On the Sound of Sirens

Sometimes after a city is attacked some people want to leave and others want to stay. Those who want to leave aren't necessarily scared, it may be a reprioritising of what's important. Those who decide to stay aren't necessarily the bravest, they may just be the most obdurate or just those who hate having others threaten their existence. It's difficult to predict which people will want to stay and which people will want to go. Here Jay McInerney writes on being in New York city after 9/11

Whether or not to leave had become a mainstay of Manhattan discourse in the last week. He and Corrine had discussed it, of course, and while they hadn't come to any conclusions, it seemed their positions in this debate had reversed. For years, she'd brought it up routinely, whereas his stock answer had always been that John Cheever might still be alive and well if he'd just stayed put in Manhattan. But these past few days, she'd surprised him by expressing a desire to cast her lot with the city, even as she acknowledged that they had to think of the kids - she who had never seemed quite comfortable calling New York home, who could never stop using the word house when she really meant apartment.

It's an extract from his new book "The Good Life".

Cloud

Here's a word cloud of this blog.



Available from here.

Misnomers

Misnomers

1. Arabic numerals (originated in India)
2. Peanut (a legume, not a nut)
3. Tin can, tin foil (made of aluminium, not tin)
4. Madison Square Garden (not square; not a garden)
5. Danish pastries (invented in Austria)

...

12. The People's Democratic Republic of Korea

That's as it was printed. That's because the whole world knows of the oxymoronic People's oxymoronic Democratic oxymoronic Republic of Korea.

News from Paris

After the kidnap and murder of Ilan Halimi, in Paris, European Jewish Press notes:

Jewish organizations have called for another demonstration next Sunday in the Paris suburb city of Bagneux where Ilan Halimi was detained and tortured by his kidnappers.

“We call on Jews and non-Jews to come and meditate on the place where such unacceptable atrocities happened. When cruelty reaches such high level, we must say enough,” says an e-mail circulating within the Jewish community.
“We will ask that a memorial plaque be set on the place where he was tortured to death because he was a Jew,” it added.

The Interior Minister Sarkozy has been recorded as saying this was an antisemitic attack.

Mr Sarkozy told MPs: "The truth is that these crooks acted primarily for sordid and vile motives, to get money, but they were convinced that 'the Jews have money', and if those they kidnapped didn't have money, their family and their community would come up with it.
"That's called anti-Semitism by amalgam."

...

Mr Sarkozy added: "We have a duty to the memory of Ilan Halimi, to his family, his parents, his friends and above all, all the Jews of France, to establish the truth."

Kidnap and Murder

Judy Adloyada writes on the kidnapping and brutal murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris. Original suggestions that the case had anti-Semitic motives were denied by the French authorities. However

[t]he investigating magistrate, Corinne Goetzmann is now conducting her enquiry on the basis that the evidence so far points to "premeditated kidnap, incarceration, criminal conspiracy, and murder, on the basis of the victim's membership of a particular religious group" [Adloyada's translation]

Her recommendation will be considered at a hearing tonight to remand the seven suspects currently in custody.

It's in stark contrast to the Paris prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin who previously denied that anti-semitism was a factor.

Read more here, here and here.

Survey Results

Here's a survey result that's bizarre.

The main question was "Do you approve or disapprove of the job that Vice President Dick Cheney has done in the Bush Administration?". The sub question asked "Has the shooting accident made you more negative about the Vice President , more positive , or has it has no effect?"

• More Positive - 4%
• More Negative - 24%
• No Effect - 69%
• Don't Know - 3%

This graphic is well worth seeing.

On the Origins of Humanity

Hitchens says

What we will find ... is what Russians find when they look at Pushkin, or what Frenchmen find when they scrutinize Alexandre Dumas: that African ancestry is commingled everywhere. If Pushkin could be a black Russian, everything is possible.

The fantasy of ethnic purity is simply a fantasy, and the fantasy of racial purity is not even a delusion, because we are all of the same race. Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, as the Romans phrased it. There is always something new out of Africa.

The latest tidings tell us in a sense what we already knew, and knew before the DNA string was unraveled and decoded: We are all brothers and sisters under the skin. No, let me amend that cliche: We were all brothers and sisters under the skin long before pigmentation was evolved. The only surprise is that we are still surprised; but then we do still live in the prehistory of our species. When we eventually get over this, one of the toasts will certainly be l'chaim.

And who's to argue with that?

History and Historians

Back in the year 2000, in Irving versus Lipstadt, Professor Richard Evans concluded that

"Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all."

Irving went on to lose the case and the

presiding judge in that case, Charles Gray, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".

Even the Grauniad calls him a "revisionist historian". Doesn't "revisionist" negate the word "historian"?
The splendid site Holocaust Denial on Trial, looking at the Lipstadt case sums up Richard Evans as saying

Irving is a particularly dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial because over the years he has consistently portrayed himself as a scrupulous historian with an unrivalled knowledge of the archival sources and an unerring eye for forgeries and falsifications. As we saw in Part I, he has repeatedly claimed that he is waging a ‘campaign for real history’ against legend and myth, truth against falsehood. ‘Real history’, he says, is based on the archives, not on copying other historians’ work, which is how academic, university-based historians in his opinion proceed. Many reviewers, and still more journalists, have been at least partly taken in by this ceaselessly propagated self-promotion and have paid tribute to Irving’s skill and energy as a researcher. But even if they have done so, they have often gone on to complain that Irving manipulates and distorts the sources he uses. If, like Peter Hoffmann, Charles Sydnor, Martin Broszat, Hugh Trevor-Roper, David Cannadine, or Eberhard Jäckel, for instance, they have themselves been familiar with these sources, their condemnation of Irving’s work for its inaccuracy and bias has been particularly detailed and unremitting.

So, why, on tonight's news, did the BBC insist on saying "British historian David Irving". Surely someone whose professional status as a historian has been so deservingly rubbished is no longer fit to be called a "historian".

Footnote: I've just discovered Deborah Lipstadt has a blog. She sums up the issue with commendable insight:

In principle I do not believe in laws which entail censorship. I believe in free speech and, moreover, I don't think such laws are efficacious.However, having said that, I also recognize that Germany and Austria are sovereign states with a democratic system. And, more importantly, they have a unique history which gives Holocaust denial a different resonance in their country than it might in the United States or the UK.

...

Finally, when all is said and done the way to defeat these kinds of lies is with what I do in the classroom and what we did in the courtroom during my trial in the UK: With the historical facts, the evidence, the testimony. In short with the truth.

Justice, what justice?

Here's something to be concerned about.

Since 6am last Tuesday a Salford family have been held in detention at Yarls Wood Removal centre resisting deportation to Rwanda. Olive Mukaraguwiza and her children Yvan Gisinko (aged 5), Oliver Hirwa (aged 17) and Sandra Gihozo (aged 18) after having lived in the UK for 3 years were arrested at dawn.

Significant issues
(1) Olive is an asylum seeker. She fled Rwanda after years of severe domestic violence towards her and her children. Wherever she lived in Rwanda her husband pursued and attacked her.

(2) The eldest daughter ,Sandra, has been studying her A levels for almost 2 years at Pendleton College. She has been offered a place at 3 universities. Just at the point of taking exams she has been arrested.

(3) The youngest child, Yvan, has lived most his life in the UK. He attends Lower Kersal School in Salford. His teachers and classmates are extremely concerned about him being held in a prison situation.

(4) The family were not informed of the refusal of their asylum claim by the Home Office. The raid on their house came as a complete surprise.

(5) The Home Office attempted to put the family on a plane to Rwanda last Friday. This was an Ethiopian Airways Flight. However because they were in such a distressed condition the pilot refused to fly them. Friends of the family are concerned that Olive may harm herself.

Things to do.

1. Email Hazel Blears at blearsh@parliament.uk
2. Phone Hazel Blears at 0161 925 0705
3. Stress
• Hazel Blears as a Home Office minister has the ability to quickly and easily intervene with the Home Secretary to stop this deportation.
• Sandra the daughter is about to take her A levels and the family should be allowed to return to Salford so Sandra can get on with her A levels, Oliver his ICT course and the whole family can benefit from this Government’s commitment to education, education, education.
• Olive is now in a depressed and suicidal state.

Arbitrary deportation of those who have committed no crime other than to overstay is wrong. If you are in the UK and contributing to society, or getting in a position to contribute to society, you should be allowed to stay. That's a fair immigration policy. That's a just immigration policy. Arbitrary deportation is just plain cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

A good night and a gratuitous plug

Norm was listening to Start the Week and caught Linda Grant talking about her new book "The People on the Street: a writer's view of Israel".

If you're in the East Midlands on the evening of March 8 you can catch Linda Grant talking about her new book at County Hall, Nottingham.

Hidden in Hidden

Hidden probably is one of the best films of 2006. Yes, I know that's standard fare in PR and journalism-speak that anyone with an inch of nous can see through, especially when it is only January. However, it is only February and it will be one of the best films of the year. How's that for being categoric!

As Peter Bradshaw says

Hidden is Michael Haneke's masterpiece: a compelling politico-psychological essay about the denial and guilt mixed into the foundations of western prosperity, composed and filmed with remarkable technique. It is one of the great films of this decade.

Even that contemporary of George Méliès, Philip French, says

... while Hidden is a gripping thriller, it is almost a moral and political enquiry into colonialism and its aftermath. The acting all around is outstanding, with Auteuil and Binoche working beautifully together as their marriage falls apart, expressing their emotional upheaval through the slight movement of an eye or the flicker of a lip. This is a movie that takes one back to the glory days of art-house films in the 1960s and 70s, when you left the cinema not in need of food and drink, but a sympathetic person to discuss the film with.

Yes, we left the cinema in need of conversation, but what's wrong with wanting food and drink as well?

Today there's a Q and A with Michael Haneke and Jason Burke that successfully refuses to clarify any questions any viewer may have. Just as any good director should. Mystery is all.

Rullsenberg gave a splendid review that ended

Most beautifully, in an age which demands 'closure', the film ends on a bleakly unresolved note which, even for a pretty substantial art-house cinema audience drew a collective mental gasp of "huh?!" when the credits started to roll: it was as if the entire audience was unwittingly dragged into admitting they had expected resolution and instead found themselves resisting the urge to yell "that's it? that's how you're ending it?!" A good thing.

It seems even an art-house audience wants to get closure and the Q&A in today's Observer thankfully does nothing to provide this.

How many bloggers does it take ... [Updated]

How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?

The answer's a fish. No that's another joke. Here in chez Cloud and Rullsenberg the downstairs rooms suddenly went dark. We flicked the switch in the fuse box and all was fine. Then Rullsenberg noticed one of the bulbs in our swanky halogen lightfitting in the dining room had blown. I went off to fetch step ladders. Rullsenberg found a spare halogen bulb. All ready to go. I climbed the step ladders. Could I get the bulb out? Are Wolves going to get promoted this season? Are Nottingham Forest? For those without any knowledge of lower division English football the general consensus on both questions is "No". Five degrees between us and we can't change a lightbulb. What makes it worse is I'm a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. My excuse is, I'm a software guy, I don't do hardware. How embarrassing. How shocking.

Update - Sunday afternoon. I try again. On my own, with BBC Radio 6 for company. Rullsenberg was upstairs doing something on the pc. Out came the light bulb. In went the new one. On came the light. On the radio came

"Let there be light,"
There was light
"Let there be drums,"
There was drums
"Let there be guitar,"
There was guitar
"Oh, let there be rock!"

Actually that's a lie. It was AC/DC but it was actually Highway to Hell. But all the best personal stories are improved by a lttle embellishment.

Sudan and Tony Blair

Just found this piece of news on Sudan Watch. Tony Blair has congratulated Libya's Col. Moammar Kadhafi for his efforts in seeking a solution to the crisis in Sudan. There is more on Kadhafi's efforts at Sudan Watch.

The news about Tony Blair originates from The Angola Press. Funnily enough that's the only source for it as of 19:41 on 18th February 2006.

Inhuman

There is no excuse - ever - for treating anyone in such a way they lose their dignity. There is no excuse - ever - for torture (not even in the Jack Bauer ticking bomb kind of way). What happened at Abu Ghraib is reprehensible and contemptible. Those responsible should be subject to full military justice. As Hak Mao says

Military law is different from civilian law and applies in particular circumstances - it follows that the application of military justice should be just as particular - regardless of the rank or status of the guilty. There is no room here for the Nuremberg defence or slimy moral relativism.

The prison has a long history of being a major hell hole. Here's a report of Abu Ghraib under Hussein

The facility occupies 280 acres with over 4 kilometers of security perimeter and 24 guard towers. The prison is composed of five distinct compound each surrounded by guard towers and high walls. Built by British contractors in the 1960s, Abu Ghraib is a virtual city within a city. The political section of Abu Ghraib was divided into "open" and "closed" wings. The closed wing housed only Shi'ites. The open wing held all other varieties of real or suspected activists. The "closed" wing was so named because its inmates -- at least until 1989 -- were permitted no visitors or outside contact. Cells measured approximately four meters by four meters and held an average of 40 persons.

As of 2001 Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, may have held as many as 15,000 persons, many of who were subject to torture. Hundreds of Fayli (Shi'a) Kurds and other citizens of Iranian origin, who had disappeared in the early 1980's during the Iran-Iraq war, reportedly were being held incommunicado at the Abu Ghurayb prison. Such persons have been detained without charge for close to 2 decades in extremely harsh conditions. Many of the detainees were used as subjects in the country's outlawed experimental chemical and biological weapons programs.

Here's an account from Seymour Hersh

In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.

In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

When Iraq starts to approach normality Abu Ghraib should be razed and a memorial park built in its place. It should be a place for reconciliation, reflection and kite flying.

On Teaching and Blogs

This is just a quicky so don't expect some great pedagogic insight. This teacher asks her students to keep blogs as part of their business studies course. I thought wow! That's a great idea. It works like this:

There are no restrictions on subject matter provided they follow one rule: they link the topic to one or more of the four strategic management theories and analytical frameworks that comprise the core of this course. Those theories are Michael Porter's "Five Forces", Gary Hamel's "Business Conception Innovation"; Jay Barney's "Resource-Based View of the Firm", and David Baron's "Four I's".
Each week I recommend up to three articles that the students may blog about. They are free, however, to choose any article or any topic beside those. This past week, one of the articles I recommended was one entitled "Effect of Danish Boycott Patchy" that appeared in the Saudi English daily, Arab News, on January 29th. As one might imagine, several students decided to write on this topic.

For it to work you would have to be teaching something connected to current affairs. Could you have a blog devoted to group theory and rings? On the other hand, an algebraic number theory blog would be something else.

Having fun in your forties.

After reading this about being 34 and old I was shocked to read this in today's Grauniad Notes and Queries:

How do you have fun in your 40s?

Being only thirty-eleven I wouldn't know but I should imagine it's just a case of carrying on doing what you've always done.

And maybe trying some new things. Maybe meeting some new people. Maybe going to some new places.

Maybe just go on having fun.

On Intelligence

What is intelligence? Some would say it's shown by articulacy. To that I would counterpose Joey Tribiani, well known for learning his lines, being articulate yet not having a clue what he's talking about.

Some would say it's being perceptive. I would add being systematic, analytical, curious, questioning and sceptical but not cynical. At the risk of incompleteness there are other aspects I won't go into here.

Gene at Harry's Place has an account of a piece by Sue Blackwell that mentions how anti-Zionism can just be an outpouring of anti-Semitism. In it she mentions how

[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion] crops up everywhere on the internet, including the weblogs of people who claim to be campaigners for Palestinian rights. I had a graduate student in my office not long ago, a highly intelligent young man who is a member of a socialist party in the UK. He told me in all seriousness that I really ought to read this incredible exposé of a world Jewish conspiracy, which was apparently new to him.

How much reading of the history of socialism and general socialist material do you have to read before you come across condemnations of the viciously anti-Semitic Protocols? Sue Blackwell's "highly intelligent young man" should read more books and he should read better books.

David Hirsh has written a splendid reply to Blackwell's piece. Here's a snippet:

In this article, Sue is recognizing the fact that her brand of ‘antiracist’ anti-Zionism lives in a world where there are also a number of antisemitic anti-Zionisms. And she is confirming the fact that the boundaries between these different but adjacent movements are sometimes fuzzy and are sometimes porous. Political alliances across those boundaries are looking increasingly tempting to many anti-Zionists.

The question that follows from Sue’s new piece is what kind of political responsibility she is now prepared to accept for these worrying developments. What does the fact that some of her own rhetoric is very similar to some of the rhetoric of the antisemites tell her? How does she explain the fact that antisemites assume that she is one of them? How does she explain the fact that a highly intelligent postgrad student, a member of an anti-Zionist socialist party, knocks on her door all over-excited at having discovered in the Protocols evidence for a global Jewish conspiracy? Why are anti-Zionists, who go out of their way to intervene in Israeli and Palestinian affairs, so often unwilling to educate themselves and their recruits in the history and themes of antisemitism?

Go read the whole piece.

On nom-de-blogs

I recently gave up my nom-de-blog, Wilson, for my real name, Neil.

Then I added some links to my sidebar and republished my blog. It's like Stalin's graphic artist airbrushers had been on the case. There is no longer any mention of my nom-de-blog Wilson. Gone. As if he was never there.

"And like that, he was gone".

Intelligent readers may have noticed inconsistencies in the accounts of Wilson. Playing test cricket until the 1950s, yet being reported dead in WWII. Inconsistency is what the chap was all about.

On Romance

'Twas the night before Valentine's day and news was breaking about the state of the English Cemetery in Rome, final resting place of Keats, Shelley and Gramsci.

In a sectarian sort of way it's officially named the Non-Catholic Cemetery. It has just been put on an endangered Site list by the World Monuments Fund.

In addition to the graves of Shelley and Keats, both of whom died in Italy, it contains those of hundreds of 19th-century foreign residents and exiles, as well as that of Antonio Gramsci, the founding father of Italian Marxism.

Founded in 1734, it is the oldest burial ground in continuous use in Europe. It was established on land donated by the Papal State and was for centuries the only place in Rome where non-Catholics could be buried. Its cramped grounds contain nearly 4,000 graves, many of them extravagant Victorian monuments dominated by carved angels. “It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place”, Shelley wrote when Keats died.

Having done Highgate, in London, Montparnasse, in Paris, and Arlington in Virginia, it sounds like a good place to visit and reflect on mortality. Better hurry while it still stands.

Pencil sharpening

This should be the first post not by Wilson.

If it's by Neil then Wilson has met a tragic demise with a pencil sharpener made out of a cog from a Fairey (in keeping with William Wilson's reported death in a Fairey "Battle" during WWII).

If it is by Wilson then it can't be true that

• All men are mortal
• Wilson is a man
• Therefore Wilson is mortal

Actually it could be true but he's just darned difficult to kill off.

Here goes.

Smart eyed readers will have noticed that this the second post not by Wilson. That's because I spotted a piece of crap typing that I had to go back and correct. So Wilson was mortal after all.

On Wilson and anonymity

After the Manchester blogmeet I began thinking about nom-de-plumes, anonymity and being open about blogging.

When I started blogging I needed to have a name and wasn't sure about going public with my own name. Blogger insisted on a name so I put down the first thing that came into my head - Wilson. I was thinking of William Wilson the athlete and cricketer, born in Yorkshire in 1795 and still playing for England against Australia (and why was it always Australia?) in the 1950s. He must be the only cricketing superhero ever. Anyone who knows any different please let me know.

So after having people ask "is it your real name?", "is it from Little Wilson", "is it from Woodrow Wilson (that's the official version) (or even Woodrow Wilson (the more open version) ?" the answer is "it's from William Wilson, 1795 to now".

Once I work out how to do it, Wilson is meeting with a tragic end. Blogging will continue.

Manchester, Manchester, England ....

That's a line from a song by The Times from the days of madchester, ah that whiff of nostrilgia (sic) in the air.

On Saturday we, that Rullsenberg and me, made our way up to Manchester for the Manchester blogmeet. Why did we go the Manchester meet when we've never lived in Manchester? Because we like Manchester and think it's a great city. And it's ages since we've visited. The blogmeet started in the Piccadilly Kro Bar. Being a sometime archivist I made a list of almost everyone who attended. For those interested here's the list, in no particular order.

Chris, Kate(1) aka Yankunian, Kate(2) of the wonderfully named "If you're sad and like beer", Norm, Chern Jie (who has loads of wonderful pics), Clare the organiser and all round glorious hostess with the mostest, Tim, Lisa, Abby, Jonathan, Ian (he likes Firefox, which means that for us who are still using Internet Explorer much of Spinneyland is invisible: sniff! - who actually posted a pic from the Kro Bar), Mike of "Me-Me-Me", wearing his blogname on a t-shirt, Richard (ageist!), Tom from "3 degrees of noise", Duncan, Dan, Phil, and Rob - who we discovered when we got home had followed in the footsteps of Rullsenberg and been quoted in Saturday's Grauniad (sadly not online).

A good time for all.

This post has been a Rullsenberg/Roberts collaboration.

On skiing

There's something faintly ridiculous about sticking two planks of pretend wood to your feet and sliding down hill without falling over and spilling your drink.

I've just discovered several things. One of these things is that there are two types of skiing. There's Nordic, which is crosscountry skiing on essentially flat terrain. And there's Alpine which is the down hill bit. The story goes that Nordic skiing was "the" done thing. Popularisation of Alpine skiing was the responsibility of an English man, Arnold Lunn. Here's an extract from the tale:

Before Lunn arrived, the Nordic countries preferred to do their skiing horizontal and the Nordic Games amounted to cross-country and then some more cross-country. They did not take kindly to Lunn's tinkering. 'One Norwegian complained to Arnold saying how would you like it if an eskimo changed the rules of cricket,' says Hussey. 'And Arnold replied he would be delighted by such an intervention because there were far too many drawn matches at cricket, don't you think?'

'It's now accepted as so obvious that the thing to do is ski downhill that people find it difficult to think there was ever opposition,' says his 91-year-old son, Peter, speaking from the Swiss ski resort of Murren, which his grandfather founded. 'But they used to say that downhill was for people too cowardly to jump and too feeble to do cross-country.' In reality, they soon found out that moving from the horizontal to the near vertical was fraught with difficulty.

This is to point to the exercise in pointlessness that is the Winter Olympics. You know, that thing that's all over the BBC at the moment.

Folk Music

There has been a resurgence in folk music. Not the arran jumper, stick your finger in your ear (sounds like you only have one of both), hey-nonny-nonny bollix but stuff like this.

When I get round to listening to it I'll tell you what it sounds like. As the man said "this music is your music". As Louis Armstrong was wont to say "all music is folk music, I haven't ever heard a horse sing". Some say this was also said by Big Bill Broonzy. Whatever it's a fair quote. A fair quote from a cracking musician in both cases.

On the importance of vegetables.

Vegetables are important. Some people insist a vegetable diet can cure all sorts of ailments. Vegetable snake oil.

Some people insist that five a day makes you healthy fit and wise.

Some people find vegetables play a prominent role in belief systems.

This guy was a dedicated vegetarian. Indeed he believed food should not be cooked. A vegetarian diet is good. Can be interesting, tasty, succulent and healthy. I draw the line at not cooking. That's total mishegas.

Seduced by Progress

This guy was seduced by Progress Publishers in India.

I got seduced in Wolverhampton. Going into town with pocket money as a twelve year old. Going into bookshops. Wanting to buy something interesting. Something informative. Something to overcome terminal boredom. Something to put on your bookshelf. And most importantly something to read. What is to be done? For one pound fifty. How could anyone refuse?

I hurried home with the book, feeling worthy and slightly dangerous. I began to read it. And I got bored. I was twelve. Cricket called. The book sat on the shelf. Looking down at me. It's moved with me many times. I think it's still on a bookshelf at home. Do I feel guilt that I never really read it from beginning to end? Yes. But I feel that guilt about many books.

And that got me to where I am today. In a house of books.

A Memo

This is a memo purporting to be circulating in the court of the house of Saud on imagery and Denmark.

Read it!


(Thanks to Eric at DSTPFW)

Beauty is both wondrous and strange

Justin Mullins has an amazing exhibition.

Ponder Euler's relation. It's just awesome how it pulls together e, i, pi, 1 and 0.

So terse. So elegant. And so damn beautiful.

If you're interested there's a splendid description and derivation here.

Celebrity Endorsement

We buy books for various reasons. Reports from friends. Reviews in newspapers and magazines. Even reviews and recommendations from blogs. Sometimes even buying books because they are a good, fashionable thing to carry around. Sitting in a bar reading The Idiot says more about you than you realize.

But buying a book because it was recommended by Osama Bin Laden?
What does it say about someone who buys a book on that recommendation?

In his recently released tape, Osama bin Laden - or "Binners" as he's now known at the MoD - referred to Rogue State, the book by the American writer William Blum, which seeks to explain why the US is sometimes a target of terrorists. The mention has catapulted Mr Blum's book up to as high as No 21 on the Amazon bestseller list and in this country the mention has had an equally dramatic effect. "It has made a huge difference," said a spokeswoman for Zed Books, which publishes Rogue State here. "We are reprinting now." Could Osama now become a more powerful endorser than Richard and Judy and Oprah combined?

Some bookshop somewhere is going to (no, will already) have a picture of OBL with the message "This guy recommends.."

State Department Full of Marxists - shock!

This discussion of George W Bush, by Justin Webb, argues that Bush's belief in democracy and freedom has a Marxist justification.

Americans are beginning to notice that freedom - to the extent that it has taken hold - has given Islamic religious groups an opportunity to tout their wares in the democratic marketplace.

And the buyers have been queuing around the block , all the way from Baghdad to Cairo, via the West Bank and Gaza.

Even among those clinging to secular autocracy - Syria for instance - there is rising tide of Islamic resistance spurred at least in part by the policies of the Bush White House.

Oops.

Still the President is sticking to his guns. His view is that "death to America" is an inadequate political philosophy once freedom comes and government beckons.

He will not talk to Hamas but he still backs the process by which the group has come to power. And if he is right, Hamas will be changed by the experience.

Quite how that change happens is left to nervous state department people to explain.

They talk about democracy leading to a reduction in "identity politics" and in the longer term to the building of coalitions built around economic interests.

A fascinating Marxist subtext to the Bush masterplan.

Is much of the pseudo-Left's retreat from the good things in the Left tradition such as internationalism, democracy, anti-Fascism, anti-Oppression and general Enlightenment values happening because some of those values have been taken up by people they disagree with? Or is it they just didn't really like those values in the first place?

Why is Bush hated more than Kim Il Jong? More than Saddam Hussein?

Munich

On Saturday went with Rullsenberg to see Munich. To quote someone "Don't believe the hype".

Some critics have accused it of showing moral equivalence between Israeli actions and Palestinian actions. I just didn't see that at all. I did see the film asking questions like is there such a thing as a just vengeance?

Neal Ascherson describes a moving section where

[a]fter one particularly horrible killing, the bomb-maker, Robert, (perfectly played by matthie Kassowitz) breaks down and protests to Avner: 'We're Jews, we are supposed to be righteous, and that's beautiful.'

As Andrew Anthony puts it

as a decent Hollywood liberal, [Spielberg] has made an action thriller that is also something of a morality tale: what happens to a good man, it asks, when he is asked to do bad things for a good cause.

To the question of whether being a Jew in any way skewed or hindered his approach to the subject, Spielberg responds: 'It would have been much more problematic had I been Steven Smith. I made this picture as a committed Jew, a pro-Israeli Jew and yet a human Jew. I made this movie out of love for both of my countries, USA and Israel. It was a struggle to make this picture. I tried to avoid making it and yet I feel that my filmography would not have been complete without this story in some fashion being realised on film.'

Go see.

Fascism

Here are two shocking reports on fascism.

1. Emma Thompson "I am absolutely fascistic about how my tea is made."
2. Anita Roddick "[husband Gordon] is a bit of a fascist [in the kitchen]."

All from today's Observer Food magazine.

All totally gratuitous uses of the word "fascist".

If "fascist" only connoted images of Emma Thompson in a strop over badly made cups of tea then the world would be a much happier place. But it doesn't.

It refers to this guy and this guy, this guy, their followers, and their activities.

Holocaust Memorial Day: Update

Holocaust Memorial Day is today.

Stop. Pause. Reflect.

Think what it means.


Here's item 12 from the list of aims of the day:

12. Assert a continuing commitment to oppose racism, antisemitism, victimisation and genocide.

How could you oppose that?

Unless you supported those things, which of course no-one does. Do they?

UPDATE: This year it was moved back by one day to avoid clashing with the Jewish Sabbath. And nobody told me. Apologies. Sentiment still stands.

New York City Subway - Going Underground

Having been there, and bought the t-shirt (#3 Harlem to Brooklyn, if you're wondering) I was interested in these pics.

Click on the image and a new image appears (or even use the << prev, next >> links in the top lhs).

Some of the trains look old enough to have appeard in Pelham 1-2-3.

(Via Norm and A Special Way of Being Afraid)

Exercise, schmexercise

There was me. Announcing I'm off to the gym. Put my coat on. Left the office. Walk over Trent bridge. Get to the gym. Notice on the door. The gym is shut for painting on 25th and 26th January.

Pish!

I had intended to go yesterday but pressure of work meant I couldn't.

Pish!

So I had a good stroll without reason. And a good stroll without reason is exercise. Or something.

The Russians are coming

Mark Almond, (not that one) argues that the West is still fighting the cold war against Russia.

Iraq's bitter experience before and since 2003 shows that fossil fuels are no use if you cannot export them. Export or die is the watchword of energy-rich states. Insurgent attacks on pipelines in Iraq reminded America that Kiev, not the Kremlin, controls the bottleneck of Russian energy exports.

Ukraine's Orange revolutionaries repaid their western sponsors by switching the direction of the Odessa-Brody pipeline to suit US strategy last year. Around the same time, America and Britain were gloating over the completion of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that cut Russia out of Caspian oil exports. Next they announced a trans-Caspian pipeline to suck central Asia's gas westwards without passing through Russia, let alone paying Putin transit fees. The west is making the running in global pipeline politics, not the Russians. In reality, the west advances as Russian troops retreat from the Caucasus and central Asia. Gazprom is upping prices to ex-Soviet republics to compensate for Moscow's loss of geopolitical clout.

Did Ukraine really switch the Odessa-Brody pipeline to suit "their western sponsors" or did they do it because it served Ukrainian interests to be less reliant on Russian goodwill? According to this source, from 2004 the Russian request to reverse the pipeline would have strengthened Russian influence in energy markets in Ukraine and Europe. The original, and final, decision will lead to greater ties between Ukraine and Europe. Surely, this is a good thing.

There are valid reasons why the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is a bad thing. There are enviromentnal, social and political impacts which are less than good. It also supports the autocratic regime of Ilham Aliev. This is not one of the world's most enlightened regimes. It gets criticism from every human rights organisation going, including Human Rights Watch who issued a damning report on the November 2005 elections.

But this does not support Mark Almond's thesis that Someone is still fighting the cold war, but it isn't Russia. The chill wind that has been blowing towards the Kremlin for decades is still coming from the west.

At a time when Putin has signed laws governing the activities of Human Rights groups any chill wind blowing toward the Kremlin is of Russia's own making.

A word in your shell-like

Norm posts on language. This is what he says:

Sometimes, before getting to the message itself, the person delivering it inadvertently gives away what the message is going to be. Julia has been for a job interview. She's waiting to hear from a friend - Anne - whether she's got the job or not. Anne works in the organization where the job is on offer, has inside information, and has undertaken to let Julia know the outcome of the appointments process before applicants are informed officially. Julia is waiting for Anne's call. The phone rings, Julia picks it up and the voice at the other end says:

Hi Julia, it's Anne, I'm afraid.

What can Julia infer? Let us consider.

• the obvious - "sorry: you haven't got the job".
• the sardonic - "you'll be working with me. It'll be terrible. Just you and me. Together. All day. Everyday. We'll begin to hate each other."
• the cynical - "why do you want to come and work at a disfunctional organisation like this?"
• the humorous - "Can you start monday?"

It depends, partly, on tone of voice. It also, partly depends on the character, the relationship, and the sense of humour of Anne. As Johnny Five says "Need more input".

Se7en

Just got memed by Snappy Cat. So I'd better do it then. Coffee mug in hand here I am.

• 7 Things to do before I die
1. run a marathon
2. play the trumpet
3. bet $10 on red at Las Vegas
4. drive a car from New York to L.A.
5. complete a cryptic crossword. I've got close. But never close enough.
6. visit Tibet
7. improve everyone's literacy
8. improve everyone's numeracy


• 7 Things I cannot do
1. Sing in tune
2. Play a musical instrument
3. Stop thinking
4. Find Jimmy Carr amusing. I think it's his impenetrable regional, some may say "thick" accent. Or it may be because he's a smug, misogynistic, reactionary, racist, sexist, bigoted, talentless gimp of a twonk.
5. Find numbers boring
6. Understand the appeal of motor sport. The point of a motorcar (or bike) is to get somewhere. Do something. And, maybe, return. Going round in a rough approximation of a circle. What's that about? Apart from being a euphemistic and metaphoric willy waving contest.
7. Draw. Anything. Apart from geometric figures.
8. Be incurious


• 7 Things that attract me to crows
1. They are not unblack
2. They star in Hempel's paradox
3. They exude intelligence. An IQ of 140 I've heard said.
4. ...er - that's it.


• 7 Things I often say
1. So it goes. So it goes.
2. I'm going to have a damn fine cup of coffee
3. Fancy a cup of tea
4. Twonk!
5. I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you. Shocked.
6. Double espresso
7. That's bollocks


• 7 Books I'm currently reading
1. The Jew of New York by Ben Kantor
2. Berlin 12 by Jason Lutes
3. Architects of Annihilation - Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction by Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim
4. Power and the Idealists by Paul Berman
5. Q by Luther Blissett
6. Elements of UML 2.o Style by Scott Ambler
7. Oracle Data Dictionary Pocket Reference by David C Kreines - highly recommended iff you are into Oracle databases otherwise you can easily get through life without picking it up. Trust me.


• 7 Films I watch regularly
1. This one's easy. See Rullsenberg's answers.
   

That's it. Tout le monde has been memed.

Nu? Nu! Nu.

Came across this glenzndik piece.

Above all, Yiddish - the Yiddish of the shtetl, the Yiddish of the Garment District - is a social language of community and commensality. Listen to its rhythms: questions answered with more questions; the elaborate, pardon-me-for-breathing apologies; the self-neutralising curses. The terrible mock - lig in drerd! - apotropaics. The awful, majestic fluency of the thing. It scolds and remonstrates; praises; tells stories; keeps you in your place; addresses our common humanity; abjures, in its very bones, privacy. Polite English maintains, wherever possible, an even surface upon which nothing - success, failure, disease, injustice - ever impinges. Confronted with the even keel so treasured by the English tongue, Yiddish has nothing whatever to say. It is only at home with the truth: the world is a very odd place populated by fools and incompetents (but few morons or thugs), where the quotidian virtues - a nosh, a klatsch, glik, kholems - take centre stage, where we might as well be honest because in the end we got bubkes and we shouldn't let it utz us.

Ah. Leo Rosten, sir, we salute you. For bringing us the delights of Mr H*Y*M*A*N K*AP*L*A*N. This piece amuses.

Our two most famous "Prazidents" he listed as "Abram Lincohen" and "Judge Vashington." The principal parts of the verb "to fail" he gives as "fail, failed, bankropt"; those of "to die" as "die, dead, funeral." The opposite of "new" is "second hand," and the comparative degrees of "bad" are "bad," "worse," and "rotten." His wife, he says, suffers from "high blood pleasure." One of Kaplan’s sentences in a business letter to an uncle reads, "If your eye falls on a bargain please pick it up"; and when a classmate presumes to ridicule the sentence, Mr. Kaplan’s triumphant rejoinder is "Mine oncle has a gless eye." When in a burst of eloquence Kaplan uses a "beauriful" word (the word is "megnificent"), an admiring Mr. Bloom asks him after class, "How you fond soch a woid"? "By dip tinking," answers Mr. Kaplan, striding out like a hero.

Why is it that the books about Hyman Kaplan are funny and witty yet the 70s British sitcom "Mind Your Language" ploughing the same furrow was racist, unfunny and generally crap?

The Wrong Trousers

Andrew Shanahan writes

The fact that I'm too fat for at least half of the clothes in my wardrobe.
Hanging in my wardrobe is the most amazing pair of trousers. I wore them once in 1998 and women stared longingly at me, men wept openly and teenagers I didn't know kept high-fiving me. I should need to be comprehensively greased if I put these wondrous trousers on today and, if I succeeded in getting them on, by lunchtime my legs would have absorbed the trousers by osmosis. Every morning I look at the trousers and acknowledge that there is more of me than there once was.

I empathise. To get back into those trousers I am

• walking more
• moving more
• rowing more. That's at the gym. My rowing on water is a sight to behold. Round and round he goes.
• eating more fruit and veg

I suggest everyone does the same.

[Andrew Shanahan wrote it in today's Grauniad but I cannot find it online.]

Ming the Merciless and this is not CGI

You know how special effects tend to be introduced into films with great triumphalism.

"Never before has a man been able to walk with dinosaurs" sort of thing.

"Look how realistic it looks".

The audience in cinemas walk out (not before the end) going "Wow".

Then 5, 10, or 20 years later you watch it and laugh at the appalling special effects.

Back in the early 1980s my brother and me were watching Flash Gordon and the Claymen. Here's a description

The serial was Flash Gordon and the Claymen, which was quite scary as the Claymen materialised from the walls of caves. Flash's spaceship had been shot down by rocket ships of his enemy, the merciless Emperor Ming and Flash had taken refuge in a cave with the Professor and Dale Arden, his female assistant. Just when he thought they were safe, the Claymen appeared from the walls and surrounded them. The episode ended.

We had been warned of this scary film by our dad who had seen it in the Penn cinema in the early 1940s.

All I can say is the special effects on Dr Who in the 1960s looked like no-expense-has been-spared-state-of-the-art in comparison.

Quote for the day.

Norm's profile today is Slugger O'Toole. He comes up with a cracking quote:

in The Reinvention of Politics Ulrich Beck quotes Kandinsky's 1982¹ essay 'And'. Beck writes: 'While the nineteenth century was dominated by Either-or, the twentieth century was to be devoted to work on And. Formerly: separation, specialisation, efforts at clarity and the calculability of the world; now: simultaneity, multiplicity, uncertainty, the issue of connections, cohesion, experiments with exchange, the excluded middle, synthesis, ambivalence'. I'm not sure Kandinsky's timing is so clearly defined by history. But hints at the multiple richness of Joyce, a literary precursor of the internet interconnected age, and the black and white days of the cold war. The simple truth is also complex. Conversations are vital in clarifying, polarizing, connecting and ultimately moving on.

This quote also pops up here, an interesting essay on Beyond either/or: the politics of 'and' in ethno-nationalist conflicts by Robin Wilson published in Democratic Dialogue in September 1999. Another thing I need to read. That pile of things I need to/want to read is just gettign bigger and bigger. Surprisingly the pile of things I need to/don't want to read is very, very small.

¹I think this must be a typo. Wassily (or Vasily) Kandinsky lived 1866 to 1944 so writing an essay in 1982 must have been some feat. Unless it's some other Kandinsky? In which case I've got totally the wrong end of something, the name of which escapes me, which reminds me of another point. For which you have to see another post, probably the post above this one.

Films that most people don't rate

Just been tagged by Norm for 'two films I think are good and most people don't'. That's tougher than it first appears. But, I'll give it a go.

First choice is Hudsucker Proxy. Many fans of the Coen's hate this movie. It's never given as much regard as The Big Lebowski, Fargo or Barton Fink. Roger Ebert possibly explains why, in his angel and devil review. I don't think his devil is justified. Sure, the style is wonderful, but it doesn't overshadow the substance. It's an enjoyable romp of a movie with a wonderful performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh. As Ebert's angel says

Tim Robbins stars, as a mailroom clerk who finds himself thrust into the presidency of the giant Hudsucker Corporation. Paul Newman is the gray eminence behind the scenes, who engineers Robbins' ascendancy because he believes the kid is hopelessly incompetent, and will drive the stock price down - just what Newman desires. And Jennifer Jason Leigh has been studying Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday," and has the part down perfect: The hard-bitten, fast-talking girl reporter who sits on your desk, lights a cigarette, and lays down the law.

Okay, he then goes off asking is there again to care about in the movie? I empathise with "Pulitzer Prize" winning Amy Archer. Her editorial meetings are filled with such zinging dialogue it stings. It raises the question, like Alasdair Gray's Kelvin Walker, what is it a successful CEO actually needs to know? It's a screwball comedy with zing. Great characterisations. Highly recommended, by me.

My other choice is Repo Man by Alex Cox. People I've played this film to tend to go "that's the most bonkers thing I've ever seen". I take that as a compliment. It's got L.A suburban punks. Aliens. Men in black. Repo men. Repo women. Cars. A great soundtrack. A very quotable script.

• "[A]n ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repoman spends his life getting into tense situations." - Bud
• "Let's go get sushi and not pay." Otto's friends
• I DO want your money, because God wants your money! - Reverend Larry (who is the spit of Pat Robertson)

Where would Pulp Fiction be without Repo Man? Nowhere, that's where.

This meme began with Eric 'Stakho' the Unread.

A sled - my kingdom for a sled

This guy misses his sled.

Perhaps he is better at sledging than Rullsenberg is at skiing.

Apparently "ggggUK4agg" is the line from Richard III, Act 5 Scene IV in textese.

How I ever lived without that info I'll never kno..........................

The Ex-Members of The Fall Club

This guy is trying to find all 43 ex-members of The Fall.

For all that he can be surreally funny, [Mark E] Smith's intent is deadly serious. As a man called Eric the Ferret - the band's bassist in 1978, and one of the people at whom Smith threw a chair - comments, sagely: "The Fall don't cruise." Among Smith's tactics for instilling the required creative tension, the trump card is threatening the sack.

Sometimes he recruited the members of the support band as The Fall, if band members were late. Sometimes he recruited the whole support band.

There's a cracking album Perverted By Mark E. - A Tribute To The Fall that includes the splendid tune: The Ex-Members of The Fall Club by Container Drivers. There's another splendid song, on the same compilation, The Story of The Fall by Jeffrey Lewis that says The constant new members kept the Fall from sounding lame.

West Virginia

Rullsenberg posts on the West Virginia Mining Disaster.

It's an excellent post. Here's a snippet:

Listening to the news last night, all the expectation - the unspoken reality - was that it was highly unlikely any would be found alive. First thing this morning, it seemed from the commentary of families that a miracle had happened; but the more I listened to how the news had spread, the more concerned I was. Clearly someone in the International Coal Group that owned the Sago Mine felt able - wrongly, OH SO WRONGLY - to inform the families of the improbable survival and cue the prayers, beliefs and thanks. Still, how can we be really surprised at such an immense screw up from those involved with this mine?

The International Coal Group has an infamous record on safety violations. See here.

For further info see this blog Minesafety Watch.

Did you get one of these for festivus?

Dave Barry reports on Christmas gifts. Among his list of possible festive treats he mentions KISS Celebriducks.

Every once in a while, two entirely different things come together to form something new and wonderful. Peanut butter and jelly. Abbott and Costello. Ham and eggs. Peanut butter and Costello. The list goes on and on.
This gift concept is another example of this phenomenon. What probably happened was this:
Some marketing people were sitting around a conference table, trying to ''brainstorm'' an idea for a product, and they got into an argument. On one side was a guy saying, ''We need to put out a product that would appeal to fans of the legendary rock band Kiss.'' On the other side was a guy saying, ''No! We need to put out a product that can be used as a bath toy!'' And then, just when it looked as though they had reached a stalemate, a light bulb went on over their heads, and they decided to ingest powerful narcotics.
The result is the Kiss Celebriducks, a set of four rubber ducks shaped vaguely like the members of Kiss. They go with pretty much any bathroom decor, and make a fun and educational toy for anybody except children under the age of 21.

As the second KISS link shows this is not a spoof (insofar as anything to do with KISS is not made up).

Only 36 days leave

There is an obituary, in today's Grauniad, of the biographer George Painter. Apparently he was an expert on Proust. A sentence in the obit got me:

he was appointed in 1954 as assistant keeper in charge of 10,000 15th-century books. He had to work on Saturday mornings and had only 36 days' leave a year, but he stayed in the job for 20 years.

Pity the man. Only 36 days leave. That's terrible. Where would the arts be if people could not take off all of August to go to Tuscany? The hardship.

By the way, 36 is the eighth triangular number. It is also square and the first number after 1 to be both square and triangular. Wow.

God is Patronizing

Norm points out this interview with Daniel Dennett, in which Dennett answers the question why are many natural scientists religious.

It goes together by not looking too closely at how it goes together. It's a trick we can all do. We all have our ways of compartmentalizing our lives so that we confront contradictions as seldom as possible.
.....
[A]re we only morally good so that we get rewarded in heaven; so that God will punish us for our sins and reward us for good behavior? I find this idea extremely patronizing. It is offensive in that it suggests that that's the only reason people are moral.

People are moral because they want to be, and immoral because they want to be. They may construct all sorts of rationalisations for their behaviour but it all amounts to people doing things because they want to do them.

For an answer to the question, does morality depend on circumstances (otherwise known as the starving person stealing a loaf of bread), go get a good introduction to ethics.

Seasons Greetings

May your days be jolly ...

May your festivus be whatever you want it to be.

Dover School Board and Intelligent Design

In the case of Kitzmiller v Dover Area School, U.S. District Judge John E Jones found that Intelligent Design is not science but a form of religious-inspired creationism. That that is what Intelligent Design is should not come as a surprise to anyone reading this.

There is excellent commentary at the splendid Butterflies and Wheels and at the equally splendid Panda's Thumb.

As expected the Discovery Institute has put out a statement. You can read it here. Earlier, when the good citizens of Dover, PA, voted out the Intelligent Design espousing members of the School Board Pat Robertson said "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city. ... If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

He probably can.

Why does Pat Robertson remind me of the televangelist, Reverend Larry, in Repo Man?

Life Reeked with Joy

This is a tale of European history, gathered from credible sources (ok, ok, undergraduate essays).

In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by inflected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France, and Italy.

The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human beings. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to nothern Europe.

Can't wait for 1066 and all that.

Go read the whole piece.

Thanks to Norm.

Delicatessen and the Politics of Salami

Here's a classic description of the delicatessen under socialism. It's so classic I've decided to get the dvd. That means it must be classic as by definition, my dvd collection only contains classics. This episode also contains the lines that made the WRP what it is today:

GEORGE: Yeah. What are you doing with the Daily Worker?

ELAINE: Ned must have left it here.

GEORGE: Your boyfriend reads the Daily Worker? What is he? A communist?

ELAINE: HE reads everything, you know, Ned's very well read.

GEORGE: Maybe he's just "very well RED"?

ELAINE: Communist? Don't you think he probably would have told me?

GEORGE: Well, does he wear bland, drab, olive colored clothing?

ELAINE: Yes, . . . yes he does dress a little drab.

GEORGE: Huh, he's a communist. . . . Look at this. "Exciting
uninhibited woman seeks forward thinking comrade and appearance not important." . . . Appearance Not Important! This is unbelievable. Finally this is an ideology I can embrace.

This comes from Seinfeld epsiode "The Race" (episode 10 from season 6 (the 96th ever episode)).

Money Money Money

Got the Amicus newsletter with last year's accounts (year ending 31st Decemebr 2004).

General Secretary: Derek Simpson
Salary £83,906
Pension Contribution £26,011
Other Benefits £52,246

Also got the Oxfam Christmas Catalogue:

Safe Water for 1,000 people £720.

So that's Derek Simpson or clean water for over a hundred thousand people. What do you think?

Correction:

That's a correction from the first draft. Some of us can't handle big numbers, we stick at: i, 0, 1, 2, e, pi ... or nada, one, two lots ...

Am I not a man?

Euan Ferguson feels, like I do, that judging by countless supplements about the gifts to buy the man in your life, we don't count. Gadgets to do things you never wanted to do. His wishlist is amazingly similar to mine.

Here's an idea - rather a good one, it suddenly strikes me, that could keep a billion relationships going much further: don't think of him as a 'man' any more. Think of him as, say, a 'person'.
Give him person things which just suit him because he happens to be a man. Forget the electronic golf gew-gaws.
Give him, say:

• A small bottle of the world's finest after-shave. It's called No. 88, comes in a little black bottle, and is made by Czech & Speake of Jermyn Street.
• A really, really nice well-cut shirt which goes with his eyes.
• A single bottle of the finest malt whisky in the land, which is called Caol Ila.
• Unconditional love.

Any, trust me, any of the above will do. The whisky, by the way, is the cheapest.

Any of those would do. Even nothing at all.

Radio, Radio, [recorded] transmission

For those lucky people with broadband and some time there's Little Atoms. You can listen to interviews with Harry, Norm, and coming up Martin Rowson.

It's also got loads of good links. Have a damn fine cup of coffee, settle down and listen.

Not Quite Oulipo

It's not quite Oulipo but this Pakistani textbook poem has potential.

Holocaust Deniers and Rhinoplasty

Maureen Lipman describes an encounter with a Holocaust denier.

Go read it.

Why I smile sweetly and seethe at genealogists

Today's Grauniad has another tale of how yesterday's women are so much much more amenable than those of today, in the minds of those who pursue genealogy. I agree with the historian (let's call him A.J.P. Taylor-Schama-Elton-Plumb-Macaulay-Fisher) who remarked

[amateur genaealogy] is nothing more than narcissism dressed up in a wig and breeches. In the process, all the complexity, difference and integrity of "then" is turned into a pale facsimile of "now". Hand over the past to enthusiastic amateurs and they can be guaranteed to turn it into a kind of waiting room to the present in which people a lot like them hang around in funny clothes, waiting to be born.

Any interest in history is to applauded but so much family history is nothing of the sort. It's often nothing more than a record that tab A was inserted into slot B and out popped C. It's instructions on how to construct a pop-up paper theatre. The sort of theatr that shows tableau of Carry On films. Beyond several generations real relationships get lost. All that can ever be discovered is what was recorded in official records. The fact that Elmer Fuddle's biological father was really Squire Trelawney's gamekeeper, Porky Pig, but the official register of births, deaths and marriages has it down as Elmer P. Fuddle, gets lost.

Most family history is a triumph of biology over what really matters, in any meaningful history: social relationships. As an adoptee I feel that my family is my adopted parents and adopted sibling. As the song goes, "the time it takes to make a baby is the time it takes to make a cup of tea". What matters is time, the relationship thus built and the wider relationship with environment and society.

A begat B begat C begat D begat E begat D or

1:2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; 1:3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 1:4 And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; 1:5 And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; 1:6 And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; 1:7 And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; 1:8 And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; 1:9 And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; 1:10 And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; 1:11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: 1:12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; 1:13 And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; 1:14 And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 1:15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Interesting but hardly the stuff of narrative history. What really brasses me off is amateur genealogists who insist "I can trace my family back to 1066". My first retort is "Are your papers in order. Are you claiming asylum? Interested in being on the front page of the Daily Express?" That's the Daily Express who's editorial meetings appear to be made up of a random collation of the phrases "asylum seeker", "celebrity", "tax", "plot", "scheme", "scrounger", and others of that ilk.

My second retort is "How interesting. How accurate and painstaking was your research? Did you make any leaps, like Sir Nookie Bear was born in the same parish as my great-great-great-great-great uncle Rupert Snookie therefore they must be related?"

My third retort is "how interesting" , said with a Roger Moore-esque raised eyebrow.

Biological determinists make me A-N-G-R-Y.

Hunting in packs

When the media go after a target (and boy, they are like a pack of wolves, or an under 8s soccer team) all other stories get swept asunder. Mick Hartley has a tale that was ignored by much of the mainstream media (and also, sadly, by much of the blogosphere).

It's a tale of kidnapping, sexual slavery, China and North Korea. Two defectors from North Korea, Kyeong-Sook Cha and Soon-Hee Ma, appeared before the House Committee on International Relations, and provided firsthand accounts of widespread tragedy occurring in the Sino-North Korean border areas.

Kyeong-Sook Cha went [from North Korea] to China with her younger daughter to look for her older daughter, who had disappeared. In the process, she witnessed widespread sexual slavery of North Korean women in China. Cha and her younger daughter were likewise kidnapped, sold as sex slaves, captured by Chinese police, repatriated to North Korea, abused by North Korean security agents, witnessed torture of pregnant women and babies, escaped to China and repeated the experience that would have broken most women the first time. [...]

Unfortunately, no one from the mainstream media was present to bear witness to their moving testimony. Their misfortune was that the hearing took place on Oct. 27. The media in Washington, D.C., were in a feeding frenzy over the Harriet Miers withdrawal and the "Scooter" Libby indictments. Cha's and Ma's tragic stories were ignored.

In exasperation, Suzanne Scholte, of the Defense Forum Foundation and North Korea Freedom Coalition, remarked the media were "more interested in bringing down George Bush than Kim Jong-il." [...]

It's that mentality of think local and screw the global. I don't like my leader. He is so evil. Your leader is not as evil as mine. Is. Is not. My leader in trouble gets more viewers, sells more papers than whatever your leader does.

Tragedy loses out to farce. You too can have a cool windbreaker like Kim Jong-Il.

Oxfam bookshops

Oxfam bookshops are both wonderful and strangely evil. They lure you in. You begin to browse. And then you feel guilty and have to buy.

Today I wandered in. I was enchanted. I was ensnared. I began to read The Rationality of Science by W.H. Newton-Smith. Now it's all mine to take home and put on the pile of books to be read.

Someday that pile will begin to shrink.

Simulacrum

Norm posts on Baudrillard.

Here's an image of Neo, sorry, Jean Baudrillard.

And here's a Baudrillard lookalike (scroll down to Prospero). And here's someone else made famous by the Baudrillard lookalike.

Now our Baudrillard lookalike was playing Prospero. Here's the quote you've been waiting for.

PROSPERO You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.

That's Act IV scene 1. Notice how it's almost, but not quite, all that is solid melts into air.

Puzzles

Here's some sporting anagrams. They're not that difficult.

• Endurance - it's them (10,6)
• Synthetic cream (10,4)
• No odd fixture (6,6)
• Fortnights on team (10,6)
• Town hampers novel drawer (13,9)

Most of these came from the Grauniad Quick Crossword. Some didn't.

The Grauniad and Rullsenberg

Over breakfast, bagel, bacon and Philly cheese if you ask, Rullsenberg discovered she was cited in the Grauniad.

Stardom!

Pere Ubu and a talentless fool

This piece reassesses Alfred Jarry and Ubu Roi. It begins

On December 10 1896 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in Paris, an actor named Firmin Gémier strode down to the front of the stage, looked out over the mincily sophisticated Parisian crowd, and shouted at the top of his voice, "Shit!" (Or "Merde!" to be precise.) Many would have us believe that theatre was never the same again.
He was playing the lead in a new play, Ubu Roi, by a peculiar young malcontent from the west of Normandy, Alfred Jarry.

It goes on to describe how Jarry and a school mate concocted embarrassments and agonies for their physics teacher.

It's a standard schoolboy tactic - take a loathed authority figure, make him behave in the most degrading manner possible, and simultaneously drench him in shame and blood and shit. Ubu is one of the first examples of a student prank being translated into something considered a major work of art.

The description of Jarry's talents goes

He had a remarkable lack of ability as a playwright - no ear for speech, no complex psychology, no sense of texture, no narrative purpose. His ability to spin his one gift, for wilful outrage, into a passable imitation of genius is the reason why he is the patron saint of the talentless. Any of the many 20th-century writers who can't write, but can manufacture studenty confections that other begrudging folk will talk up as art, has Alfred Jarry to thank.

So, how much was Pinter inspired by Jarry?

The piece ends with praise for iconoclasm:

Artistic rebellion at a certain pitch of courage - or produced by folk so steeped in absinthe they don't know what courage is any more - provides its own reward. Simply forcing the door open into the modern, and being the first to walk in new rooms, creates an energy. Ubu is full of that delirious freedom.

The punk desire to howl the house down shouldn't create anything enduring, but it does. Will Never Mind the Bollocks stand up in 500 years' time, if there are enough cockroaches left around to pogo to it on their mini-iPods? For all that it's a pile of naive, posey, opportunistic twaddle, the answer is still undoubtedly yes. And will they enact Ubu with puppets on their blasted waste-grounds? Probably.

Just one real criticism. How can you discuss Ubu Roi and its legacy without mentioning these guys?

That's 300 000 laptops

There's a project to supply sub $100 laptops to children in developing nations.

Wind-up laptops. Cool. Or kewl. Whatever. Answers to some questions:

Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's wrong with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencils—kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to "own" something—like a football, doll, or book—not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.

What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.

Access to information is a vital part of (economic, personal, intellectual, social) development but not the whole enchilada.

As a part of development this project is A G-O-O-D T-H-I-N-G.

$30 Million Dollars

Yes. I have been offered a share of $30 Million dollars. I am so excited.

Dear Sir,

Our present situation has made us decided to send you this mail that I am sure will come to you as a surprise. Please we mean you no harm only we are in a desperate situation and need urgent help. After going through this letter it will be your decision, whether to help this bereaved family or to leave us to our faith, but whatever you decide, bear in mind, that we are in trouble and need your help.

I am Mrs. Jennifer Ngdala, the wife of late Mr. Brown Ngdala the Zimbabwean farm lord, one of the major victims in the land reform crisis in Zimbabwe. You might have read or heard about it. We obtain your contact privately and decided to contact you in view of your profession and confirmed reliability.

Our country Zimbabwe is in a near civil war with no end in sight. The President Robert Mugabe had introduced a new land reform act meant to deprive and relocate all the major Farms in Zimbabwe. This has resulted in the Zimbabwean war veteran and black mob killing, looting and displacing the entire major farms in Zimbabwe. Thousands have been killed and my husband and my three children are among the victims, as we own one of the biggest modern farms in the Southern Africa region.

Before my husband was murdered in cold blood, he traveled to South Africa due to the rage and killing and deposited the sum of USD$30.000.000.00 (Thirty Million United States Dollars) in a security company in South Africa, it was deposited as a family valuable to avoid unnecessary attention and high demurrage payment as this money was actually meant for the development and building of an ultra modern farms in Southern African region with all its machineries, but he did not live to accomplish this dream.

Faced with this situation, I ran to South Africa with my remaining family where we are currently residing as political Asylum.

Now, to claim this fund (USD$ 30.000.000.00) from the security company, we will require your candid assistance as a foreigner to retrieve this fund and subsequently plan for a profitable investment where part of this fund could be invested in.

Please do understand that there is no risk of any kind involve in this, as all modalities are already in place for a successful conclusion of this transaction. All that we require of you is your reliability and trustworthiness not to take advantage of our vulnerable position in this matter. We have resolved to reward you with 15% of the total sum after a successful completion of the business transaction, 5% will be to offset every expenditure that we might incure as a result of this transaction, 70% will be for proposed business investment and 10% will be used to purchase country home for me and my son Frank. This money is all we have left for my remaining family and me. I am presently on a sick bed; my ill health is due to the trauma from what I have been through. More so I will need your assistant to help us migrate over immediately this fund is transferred to your account. We need not remind you of the confidential nature of this transaction, please keep it as such.

Contact my son Frank with the email address below he is presently in charge due to my ill health.

Email: frankydala@yahoo.com.sg

Yours faithfully,

Jennifer Ngdala.

Unfortunately I am unable to avail myself of this kind offer. I just hope Jennifer gets better.

Bleak House

The Beeb's Bleak House is excellent.

It gets plaudits from me, from Rullsenberg and from Norm.

Here's a sourpuss article explaining why this guy is not watching. There's always someone, somewhere. That's not to say Philip Hensher has a big nose just that his ill-informed witterings make Mrs Honeyman seem like a paper of record.

Catriona Davies said that "to those who have ploughed through all 1,088 pages of Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House, it may seem like an unlikely book to be transformed into a populist drama".

Not having seen any of it, I can't say, but it seems very unlikely that this dramatisation adds to the quality of the greatest novel in the English language. For a start, I've heard that there is no fog to be seen anywhere, which seems rather like filming Moby Dick without the sea. Vegas is surely rather adventurous casting for a character who is 76 years old, described on first appearance as "short, cadaverous and withered."

And one hears that Mrs Pardiggle has been left out altogether. Frankly, a Bleak House that leaves out Mrs Pardiggle, and above all, the five- year-old Alfred Pardiggle, that most unwilling contributor to the Infant Bonds of Joy, is not a Bleak House I have any great desire to watch. Of course, he, and about a hundred others, contribute hardly anything to the plot, but what else can be left out? Prince Turveydrop? Volumnia Dedlock? The Military Bassoonist? Mr Chadband's reflection, saying grace, that without "refreshment" "our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over"?

The main reason for not watching this dramatisation, or, in fact, any dramatisation of Bleak House ever again is that one knows one would sit there with gritted teeth waiting for some magnificently unnecessary moment, groaning with pain at its omission or suffering an only temporary relief. Does it, for instance, include that incomparable passage, Krook's list of the names of Miss Flite's 25 pet birds: "Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon and Spinach?" It seems fairly unlikely; but, really, I just don't want to know.

Yes, it does. Every point Hensher makes about things missing from Bleak House is based on hearsay. Hensher knows someone who knows someone who was jogging past someone's house when they noticed Bleak House on telly and there was no Mrs Pardiggle. It's time Hensher found things out for himself rather than relying on the ill-informed gossip of others.

Can I start the campaign to make wilful ignorance a crime?

As Tony Kushner writes of Maurice Sendak

Maurice is a child of the Great Depression and of Jewish Depression, if I may generalise. Jewish Depression is that inherited awareness of the arduousness of knowing God, the arduousness of knowing anything, an acute awareness of the struggle to know, the struggle against not knowing; and it is that enduring sense of displacement, yearning for and not securely possessing a home. Maurice's is a Yiddische kopf, a large, brooding, circumspect and contemplative mind, darkened by both fatalism and faith.

The "arduousness of knowing anything, an acute awareness of the struggle to know, the struggle against not knowing" is, if not universal, at least something I identify with.

Is Philip Hensher interested in where the wild things are?

Where's Your Trews?

Rullsenberg blogs on a sales pitch for a pair of trousers.

The article is in the paper of choice of fashionistas everywhere. Here's a taster.

I would like to emphasise that aside from trying these pants on, they have never, ever been worn. In public or private.

I have not worn these leather pants for the following reasons:

I am not a member of Queen.

I do not like motorcycles.

I am not Rod Stewart.

I am not French.

I do not cruise for transvestites in an expensive sports car.

These were not cheap leather pants. They are Donna Karan leather pants. They're for men. Brave men, I would think. Perhaps tattooed, pierced men. In fact, I'll go so far as to say you either have to be very tough, very gay, or very famous to wear these pants and get away with it.

Again, they're men's pants, but they'd probably look great on the right lady. Ladies can get away with leather pants much more often than men can. It's a sad fact that men who own leather pants will have to come to terms with.

And I so wanted a pair of leather trousers. But that was then and this is now.

The thinking person's Keith Flett

There is a letter from Pooter Geek Senior in today's Grauniad.

Maybe I'm naive, but what kind of socialist buys shares (Blunkett faces new conflict of interest claims, November 1)?
Greg Counsell
Tamworth, Staffs

This man is rapidly becoming the thinking person's Keith Flett.

I was shocked when I found that there is not a Wiki for the prolific letter writer and founder of the BLF.

Keith Flett, of the Beard Liberation Front, said: "Beards are part of the tradition of the Labour movement, but I don't think new Labour likes them. People seem to think men with beards are dodgy or have something to hide. I've been shouted at by youths and van drivers just for having a beard. There is discrimination and we need to broaden the opportunities for people with beards."

None of the above in any way implies that Pooter Geek Senior has, or has ever owned, a beard.