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 
Jane's Blogosphere: blogtrack for Natalie Solent. 
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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Monday, January 19, 2004
Three improbable, appropriate and delightful things before bed. Did you know that -
True! All true, at least according to the Mirror. Thinking about it, perhaps Charlie isn't really Britain's oldest bird, just the oldest bird whose age and provenance can be proved as a result of the fame of its onetime owner. I expect there are older parrots around, living out their longer-than-human lifespans unrecorded, having been inherited from seagoing uncles.
Parrots are, I gather, extremely intelligent birds; intelligent enough to go nuts if they have too boring a life. With an owner like Churchill that probably wasn't a danger Charlie ever had to face.
(Via Samizdata - and while you're there have a laugh at David Farrer's comment.) Depressing. Details are scarce but this story reports that police are investigating an alleged assault on Professor Stephen Hawking. Since he is confined to a wheelchair by motor neurone disease this appears to be a crime contemptible even by the standards of the British thug. Vanity, thy name is Woman. With this spectacular picture, Myria of It Can't Rain All the Time says, quite unjustifiably, that she has taken "vanity publishing to new lows." Interestingly only a few posts down she mounts a defence of vanity while explaining her reasons for wanting cosmetic surgery. Her sister at A Little Sarcasm looks like her. Can you see the potential for conflict here?
Actually, the conflict doesn't happen and my last line was a shameless attention-seeking device akin to taking all the forty-three seconds where someone is shouting in a generally philosophical ninety-minute movie and putting them all into the promotional clip. Myria's Sister responds with an evolutionary take on why people are so down on those who want cosmetic surgery.
I don't myself. But to spend money on beautifying your own body to your own standards is no sillier than spending it on beautifying your house or on beautiful art for your walls.
It's funny how some ways of parting with your money in exchange for aesthetic pleasures are respectable when other ways aren't. A few years ago I was in the audience for a big free firework display put on by a bunch of SF fans including my husband. They paid for the fireworks themselves. Most people loved it, but one old woman was grousing away (while still watching, mind you) at all those hundreds of pounds being wasted. I was too polite to correct her "hundreds" to "thousands, actually" or to ask why the many luxury cars parked nearby (possibly including hers, as she appeared quite well off) did not arouse her ire. Saturday, January 17, 2004
David Janes is helping President Bush deal with his mail. Warning: not work safe for Turkish officers of general rank. The Royal British Legion are supporting the pensioners' demo against council tax rises. Why? What's it got to do with what the Royal British Legion is for?
I'm sympathetic to pretty well any campaign for lower taxes, though having seen it repeated six times on every single Liberal Democrat leaflet that comes through the door I really don't think I need to hear the phrase "a Council Tax system that takes account of an individual's ability to pay" from the Legion as well.
I can see why there might be plenty of overlap between the membership of the Legion and this particular campaign. So what? Why should ex-Servicemen qua ex-Servicemen have any better a knowledge of an economic issue than anyone else? Frankly, old age pensioners are probably worse judges of this than average, having grown up in an era that quite seriously thought that a nationalised industry was bound to be more efficient because its workers would have a purer motivation than mere moneymaking.
Come November I always have a poppy. That isn't going to change. But much more of this from the Legion and it will lose its identity as a Services charity and just become part of the background radiation emanating from assorted NGOs. Bip-bip-bip will go my pay-attention Geiger counter. Something that matters? Nah, it's just the Legion banging on about their theories of taxation again. Discount it.
Help the Aged are in on the act too, but I'd already given up on them. Thursday, January 15, 2004
Just mucking about. It's not exactly clear what happened in the bus crash that killed this boy. What is clear is that while he was sitting on the top deck of the bus, a group of his schoolfellows were pushing, shoving and fighting in and around the driver's cab. One of them may have grabbed the wheel. There are two possible political morals to this. One is, don't have schools. Children in large groups behave like troops of baboons. The other is, if you are going to have schools, have discipline. Cargo cult regulation. On a more serious note, this post about regulation by Thought Mesh contains a whole bundle of profound truths. ... the gist was that our corporate customers cannot comply with their reporting and auditing requirements. There are so many and they are so detailed that compliance is apparently no longer possible. And ... the requirement is now not actual compliance, but “improvement” over time ... It’s the “no child left behind” theory of corporate regulation. One is left to wonder if we shouldn’t be trying for a set of regulations that is actually possible to obey. The answer, of course, is that it’s best for the regulators if everyone is guilty of something. Then when bad things happen, there is a nice selection of the usual suspects to pin the blame on, all of them disarmed because they are in violation of some regulation. A.O.G. is talking about commercial regulation here, but he could equally well be describing the sovietised British education system: In another sense, it’s cargo cult regulation. Some good company is observed to perform some action. Therefore if every company is required to do that, they will be good companies. In fact, this kind of regulatory environment, with endless obscure rules and universal compliance failure, is perfect for the sophisticated con men. Not only does it provide a thicket of procedures to hide in, but it distracts everyone into watching the forms without time to worry about the results. Can you feel the power coursing through you? Then take your finger out of the plug, stupid. I like success books, I really do. That's why I was so entertained by the product line of a company selling demotivational tools that I found out about via Thought Mesh. For instance, is this not a profound truth? Rob Hinkley's got a letter in the Guardian. Here it is. He says it's been slightly edited. He should count himself lucky; years ago a friend of mine wrote a letter denouncing equally censorship by fundamentalist Christians and by politically-correct socialists. By the time it had passed through the Guardian's digestive system it emerged as a denunciation of censorship by "Christian socialists." Wednesday, January 14, 2004
I am worn to a ravelling, like the Tailor of Gloucester and for much the same reason. Ten things I hate about cutting out pattern pieces:
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
'And exactly what do you suggest we do with all the students who are "got rid of" because of disruptive behaviour? So asked a correspondent to Freedom and Whisky after David Farrer said schools should be privatised, and free to eject troublemakers. Here's how David Farrer answered. I say: actually the private sector is already much better at educating and reforming disruptive children than the state for the excellent reason that their parents' money is collectively as good as anyone else's. Not as copious, sometimes, but as good: there is a market there. A private school that can take in a yob at yob-premium fees and then manage things so that he is no longer a yob (meaning the school does not have to bear yob-premium costs) stands to make a handsome profit. A parent that finds out that he or she must pay extra because of their kid's bad behaviour is highly motivated to start taking an interest in said behaviour. However if a child is so horrible that no one wants to teach him, let him rot. I said the same thing at greater length - no, on second reading, at about the same length but with greater acrimoniousness - on March 28 last year. Shock news just in: Bloggers are Real People, Live in Real World. Norman Geras knows famous folk. No, not him. My kids have never heard of him, unless it's from me, and if it was via me it doesn't count since as a parent I radiate a deadly fame-invalidating uncoolness field or something. The properly famous person known (rather well, it appears) to Norman Geras is, as I have belatedly twigged after a child-centred rant about all those books on the living room floor, her. Getting personal. It seems that the inspection reports on childminders are to go online. The confidentiality protections the story mentions are derisory. We're all used to inspection reports on schools being made public. I have mixed feelings. On the other hand it gives absurd importance to the mouthings of yet another pack of government inspectors. It's a sad sight to see parents and teachers worrying about what the G-men think rather than what each other think - or what the children think. On the other hand one is inclined to welcome any incoming foot with a decent chance of connecting with the educational establishment's bloated backside, however ignoble the body the foot is connected to.
At least in the case of schools, though, the blow is softened by collective responsibility. Also Ofsted stay at a school for a week. It may make them the guests from Hell but at least the school gets numerous chances to show what it can do. In contrast a childminder's future will be made or broken by the opinion of one official having made one or at the most two visits. Just pray the inspector doesn't come calling when you are having a Bad Kid Day.
The solution isn't to have yet more or longer official visitations. I personally would find it difficult to welcome an Ofsted inspector into my home for a whole week, wouldn't you? Also the last thing you want is inspectors with too little real work to do; they will spend all their time instead of just some of it leafing through your Beatrix Potter books in search of unacceptable gender stereotypes.
Remind me never to become a childminder. Remind me never to become a child. Friday, January 09, 2004
Giving away stuff for profit. Brian M. found a SF author who is offering free downloads of his books so he can make money off them. It's only paradoxical at first sight. The author, Eric Flint, makes the tremendously good point that books have always circulated for free, when friends lend them to one another. What's happened here? Has the author "lost a sale?"He then goes on to make the point that there is nothing an author with any sense should prize more than such word of mouth recommendation: the friend lent one book may buy a lifetime's supply of that author's work in years to come. I wonder, though. The author endearingly says that 'most people are honest.' That's true, I think. I hope. Still, there's no denying that public ethics are influenced by what is convenient. Once a bad thing becomes convenient, especially if it isn't an obviously bad thing, a significant minority of people do it. Then they start arguing for their right to do it so they can feel good about themselves and be saved the trouble of concealment. Eventually they may convince most people and make the ones still holding out against temptation look like a bunch of fuddy-duddies. Pretty soon the bad thing is the custom of the country.
At the moment I'd far rather have a book-sized chunk of words as a book than a download. I don't even know what you do with a download. Read it online? Hurts the eyes, or the neck, and for many people you have to sit at a desk to do it. Print it out? Takes a week and probably costs the price of the book in ink and paper. How much nicer to have a snuggy little book that you can take to bed with you.
But come the day of the utterly portable 4" x 6" x ½" hand-held computer with a zero-glare screen, or the desktop machine that prints and binds a nice little paperback from a download, and of it being as easy to e-mail a friend and say, "hey, you simply must get yourself a download of X's latest, it's terrific" as to physically lend the book - then I dunno, mate, I dunno.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
The pressure-cooker effect. I have a post about Robert Kilroy-Silk's tussle with the Comission for Racial Equality over at Samizdata. Wednesday, January 07, 2004
We need you to be our attack dogs. That's why we're going to keep you hungry and mean. One thing you may possibly have noticed is that I'm not the Palestinians' biggest cheerleader. However I wouldn't treat a dog the way that those who are the Palestinians' biggest cheerleaders treat their Arab brethren. Damian Penny summarises an AP report on how Arab states ensure the Palestinians within their borders cannot put down roots. Most Arab countries except Jordan deny Palestinians citizenship. In many countries they are banned from professional employment. They suffer restrictions on higher education, and when others get free healthcare Palestinians do not. Why? Because if they stopped being an underclass they might give up the dream of returning to Israel. "Hold on to your dream" is usually an inspiring message, but not when the unspoken coda is "...because slim as it is, that hope is the only one we intend to leave you." And they call Israel an apartheid state. Tuesday, January 06, 2004
We've all heard of thought control. Many are the grim examples of those in power who have attempted to extend their dominion even to the innermost thoughts of their victims. From the Holy Inquisition to the Consistory of Geneva. From King Il Jong of Korea to the Essex Wildlife Trust. Monday, January 05, 2004
Mr Pound will go to the guillotine after all. He didn't originate the "bastards" quote, the bastard.¹ Captain Heinrich wrote to Brian Tiemann at Grotto11.com with the following two links attributing "The people have spoken, the bastards" to either Dick Tuck, after losing the 1966 California State Senate race or Morris Udall in 1976 after failing to achieve the Democratic presidential nomination. He adds: ... perhaps you could forward this to Mr Pound to refresh his memory. What might also be of benefit to him on future occasions, would be the words of Edmund Burke to his Bristol constituents: "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."That quote can be found on this website.² Arguably the Pound in the People's Pocket³ is being truer to Burke's advice now when he wriggles out of doing what he said he'd do than when he originally agreed to do it. But wriggling out is also a serious offence. It's like Vortigern offering Hengest anything he wanted if he could have his daughter's hand in marriage and then acting all taken aback when Hengest said, "thanks awfully old chap, in that case I'll have Kent." They never change, these people. Well, maybe they do: Vortigern ceded Kent in exchange for the nubile Rowena. To the guillotine with the lot of 'em, that's what I say. ¹January 5 and failed already.
²If the Edmund Burke link isn't working and you need to see it on a proper website before you're happy, try this one or the jumping-off point for the wonky link.
³I'm rather proud of that line. Would you mind standing back and admiring it? Saturday, January 03, 2004
That said, "The people have spoken, the bastards" is a beaut of a line and Come The Glorious Day we shall spare Mr Pound on those grounds alone. Tony Martin's Law: Update Stephen Pound, the MP who rashly said he would try to steer the Today listeners' choice of new law (whatever it might be) through parliament, had a painful interview on TV today. (Channel 5, I think.) His main strategy seemed to be to say that because the literal meaning of the words on the listeners' ballot would allow you to shoot dead a kid who stepped into your garden to retrieve a ball, that made every conceivable alteration of the present law self-evidently insane. Somehow I doubt that similar deficiencies in whatever unimportant words were chosen to identify the rival proposals would have proved insurmountable if the voters had gone for an option more congenial to him. If you are reading this Mr Pound, do try to remember that you are a Member of Parliament. Proposing, scrutinising and amending the text of new laws is one of the things you are paid for. To aid you in this task you can call on the services of skilled Parliamentary draughtsmen, not to mention the many barristers and legal scholars in your own party. I'm sure you'll manage something. Off you hop, then, and tell me when it's ready. Friday, January 02, 2004
True in Toronto but false in Kispiox. Moira Breen tussles with a cold and the limits of science in a free society. Her long-running interest in the Kennewick Man case sparked the post. Sometimes she's cruel... If you've ever wondered how certain academic types manage to justify sneering at Baptists while honoring any other (non-European) spiritual belief - well, they don't manage to justify it. But this is as fine an example of an attempt to justify it as I've come across.Sometimes she's kind.... It is also true that the engagement of non-Europeans with the troubling truths of science will be an experience distinct from that of Europeans - from whose culture, after all, contemporary science evolved, and who particpated in an intellectual tradition, extant for millenia, that truth is best approached by reasoned argumentation. But to state these truisms addresses nothing and settles nothing. Whatever the difficulties of that engagement (and they can be very harsh and painful indeed), science is not culture-specific, and all must eventually come to terms with what science has to say about the world - not only because that is a natural response of thinking, curious human beings ("how do I make all I know fit together coherently?"), but because no culture is static and sealed, and truth claims will inevitably contest.But cruel or kind, she's on target: I no more want "experts" ruling over our private lives, no matter how true their claims, than I want what are essentially anti-blasphemy rules limiting speech and free inquiry. Thursday, January 01, 2004
Beyond parody. Jackie Ashley wants to nanny you. When I wrote all that guff about not wanting to "add to the profits of fat-cat Big Calendar shareholders" I was joking. But our Jackie was serious when she wrote this: The crucial point which critics of the nanny state fail to mention is that individuals and families don't stand alone. None of us lives in a neutral social space, unharassed, and free to make wise long-term choices. Whatever the philosophical ideal, in the real world we are bombarded by corporate messages cajoling us and our children to consume and borrow. We are inhabitants of the more, now, spend-it, eat-it society, which - let us not forget - boosts the profits of the multinationals. Get working on audience research. Radio 4's "Today" programme is the world epicentre for snobby progressivism, right? Maybe, maybe not. In some poll or other where Today listeners voted to choose the new law they would most like to see enacted, the favourite was a law allowing householders to use any means to defend their home against burglars. Or if you think that ecologically sound bio-fuel belongs back in the horse, you could read Tim Blair on why Test cricket is like the free market. And a Happy New Yea... on second thoughts, let us challenge the surrender to capitalist consumer-culture assumptions implicit in that wish. Quite apart from the ethno-centric and patriarchal Christian overtones implicit in the designation "2004", why does one have to have a new year every year? No doubt multi-national corporations are very happy with this planned obsolescence! But if you want to conserve the planet's dwindling stock of years, why not join with committed friends all over the world and recycle an old year? Many activists find it very satisfying to keep lovely vintage old years such as 1972 or 1968 running on ecologically sound bio-fuel rather than add to the profits of fat-cat Big Calendar shareholders. Happy old year. Thursday, December 25, 2003
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
"My first ever Instalanche - and it's about my dress sense. " First there was this. Then there was this. Michael Jennings talks about it here and Brian Micklethwait talks about it here, and down in Brian's comments Michael utters the lament that makes the title of this post. Got all that? Joking apart, I was there and I can testify they were both wearing perfectly nice guy clothes from reputable shops. Both signaled "intellectual sort of chap" with admirable efficiency. Since the photo was posted and the caption written - or at least approved - by Michael Jennings himself, it's safe to assume that he was successfully signalling, "I have self-confidence enough to not bother slavishly following fashion because I know damn well I am an intellectual." Indeed (as he might say himself), Glenn Reynolds wasn't just signalling an explicit compliment ("you have substance") but also an implied one ("it is safe for me to joke about your style because you know and I know that you are intellectuals.")
I know I've been claiming lately that it's becoming harder to tell what class people are from their clothes; in other words that nearly all of us now send out the message "I am not out to dominate you" or, perhaps "I'm not out to stand out from the crowd." Even so, within this large message of democratic sameness most of us are very good at reading and sending out minor differentiating messages by details of dress - even if the signal is, "My mind is on higher things." We are so habituated to self-revelation by clothing that any attempt at re-branding dare not go too far from the original. I have seen some makeover TV programs where the made-over person looks not so much dressed up as lost in their new togs.
Random thought: has human evolution still been going on since most of the species took to covering themselves with skins or cloths? I suppose it could, proceeding by differential reproductive success rather than deaths.
All very interesting, this style versus substance stuff. Probably Virginia Postrel has dealt with everything I've said by page four. Incidentally, at the same gathering, Brian asked me "how are you?" then answered himself, "I know how you are. I read your blog." Is this true? Discuss. Weather Report. The winds of the blogosphere have blown the much-missed It Can't Rain All The Time to a new location. After a long break from blogging, made necessary for sad reasons, Myria is back. And like many people she is wondering why they even bother with these Bin Laden audio tapes. Bin Laden is like a UFO. UFO fans never can give a really convincing explanation as to why their little green friends choose to make themselves known in Lesser Pifflington-in-the-Bog or Dead Sheep Gulch, Arizona. Don't these people have publicists? What's actually stopping them from landing on the White House lawn, or on the helipad of the United Nations building if you insist, and saying, "take me to your leader" in the traditional manner? (And don't say the United States Air Force: aliens who can cross interstellar space are not bothered by F-16s, not even when they have a spiffy new mux loadable data entry display set, whatever that may be. )
Yup. The UFOs and Osama share a common problem, namely existence-deficiency syndrome. But I must disagree with Myria when she says his legend will grow without proof of death or capture. I say, let the audio tapes keep coming. A few little disputes between Arab TV stations as to authenticity are joy to my ears. (Hey, maybe the CIA could make a few deliberately unconvincing tapes of their own, if they haven't already.) Let the realisation that they were duped grow in the minds of his followers, all the stronger for its slow genesis. The knowledge that they fell for one specific deception will carry with it the seeds of a greater doubt. Monday, December 22, 2003
Peter Cuthbertson has gone postal. I've always wanted to do that. I wonder how he'd get on with his colleague from across the pond who wrote this? The writer, an American postal worker, has eleven suggestions to defeat the dreaded neocons, whom he appears to think are likely to be religious fundamentalists. (And there I was thinking they were all recovering Trots.) The best parts, however, are not divulged for "political security reasons". 11th. Sex. .The 2000-pound gorilla. Once again, too important to post online or in hard copy. I have a few good suggestions; if you want to know more, contact me. Serious inquires only.You heard the man. Instaconspiracy theory. This photoshopped image of Saddam Hussein, created by a guy called "happydogdesign" in the Free Republic, was praised by Glenn Reynolds. Is that why it appeared uncredited in the Saturday 20th December 2003 edition of the Scottish tabloid the Daily Record? It's on page 21 of the print version, illustrating this Bob Shields column. Unfortunately the online version doesn't show the picture, but I've kept the clipping. Do you think we should tell someone? |