You, it's all a great album)
5. Cold War (Janelle Monae)
6. The Only Hope for Me is You (My Chemical Romance; shutupshutupshutup...)
7. In The Rain (Sol Invictus)
8. Wire to Wire (Razorlight)
9. Never Gonna Dance (Fred Astaire)
10. Heavyweight Champion of the World (Reverend and the Makers)
11. My Body is a Cage (Peter Gabriel cover; turn the volume up)
12. The Glorious Land (PJ Harvey)
13. Glass (Bat for Lashes)
14. I'm Deranged (David Bowie)
15. The Revolution will Not be Televised (Gill Scott-Heron)

Listen

Previous years:
listen to 2009

listen to 2008

I don't know what happened to 2010. And in general, the fact I can't bear listening further back than four or five tracks, says everything to me.

I have taken a bizzarely Randian turn for the past few days, which is odd considering:

1. Rand is a nut
2. See one.

Nevertheless. It started on being at the docs today, and taking in quite how much resources and effort will have to go towards getting me healthy. In any other country or any other time - or with any other fortune - this wouldn't be possible. Do I deserve to be better; if I can't get better, do I deserve to live? This is more philosophical than pragmatic, but still - what am I contributing to society which justifies such input?

The thought continued while watching "Baby Animal Planet" for solace. Awwww, Lucy the baby lion being raised as if she was a kitty. The show ended with the narrator claiming that Nature wanted "the survival of all species". That's bunk - survival of the fittest, surely. And I got to thinking about endangered species, and how nice of us it is to save them, and how ultimately pointless. If you're an African Wader with a silly breeding strategy, of course you don't stand a chance. We forget: we wiped out our wildlife centuries ago, so as endearing as orangutans are should they not be cleared in the way of progress, as we did our black bears and native wolves? Let's invite the wolverines and wooly mammoths back while we're at it!

And finally, to language. Why do we save language? I'm divided, even as I collect zombie languages to learn. In the next 10 years, 90% of the world's languages shall die out - they will remained like stuffed animals, museum pieces. Of course, their contents must be preserved but...saving languages like Guernsey French is a happy-Tory, Green And Pleasant Land, home-jam-making sort of idea. Because it's so nice, and we can wheel it out once a year with the bonnets, and the weaving, and the beanjar and can-making; and forget that plastic is superior to copper milk cans, and that the bonnets are made from synthetic materials, and that nobody actually likes bean jar - it's just, y'know, traditional.

Part of me says that. Loudly. I can now say "hello, how are you doing?", in a language no one can reply to. Brilliant!

At the same time, words are the expression of a people. A book in translation is necessarily different from it's original. And Guernsey French has a word for a cat's fur, ruffled the wrong way; and a verb for "touching food with hands which might not necessarily be clean"; and one for a certain note in the song of a songthrush. Pointless. Priceless.

I'm excited by a future when everyone speaks the same language (especially if it's English, and i don't have to do any more work). We'll be able to exchange those ideas and concepts encoded in our national languages and achieve world peace. At the same time, how can we preserve those ideas at all if we do not have the words?

A la perchoine!

Music is different to the other arts.

You might feel a passion for Picasso, but at the end of the day the Guernica is on the wall of the Reina Sophia, and the best you're going to do is a postcard. Theatre is worse, only existing within 90 minutes of time before vanishing again into the darkness. And film, well - you can see the faces and the bodies of an iceberg's tip of those involved: you can see that film isn't yours.

And sure, there are films that have moved me, and my emotions on seeing Apollo and Daphne are going nowhere - but broadly, I know those experiences are also on loan. My love for Bernini is conditional on the Villa Borghesi continuing to exhibit his work. But music! What about "our song"? What about the "song of the summer"? What about that mix tape, or that radio request? We so often substitute music for our own words, or ideas, that it becomes part of us. Should I be paying off Virgin when I wake up humming Wannabie? Should I write a cheque to the Jackson estate if I want to sing Yellow Submarine in the shower? Do I owe Cliff Martinez a drink when, apropos of nothing, the soundtrack to Solaris compliments my day?

As Spotify puts it, everybody loves music.

Business have been struggling with this model for some time. It's familiar trivia that the Disney company owns "Happy Birthday" - not true either. It's owned by Time Warner, they make $5000 off it a day and will do until 2030. I'm sure, however, that you feel you too "own" Happy Birthday. You sing it at parties. If you sing it in any sort of public place, however - like a restaurant, say - you need a license.

At this point, we get into the tricky territory of what companies can and cannot own. As far as I'm concerned, Happy Birthday is part of world heritage. A bit like Facebook succeeding to copyright the word "face":

In August, the company sued Teachbook , arguing that "book" is a term associated with Facebook. Selecting "book" was a completely arbitrary choice and "pilfers a distinctive part of the Facebook," Facebook said. Travel site PlaceBook also changed its name to TripTrace after Facebook contacted the site and said its name was confusingly similar to its own.

Not to be vulgar, but FUCK OFF, I think you'll find the word BOOK is associated with BOOKS. Books, and libraries, and learning, and (say) teaching.

So copyright is often very counter-intuitive - you may think you have a right to use the word face, or sing Happy Birthday but actually think very, very carefully about how you do so, because you probably don't. There is something about those two cases which is fundamentally morally incorrect.

Music is different, of course - it is morally correct to repay the creators and performers, else they will die in a garret. But that's still counter intuitive - when I wake up humming "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", it's reminding me of the summer when I bought the CD; the New Zealand road trip; my school Speech Day; Tom Stoppard's "Rock and Roll", and how I fell in love while watching it; and Torchwood: Children of Earth: Day Five; and the fact that nowadays, I've listened to the Beach Boys so much to cheer me up that it actually triggers negative feelings. It does not remind me that in 1966, a group of guys got together in a recording studio to try and put a "vibration" on tape and that I should probably recompense them for all those memories.

Bullshit! Those memories are mine! They're just locked up inside the song, like giving a librarian rights to all the books in his library.

Spotify was the greatest, the best act ever performed against piracy. It combatted it by giving the pirates what they want - all the music, all the time - but used the model of a radio station to recoup profits. But it recently became clear that all was not well - Spotify seemed only to advertise itself. And now, the long-expected axe has fallen. From the start, I was suspicious it's perfection was merely that kindly free heroin sample given by your friendly neighbourhood dealer:

• you may each track for free up to a total of 5 times (that's forever, by the way)
• Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.

Hrm. This vastly reduces Spotify's unique selling point - it's skill in actually replacing your music collection. Can't carry your cds around? They're on Spotty! Need to send an album to a friend? Just send them the link. Can't afford £120 a year? We can endure adverts. Spotify seemed to know what the market wanted, understand the pirate mindset and compensate for all its flaws.

What music execs seem to underestimate is the level of entitlement associated with music. It becomes part of our natures, our histories, our very souls. This doesn't excuse piracy, but an easy excuse. Copying technology has also threatened the very nature of posession. If I buy a book, I can give it to my friend, or to a charity shop. If I buy a song off the internet, they are suddenly wary because the same ability to give it to my friend (my posession, which I bought) also means I have the ability to share it with all my friends, and so forth.

And alas, I'm not going to pay £120. I don't buy CDs except very rarely, and then after having listened to them to the extent they become a necessity (and where would I do that?). It's the same way I buy everything, buying only necessities. My music budget is already blown on concert tickets.

Do I, therefore, renounce my right to listen to music? Am I to be separated from my memories?

Why are my dreams no longer on my side?

So I'm walking along with this "leutnant" and his Nazi band. I'm not a solider - for some reason I'm just along for the ride. I'm not with them, I don't approve, but bizzarely enough I am "with" this friend, who is protecting me and keeping me safe. Friend seems a strange word to use, but you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, we were travelling through this big, old Georgian area near a cliff-face. My friend peppering the building with some sort of mortar. He asked me what I thought. I told him that, if I didn't know what it signified, the formalism of the straight lines of windows shattering could even be beautiful. In the dream, that was a bit of a porky, and he looked dubious; but it sounds perfectly like something I would think. His band picking up any survivors and stragglers and loading them onto a train. You can see where this is going. Train wasn't the cattle-car of legend, it was actually more like the Bakerloo line, with all the shabby comfort that implies. In the carriage we were in, there was a spare seat - my friend was pointedly standing, in his awkward, squeakily-parodic SS leather trenchcoat, so I was standing too - totally on my best behavior. After all, I wasn't on the train so to speak; I was with the soldiers. One of the women asked why he didn't sit down - an older, crotchety woman. He sneered something about standards. Then she asked me. I looked around awkwardly, didn't want to seem to be copying, and then perched on the edge of the seat, hoping that hadn't blotted my copybook too far.

The train journey was magical. It lead us through the underbelly of a city, all neon and saturation - but high up, so we could see the dark streets both above and below. Beautiful. Then we came out at another cliff face, with another huge, forbidding castle, or more properly, concentration camp on it. If Auswitz had really been that glam, it might have been worth a four-star stay. My friend left me right next to the gates, with instructions to stay there. Then the regular grunts started loading people through, about eight at a time, and lining them up in a dark building. One of them was the love of my life. By this point I'd morphed into a simple village lad, with sleeves and a tattered waistcoat. So she was wearing a plain shift, and a black crochet shawl et al, and was beautiful in a natural, wholesome, "I want to sell you milk chocolates" sort of a way. A line of soldiers calmly shot them, and then brought the next group through.

At this point, I decided I didn't really trust my friend's agenda. Which was fair enough, as I still don't know why I was there, or why I was safe. I said something kickass, and before anyone could stop me, took a running jump over the cliff edge. Fell a very long way, close to the rocks, into the sea.

I'm not sure at that moment I really had a plan - swimming to safety and death both retrospectively seemed like good ideas. Bobbed around unconscious for a bit. And then there were people, ragged people helping me to shore. I'd been rescued by the resistance! I'm not sure how they knew I was there, or why they thought I was worth rescuing. Like the other dream, I was some sort of special which excused me from guilt. Perhaps I was undercover; or some sort of angelic agent monitoring both sides. They took me back to the city, and hid me with a false identity. I thought "yay! I get to explore the streets!", although like all things in dreams, it didn't make sense when seen close up. Instead, my mind filled it with contemporary Acton pawn shops. "well typical", I said in the dream. Which does create a bizzare set of kicks for you. I had enough autonomy in the dream to despair of a Jewish quarter made up of pawn shops as cliche, but not enough to build a better quarter.

After that, things just got increasingly pleasant. I was one of the people they were sneaking out before the soldiers targeted the city. We got out in a little boat, periodically going under the water. And then it turned out we were extras in a movie, albeit very traumatised ones - a young Natalie Portman was in tears, because it had all been so intense. We were heading to the set exit - which we found, eventually, although we had to travel a lot of dark streets to get there.

Well gee! Thanks brain! Boy, do I want to dream about Pol Pot tomorrow! Then I'll have the whole set! As I write it out, some elements make sense. All the same. I feel like the NAZI COLLABORATOR DREAM is a special, memorable event.

Friend 1 and I

Anyway, I was walking through a city and I came across a small student protest behind a little fence. A Libya protest - I explained I couldn't take part because it was too dangerous. I- and S- were among them - I gave them each a massive hug and a kiss on the cheek which was, retrospectively, a sensible thing to do. Kept walking. Came across another, smaller protest. Of all the people, Friend 7 was in this one. Kept walking through darker streets. All of a sudden, there were a small group of streetsoldiers running across the end of the street, who threw an "IED" in our direction.

So. Not London. And note for the military nerd - the thing my brain labelled "IED" looked like one of those long, pipe grenades, had a blast radius of about six metres and just about enough time for them to be outrun if you were paying attention. I screamed for the other people in the area to run also - I was safely out of the blast, they were a bit more Bond ("SLO MO JUMP!").

I kept going. Went through a tunnel. Came to a grassy valley, thinly lined on either side by protestors who meant business. The mood was far more Les Miserables down here, although I still recognised many of the protestors, including Samir who turned out to be quite the quantum boyfriend* in the dream. I gave him a hug and a I'm-Never-Going-To-See-You-Again kiss too. Oh dear me. I gave them some news - the newspapers up top were saying they weren't organised enough to win, so they really needed to organise. I don't know by what power I was just a floating rambler, but I guess I'd made the decision not to die. I don't know, though - everyone I met seemed to be aware and supportive of me not being heroically massacred. I carried on through a building where the coordinators were planning. They seemed really quite dour about their chances. They also informed me there was no way out this way, and that heading south was my only chance. So, back north the way I'd came, then south by a different route.

*had I a hundred billion lives, quantum boyfriends are people I'd quite like to date. As it stands, they are people I like a lot and am curious about the experience and what the rest of my life would look like. But not sufficiently in-love-with-and-attracted-to to actually be bothered with the trouble of asking in this life. Not so much because it'll be trouble for me, but trouble for them - it seems I feel bad dumping all my emotional issues on people I like unless they've explicitly asked me to. So the attraction remains more a cerebral one. Pity, though. As I'm sure I'll feel a tad mifffed if any of them ever found anyone else. I'm basically just posessive. And greedy.

When I got outside it was dark. I tried to stick to the deeper shadows back through the valley, but when I got to the tunnel there were lines of armed soldiers running towards the defenders in the valley. I nipped into an abandoned house. Became a camera for a while. In the cafe, the owners who had run away to avoid the fighting had returned a few days later, more in optimism I think although it was true - the fighting wasn't heavy here. More like mopping up. They discovered the dog they had abandoned was still alive, and feral - attempting to attack and eat them. Like any dream, they got several attempts to contain the dog before they were eaten. They failed, all three times - the mother got munched, but the little girl survived. What sort of survival is this, thought my camera eye? I floated up the side of the valley, where the protestors were in dugouts and being efficiently butchered by passing troops. One group was actually a tour group from the future whose bubble failed and was picked off with the rest of them (with an exception of one member, who was an archangel).

"I" returned, back where I'd started near the first protest. Near the river. OK, going south. I ran across the bridge - it was morning now - ignoring the rather large group of protestors posessing it. When I was nearing the end, another one of those "IED"'s struck, and I regret not doing the sensible thing - chucking it over into the water - instead of outrunning it to the other side again. It's quieter down here. So I move between buildings, all very Southbank. When I turn, the bridge has been destroyed - it's easing itself into the water, then crashing, and then a ridiculous amount of screaming as everyone falls, then flounders, then drowns.

Eventually, I get to an area which can not be passed. Lots of people bumbling around. We passed into more of a dreamstate again here. Fortunately, the Doctor was there to figure out how to traverse. He and Amy rigged up little rafts across the floor, to an area where there was supplies - joy of joys. I followed, so did a few others. We were trapped there. Oh, and one of our companions turned out to be Gadaffi's son, the poor wretch. I say "poor wretch", because being trapped with a bunch of angry escapees isn't anything an ex-evil-dictator wants, and some very PG-level, Doctor-approved torture took place with the items we had around - including eggs. Note to self - G jr. has a serious allergy to eggs. We persuaded him into releasing a regime-approved carriage and boat, with which we could escape from the building. The Doctor told Amy to drive with G jr. ahead in the carriage. Like, an expression of trust thing. The rest would follow through the canal to the river in the green boat.

Amy took the carriage out of the front. Well, yeah. The building was totally surrounded, as if for a state procession. Hundreds of joyful supporters cheered as it left the building. With that distraction, the Doctor and the other survivors slipped out carefully to the river. G jr. reached his own boat, but he had been so - wait for it - touched by the Doctor's kindness (egg-torture ignored?), and trust in leaving Amy with him that he allowed them to escape in the boat in exchange for releasing him. As his state boat sailed away, he was looking quizzicaly joygul in a totally implied change of heart sort of a way.

Which is the type of thing which happens when you let Doctor Who do real world events. Libya gets a happy ending.

There were some other bits, more unpleasant bits, including yet another my-house-is-under-attack dream. That was interesting by virtue of Steel being its central character - an angry Steel, whose Sapphire had gone missing, and was attacked in Horned hallway by two equally strong villains, who he despatched with great difficulty, firearms, and serious wounds afterwards. I can make sense of most of the fragments - the dog, the archangel, the whole shebang. But I'd rather just leave it for you as a fabulous little string-of-dream-sausages. Good morning, world!

I've a funny feeling that Ruby is going to be my little savior.

I think my medication is finally working, which is brilliant and awful in equal measure.

To be honest, it makes me think of Bevenita. She'd been on something similar for something like three years as they passed her around different docs and waiting lists. Now, she had some seriously impressive problems - I'm just a good ole' melancholic invert, while I gather she had the whole hog of voices and pyromania. Proper problems. She expressed frustration that her emotions were trapped, and she was just drugged up instead of being cured.

At this point, I can't tell whether it's the symptom or cure - depression causes a feeling of detachment and unenthusiasm; but the drugs are designed to numb everything down and limit extreme emotion. I feel like I'm trapped in a glass bubble about 2 metre in diameter, and because the sensation is new I'm guessing it's the dopey pills.

Depression saps your motivation and leaves you unable to do anything. The drugs have a similar effect. A good example would be eating. I eat pretty well, but on bad days I simply cannot be bothered to make food happen. If I'm sitting somewhere well, it'll have to wait - it's a very negative, rather petty bit of braincode that loops until I really am very hungry. Whereas the drugs are a bit more like pax or bliss (from Serenity and Doctor Who respectively), inducing a general feeling of wellbeing and contentment in which food is a rather academic possibility. Depression kills your memory and attention span. But I'm pretty sure it's the drugs which make other things seem so far away that attention is difficult, and so lacking in definition that they fall out of my brain.

I'm not complaining. Or at least, I am because it's an awful sensation, but only in a logical sense. I know that I am wrong, but I don't feel wrong. I am indifferent to people. I'm not really feeling enjoyment, or guilt, or anything much. My Cleggface has improved, because I can no longer effectively link up words and feelings. I've observed a beautiful ice-cold unthrillability - whether that to be to my sister swerving the car, or ridiculously huge stressful situations which I could put to one side as I might ignore the last few peas on a plate. For example, my flight back to Sarnia on Wednesday was scuppered by fog - we got all the way there, but couldn't land, and went all the way back. At Gatwick, we hung around for 20 minutes for our luggage, then some 45 for hotels to be booked, then at least another hour in the cold for a taxi, and then at 5am the next day we did it all again. Wasn't really bothered at any point. I know I'm customarily unflappable, but I also know that being stranded away from home and trying to do public transport are two of my big triggers, and all this with an inimicus scholarum as my only companion.

I've a lifetime of morality which is aware that this renders me effectively inhuman.

I feel OK. Not happy, but OK. Nice. All the adjectival thrust that the metatron of the English Tongue can conjure with the majestic word: nice. For example, today was mother's day and I didn't get a card.I forgot. Or rather, I had a marvellous idea for something at the beginning of the week, but time lapsed. Oceanic got her two bunches of flowers and a massive card in a box. I knew I felt awful, and I knew that I had hurt people's feelings and that this too made me feel awful - but a soap half glimpsed would have yanked my heartstrings more, and the only thing that really bothered me was the fact it wasn't really bothering me. It's still on my mind. But I'd be lying if I said I actually "felt" bad, in the strictest sense of the verb. I can still be sad, but it's a sadness inside the bubble - it condenses then drips back around my feet. I'm worried to overstate it as the effect of the happy pills, because I recognise this as similar to Mortimer's mental state and modus operandi. It feels different, though, to his, and I've not got the enthusiasm or his characteristic directness of purpose. I also feel like my reaction times have slowed. Or more strictly, my perception times - once I've percieved, my reactions are fine.

One good thing is that my imagination is still around. It takes a bit of serious concentration, and I'm even less likely to be producing anything concrete than usual. But I can still delve down to my clubhouse, and I've just written some very exciting scenes. Another interesting side effect is that my dreams make far more sense - more cause-and-effect. My dreams used to be notorious for starting an interesting plot, and then getting sidetracked.

As little as I like it, it's a really helpful support. I am fairly sure I'm safe now, which I haven't been for a while. That is good. But I know I'm not better. Like Bevenita did, I know I've just been put into hibernate mode. And while this gives me a very high-walled sandbox to throw my toys around in, it's almost like using that sandbox to figure out glass-blowing in. I feel like I'm cut off from the pain and misery which I'm actually going to need to be able to access. Which is why sportsmen shun painkillers.

Still, I'm not complaining too much for now. I'm cultivating patience instead. And learning Ruby which, as I said, may turn out to be my little savior.

Ruby is a programming language, chiefly popular for building web-things but it's also possible to build proper program-things in it as well. The learning curve is simultaneously shallow and steep. On the one hand, programming is pretty darn simple at it's most basic level. However, the amount of assumed knowledge is immense - for example, I downloaded the language then floundered for a few hours until I pieced together how you did anything with it. Now I can make it do very simple things, I'm floundering at finding a program which lets me create a pretty user interface. I am sure I am ultimately going to flounder a third time when I try to turn my code into an actual program. The information is out there, but not in one place. And I'm still using phrases like "web-things" and "program-things".

By some luck, I happen to have picked upon a programming language which is universally lauded as fun, clear, even beautiful. One of the most vocal proponants of the language is a mad genius, who created zine-style instruction leaflets filled with cartoon foxes, before mysteriously disappearing. Even better, the syntax seems to me very much like Latin in places - subjects, objects, verbs. Just the way you identify the parts of the sentence, and read what they are doing. Ruby, like Latin, has immense periods filled with innumerable parenthesis and subclauses. Cicero would be proud.

Why? Oh, I'm easily amused by learning random new skills I'll never follow through on. But it's making me happier than I expected. Like, smiling and everything. More than once! It's worse than Avon in series four. I'm having difficulty moving, motivating. I enjoyed not having the web because the web is the perfect outlet for what "I" crave - numb, vaguely involving nothingness. The internet is much like dreaming - pictures you don't have to focus on, and the dreamlike logic of links which chains one to TVTropes for hour upon hour. Programming is sedentry and fairly repetitive, so it actually performs the same task pretty well.

But unlike the web, it helps as well as hinders. What I need is my mind to be constantly stimulated. I find myself dozing and drifting during nonchallenging conversation. People have got to be asking questions, disagreeing, debating - if they're just conveying information then I find it hard to pay attention. Yeah I know, I always do that. But I'm trying extra hard to right now, and it still won't stick. Same goes with dull movies, music, whatever. And programming needs sharp thinkining as well as persistance. A perfect combination! It suckers my time lazily, while feeding my brain with pintacs. Plus, it's also really satisfying, because I'm smart and it's easy (at present) so it's nice getting the gratification. But not under pressure. It's different to the gratification of a good mark: the success is mine and mine alone, and for it's own sake.

What I've done so far is very minor. I'm able to program 1970s level computer games and that's it. I designed one based on the story of Echo and Narcissus, which I'm regarding more as art than anything else. You are Echo. And another one with the Prisoner startup spiel. Where am I? In the village! Basic nonsense, it's quite fun.

while Emily !=recovered
Ruby.learn
end

Recovery can wait.

I am so excited about real physics right now. I wasted my morning productively by looking up Mars on Wikipedia, and the various plans and ideas for a manned space mission. A subject it is actually satisfyingly thorough on.

Musings: I wonder what the rights issues are with planets? Have space-faring countries signed a deal, or is it the property of whoever gets there first? If a space mission colonised Mars, and sold minerals back to Earth, whose would the profit be? Earth corporations are evil and without conscience, and inherently exploitative. I don't know science, but I am a bleeding heart liberal and everyone is talking about the practical issues, and none the ethical/legal frameworks. A best case scenario would be if the minerals were the property of the colonists - the profits would be cost-covering, and they could use them to trade for supplies. That way an economny would get going. We would need to prevent a scenario where a single business had financial interest in the minerals, and exploited the settlers - as the settlers would depend on Earth supplies for maybe hundreds of generations, their priceless minerals could be effectively extorted in exchange for basic survival kit. (Doctor Who's brilliantly nasty Vengeance on Varos posits a similar situation, where Varos intensely rare natural mineral is bought for peanuts by an evil company, because the Varosians are unaware of its value, and so poor that they are forced to accept low prices)

Under whose jurusdiction would the people there be - would they have rights? There would have to be some sort of declaration of their civil rights - could they form a union, or strike? How would they get their voice heard on Earth? Looking far ahead, but would there be a project for their independance? Struggles for independance in our history have been bloody and vicious - Friend 4's dad is from Guyana, and what America and Britain did to that nation is appalling, fixing the independant elections so a dictator who would support our interests was in power, instead of a brilliant and politically savvy chap, crippling the country, y'know, ever since. Or the problems still faced by African nations. How would the world relate to an independant Mars - would it be like Guernsey in the Commonwealth, where we have our own government but are still closely linked to England both culturally and legally. Alice asks "would the Martians pay international uni fees?" Or more like America and England, where America is wholly separate nowadays but has a sort of shared interest and "special friendship" with England. Both of these strike me as bad.

We would have to have some sort of universal world government, like the Terran Federation in Star Trek or the UN, but an effective and non-rubbish UN,in which the Mars Colony had the same sort of voice as every other nation. For that to work, and for Mars not to be like a little chunk of whatever nation got their first, the Mars mission would have to be like the International Space Station - multinational and multicultural.

I also wondered about the plans they have to "terraform" Mars - making it enough like Earth to live there. Cool, but a bit evil? You are basically setting out to destroy a natural, totally unique enviroment with no idea of the consequences.If you're interested in whether Martian bacteria have rights, this article is excellent: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/EthicsDTP.pdf