Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
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Links ( 'Nother Solent is this blog's good twin. Same words, searchable archives, RSS feed. Provided by a benefactor, to whom thanks. I also sometimes write for Samizdata and Biased BBC.) The Old Comrades:
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Thursday, February 07, 2002
My hols coming up. This may be the last post you will get from me until some time after the 24th February, as I am going skiing for the first time in CENSORED years and the second time in my life. Truth to tell, I am not leaving for a few days but, as always seems to happen, I have a whole horrible pile of things to clear first. I am reluctantly convinced that the only way to ensure this is done is to refrain from even turning on the computer. Though I might a tiny bit, just to see. While I'm gone, Eric Olsen (get some independence man! learn to sew your own buttons!) and his wife Dawn (and don't you sew them for him, it'll do him good to learn) have e-mailed to say that they will open a site called http://tres_producers.blogspot on February 12th. This will deal with the meaning of life. If you know it, e-mail them at ericolsen@compuserve.com stating age, gender and zip code/country. Remain anonymous if you so choose. Google Yourself. James (Reuben) Haney has some thoughts on self-googlification. He is an anarcho-capitalist American transport-geek who appears to speak Danish, and have lived in Belfast. You know, just an ordinary joe. In answer to your question, James, the day to day changes in self-googling only come in the high-number entries from about 15 onwards. When I do it the first five or so results are always the same defunct personal websites for which I have long forgotten the passwords. And yes, there is a time lag of several days before new entries appear. I had 1,100 entries last time I tried. For a long time it was an inglorious 3, then it suddenly shot up. I've never looked to see what strange things lie in the realms you reach by pressing "Next" fifty times. Even I am not quite that self-obsessed. Like a red rag to a bull, telling you guys not to write in about Hessians. A Mr Bolt Throw, who may also be called Dan Truly, writes "i can only assume that one of my proud brethren has come forward to claim heir to the modern usage of this term...but 'hessians' nowadays are of course us dumbasses who, defying all societal pressure (not to mention any sense of musical taste), absolutely love METAL." In a searing testimony, Mr Throw goes on to bravely admit to anti-social behaviours such as professional employment and receding hair, but he's doing his best to live it down. From a rather different lifestyle perspective, Capt. J M Heinrich writes, regarding military toasts, "Depends on the unit tradition but generally at memorial mess dinners (11 Nov period), the final toast is "Fallen Comrades". The only required toast is the loyal toast 'The Queen', all others are optional and depend on the circumstances, members, guests, etc. Absent friends are the SOBs who managed to avoid the dinner because the wife was washing her hair so he couldn't ... 2. The hessian you buy for your needlework probably originates in 6' wide rolls held in the back room. It is generally sold to the military where it is used to cover windshield, screen latrines, windbreaks, etc. Also sandbags. Glad you like it." "Glad you like it." With what better sentiment can I bid you all adieu? Hmm. Well, I could submit, "Keep your powder dry and don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes." Whichever you prefer, goodbye until the 25th. Deborah Orr Bust! Peter Briffa's stroppy new blog "Public Interest" says that she writes for the Independent, not the Guardian as I said earlier. No doubt her sword is widely for sale. "Stroppy" is praise, by the way. "Genocide is happening right now" says a deaf activist. In fact what this man is talking about - and I know it's a jolt to go straight from talking about anti-semitism which really has killed millions to this - is deaf people being cured of deafness by cochlear implants. Only you mustn't call it "cured." That is the view of the world described in a link which I found in The Occasional, via Media Minded. Pipped at the post! I have, half-written in the bowels of my computer, an article about this very subject. I must be the only hearing person on earth to regularly scroll through the BBC's Ceefax pages to reach the "See Hear" section aimed at deaf viewers. For foreign readers, Ceefax is a primitive form of text information service that you can get on British TV. For British readers, go to BBC2 and then it's usually to be found at about page 640. The service is maddeningly slow, but if you can bear the wait you get to read some interesting, mad letters. And some sane ones. The use of the word "genocide" is not that extreme or unusual among deaf activists. As with many subsidy-driven cultures there is an insatiable need to be hard-done-by that infects otherwise reasonable people. I will not call this a ghetto mentality, since the actual ghetto looked out towards the world with real hope and justifiable fear, as well as inwards to seek the meaning of suffering. The aim of the subsidy-activist is to have every privilege and still be the victim. For all that, I can see the sadness. If the numbers of deaf people drop too far a unique culture will become unviable. People's bodies are their own: if they want to stay deaf, that's their right. And, although this is harder to say, it would be intolerable for the government to force people to have an implant operation on their children. More examples of the new antisemitism in Europe can be found at Instapundit, which cites the same Ha'aretz survey as I did below. An old tune from the New Statesman On the advice of a reader I burrowed into the New Statesman's files to find a story by Denis Sewell dated January 14 this year and titillatingly headed (what high minded scorn the NS would have for the Sun, were it to use such tactics to get readers!) "A Kosher Conspiracy." I read the first few lines, which bemoan poor Guardian columnist Deborah Orr's sufferings when people call her an anti-semite for criticising Israel. For a moment I did consider paying £2* to read the rest, before a great weariness with the troubles of Guardian columnists and the deep concern and sympathy felt for Guardian columnists by New Statesman columnists overcame me. Ha'aretz will show you the cover of said issue of the New Statesman and tell you all about it, and they don't charge you a penny. Rabbi David Goldberg will, writing in the Guardian himself, also tell you something about the Sewell article, and his telling is also free, and a good thing too because I wouldn't pay a lot myself to be advised thus: "To equate a modern Islamic political response to the state of Israel with the church's theological animadversions against the Jewish people, as the chief rabbi did, is, at the very least, dangerously ahistorical." At the words 'modern Islamic political response to the state of Israel', I could not help thinking of the way that suicide bombers have bound up their genitals for some purpose connected to the promised virgins. For once I say this not to mock but to observe that history does provide some illustrations of that sort of mentality. ------------------------------ *I tell a lie, not £2 but $2. The New Statesman charges in dollars? These Americans, they get everywhere. Let me know if ever it changes to Euros. Wednesday, February 06, 2002
Bloody Hell. Iain Murray (links, passim) alerted me to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Kesher Talk's Howard Fienberg weighing the risks of BSE in the blood supply. Here's the article. The absolute last on Hessians. John Costello sneaks in through probably having written this before I closed the correspondence! He says, regarding the Hessian hirelings in 1812, "Of those taken prisoner, about 1/3rd refused repatriation and stayed in the US. They had been used as farm hands and miners well away from the fighting and were viewed as ideal sons in law by the farmers .... English POWs were not viewed as ideal sons in law. The opinion of the farmers was that you could not get a decent day's work out of them (and in general this prejudice was common to Americans for several generations.)Alex Bensky was obviously, clearly too late for my deadline. If he had not been you would have been able to read that: "I figure it's a tie. Whenever I go to London (Ontario) I pass by the site of the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh died and we administered a drubbing to you chaps. I also count Korea as a tie.Cool letter. Pity he was too late to get it in. (NB further stuff on Hessians really, truly, may be read but will not be posted.) Well, I didn't put him on the links page because I agreed with him. Emmanuel Goldstein posts back on the Great Iain Murray Controversy, out of which Mr Murray himself has understandably faded away. Emmanuel, it's all much simpler than you appear to think. 1. The kidnappers said that they were going to treat Pearl as (they thought) the Camp X-ray prisoners were being treated. I believe it because they said so, not because of some geopolitical theory. Of course they are also enemies of America on more general grounds. So what? What will motivate their hands to give or withold water, to strike or not to strike the bound man in front of them is "an eye for an eye." The idea of turning the tables is common to all mankind. I'd worry about that even if that particular e-mail turned out to be a hoax. 2. Much of the coverage of the shackles, goggles etc. made out falsely that that stuff was on permanently. 3. The idea that there might one day be equivalent revenge on American prisoners was obvious. I read criticisms of Camp X-ray from your side of the fence that made exactly that point. I think even Colin Powell made it. It is one of the many factors that make it the duty of a reporter to be honest. 4. The idea that reporters might be kidnapped is also fairly obvious. It happens regularly. Intelligent self-interest should have led them to think of this. 5. Finally, Pakistanis can read the Mirror via the internet just as I can read Dawn magazine. It's not that primitive a country. And if the Mirror is not influential there, the BBC certainly is. There is nothing unlikely about the BBC taking its tone from the Mirror, the reporters all know each other. A disease of our times. The Telegraph reports an investigation into a claim that a child was "culled" from a doctor's list because the parents refused the controversial MMR jab. Personally I think the balance of probabilities is in favour of the MMR jab, and my children have had it. But the attempt to project state power into people's very bodies scares me as much as measles. Glood, buts and Blooglesearch Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblog has, like me, come out of the closet as a serial self-googlesearcher. (And how do you think I found that one, huh? Um, actually he e-mailed me.) But if you want to see another stupid killer decision of the safety-freaks, scroll down to where it says that anyone American who has been in the UK during the Foot & Mouth epidemic is forbidden FOREVER from giving blood again. Foot & Mouth has in literally one or two cases mildly indisposed humans for whole days at a time. It is not even usually fatal for cows and sheep. Future generations will look back on our reaction to it with something of the scornful awe we reserve for the Children's Crusade. CORRECTION (THE NUMBER OF THESE I ISSUE IS GETTING EMBARRASSING!) Steven Den Beste (link below) points out: "It's not Foot-and-mouth that they're concerned about. It's BSE, Mad Cow disease that they're worried about, and that is a legitimate concern. vCJD might be passed by blood-to-blood contact and it is fatal." A quick check of Dodgeblog confirms my error. Blame it on my smouldering anger at the whole Foot & Mouth thing which has obviously preyed on my mind to the extent that I see the words where they are not. Actually I still think the restriction on blood donation is disproportionate, but not remotely as disproportionate. There has been no epidemic of Mad Cow disease as yet. Pray God there never will be as, it is a horrible way to go. But if you ban blood from anyone who has visited a country where there have been (I think) tens or at the most hundreds of fatalities from a blood-transmittable disease then pretty soon you will have scarcely any donors left. Tuesday, February 05, 2002
A cri de coeur from Brian Micklethwait over at Samizdata. With commendable honesty he admits he half-mourns the passing of the days when he was a big fish in a small pond - the internet went and expanded the pond. I think I'll pop over there and comment directly in a minute. You can also read, if you must, Perry de Havilland and Steven Den Beste obsessing over the merits of various aeroplanes. Dear boys, so sweet, but I get enough of this at home. Before I close this correspondence, (It's funny what prompts the most mail. "Western drag", petards, payment for blogging, and now this. Are all my readers as pedantic and poor as I am?) I had another note from Robert L Martin who recalled... hey, let him tell it: "I was in London in 1965 and while there I went to the changing of the Guard. During the ceremony, the band ( I don't recall which regiment) played the marches of all of the U.S. armed forces (Anchors Aweigh, Marines' Hymn, etc.). At the time, I was living in Heidelberg, Germany where my father was stationed with the U.S. Army. The pipes, drums and military band of one of the highland regiments (again, can't place which one) visited U.S. Army Europe headquarters and played at evening retreat, including the Star Spangled Banner and God Save the Queen. I don't know if Mr. Kidd would view these performances the same way as performing the SSB, but it seems to me that if he feels degraded, it has been 40 years in the making. Perhaps he would be soothed by a tradition I became acquainted with while serving in the U.S. Air Force. USAF developed a "dining out" tradition for unit officers. These evening meal events were openly, notoriously, and shamelessly copied from the RAF after exposure to that service during W.W.II. Should a British officer have been present during one of our dining outs, we had no trouble toasting the Queen's health. The penultimate toast, was, however, reserved for the President."Oh, all right, I'll reopen the correspondence long enough to ask what was the final toast, "Absent Friends"? ADDED LATER: It was usually "To those who did not return." More on "hirelings and slaves." Reader John Costello observed that all Americans think that they won the war of 1812, which I must say speaks well for their education as I doubt if most Britons have even heard of it, and then went on to say "of course they don't know about To Anacreon in Heaven either." Which stumped me. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, though, I now know that he was referring to the original song which provided the tune for the Star Spangled Banner. Jim Bennett was one of several correspondents who made the point that the hirelings and slaves were in fact the mercenaries generically if inaccurately referred to as Hessians. He goes on to say, "But the interesting point about the Hessians was why they needed to be used in the first place, which is that very few English were volunteering to fight Americans.Indeed so. Confound their knavish tricks! Which takes me rather neatly to an e-mail from Robert L Martin, who also took up the point about bombastic lyrics, pointing out that there are "some references to Scotland in a later verse of God Save the Queen that are best left unsung." What comment is there to make about this story? BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Defendants killed in Palestinian court I can however observe that, if you click the "Question of betrayal" link to the right of the main story you will find that the BBC, although it cannot bring itself to call terrorists terrorists has no trouble in describing as "betrayal" any action taken by a Palestinian Arab which helps Israeli security. They say themselves that these "collaborators" were not paid very much but do not consider for a moment that perhaps some of them contacted the Israelis for reasons other than money. Googlewhack! Doesn't this sound fun? Just what I needed in life, a new way to spend time on the internet. Talking of Google, prepare for A Disclosure. Sobbing Confession. Heartrending Personal Testimony. Whatever. I google-search my own name nearly every day. And I love it. It sends adrenaline zooming through my veins, fills me with vim, zest, zip and other monosyllables containing letters that score high in Scrabble. Yeah! Google self-abuse gives me the strength to stand up to Life's little vagaries, hit them on the head and steal their mobile phones. I also find cool websites. Only cool sites mention me, did you know that? But I want you to know that I am not addicted. I could give it up any time I liked. A sewing bit! A real sewing bit! It was hopeless trying to hold off the maddened hordes of history freaks. I fought bravely but their sheer numbers and fanaticism overwhelmed me. Angie Schultz wrote: My dear woman, you simply cannot open up a rusty can of 1812 Brand Fine Worms and just airily wander off, leaving the mess there, stinking up the place. (It attracts Canadians, for one thing.) Oh, but I suppose *you* have a maid. [In my dreams. NS] "We'll leave aside Mr. Kidd's dubious knowledge of history (what's he a lecturer in, I want to know) and instead go on to something I have a better grasp on, namely the Star Spangled Banner. The "hirelings and slaves" bit was not meant as a reference to British soldiers, but rather to the foreign mercenaries and other troops that the British deployed in North America. ("Other troops" would include conscripts, which I very dimly remember were some sort of tribute or treaty fulfillment from one of the German principalities. Hessians, in particular, are remembered for being there, but I don't know if they were there of their own free will or not.) I can't remember whether these were actually used in the War of 1812, but it was a very bitter issue in the days leading up to the Revolution. The fact that the king would use foreign troops against Englishmen (for so many still felt themselves) was what sent many fence-sitters over the edge.[I hadn't heard it was played at the changing of the guard, though it may have been, but it's popped right out of my head what exactly was the big occasion with the Queen there (and visibly moved) when it was played. The point was that it was some semi-state bash where a foreign anthem had never been played before. It seems to have been a separate concert, that involved the band of the Coldstream Guards playing in New York, which so excised Mr Kidd. ] "I hang out in some of the seedier dives of Usenet. Think of it as the bitter old war correspondents' bar, a room full of flinty eyes and hearts to match, and the devil take the tender of soul. After the above event, many of the posters wrote of watching this on TV and melting into puddles of warm jello, openly sobbing into their keyboards. Don't think this "nadir" went unappreciated." Actually I too recall that I had a tear in my eye from just reading about it. I will try to quote from some other letters but I've just remembered that I have to put in our rusty old C-reg Volkswagen Passat in to the garage in order to stop the exhaust trying to lift the whole car off the ground like a rocket. And you people think I have a maid. Sob. (That sob was not a deeply moved sob, it was a deeply envious of people with maids sob.) Oh, that sewing bit. Did you know that sacking-like scratchy large-weave fabric with vaguely hairy fibres, the stuff they put on display screens and trendy flower arrangements, is called Hessian? You do now. Monday, February 04, 2002
Two takedowns. Orrin Judd makes life tough for Senatorial turncoats, and James Morrow does the same for Arafat. Still, don't anyone say that Arafat and chums aren't environmentally friendly - they do recycle Nazi propaganda after all. Q: Am I anglospherical? A: No, I went on a diet after Christmas. This Right Now! magazine piece by Timothy Kidd reminds me of a few things I'd rather forget. In general, I don't care for the tone of the article. Kidd describes the playing by the band of the Coldstream Guards of the American National Anthem as a "degradation." Perhaps he's lived a sheltered life, but so have I, and yet I can gird myself to think of quite a few things more degrading than this rather touching display of solidarity that took place a month to the day after the WTC attack. As for what might be the correct response for a patriotic Briton to make when reaching the offending words, "hirelings and slaves", I suggest singing them lustily with many a merry quip about the coming reign of the EU. Americans! As Blogland Royalist-in-Chief, I officially forgive you for trying to invade Canada, claiming you won the War of 1812 (restrain yourselves from comment, this week I am too busy for historical research), not checking the identity of the Little Belt before firing, and for all other crimes and misdemeanors committed before the birth of any person now living. The purpose of the study of history is to make such things live again for a while, but the time arrives for the book to be put down and the news turned on instead. Aye, but there's the rub. Mr Kidd had some painful reminders about more actions quite recent enough to be still called news, actions by people and groups for whom I have had great sympathy since September 11: A few years ago, a visiting Sinn Fein/IRA delegation was feted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a fund-raising gala, and entertained by the band of the New York Police Department. On a visit to the New York Times, Irish terrorist leaders were greeted by a standing ovation from the editorial board. I myself have seen the New York Fire Brigade marching up Fifth Avenue under a banner with an IRA slogan, and being cheered by the crowd along the whole route. Q: What would Elvis say if he were alive today? A: "It's awful dark in here. Uh, where's the door?" Sorry. Just slipped out. Dawson has recovered enough for a wee small post or two, although he still thinks he saw the popular musician mentioned above. I won't steal his clicks by giving you all the great links he provides, but the "little people" question in the 20 Questions post is poignant and interesting. Poignant because of the many replies that refer to childhood memories only dredged up with great effort, interesting because it is obviously one of those phenomena that are actually quite common yet remain unknown because those who experience it don't talk about it. Sunday, February 03, 2002
Off with his head! Michael Lonie dares to dispute that HRH is descended from Boadicea. "I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but isn't she of German ancestry? If I recall correctly..."Hey, c'mon! 'If I recall correctly' indeed! Are you trying to convince me that you have all this erudite stuff just in your head and nary a reference book in sight? :-) "...she is from the Welf family from Hanover on Great-great-grandmama's side and the house of Saxe-Coburg ("stud farm to Europe")on Great-great-grandpapa's side. Perhaps she is descended from Ariovistus, the German king Caesar thumped, or Hermann, who destroyed three legions of the Roman army at the Battle of the Teutoburgerwald in 9AD. Those would give her warrior forebears just as well as the great Briton. Even if you trace back through the immensly convoluted tree to those Scots and French types who sat on the English throne, there is still a break at William the Bastard. Although I suppose you could come back with something about Jasper Tudor..." Actually I take it all back. Maybe you can do all this stuff without reference books. There are people who can, as I just proved to myself by, in the best tradition of clueless contestants in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, phoning a friend. Two friends actually, married to each other, and, spurring each other on to ever-ascending heights of antiquarian cool, they came up unrehearsed with miles of learned speculation, much of which I missed through not being able to type at supersonic speed. They said, yes, the Queen is a Hanoverian. But the Hanoverians get their claim to the throne via the Stuarts, and they get their claim via the Tudors. (They agreed with Mr Lonie on the Jasper angle. Actually I know a great drinking song called Oh, Sir Jasper, Do Not Touch Me, but you don't want to hear about that.) And Elizabeth II is Heir to the Tudors unless you count any surviving descendants of Henrietta Maria, youngest daughter of Charles the First. Only you don't count them firstly because an elder daughter of James I takes precedence over youngest daughter of Charles I any day, and secondly all such descendants probably died out in WWI anyway. Anyway, if she's a Tudor then she's surely descended from some Late Roman senator who is in turn descended from an early Roman senator. Then you mustn't forget her separate claim via Royal House of Essex, i.e. Alfred the Great and Co. They must have miscegenated with the Britons a bit. So, pushing my luck, yes, Elizabeth II is probably descended from Boadicea. Then they spoilt it all by saying that Boadicea's family were all probably wiped out by the Romans. But never mind, everybody is descended from everybody anyway. Zooom! The stealth blogger strikes. I am really not meant to be doing this today, but I have sneaked upstairs for a quick internet fix. And what do we have in the in-tray? Aha! Nice words about the French, as promised, from Midwest Conservative Journal. Saturday, February 02, 2002
Last night I passed 25,000 on the hit counter. Admittedly Nos. 24,992 - 25,000 were all my husband clicking in and out. Then we hit the magic number and tried to print out the page for posterity. That was the moment the man from Porlock struck, in the form of a real external hit, so the British Museum will just have to one day launch an appeal to save for the nation the page recording hit no. 25,001. After that great effort, silence. Sorry for the lack of posts today, lack of replies to e-mails, and yet another apology in advance for the probable lack of posts tomorrow. It's just one of those weekends. Friday, February 01, 2002
Two new links. The very different Midwest Conservative Journal and Airstrip One join the links column. BTW those little line-spaces every five links do not mean anything. They carry no ideological message. Nor are they there to stop one link biting another, or indeed mating to produce little linkittens. I just read somewhere that the mind cannot conceive at one instant of any number greater than five. Chickens home to roost. Iain Murray on Edge of England's Sword asks whether the hysterical reporting of conditions in Camp X-ray may have already have helped kill kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl. I do not say that the Mirror could have known that a specific "reprisal" would take place, still less that they wanted it to. Yet it is not so very hard to guess that irresponsibility when dealing with violent people can have fatal results. In 1990 Iranian-born Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was hanged by Iraq for espionage. Iraq may have been influenced by a well known hoaxer active at that time saying Bazoft was a spy. The Conspiracy Theory Premier League has suffered a major upset, according to the sports commentary at the MCJ: 'Rhodesians the world over were ecstatic. "It hasn't sunk in yet," one of them told the Editor in the victorious Rhodesian locker room while spraying champagne in all directions. "But we did it! Nobody thought we could knock off the Jews but we did! We're number one!' On reflection my earlier SOTU post saying that Bush "knows what sells" comes across as accusing the President of duplicity. That wasn't my intention. I think the public George W. Bush is a simplification and sometimes a distortion of the infinitely complex real man, but that's true of us all. The point I intended to make is that he knows his audience and is aware of his own appeal. Yes, Professor, there is a brutal Afghan winter. Hey, so we had to wait a few months, but I always said this would happen someday. Fisk! Pilger! To work! A bureacrat with a sense of humour is Mr Shawn Dearn, a spokesman for the Canadian Federal Identity Program. First remind yourselves about the controversy over why that smokers' rights website was forbidden to use the Canadian flag. (The link takes you to last week's archives. Scroll straight down to the very bottom to find the relevant post.) Then see what Mr Dearn had to say: "[The flag symbol] is not to be confused with the Canadian flag, even though they are remarkably similar," he said.Glad that's been cleared up. (Thanks to Ranting and Roaring who gives us another cute baby pic - that's baby pic not babe pic, you Samizdata-maddened maniacs, and with whom I will probably end up arguing about abortion some day.) Incidentally, the day I wrote my earlier post I bunged an e-mail to the Canadian authorities citing it and asking if they cared to comment. No reply yet. Another difference between the UK and US systems is the route to power. In Britain the stages are MP - Junior Minister - Proper Long Trousers Minister - Prime Minister. Yeah, there may be a few aristos and cronies who tiptoe into the Cabinet but it is next to inconceivable that the top job would go to anyone who had not followed the right path. Not so in the US, according to Sean McCray: "I also have a theory that members of Congress cannot get elected President, only Governors. Congress votes on too many things, and people vote for different reasons on a bill. A person can support the main idea of a bill, but be against the amendments attached to it. These things allow for a Congressional voting record to easily be used by an opponent."- from Next Right, via Dawson.com That chap Warren over at Unremitting Verse might be able to turn his pen to any subject, even the Euro, but I bet he didn't know that the original "Pop goes the Weasel" refers to people pawning their fox-furs. Actually not even I know that it does, but that little unverifiable factoid is one of the many bits of trivia that fill up my brain and deprive me of the necessary single-mindedness for becoming President, Mighty She-Elephant of the War Host or any similar top management job. "SOTU" was the heading of an e-mail from Fritz Anderson. I spent a minute thinking, "isn't that a soya paste that vegetarians put in casseroles? Is this some political comment?" before finally figuring it out. Anyway, Mr Anderson writes, "I had thought the State of the Union address was almost exactly analogous to Speech from the Throne at the State Opening of Parliament. Is that not a big deal in the UK?"So I had to hit myself on the head all over again. Of course it is. Why didn't I think of that? Yet some tattered remnant of my once-proud point yet remains. The main difference is that, no, it's not that big a deal except among chatterers like us. Perhaps that simply reflects the fact that Her Maj merely reads a prepared speech, and despite being one of her more self-consciously loyal subjects I have to say that it's a good thing she's queen and all because she'd never make a living on the stage. There is no performance angle. In contrast the chap reading the TOFU has to have at least enough star quality to get elected. While I grant that Bush Junior's crown is to some degree inherited, I'm not one of those who thinks his "Just Plain Folks" persona reflects any lack of either brains or knowledge of how to project himself. No sir, old Dubya has a pretty good idea of what sells among plain folks. Put another way, his father first made himself Head Spook and then Total Head Honcho and it's not unreasonable to suppose the son has inherited a good many of the qualities that propelled his father to the top. Two wrap up, while the two speeches are both formally addressed to parliaments of various types, the President is an awful lot more worried about how it'll sell to the cameras than the Queen is. One could make some tediously democratic point at this juncture. I, however, prefer to dream of the glorious days to come when the Queen will once again don the terrifying war-blue of her ancestors and ride out to battle on her bronze chariot, its wheels bearing cruel spikes with which to mow down the bravest of her enemies. For does not Elizabeth bear the blood of Boadicea? The answer to that is, yes, but in dilute measure. One can't imagine Boadicea (I refuse to use the pathetically correct version "Boudicca") being late for the first time in 50 years because her chariot was stuck behind a learner driver. Thursday, January 31, 2002
Francophiles, speak out. Both Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal are having mild guilt attacks over all this cheese-eating surrender monkeys stuff. He says he quite likes the French and "I'm going to write something nice about them first chance I get." My sentiments exactly. I go to France whenever I can. But the French elite, venal yet pompous, do not make our task easy. How often do we get to read about the magnificent not-very-secret society of French gourmets who feast on unpasteurized milk, fragrant blue cheese and forbidden cuts of meat in defiance of all regulations? I can't even find a link. But they do exist. Here, as second prize, is a very old article by Jim* Henley in the Guardian saying the French aren't as Europhile as we think. Actually it is a pretty sound analysis, but I was looking for something far more quick, French and lively than mere politics. *TWHACK SELF ON HEAD / CORRECTION The real Jim Henley writes, "I've actually been blogging long enough now that I had to ask myself, "Did I write something nice about the French?" Then I worried that there was someone at the Guardian trying to live off my reputation. (I mean, they're pretty stupid at the Guardian, right?) But apparently the byline on the article is Jon Henley, who is likely deeply jealous that I registered highclearing.com before he did."My typing fingers obviously just think that "Jim" goes with "Henley" better than "Jon" does. It's sort of a compliment if you think about it. Bell, book and a word from the mayor. One of Damianation's readers sent him a CNN story about a village that officially expelled Satan from the community. Wish it was that easy, guys. I am reminded of the Kipling short called "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat." That story has a surprisingly modern starting point: two motorists (oh, for that age of empty roads!) are caught in a dishonest speed-trap run for profit by the local authorities. In revenge they manouevre the yokels into making their village famous for its folly. Feel better now? These are the instructions given to airport security screeners in the US. Aren't you relieved that they are told "personnel may not rely on generalized stereotypes or attitudes or beliefs about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity." There is no excuse for insulting behaviour towards Arab or Moslem travellers. There is no excuse for ignoring the fact that there are other fanatics than Moslem ones, and that Moslem terrorists will try to use non-Arab agents when they can. But what does it take for the Department of Transportation to admit that it is not a belief but a fact that, at this time, 90% of the world's terrorists are Arabs and Moslems? Two big smoking holes in a major city? From this side of the Atlantic it seems odd - admirable, but odd - the way Americans pay so much attention to the State of the Union speech. After the tragedies and dramas of last year it is natural that this year's speech will be watched carefully, but even in the piping years of peace it seems that ordinary Americans will sit and watch the speech on TV. In this country as soon as a Party Political Broadcast comes on they have to beef up the National Grid to cope with the surge of power required by millions of kettles being put on to boil. I believe that was literally true in the days when all channels had them simultaneously. Of course a Party Political isn't comparable to the State of the Union, but that's the point - what is? No one say the Queen's speech on Christmas Day. I always put it on out of respect, and loyally half listen while I pig the rest of the pudding in another room. It is sincere and can be moving in a stilted way, but were not talking policy content here, are we? Anyway, it's very impressive the way Americans take it so seriously. Like the dude does. Wednesday, January 30, 2002
Anglosphericalsceptical Emmanuel Goldstein writes that his column on antiwar.com is taking a break, at least for the next few months. Meanwhile Airstripone.blogspot.com has mutated into a team effort, possibly under the influence of spores carried by my fellow Samizdatan David Carr. The brothers have Labour over a financial barrel. A possible explanation for the upsurge in union militancy from Ian McWhirter writing in the Glasgow Herald. (You have to press "opinion".) He believes that the requirement to disclose large donations has put off businesses who don't want to be accused of cronyism. That in turn has made Labour more dependent on the unions. To think that I supported the European Economic Community. To think that I was bored by the European Community. And now I loathe and fear the European Union. Why? Because of this sort of mindless destruction of the environment. The EU has a venereal disease. It can't even stop itself from harming the causes it most affects to love. (Also covered in The Edge of England's Sword and Samizdata, and no wonder.) Scary stuff. While my flowing locks bedecked the pillow, the ether fizzed hot with talk of someone denouncing Sulli. for alleged Krugmanesque practices. By the time I had finished my cornflakes and had taken my morning dose of the dread drug gfi, and hence was finally able to face the world, Tony Adragna had already caught the ball From Left Field and was in the process of hurling it back. SPLASH!The long promised new look to Dawson.com has arrived, courtesy of Stacey of Sekimori Design who has a designer blog (well it would be, wouldn't it?) in which she shocked me to the core by admitting that she doesn't like Thunderbirds. The very first post of the New Dawsonian Era mentions me calling his new design "the wave of the future". Which, worryingly, it is. The worry does not come from any dislike of resting my eyes on a surfer's dream. I'm just worried that the standard has moved up again. For a while there I thought I was poised on the cutting edge of technology for having figured out how to change the background colours. Oh well, balancing on the cutting edge gives you stripy feet. 5,4,3,2,1... Midwest Conservative Journal And she's off! Unlinkable no more! Thanks to Myria and Geoffrey Barto, gurus of of the ancient and puissant art of Hut Mul. French lessons for us monkeys Geoffrey Barto of Turkeyblog which used to live here but now lives here chimes in with a more scholarly interpretation of the dreaded Simpson's phrase that I discovered yesterday. "I'm not a native speaker of French, but the de reddition construction, while meaning "of surrender" doesn't feel quite right (maybe you should check with Matt Welch's wife).[Um, if you know the lady personally, perhaps you might like to ask this particular question, Geoffrey. - NS] To offer something a little more out-there, may I suggest "singes capitulards caséivores" - monkeys tending-to-surrender eating-cheese (like carnivores eat meat; I doubt that this word exists, but the roots are there to make it). Alternatively, singes capitulards qui mangent du fromage or singes capitulards, mangeurs de fromage. Since I rather think the answer to that would be "a smack round the ear - Comme ca!" I rather think that the issue must forever remain unsolved. Je me rends. Unless any French readers would care to let us know the equivalent insults for those boorish Anglophones? Oh, yes. The wicked Christopher Johnson of the unlinkable (though I have been sent some useful hints {which worked, see above}) Midwest Conservative Journal, who started all this, has confessed that he does not speak French but used translation software. Wow, this is cool. Interesting that, though it gave far from a perfect result this time, translation software has definitely reached the stage of being useful. What changes will come to the world when the curse of Babel is finally lifted? What towers will we build? Tuesday, January 29, 2002
Disturbing (but Funny) Search Requests. I had had some inkling of the awful truth of what modern software can do when Samizdata posted a list of funny criteria which had guided some folk to them. But the full horror only became clear to me when I skimmed through the "Bloggie" winners and found a wonderful site called "Disturbing Search Requests." (Warning: the award means that the site is dead crowded today.) Yes, I know, you are amazed that people who didn't know all about both phenomenon and site are even allowed out any more. But it's new to me and I love it. This is funny spell-checking for the 21st century. Talking of which, Christopher Johnson of MCJ asks, 'Are spell-checkers intelligent life forms? Juno's didn't like "McAuliffe." [Democratic party chairman.] It suggested "Malice."' Three things I found out in the last 24 hours that everybody else has known about for ages. 1. Control-F. 2. Cleverer hit counters than wot I got can tell what search criteria people used to find your blog. Deeply, deeply embarrassing. 3. The phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - see previous post and this Goldberg article. For one brief moment I thought I had successfully linked to the Midwest Conservative Journal. But no. I've tried various stragegies of leaving in and editing out those two pesky squares, and it still doesn't work. You'll have to go via Samizdata (who have mysteriously called me a "posh blog stop". Posh? Essex girl me?) if you want to see Your Editor calling the EU the League of Nations and sundry other jibes, such as "vous fromage mangeant des singes de reddition." Ah, French, the language of diplomacy. Quite possibly that means "cheese-eating surrender-monkeys," but it may not because the French-English online dictionary I consulted warned me that la reddition was a new submission and had not been checked. It is nice to see a dictionary being built up, apparently, word by word by anyone who happens to pass by and feels so inclined, like modern day barn-raising. No one seems to have voted for Canadian whisky as being the best in his little poll. Isn't that sad? A seven year old boy was stabbed by Palestinian infiltrators according to the Jerusalem Post. Clicking the Arab Terror button gets an equivalent of "Portraits of Grief." An Author's Tale. John Weidner of Random Jottings says he was touched by this Telegraph article on author Patrick O'Brian. I confess I was more saddened and disturbed, perhaps because I had no idea of O'Brian's double life. We delude ourselves that we know an author because we know his books. I lost touch with O'Brian's work when after the birth of my first child my fiction consumption went down almost to zero and stayed that way for several years. I put this change in the habits of a lifetime down to tiredness and hormones. But "episodic fiction-reading impotence" has other triggers than just having a baby. There was a discussion in the Libertarian Alliance Forum on the subject and several courageous male sufferers came forward. Others told harrowing tales of the reverse condition, describing solitary sixteen-hour book orgies after traumas such as redundancy. Don't worry. Following temporal therapy, in the last year or so I started reading again. And, profound though his moral failings appear to have been, O'Brian's books are on the list. Monday, January 28, 2002
I stand refuted by Alan M. Carroll, who writes, "On the other hand, one may think back to the Rigoberta Menchu incident, where many did say "although the content of the book was refuted, it's still true". (This is all about my pedantic objections to the misuse of the word "refute".) Also from Instapundit "PUNDITGATE STRIKES BRITAIN, at least according to this report from The Guardian. This sounds far worse than anything involving Enron, I have to say. Does the pun in "smoked out" mean that the Prof was joking when he said it sounded "worse than Enron"? I hope so. Scruton would escape horsewhipping under my proposed system, since it was always obvious to me what he would say about ciggies and I am not half as shocked that he seeks to be paid for saying it as I am by the amount. It's so low. The Guardian article is not quite clear, but if the £4.5 - 5.5k per month was not just for placing articles but also for "...assisting the multinational - the world's third-largest cigarette combine and manufacturer of brands such as Camel and Winston - on everything from education and licensing to dealing with the World Health Organisation."then it's pretty measly. OK, OK, I'm being a little too easy on Scruton here. He seems to have annoyed the Financial Times enough for them to drop him, so clearly they did not feel he was dealing with them properly. Though he made no secret that he was a consultant for Japan Tobacco, I can see their irritation that Scruton sought to break the usual convention that a columnist is only paid by one master, the newspaper, when a story by him appears in that paper. Perhaps the Club Committee ought to drop a stiff hint in the professor's ear about disclosure. If consultancy fees that substantially add to a pundit's income are going to become commonplace we need a new set of habits. But Scruton escapes, as Krugman does not, the charge of hypocrisy. By the way, if Clive Bates does not get a salary for being a director of ASH, then I shall apologise handsomely for calling him, as I do call him, "a grimy hack for the anti-smoking industry." The Guardian's headline-writer, a grimy hack for the newspaper industry, was also no doubt paid well for falsely stating Scruton was promoting smoking per se, rather than smokers' rights. Regrettably, I have not been paid to write this. From Instapundit's FAQ: "While I'm at it, a surprisingly large number of people don't know how to use the "find in page" feature that most browsers have. Control-F, or clicking on "Edit" and selecting "find" will let you search for an individual word on a page. It's very useful, but I'm amazed how many people don't know about it." Including me, until this moment. Times columnist Matthew Parris got a bit of stick from warbloggers for pessimistic predictions that didn't come to pass. Never mind. In the domestic sphere he is one of the best. This article on the NuLab way of dealing with crises shows how Parris does it. Click the link to read some darkly comic lines, but the part that made me most angry was this: "I listened to the Health Secretary on the Today programme at the start of the week. Alan Milburn had been invited to discuss a directive issued by a Civil Service health chief in the South East telling staff the region was heading for an overspend and must make urgent cuts, no matter how painful. What, asked the interviewer, did Mr Milburn make of that? Oh, said the Secretary of State, no problem: they can get the shortfall from other regions which may be underspent. Thus in 30 seconds, to extricate himself from a temporary tight spot on the radio, a Health Secretary kicks away an entire financial discipline, undermines the woman tasked to enforce it, and cheats those regions which do succeed in keeping within their limits. After that interview, everyone in the health service will be taking their spending limits just a fraction less seriously." Parris is wrong about the "just a fraction less seriously" - the peverse incentives are much more serious than that. But if you want to know by what mechanism things fall apart, there it is described. A grim end. US forces storm a Kandahar hospital where wounded International Taliban were left stranded by the fall of the regime that brought them to Afghanistan. They decided to barricade themeselves in, waiting for... what, I wonder? Anyone want to tell me they'd have been worse off on the beach in Cuba? It's surprising that this seige, which has been running for months, was successfully kept out of the public eye. UPDATE: Robert A. Carroll writes, "I dunno where you are, but there were quite a few stories about the terrorists holed-up in the hospital. I'd bet I heard about them once a week, on average." Oops. Ignorance revealed. Too much time blogging, I suppose..... In retrospect I now realise that the tail-end of one news story I heard did refer to the seige. Hidden glories of the Midden. John Weidner writes, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation would be well advised to hire him for the defence: "I think 'midden' is used in archaeology for the village trash-heaps and dumps that are of great interest to excavators. Perhaps someone read about treasures of some primitive culture being found in a midden, and assumed it was some sort of art gallery." Through the keyhole. There are fascinating pictures of AintNoBadDude's party for LA bloggers. The Dude himself has little round glasses and a cute little flick in his hair. Ooooh, I just knew he would. But I always sort of thought he had black hair. And a lightning-bolt scar... Apart from that the biggest surprise is the unaccountable failure of various bloggers to wear their "props" 24 hours a day. Matt Welch: no hat. I love that hat! Ken Layne: no hat and no trenchcoat. You're not going to tell me that anyone with a typeface like that doesn't wear a trenchcoat. Inappropriate Words. I've just noticed that what I wrote below ties in with Moira Breen's understandably peeved response to the misuse of words. My own peeve of the month is people who think "refute" means "deny" or "argue against" rather than "disprove". It was funny but also sad to hear someone on the radio say, "Dr X may have refuted what I said, but I know it's true." Sunday, January 27, 2002
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a page giving publicity to websites of interest to Aborigines. It's called "the Midden." Why? Is there some culturally specific metaphor - something about where the flies all go to socialize, perhaps - of which I am ignorant, or did some enthusiastic young thing at ABC convince herself that it meant sorta like "central meeting place" rather than its official meaning of "pile of manure"? That came out sounding nastier than I really intended. From what I could see there was nothing I would confidently describe as crappy about the actual aboriginal material, although much of it had the laboured, wheezy tone of a culture being muffled by subsidy. I just want to know who thinks up these names and why. Dear Old Oom Krugman Some thought-provoking words in defence of Paul Krugman from Mind Over... There's a ping-pong match here between two views as to whether Krugman's profession as an economist should have have given him any special insight when paying in the now famous Enron $50k cheque to his bank account. Mark Steyn says, "he of all people should know it doesn't come out of thin air." The Zilber response is, "Honestly, Andrew [addressed to Andrew Sullivan], do you really ever expect to convince an economist to apologize for his own market value?" The resolution? Krugman's arrogance - I won't go so far as to say 'crime' - lay in taking the tone of a fearless giant-killer and defender of the peasantry while stashing an enormous cheque from Giant Plc. The phrase "It's Just Not Done, Old Chap" has covered a lot of folly over the years, but it also served to keep many a soul on the straight and narrow. If it is the "done thing" nowadays for columnists to act like this then it's about time they were all horsewhipped on the steps of their clubs. If Krugman had been happy to tell the world, "I'm a superstar, and paid to match" all along he wouldn't look such a rat now. Don't just scroll down to find your own name in the "Hiawatha for our times" in Unremitting Verse. Read all of it. Go on. Get yourself some culture. Blairey bait: Glenn Sacks, one of us. OK, I didn't set this up, it just happened, right? I jus' goes and checks out Tim Blair, an' he disses Glenn Sacks an' there's all these links, see, and one of them is really great and makes me say that can a guy who writes this be all bad? This is how it feels to be Charlie Brown seeing a smile spread across Lucy's face as his foot leaves the ground to kick the ball. Saturday, January 26, 2002
Not many posts today, as my loving family intend to gently but firmly escort me out of my warm cyber-cave in order to feel once more the sun on my face (no chance) and wind in my hair (can do). Before I go, any teletubby survivors among you, such as the Distinguished Correspondent (bet he's never been called that before) who e-mailed me the other day, might like to see this winsome ditty that did the rounds of the playground some time ago.:
Friday, January 25, 2002
The sad fate of my Blaireys. The first thing they teach aspiring journos in j-school is a trick of the trade known as the Tim Blair gambit, often inexplicably abbreviated to "Blairey". It works thus. You write an op-ed dissing something. Then you wait for replies saying "you're too mean." Then, and only then, you release the killer fact held in reserve. For an example see Fxxzzplt. (Noise indicates utter failure of Blogger archive to smoothly implement my request to link to that Tamin Ansary thing where this gambit was first revealed.) Twice in the last few weeks I have sought to provoke the scheming Blair by jocular insults against his country, while all the time holding ready a quiverfull of shafts of repartee poised to shoot down all his most likely replies. Not only has he failed to respond for so long that I have forgotten what my own V-1 and V-2 Vengeance Jokes actually were, although I do recall that one of them somehow involved asserting that wombats are made of fibreglass*, he has further oppressed me by himself bringing up a glorious bit of Ozmockery. *a fact personally checked out by my husband who fell into a trance while wombat-viewing at Sydney Zoo. He reported that waiting for it to move was a deeply disquieting, ego-deconstructive yet oddly transformative experience of ephiphany-through-boredom. My day for fulfilling promises. I also said I'd give answers to my little quiz on the breakdown of body count for the conflict in Northern Ireland. The place to go, as two and a half million viewers already know, is the Conflict Archive on the Internet site, known by its rather contrived acronym CAIN. One grimly fascinating section of this site consists of statistics tablulated by Malcolm Sutton and can be found on http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html. Who did the killing? http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Organisation_Summary.html Deaths (caused) by Organisation Summary British Security 363 Irish Security 5 Loyalist Paramilitary 991 not known 78 Republican Paramilitary 2043 TOTAL 3480 So Republicans killed more than twice the number of victims claimed by Loyalists. (Note: No, I do NOT think that excuses Loyalist killers.) But my question was a cheat, dear readers, for it hid an interesting and little known paradox. Namely that there were more Catholic victims than Protestant. Who did the dying? Deaths by Religion Summary Catholic 1506 Not from Northern Ireland 713 Protestant 1261 TOTAL 3480 How come? Because as well as killing Protestants the Republican paramilitaries killed loads of people of their own - and my own - Catholic religion. Neither sort of killing makes me like them very much, but I think the second type ought to be better known. Oh yes, I also said I would supply the population ratio. It's 58% Protestant to 42% Catholic. Although the word "minority" is often, accurately, used to refer to the Catholic population, there is a curious tendency to simply use the word as a sympathy-getter without any consideration of the logically necessary implication that the non-Catholics are the majority. Can I supply examples? No, because one can't supply examples of an absence. Just read a lot about NI and you'll see what I mean, once you start looking for it. I've found it really saves on mental wear and tear when discussing NI to get all your caveats in first. Please take it as read that I am the last person to think that mere numbers make a cause righteous. My point is only that the lack of interest in the Protestants amounts to bias. Last post I promised examples showing a determined effort not to notice that the really heavy restraint on the Camp X-ray prisoners was for only for the flight. Here's one from the lovable Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. "However, we may ask: "Is there one single incident of the Taliban treating their prisoners, whether Muslim, non- Muslim, Northern Alliance, Western, in this manner, depriving them of the ability to speak, hear, smell, move, etc. throughout the seven years that they were in power?"We may indeed ask. Let's ask Sayed Abdullah. The Washington Post article telling his story describes how Taliban beatings and imprisonment crippled him, blurred his vision and speech, damaged his brain, rendered him incontinent, and, in a perfect emblem of the Taliban, killed his pleasure in books. The numerous prisoners of the Taliban who had hads and feet amputated might also score as "incidents", no? Azzam finished his article on a note intended to be stirring: "The next time there is a martyrdom operation carried out by individuals for whom the Sunnah of the Prophet is worth more than the lives of American civilians, America only has itself to blame: it cannot point the finger at anyone when the 'chickens come home to roost'. "No, but it can point daisy-cutters. Good news, when you're dealing with people who think that the proof that a man does value the Sunnah of the Prophet is that he does not value the lives of American civilians. Thursday, January 24, 2002
Correction. I was posting too fast on the 22nd and ended up being inaccurate when "quoting Instapundit quoting Jim Bennett" about that Richard and Judy show poll. Jim Bennett himself wrote in to put me straight: "Actually, it was Instapundit quoting Jim Bennett quoting a Washington Post Article. The funny thing about the article was that it was a typical effort by T.R.Reid, the Post's incredibly Europhile London man. Almost all the article was about how Britons are shocked, shocked, by the X-Ray treatment -- except for the last four sentences which bring up the Richard and Judy poll. I'll add that the latter group also realize that the prisoners are not sitting in their cells muffled up to the eyeballs; the really heavy restraint was just for the time of maximum danger, namely the journey. (I bet the pilots of those flights had a stiff drink afterwards.) There seems to be a determined effort not to notice this fact. I'd post a few links showing what I mean, but, such is the unfairness of life that I have to wash up instead. How others see us. I found this Palestinian Media Watch site via Kesher Talk. The general style of high-flown murderous hysteria featured in its translations will be familiar to those who've seen what is reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute. PMW makes no bones about its message and lacks the more moderate Arab voices which MEMRI does feature. PMW's ideological bent doesn't bother me - so long as the translations are accurate it has every right to bring them to the attention of the world - but if it wants solid credibility it should also indicate how mainstream the publications quoted are. Yes, I know the Palestinian Authority does not allow a free press so in a sense anything they put out is "mainstream." Yet even within that there might be degrees and nuances, kite-flyers for mad ideas and pet moderates for western eyes. "BEFORE THE NEW YORK TIMES STARTS RUNNING "PORTRAITS IN GRIEF" OF FORMER ENRON EMPLOYEES," said Dawson.com, and I thought, wow that is one biting line, gotta blog that, and then I went on and read the next bit: "IT'S WORTH REMEMBERING THAT EVEN AFTER THE COLLAPSE, ENRON STOCK IS STILL WORTH MORE THAN THE ENTIRE SOCIAL SECURITY "TRUST FUND" which turned out to be a really sweet little thrust of the stiletto, too. BUT I HATE THE CAPITALS! THEY REALLY TIRE MY EYES OUT! DAWSON ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? COS I'M SURE SHOUTING AT YOU! Siren song. I tried to resist but I knew I would be sucked over to Unremitting Verse eventually. There's something simply irresistible about the whole idea. Despite the quotes I'd heard bandied about the web, it's not all about Tom Ridge and the present war. For instance there is vast sequel-fodder in verses such as "If My Grocery Store Wrote Me As My Old College Does." Al Quaeda don't watch movies but they talk to people who do, or they did watch when they were kids, and the somehow the idea of the city-in-peril-from-Dr Strange percolates through the same interconnections that put Bert the Muppet on a pro Bin Laden poster in Pakistan. So I think Robert Altman is right and Damian Penny is wrong. Not a comment I often make. I've read the first of Pullman's fantasy series, here reviewed by Andrew Marr in the Telegraph. A good review by a man whose ethos and influence I don't like of a good book whose ethos and influence I don't like. A pro-Mugabe guest column from the Guardian. This is by George Shire It's difficult to know what to say about this, except that to say the bits I do know about are full of distortions and smears, which doesn't give me confidence in the rest. He writes, "You would never know from the way Zimbabwean politics is usually reported in Britain that Zanu-PF supports a broadly social democratic programme...."You'd never know it from this Amnesty page on Zimbabwe either. (And it doesn't even yet include the moves to end freedom of speech in the last two months.) I let my Amnesty subscription lapse because I got tired of their other agendas (anti death-penalty, anti-arms trade) crowding out the core work of writing to free or protect prisoners of conscience, but I still respect them for this sort of work. "As long as Muslims like Mohammad Wakil have a voice," says Bjørn Stærk, "there is hope for Pakistan." He gives a quote from Wakil which encapsulates my see-saw of feelings about the present state of Islam: "The world is relieved to know that 99.9 per cent of our billion plus Muslims are not terrorists. However, this relief is swiftly displaced by the fact that today, over 90 per cent of the world's terrorists are Muslims. These ignorant, misguided Muslims justify their terrorism as "jehad". And we, the moderate, secular and educated Muslim elite have, for decades, bought into their argument to pacify their wrath against us." Silly note: there's hope for me, too: if I put Bjorn Staerk's name in as the link I automatically get the funny characters. Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Who is this chap Krugman anyway? Whoever he is, Random Jottings flags up a nuance often ignored, while quoting another good Mark Steyn column. UPDATE: A hypocrite, that's who. I've just re-read both Mark Steyn's column and John Weidner's commentary. Both of them need a bit more shouting about than I gave them a minute ago. The Steyn thing is ace. Sample quote: "In other words, if the producer's girlfriend gets $50,000 for being "script consultant" on a movie (as happened to a friend of mine), she can be forgiven for not knowing about how any of this icky money business works. But, if an economist gets offered 50,000 for nothing, he should at least understand it doesn't come out of thin air -- down the line, it might even come out of the pockets of all those little people he bleats on about."Plus lots of stuff about the way the paper media are being soft on one of their own. And John Weidner's point, which I have not seen anywhere else, about the difference between donations to a political campaign and donations to a person's own bank account, makes Krugman look worse yet. Captain Kirk as villain? Thomas Sipos drops me a line every now and again. As well as being a lawyer he is a luminary in a writers' salon called the Karl Hess Club, and this website of theirs mentions the "Prometheus Awards", established by the Libertarian Futurist Society "to honor books in which the Captain Kirks of the galaxy are the villains. Books in which the only good starship captains are those who smuggle contraband past interplanetary governments." Yeah! But nothing can dent my affection for Classic Trek, polystyrene rocks and all. Some letters you just post uncut. "The ultimate parody of this subgenre of science fiction [Trials of Humanity] has to be the Eighth Voyage of Ijon Tichy, described by Stanislaw Lem in his Star Diaries. It is hilarious - full of descriptions of humans as lopsided bags of mucus ("snot monsters") by the disgusted Representatives to the Star Congress. The trial culminates when it turns out that humans are the corrupted evolution of a higher-beings illegal refuse pile. Actually, it is quite hilarious, as is most of the rest of the book, especially the Seventh Voyage which is a hilarious time-travel-paradox-meet-your-parents story. -- Dave Bakin" Gee thanks, Mr Bakin, so good of you to share. Some poll results showing why Jack Straw should keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay popular..
Intelligent concern about treatment of prisoners is a good thing. A yawning gulf between the so-called leaders of opinion and ordinary people is also a good thing, if it presages the fast-approaching appearance of aforesaid opinion leaders in the dole queue. [UPDATE/CORRECTION: Jim Bennett was actually himself quoting a Washington Post article.] Lileks on Richard Scarry: the dark side. Have fun. He has not yet begun to suffer. When his Gnat is a year or two older Lileks Senior will taste the full horror of singing the Teletubbies theme tune while driving even when, for the first time in months, he is alone in the car. A friend of mine got seriously into an SF scenario where the Tubbies were test-tube grown* clone-descendants of aliens imprisoned for long forgotten crimes on a planet run by robots. Sort of like Australians, really. I didn't say that, you imagined it. Talking of those aliens, have you seen my new "Ranting and Roaring" link over there to the left? Go there and see an awe-inspiring picture of one of the original aliens in its spaceship. This one is an example of the species before it was genetically engineered into the green, purple, yellow and red-skinned forms. *Look at them. They didn't propagate sexually, now, did they? What on earth was I talking about two posts down? These two Telegraph pieces cover it well. First take a look at yesterday's leading article "Another Surrender" then at an article published the day before on the recent Bloody Sunday film. It's the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, so there has been a rash of films and documentaries about it. Fine, normal, OK. What is not fine and OK though it definitely is normal is the glaring absence of any portrayal of or interest in the Protestant side of the story. ('m talking about the whole Northern Ireland conflict here, not just Bloody Sunday.) The British Army take on things is shamefully underepresented but not utterly ignored. The Protestants... hey man it's weird. They've been written out. Invisible. Do this quiz in your heads. Answers in a day or two's time.
And no, I'm not under the impression that two wrongs make a right, nor that the rightness or wrongness of a cause is decided by population numbers, still less that the identifiers "Protestant" and "Catholic" have any significant connection to varying beliefs about transubstantiation and the Real Presence. I swoop like a harpy! With my cruel beak I snatch links from Perry de Havilland's very mouth! Uncatchable, I fly away to gloat and consume this Onion piece about a gun-besotted peace activist at my leisure. Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Exciting new 25th anniversary drama in production from BBC! Already in production, ready for screening on the anniversary this time next year is a vivid reconstruction, of the human cost of the La Mon House Hotel bombing. Twelve people were killed, several by being burnt alive, when the Provisional IRA blew up this hotel. This drama will tell their story... Just kidding. Philistines take over Reason magazine? I heard it from the Kolkata Libertarian. Reason magazine have published an article by Charles Freund who says that when the Taliban trashed the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan they did more to wrap the statues in greatness than their builders ever did. A very careful reading of the article reveals it as stopping short of cheering the Taliban on, more observing that "fame accrues to those who die untimely deaths" applies even to statues. So Suman Palit is a little harsh to Freund, but I did admire the rest of his comment on the way art made according to quite different precepts reminds us of lost civilizations. Monday, January 21, 2002
Shock horror! Canadian blogger PICKS UP PHONE! It has to be admitted that some of us are so mentally stuck in the cyber-province that it comes as a shock when you find intrepid souls like Lawrence Garvin of What Fresh Hell ........?, willing to pick up phones, seek out officials by name and ask them for their side of the story. For a phone-phobic like me, that ranks only just short of ringing up Sauron and asking him, does he think he has an image problem? You will remember the Ms Jan Ovens in the FORCES Canada controversy. She was the official who asked that the Canadian flag be removed from the pro-smoking website. Mr Garvin tracked her down and spoke to her, and reports that she picks up her own phone (which favourably impresses him and in turn me) and was happy to explain. He says, "It turns out that the flag itself, while it is technically Trademarked, can be used by anyone so long as it is not used in a style that would tend to cause confusion between the user and an official government agency. That was the beef in this case. " He concludes that the smokers oversold their story. I don't. I feel sympathy for Ms Ovens because I, like her, have been a civil servant obliged to pick up the phone and explain a government policy to sometimes irate members of the public. But that same fellow feeling also supplies me with a certain amount of cynicism. I've been there. I've done my share of soothing the public, and when I read that the only beef was the possibility of confusion between FORCES and the Government of Canada, I'm afraid that the background music swells in my head, and the tune is a medley of lullabies. There is one point which favours the government case. "FORCES" is an unfortunate acronym. The phrase "Canadian FORCES" genuinely might be taken to mean "Canadian Armed Forces." But if you look at the snapshot of the original web page you will see that, right next to the flag, the very first line of the explanation says that FORCES Canada is the Canadian chapter of an international smokers' rights organization. How much clearer can you get? Did any member of the public actually complain that they had been misled by the presence of the flag into thinking FORCES was a government site? Lawrence Garvin, in saying that the smokers oversold their case, points out that the repressive-sounding section 9 of the Trademark Act, (1) No person shall adopt in connection with a business, as a trade-mark or otherwise, any mark consisting of, or so nearly resembling as to be likely to be mistaken for, is cited in the e-mail exchange between the FORCES-Canada rep. and the govt. rep but the next and more liberal-sounding section is not. The liberal-sounding bit reads:
I don't think that the omission by FORCES of this section damages their case. For one thing, I may be missing something that a lawyer would see, but the way I read it the two sections say nearly the same thing anyway, just in different order. For another, I say again what on earth was there likely to mislead the public? And if the only objection to the use of the flag is the possibility of confusion, can the government please advise its citizens in FORCES Canada of ways in which they can put the flag back on the website in a non-confusing manner? And this part of Mr Garvin's report was the clincher in leading me to conclude that my sympathies are still with the smokers: "Ms. Ovens told me that this type of intervention had been made "two or three" times before but that there is no organized effort to chase down abuses of trademark on the flag." If they only chase down two or three then this is a dead-letter law. When a dead-letter law is revived just to nab two or three violators then there must be a reason for those two or three. Much as I disapprove of trademarking a national flag, I can see why it would be a good thing to stop fraudsters pretending a product had some sort of Government approval or backing when it did not. FORCES never made or implied such a claim. No one is saying that they did. So why was the decision made to crack down on FORCES in particular? Were the other two also smokers' rights groups? It looks to me as if this is a case of selective enforcement of the law according to political criteria. In case anyone's wondering, I am not a smoker and never have been. I never could manage to inhale - I had to fake it when having the obligatory surreptitious attempt at smoking on the way to school. Embarrassing at the time, but lucky for my health in retrospect. Nor have I any connection with FORCES. The first communication I ever had from them was when Mr Walt Hanley sent me an e-mail last night drawing my attention to this webpage. If any of the relevant officials are reading this, the questions I think you should answer as part of your commitment to being seen to enforce the law equally to all, are in bold.. But don't read Walt Hanley's web page, because he specifically forbids you to in the disclaimer at the end. I'm telling you this because you might otherwise read all the way down the page and only realize when it was too late. It's a pity. If people keep banging on about this then Ms Ovens will stop answering her own phone, and the relatively human face of the Canadian government will be dimished by a small amount. But I still think the removal of the flag is quietly oppressive and bang on we should. A good wigging. Blogs of War links to an article that makes fun of the venerable if sometimes lousy headgear that weighs down the brain of the British Judge, and hints they should be jettisoned. I believe that Australian judges did get rid of the wigs some years ago, but then went back to wearing them. The reason was that off-duty judges found themselves much more prone to be accosted by aggrieved ex-cons when shopping. The wig also puts a brake on judicial showing off. Would the judges castigated by AintNoBadDude be so prone to play to the gallery if they knew they looked like plonkers? I like the wigs. As I-forget-who said, "are our lives so full of colour and drama that we must set out to make them greyer and more boring?" Finally the wigs and other anachronistic regalia might - and now the edge comes into my voice and it all gets a bit less jolly - they might remind some of our trendy modern judges that the law, including trial by jury, is their entailed inheritance not their bloody productivity bonus. Must've been in a snappy mood this morning when I made a dig at Instapundit over the Cornell West saga. Actually - you know how you do these things - I was actually quite happy to keep hearing about the egregious West but had noticed the big peak of West stories a few days ago and somehow felt obliged to make a dig because I could. Y' know. Or maybe you are nicer than me and don't. Anyway in recompense I'll say that tucked into a post about K-mart was one of those little buried gems of Reynolds humour that you could so easily miss: "I haven't followed the issue that closely, if you can believe it, but..." Italics mine. Smiles again. I'm glad Ken Layne seems to have made peace with Scourge of the Warblogs Tim Cavanaugh. Rail safety is costing lives, says the Telegraph's Neil Collins. I respect him for this. Anyone can sound off about this issue on a blog, and I often do, at zero emotional cost to myself. Mr Collins comes right out and says it in reply to an "how would you feel if it was your son who died?" e-mail from the mother of a young man killed in the Paddington rail crash. He does not abuse a person who has suffered, but nor does he deviate from saying what must be said. Got to grit my teeth and say it: well done David Blunkett, Lord Irvine and Lord Goldsmith if it was really you who "saved trial by jury", as the front page of the Times put it. Was there any principle there, or was it just reluctance to be unpopular, I wonder? I'm trying to shut up about the Canadian flag for a bit, lest I be accused of "doing a Cornell West". Unfortunately Hawspipe posted a whole lot of detailed stuff which mentions me a lot. That is completely irrelevant, of course. Just look at the "life's little choices" picture below. CIA, CIA, How many Al-Quaeda did you burn today? Tacky I know. But how odd it is that everybody's swapped round from talking about wicked CIA activity to wicked CIA inactivity. Dawson.com has a link to a review of three books about the CIA, which like all the best book reviews goes way beyond the actual books. Sunday, January 20, 2002
Mail from David Janes. "Well, I just did some goggling and found this: The Canadian Flag is protected by the Trade Marks Act, and protected"The next question is: did someone tell FORCES that this use was, unathorized, or did they do this a publicity stunt?" Note from NS: I heard about this whole thing from the Libertarian Alliance Forum (it's on Yahoo, but you need to register, and unfortunately there is a stupid hacker loose in it at the moment.) That gave the impression that FORCES Canada were merely using the flag as a visual identifier to lead readers to their bit of the site. But I don't know. And while the question is interesting, it makes no difference to the principle. UPDATE: Looks like Mr Janes' own blog, "Ranting and Roaring" has more info. I've just added a link to his name above. Gosh, he gets mail from Mark Steyn! Rare agreement between Aint No Bad Dude and Samizdata on why you shouldn't have cameras in courts. Kudos, Dude, you've moved me from undecided to decided in one fell swoop. And the times when that has happened all stand out clearly in my mind. Take on the flag issue: Quote from a letter to Instapundit: "That's nuts," he murmured. "My dad was a POW in World War II. He and his dead buddies earned that fellow the right to carry his flag and speak nonsense." From the context of the letter it's clear that the flag referred to is actually the swastika. Now, the evil associations of that symbol are about as far away as you can get from the friendly thoughts that I have when presented with the Canadian flag. But the same sentiment should apply in this case as well. Let's assume that you think that smoking is a thoroughly unpleasant habit and that the smokers' rights group are speaking nonsense. So what! A whole load of Canadians (a great many most likely smokers) died to preserve freedom of speech, and that includes freedom of pictures and symbols. Many libertarians think that the nation is an accident of geography unworthy of their loyalty. I'm not one of them. I think that loving your own country is as natural and need be no more aggressive than loving your own family. But it has to be said that patriotism has been corrupted many times with worship of the current ruling man or group, which is indeed worship of an accident of the times, unworthy of anyone's loyalty. One of the triumphs of our civilization is the partial unbundling of these two ideas. We sneer at the Third World countries with their Presidents for Life and at the old communist countries where the Party and the People were, so we were told, forever indivisible. The reason I'm so het up about one little arrangement of pixels on a screen is that Canada, a civilized country, one of our own, has taken a step in that same terrible direction. The Canadian flag does not belong to the Canadian government. Neither does Canada. |
