Natalie Solent |
|
|
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:
Archives
November 2001
December 2001
January 2002
February 2002
March 2002
April 2002
May 2002
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
August 2007
October 2007
February 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
March 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
October 2009
January 2010
March 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011
April 2011
June 2011
August 2011
September 2011
October 2011
November 2011
January 2012
February 2012
March 2012
May 2012
|
Monday, May 23, 2005
Down the road, worlds away, but one can go there in imagination. Via R C Dean at Samizdata I found this marvellous Criterion article by Theodore Dalrymple. If I say that it is about the Church of England vicar who collected rejection slips for his short stories until he submitted them under the name Rahila Khan, then I will tempt a few anti-PC readers to go there for a laugh. But it is far, far more than that. Dalrymple says explicitly and the Rev. Forward (the author's real name) says in his work something important about literature. Academics and intellectuals found the affair painful to elucidate. If it were true that the balkanization of literature was justified by the supposition that only people who belonged to a certain category of people could truly understand, write about, interpret, and sympathize with the experiences of people in that same category, so that, for example, only women could write about women for women, and only blacks about blacks for blacks (the very careers of many academics now depending upon such a supposition), how was it possible that a Church of England vicar had been able, actually without much difficulty, to persuade a feminist publishing house that he wrote as a woman, and as a Muslim woman of Indian subcontinental origin at that? Was he not in fact telling us, as presumably a good Christian should, that mankind is essentially one, and that if we make a sufficient effort we too can enter into the worlds of others who are in many ways different from ourselves? Was he not implying that the traditional view of literature, that it expresses the universal in the particular, was not only morally and religiously superior, but empirically a more accurate description of it as an enterprise than the view of literature as a series of stockades, from which groups of the embittered and enraged endlessly fired arrows at one another without ever quite achieving victory?There is also a compassionate account of the two differently blighted but mutually contemptuous cultures that "Rahila Khan" described. Many of the stories describe ultimately tragic liaisons between Muslim girls and white boys living in depressed Midlands towns. "Khan" had claimed to have been one and know the other well. The only thing that was untrue in that claim was which half was which: But from the moment I started to read the stories in Down the Road, Worlds Away (and the title itself should have given a clue to the book’s serious intent, capturing in five words a very important element of modern social reality), I understood that the author was not in any sense perpetrating a hoax, much less a fraud. He was writing in earnest, and not satirizing anyone. For what he described in his stories was only too familiar to me from my work as a doctor, and no one could write so clearly of such matters without a deep sense of purpose. I hope to read it one day. Sadly, it is difficult to get hold of as the copies not yet sold were pulped by the publishers when the "fraud" was discovered. Number gut. Shannon Love writes about estimates of dead in the Iraq war. For example, during WWII the Japanese mainland suffered the most extensive aerial bombardment in history. Every major urban area save one (Kyoto) was burned to the ground. On march 10th, 1945 the great Tokyo fire raid burned down a third of the city and killed 100,000 people. Two major cities were nuked. Japan at the time had a population of 78 million, so 1% of the population would have been around 780,000. Now, what is your guess as to the number of Japanese killed on the Japanese mainland? Click, click, click. That's how often a life is lost by the policies that Make Poverty History wants to entrench. Stephen Pollard says the Make Poverty History campaign would be better called Make Poverty Permanent. The engine of growth, without which countries remain in poverty, is trade. Tariff protection keeps resources in unproductive, low-return activities such as the type of farming which Make Poverty History seeks to entrench. Free trade shifts resources to more productive uses. Take Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and India: while they maintained their tariffs, they remained stuck in poverty, the only thing which tariffs protect. As recently as the early 1980s they were poor countries. Their incomes per head ranged from $700 (£350) to $7,000. Today they range from $2,000 to more than $21,000. Even India, one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1960s and 1970s, is on the road to prosperity. In 1991 the Indian Government reacted to a financial near-collapse by cutting forty years of bureaucratic control in seven hours. Its economy now grows much faster than its population and India is becoming one of the leading exporters of computer software and services. There is a vast new middle class of 250 million. Lee Moore writes: I was amused to see that what you describe as the Guardian's belated conversion to the idea of limited government, to which you linked on 16 May, concludes with a complaint about the government's reluctance to ban people from working more than 48 hours a week. I think we can rest easy - the Guardian is still on the side of those who would guard us from ourselves.Oh, the relief. Actually, though my understanding is that the directive concerned will mostly stop shop and factory employees from such predatory behaviour. Creative types like Guardian writers will find all sorts of let-outs. Friday, May 20, 2005
Independent journalists get new insights from exotic herbs. I always suspected something of the sort. Scott Burgess has more. A government task force is going to specify exactly what they mean by good school behaviour and advise on how to bring it about. Jacqui Smith, the new schools minister says: "A culture of respect, good behaviour and firm discipline must be the norm in all schools, all of the time." It must be. All schools, all of the time. What weakness, what years of disappointment, what nervousness lie behind those martial words. It sounds like a failing teacher talking tough to the Friday afternoon class she most dreads. Brian Micklethwait says the way to get rid of bad behaviour is much easier to specify than the committee think. Easy to specify but politically impossible, for the moment. The heart of the impossibility is the minister's demand that yobbery be banished from all schools, all the time - when what is needed is the power to banish particular yobs from your particular school this afternoon. Gerard Baker on George Galloway: Perhaps in the end, if you’re a cynic you may find Mr Galloway’s asymmetrical approach to authority — a lapdog in the hands of the one who likes to watch as his victims are tortured; a lion in the face of those who threaten with questions and subpoenas — simply the familiar mark of the coward. If you’re an optimist, you might find it oddly comforting The Mother of Parliaments clasps him to her bosom. The world’s greatest deliberative body sits in embarrassed silence as he lectures it on its shortcomings. Nothing surely illustrates better the absolute superiority of the West’s system and what underpins it that we tolerate and even reward such lèse-majesté. We know what Saddam did to those who were brave enough to utter much more cogent critiques of his rule.The Times used to be called "The Thunderer." It thunders still. Thursday, May 19, 2005
Grand strategy "...the real strategic danger to the cause of freedom and democracy isn't from the noisemakers of the Left but from the temptation to betray principles for tactical gain. It lies on the very same path that Galloway, Martin and Newsweek, in their cunning, have taken. The Left hitched its wagon to the worst men of the 20th and 21st century and it is dragging them into the dustbin of history. Let's go the other way."- Wretchard of the Belmont Club, talking about the alliance with Karimov of Uzbekistan. Read the whole thing, as Instapundit does say. Also read the extremely informative post from Winds of Change quoted within the Belmont Club post. Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Good stuff I read today. Yeah, can't think of a better headline. Photon Courier on why it is a bad idea for university libraries to dispense with books. The Blitherbun takes the metaphor of the political balance literally and does some sums. Suggestions as to the S.I. units of condemnation should be directed to him. Getting back to his main topic, I wonder how or if his interesting model could be tied into this article by Mark Steyn, also quoted by the Bunny a few days ago. As a general proposition, the Heseltine thesis is doubtful: successful conservatives don’t move towards the ‘political centre’. They move the political centre towards them. That’s what Thatcher and Reagan both did. Whereas if you move towards the political centre, all you do is move the centre. If Labour is at 1 on the scale and the Tories are at 9, and their focus groups tell them to move to 5, they have ensured that henceforth the centre will be 3, and they’ll be fighting entirely on the Left’s terms and the Left’s issues.Let me add to the mixture another quote from the same piece on my own account: So Lord Heseltine may simply be providing further evidence that he’s yesterday’s man when he drones on about the ‘centre ground’ being where elections are won. In Northern Ireland, it’s where elections are lost; the centre ground is where parties go to die.Both the Steyn quotes appear to contradict Scott's model. But I have a feeling they might be reconciled by someone more awake than I. (UPDATE: With one bound he was free! Visit the link again to see Scott incorporate the Steyn quote as supporting evidence for his model) Richard North of the EU Referendum blog sardonically asks why the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) presumes to instruct the Lebanese media on the fairness of its election coverage when "when virtually every member state holding a referendum is attempting to rig the media to ensure a "yes" vote for the EU constitution." I shall demonstrate my healthy self-esteem by including two acrimonious comments threads at Shot By Both Sides in which I participated under the heading of this post. Upstanding newspapers. Jake writes: "Have you tried the IHT? or maybe our FT?You have a point, there. I'd prefer a British paper - as I said I have a preference for taking a paper that at least some other people around me are reading too. (In my next life I'd like to be a lemming.) Will definitely consider the FT. Not only would it be educational, the pink pages in the recycling would impress the neighbours as well. Alex Bensky writes: I see the British papers from time to time and everything you say, and more, is true. And yet...one day wander over to one of our excuses for a local paper, the Detroit Free Press, at www.freep.com. Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Mildly hypocritical, mildly prudish reader seeks newspaper for fun and possible long term relationship. From the age of ten onwards I read the Times every day and learnt a lot from it. I was the sort of child who instructed her elders and betters on any complexities of the situation in South Africa that they might have missed. Having survived being strangled I was on course to be the well-informed person you see today. I remember the Times, and particularly the columns written by Bernard Levin, with gratitude. Decades have passed. My oldest child is twelve. You might think that I would make sure to have a quality newspaper hit the mat each day. We do not. Why not? Several reasons, but to my suprise I find that one of the most important is that they are all too salacious. Since I am complaining about that I had better mention that there will be some discussion of sex in this post. Nothing the average twelve year old hasn't known about for years, but probably mutually embarrassing for parent or child to know the other has read. That's the whole point, actually. When I was a kid I learned much the ways of the world - sex, drugs, crime and so on - from reading the paper. The information came in gradually, casually and mixed up with other topics. Good. However, thirty years ago an article about prostitution, for instance, would be wrapped up in a package of high-minded concern for a social problem. Possibly this concern was fake, mere cover for a way of giving readers a thrill while allowing writer and reader to pretend to be respectable. More likely motives were mixed. Certainly I frequently read such articles in the spirit of one looking up the rude words in the dictionary. But if hypocrisy it was, then so much the better for hypocrisy. It compares well with the crassness of today. A month or two back the Sunday Telegraph had an article about that countrywoman who became a prostitute to pay for her daughter's riding lessons. It wasn't the fact that the story was covered that I objected to but the detailed descriptions of her encounters with various clients, including clients who took pleasure in violent abuse. I would rather not have that topic for family discussion over breakfast, thank you. And that was the Telegraph - once upon a time written by respectable Tories. The Independent and the Guardian are full of writers anxious to assert how comfortable they are with various fetishes. Quite apart from the explicitness, I do not wish my children to grow up to be bores. Should I then go back to my old friend, the Times? It's probably the best bet of the qualities, but I find it ominous that David Aaronovitch has joined the staff. I greatly respect Aaro's writing on the Iraq war but every fifth article he wrote for the Guardian concerned his relationship with his right hand and I have no reason to suppose he will be any different in the Times. I'm certainly not advocating censorship, just saying that a paper that went back to offering all the news that's fit to print would have my subscription sewn up. I would like it to be a major paper, though. I have nothing against the various Christian papers - I am always happy to learn of a successful Alpha Course in Cheam - but that isn't what I want as a main news source. Too sectional. Too wholesome. Too admiring of Christian Aid. I want the cosmopolitan feel of a newspaper that I know is also read by several hundred thousand of my compatriots at least. How many other readers are there like me? My guess is that quite a few parents who don't particularly care about sex in the papers on their own account suddenly develop prudish tendencies when their child reads about it. As a result many children may not be getting started on the newspaper habit. Monday, May 16, 2005
The Guardian repudiates the Nanny State. In this leading article, "The Limits of Politics", the Guardian is referring to the recent banning of "hoodies" and baseball caps by Bluewater shopping centre, which for some reason the government felt compelled to comment upon. But in 10 years of raising the issue, we are no closer to seeing a bigger picture, or solutions that involve anything more than crackdowns, anti-social behaviour orders, or more police out on the beat. Not that the opposition parties have been any better on the subject: the Liberal Democrats recently changed its tack on Asbos and dispersal orders, while the Conservatives had their micro-policies aimed at yobs. In all cases the politicians' reflex is to take actions that they think will influence the tide of society.Now they tell us. It would have been nice if the Guardian had discovered the wisdom of limited government earlier. Like, say, 1945. As it is the leader writer has had his or her epiphany about the wrong subject. There may be indeed be little that politicians can do to actively legislate for civic virtue but there are enormous harms that politicians could stop doing. They could stop paying people to raise their children without virtue, social skills, chance of employment, or fathers. These "genuine shifts in cohesion and cooperation" the editorialist writes about did not arise from an inauspicious conjunction of the stars. If there is one insight (actually there are several) I owe to my time as a socialist it is that bad states of society are not unalterable. How the old-time socialists would have despised the Guardian today, as it sighs like a medieval peasant woman paying to grind her corn at the Lord's mill: "It's just he way things are. There's nothing the likes of us can do." The only problem is that the present weakness of civic society largely arises from the very measures those old-time socialists enacted with such determination. Admitting that and beginning the process of reversal is very painful but it is not complex. The pretence that it is complex is usually just an excuse to avoid the admission. As for the ban itself, fine, if that's what Bluewater thinks will make the majority of its customers happy. Why shouldn't it operate a dress code? Lots of pubs and clubs already do. If you don't like the code, shop elsewhere. Bluewater will keep it if it works and drop it if it doesn't. "If there is a workshop of the world today the way there was in the north of England in the mid 19th century, then this is it." Michael Jennings went to Shenzen, China. He took both literary and literal snapshots of a society steaming away from the Third World and into the First. Or do I mean Second World to first? I liked this: I quite genuinely would not want to live in a world that does not contain giant bowling pins with writing on them in languages I do not understand: But that is because my metacontext is fundamentally cosmopolitan. Fish enjoying new cylindrical home. I thought that the Huffington Post would be nothing but clueless leftebrities telling us that they are emigrating to Canada after the Oscars and whales are, like, so spiritual. Perhaps not. This post surprised me. The writer is the CEO of three charter schools in Los Angeles. There are four special interests that have blocked, clogged, and undermined reform for decades. It is all about money, control, and power. It is diseased value system that leaves our kids uneducated, exposed to violence and drugs, and with too few or zero opportunities to pursue the American Dream. Who are the four? Emphatically, I name names: the teacher's unions, the University Schools of Education, the bureaucracies, and (unbelievably) the PTAs. Via Joanne Jacobs. Thursday, May 12, 2005
The sun shines and your humble servant bloggeth not. Or not much anyway. Maybe I should garden more often. Scott Burgess left off the blogging for a while to tend the Burgess plot and look at him now: riding high. Galloway, A L Kennedy, Allende - it's all there. Wednesday, May 11, 2005
This article by Nkululeko Khumalo from the South African business magazine Business Day is rather heavy on the economist-speak. Read it anyway. One large factor keeping Africa down is this: Delays at African customs are on average longer than in the rest of the world: 12 days in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with seven and five-and-a-half days in Latin America and in central and east Asia respectively. There is an epic to be written about African lorry drivers. The distances they cross, the ingenuity they must employ and the risks they take to get their cargoes delivered are all on a tremendous scale. The epic would involve tragedy: many of them have AIDS and have carried the disease with them. (Via Alex Singleton's mail digest from the Globalisation Institute.) Better to have been left in ignorance as to what Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said on Monday. Let that not diminish my gratitude to the nice person who responded to my shameless hints of yesterday by supplying the text, but, heavens, this is one of Yasmin's dopiest. The bigger politics is what concerns us activists much more than the race and/or gender profile of an MP. And so to the Tories. The election ushers in the first 'black' Tory MP, Adam Afriye (half Ghanaian and half English)Unless he has joint Ghanaian-British nationality he is all English. and Shailash Vara, the Ugandan Asian who has done time as deputy chairman for a party which has always repudiated equality and diversity policies and produced a string of racist politicians, including Winston Churchill.You mean she didn't want to talk about early socialist white supremacists after all? So is this the nasty party shedding its repulsive past? Not a bit of it. These results, for me, are a damning manifestation of the splintering of the anti-racist struggle, a triumph of uncle Tomism and worse. Here is what Clive Davis (whose blog I discovered via Stephen Pollard) said about that: "Uncle Tom" is the laziest insult in the book. How does Yasmin know that black and Asian conservatives "assimilate into the political establishment without a backward glance at their origins"? Isn't it just possible that their ideas are based on hard experience rather than an eagerness to get a seat at the top table? Has she ever considered the possibility that it's much easier to follow the right-on crowd rather than take the path of somebody like Shelby Steele, a writer who has been subjected to no end of personal attacks simply for questioning America's post-Civil Rights orthodoxies?Ms Alibhai-Brown continues: To witness the son of illegal Jewish immigrants strategically mobilising mob instincts against immigrants was bad enough. To then have the sons of an African and a Ugandan Asian reiterate these obscene prejudices made me suicidal. They say it isn't racist to control immigration. They know how a racist stench rises when they flash such statements across the land. The victors deserve to be despised by egalitarians and people who believe in human rights, just as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are by millions of Americans of colour.I agree with her view that it's what a politician does that counts, not his or her colour. The rest of the argument scarcely deserves the name. I am undecided on immigration, but even in my most libertarian phases I don't convince myself that someone saying it is not racist to control immigration is responsible for the racist thoughts that third parties may have when they hear this statement. There are probably people who think racist thoughts whenever they hear Yasmin Alibhai-Brown argue for some of her beliefs. She would not feel she had to remain silent to keep them from sin. Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Diversity policies in history. Laban Tall - he pays a quid so you don't have to - has a splendid quote from an article Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has penned for the Independent. Referring, I think, to the Conservative Party, she speaks of: "A party which has always repudiated equality and diversity policies...Too right, sister. It is fact too little known that John Stuart, the Third Earl of Bute, generally reckoned to be the first Tory prime minister, would not countenance sex-change operations on the NHS. ...and produced a string of racist politicians, including Winston Churchill"Hey, Churchill wasn't so bad. The English Democrats* website provides a page of quotes from his memos cited in the first volume of his History of the Second World War. Here is one: There must be no discrimination on grounds of race or colour [In the employment of Indians or Colonial natives in the Royal Navy]. In practice much inconvenience would arrive if this theoretical equality had many examples. Each case must be judged on its merits, from the point of view of smooth administration. I cannot see any objection to Indians serving on H.M. ships where they are qualified and needed, or, if their virtues so deserve, rising to Admirals of the Fleet. But not too many of them, please.One can read that either way. Whether you say that Churchill allowed his principled stand in favour of racial equality to be subordinated to the prejudices of the majority, or to winning the war, it is unarguable both that he made it and that he saw it as a secondary issue. Frankly I don't think Churchill's contemporaries on the left would have done much better: two incompatible tracks have always run in parallel in the British Labour movement; internationalism, and a belief in "British jobs for British workers." And simple protectionism wasn't the half of it. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century ideas could be discussed at Fabian Society meetings by some of the intellectual leading lights of socialism that would get you turfed out of the BNP nowadays. The Webbs, Wells, Shaw, Ruskin and Havelock Ellis all came out with some unlovely sentiments on the subject of eugenics and race. Will Ms Alibhai-Brown mention any of this? I might even bestir myself to buy an actual paper copy of the Indy to see. *in extra large print for older readers. UPDATE: I am too late. The article was in yesterday's paper. The bit they do let you see tantalisingly suggests either that the general thrust of the rest was to denounce anti-semitism, and I have to say that she is on the side of good on that topic, or that Galloway defeating Oona King is somehow a good thing for race relations. Since I have an objection on principle (the principle that my money is better spent elsewhere) to paying for the Independent's "premium content", I shall never know which. Several media sources and major bloggers have asked for help in publicising the Time Traveler Convention. I am happy to oblige. The Convention was held on May 7, but, as JEM says, "if you're a time traveller so what? It's never too late, is it?" Well, it may be. Persons planning to depart for the convention in 2065, ten years after the launch of the Sony Timeboy (they were waiting until the price came down), and then to catch up with themselves a second time on one of those iPod timeshuffles given away free with Weetabix in 2070 ought to be aware of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. Monday, May 09, 2005
"This creepy collection of local government officers, geography teachers and assorted smelly cranks combine the hungry opportunism of a trap-door spider with the prim, bossy condescension of an Edwardian school ma’am, only without the good looks of the former or the moral fibre of the latter." - David Carr on the Liberal Democrats. He's scarcely kinder to the Tories: Deep down in their hearts, Conservative MPs just want a very quiet life, a reasonable stipend and a researcher-cum-catamite. All this nasty politics stuff just gives them a headache.And on Labour's handling of the economy: Sometimes a village is inundated by a man-made reservoir. Often, though, that is not the last that anyone has seen of it. In the hot summer months, when the water level drops, a rotting church steeple can be seen poking up accusingly above the water line. If the level drops further, then the roofs of ruined buildings which one housed a thriving community become visible too, reminding everyone of the price that was paid for the reservoir. Friday, May 06, 2005
A famous name learns first-hand about postal vote fraud. My husband was listening to election stuff on Radio Four this morning and came up to tell me that James Naughtie said that he had been unable to vote because - get this - someone had fraudulently registered his name for a postal vote. "Ho," said I, (whilst deploring etc.) "That'll get 'em buzzing. Nothing stirs up a high priest of the chatterati like being denied his legal rights. The culprit probably targeted him to make that very point." Then my husband rather spoilt this post by saying, "Or it could've been that other bloke." Whichever bloke it was, Naughtie or Humphrys* or whoever, I hope he goes to law and wins a packet. A nice loud legal case with a famous lefty media plaintiff is about the only thing that will persuade the government to take vote fraud seriously. "It is Resolved, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, That, by the known Laws of this Kingdom, every Freeholder, or other Person having a Right to give his Vote at the Election of Members to serve in Parliament, and being wilfully denied or hindered so to do, by the Officer who ought to receive the same, may maintain an Action in the Queen's Courts against such Officer, to assert his Right, and recover Damages for the Injury." *It was Humphrys. (Hat tip - Verity.) He wasn't the only one - not even the only BBC presenter. Many more accounts of lost votes can be found here. Here we go again. It looks like the Lib Dems took seats off Labour rather than the Tories. That was opponents of the war, obviously. Wonder if it will last. The Tories took some damage from UKIP splitting the Eurosceptic vote in marginals. Not a great night for the SNP (gains but overtaken in share of Scottish vote by the Lib Dems), and an actively bad one for Plaid Cymru. Thursday, May 05, 2005
The Edge of England's Sword will be on the edge of his seat, liveblogging the election. The dreaded apathy lurgy can't reach him across the Atlantic. Thinking about it, the link above takes you to one particular permalink. A better link to follow for regular updates would be this one to the main blog. Tony Blair. What to say? Here is a damning indictment. And here is a moving tribute. (Free Iraqi link found via Normblog and Harry's Place) Inexorable incompatibility. A few days ago Best of the Web was too dismissive ("And some people think Christians are weird!") of Steven Spielberg's belief that aliens will be friendly. Spielberg said: "I can't believe anybody would travel such vast distances bent on destruction. I believe anybody who would travel such vast distances are curious explorers, not conquerors," Spielberg said. "Carrying weapons a hundred-thousand light-years is quite a schlepp. I believe it's easier to travel 100,000 light-years with their versions of the Bible."If it is weird to think about such things, sign me up to the weirdo club. Problems may arise for which it is useful to have around a few science-fiction-loving weirdos who have got some thinking done in advance. A more significant criticism of Spielberg's argument is that his mention of aliens bringing their version of the Bible is not an entirely reassuring model even to believers in our version. As my fellow Christian weirdo C S Lewis said in his 1958 essay on whether Christianity could be reconciled with the existence of aliens, 'Religion and Rocketry', "'Gun and gospel' have been horribly combined in the past." This post of mine got started when I saw a post about Spielberg on Thought Mesh. AOG wrote: Conquest isn’t going to be profitable for the same reason we don’t have slavery and the USA is uninterested in conquering other nations. Once a society reaches a sufficient level of technology, brute force and large scale coercion becomes a liablity, not an asset. This is of course the same effect that doomed the USSR and other Communist nations.I agree with this as far as it goes. Of course aliens could wish to conquer for other reasons, such as a species need for dominance, to gain sentient sacrifices to Xfffa-peB[click]-nx, or the desperate need to fyoing the frupbooples of the poor Earthmen who will be grateful in the end. Yet I find none of these prospects as scary as the next one AOG raises: What is far more likely than hostility is complete indifference. It’s far from obvious that that would be preferable. For instance, a automaton swarm that dissassembled the planets to build large scale space structures would be indifferent to humans but hardly beneficial.I am haunted by the fate of the Amerindians at the time of first contact with Europeans: vast numbers of them were wiped out by diseases to which Europeans had immunity and they did not. The Europeans did not plan that, or want it. (There are some accounts of deliberate infection via gifts of blankets infected with smallpox, but in general even the most conscienceless European conquerors wanted living slaves.) Neither the natives or the newcomers knew why one group of humans died from contact and the other did not. Not even the germs themselves, who to alien observers might seem as important as the humans, can be said to have "wanted" so many Amerindians to die; strains of disease that kill off their victims too fast tend to be relatively unsuccessful in replicating themselves. Should we ever make contact with aliens a similar fate might befall us, or them, or both. I don't mean that alien diseases would be likely to harm us or vice versa: surely our respective biochemistries would be too different. (Or would they? What about some microscopic natural or created von Neumann machines that ate more or less anything and used it to replicate themselves?) But I fear being consumed by some inexorable incompatibility, some phenomenon without purpose yet beyond our understanding. I fear the fate of the moth that flies into a flame. This is not an argument for pulling in our horns. It behoves the moth to study fire. If there are dangers out there, better to know. Once we know that one other intelligent race exists, or has existed, it's a safe bet there are more. Even if these aliens are both benevolent and compatible, what about the next lot, and the next, and the next? It's as if the Amerindians had to survive their interaction with not one but a thousand Europes. I've delighted in science fiction for many years. I'm used to thinking that the discovery of an alien race would be tremendously interesting. The day the news of discovery came I would go half mad with wanting to know what they were like, how they lived and died, their ideas of good and evil, what they knew how to do, and how they got here - especially if that last item involved faster than light travel. I still do think I would have all of those reactions. But when I imagine that day as it would be to live rather than to read about, I think that fear would take a grip of my heart that would never entirely loosen, however many years went by with no harm done. Lots of comment from readers on banning the BNP. Anonymous writes: I observe that in the United States and Canada where we have real live (neo) nazis that leaving them to be open has proved very useful. Cockroaches don't thrive in direct sunlight. Pete James writes: Hi, JEM writes ...By the way, I do not favour banning the NF, but the question deserved to be put. Free speech famously does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre; ultimately the principle could be considered the same. Interesting to note the points of disagreement and agreement in the letters above. While I agree that the National Socialist party did have true socialist elements I must stress that I think the great gulf between any democratic party or politician and totalitarians should always be acknowledged. My admiration of Blair's stand on the Iraq war and my anger at his curtailment of ancient liberties I have discussed in other posts. But as the editor of the Times used to say, "This correspondence is now closed." Wednesday, May 04, 2005
My election prediction. A much reduced Labour majority. The Conservatives will do better in the popular vote than polls now suggest, but it won't translate into that many more seats. The Lib Dems will gain a few and be insufferable. Remember, you heard it here millionth. Things too obvious to see. I'm interested in why people make mistakes. So is Anthony Cox, although the sort of mistakes he studies usually have more serious consequences than mine. One day my friend and I set off to a check out a new branch of IKEA. With what care and concentration did I, as navigator, trace our route through the highways and byways, bringing us at last to the fabled blue edifice. My curses turned the air blue when I noticed that plastered across the top of the very map over which my head had been bent so low, in a type size suitable for a headline announcing the invasion of Poland, were the words "NEW STORE OPENING ON..." followed by a date two weeks into the future. We both felt that it was inconsiderate of IKEA to write that bit in print so big that any normal person would assume it was a special offer. I thought of all this today while sniffing the brake pedal of my car. I do not do this for pleasure. It was all part of an attempt to open the bonnet. In the good old days all my cars where full of character, in the iron oxide sense of the word. Of course I knew how to open their bonnets; even when they didn't oblige by doing it spontaneously on the M11, they were always going wrong and I was always peering into the footwell to find whatever recycled impaling-stick the manufacturers had deemed the most amusing means to unlock the interior. What threw me this time was that, the car being (as my cars go) fairly new, the bonnet was opened by an enormous bright red lever placed directly under the steering wheel. Deceivers! I'd always thought that was the ejector button. Should we ban the BNP? JEM writes: Natalie,My short answer has to be no, not just on the grounds (very probable grounds though they are) that banning them would help them recruit, nor even on the grounds that once the State had banned them it would, as Niemöller's poem suggests, be emboldened to ban UKIP and/or RESPECT, but on the grounds that everyone should have freedom of thought simply because they are human. That said, there are obviously some infringements on freedom of thought that outrage me less than others. The ban on Nazi activity in Germany just after WWII - well, it was just going to happen, that's all, and is no more to be complained of than the fact that a man who has just fought off a lethal attack keeps a knee to the neck of his downed assailant. No way were the Allies going to allow their enemies to reorganize having just defeated them at such ruinous cost. Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Selective law enforcement directed at the BNP. Pete James writes: Hi ,I couldn't make the media player thingy work, but, as you all know, that's not exactly unusual for me. Nothing would suprise me less than to see the police seeking to win favour with the government and the Guardian-reading classes by hassling the BNP. Rod Liddle (the journalist and former editor of Radio 4's Today programme who has me cursing and cheering in equal amounts but who cannot be credibly presented as a closet fascist) has written well in the Spectator on a related topic. Some time ago the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, was arrested for making speeches that said that... er, actually, not even the cops arresting him could clearly put their finger on what words of his broke the law. His words were just generally offensive, they said. They probably were, but that's not the point. As Rod Liddle said: ... don’t you suspect that this was precisely a politically motivated and, indeed, directed operation which will, in the end, do nothing to improve race relations and only ensured that a few more burglars and other such recidivists, who are a genuine menace to the public, were able to go about their business unhindered because of the priorities of this government? Would West Yorkshire police have spent so much time and effort on the case had it not been for political involvement from — as that errant officer put it — ‘higher than that’?"Higher than that" means the Home Office, the government department concerned with ensuring the laws are enforced without fear or favour. Mollycoddled Miss. Yay to this post from Hrairoo of Silflay Hraka, addressed to that American woman who made up a whole bunch of lies to cover up wedding day cold feet: You want to report your escape as a kidnapping, complete with perp descriptions and a blue van? Interesting. The intelligence graph of your choices is taking on a noticable downward trend. You have now graduated from "panicked moron" to "panicked moron criminal."It used to be the custom that if the best man failed in his duty to ensure that the groom was both present and sober on the church steps on the day of the wedding, then he had to marry the bride himself. I can't remember if the parallel duty fell to the maid of honour, but it should. Put Not Thy Trust in Princes, Part MMDCCCLXIX. That leading light of redistribution from rich to poor, the government of Zimbabwe, celebrates May Day by breaking up trade union meetings. That leading light of toleration ("Tolerance must extend to those of all faiths and practices" - Prince Abdullah), the government of Saudi Arabia, arrests Pakistanis for the crime of Christian worship. Monday, May 02, 2005
"Can we talk about this later?" says the EU... Tim Worstall examines a nice bit of political manipulation and news management on the part of the EU. I never read this sort of post without thinking, this is the future they want for us. However EU skulduggery about textiles was not the only thing that prompted the title of this post. The mighty Worstall content fountain also, of course, hosts the Britblog roundup. One of the roundees-up (roundup-ees?) is this post from the EU serf, which (honest guv) I had noticed independently but hadn't had time to blog. The Serf quotes an article in Forbes Magazine, "Liberty, European-style" by Dan Seligman. Frighteningly it seems that a perfectly natural and unforced reading of the EU constitution might forbid discussion of measures to change what it defines as rights. The EU constitution says: "Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity … aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized in this Charter or at their limitation."Seligman writes: This seems highly problematic. If someone were to mount a campaign favoring the death penalty, or opposing collective bargaining, or opposing preferences for women, or limiting the options of asylum-seekers, this would plainly constitute an effort to destroy rights recognized in the Charter--an activity characterized as an "abuse of rights" and therefore prohibited. The Bruges Group, a think tank in London, has published an essay arguing this case. The essay was written by Brian Hindley, a British economist, and was endorsed (in a prefatory note) by Oliver Letwin, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Tory "shadow cabinet."An EU spokesman on cultural issues called this argument "nonsense." I am not reassured. Many a time we have been promised before a new abridgement of liberty is made law that it would only be used against obvious nutters and evildoers but that has not been the case. To take an obvious and only apparently trivial example, if someone had said at the time of the 1972 referendum on the EU that one day the law would be turned on humble market stallholders if they sold fruit in pounds and ounces then the speaker would have been denounced as a paranoid fantasist. Saturday, April 30, 2005
I felt very slightly excited about the election today. Mr Blair might win. Or Mr Howard might win. Exciting. Peter Briffa writes about declining trust in politicians for Civitas. Civitas? The man is getting respectable. UPDATE: You can comment on his article by going to the Civitas blog here. Thursday, April 28, 2005
Two quick links. - a disturbing one from Of Arms and the Law, quoting a Guardian article about youths who film themselves violently attacking people for entertainment. I have not followed the link at the end which shows some of these videos. I get upset easily. (Hat tip: James Rummel.) - a much more cheering post from Jim Miller, criticising by means of facts and argument a Guardian / Seattle Times article by Jonathan Raban. Miller says: The Seattle Times headlined Raban's piece, "Democracy holds little allure in the Muslim world". The millions and millions of Muslims who have voted in the last few years would disagree.Some people refuse to see the danger of the fascist-fanatic strain within Islam. Others refuse to see the existence of a powerful movement towards Islamic democracies. Some refuse to see both! Wednesday, April 27, 2005
"Not sure Alastair Cambell would go for this, but you never know." Anthony Cox's election poster for Labour has finally decided me on voting Conservative. I had been uncertain. Conservatives least worst overall, UKIP best on Europe, Labour best on Iraq. Anthony's poster has reminded me how awful it would be to see the Lib Dems gaining our constituency. I'm voting tactically. Julius II he ain't. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not at present planning to assume personal command of his armies and take the field against the French. Instead he has given a sermon on globalisation. As this Samizdata post explains, it could have been a lot worse. Congratulations to the still-young Globalisation Institute for getting mentioned; congratulations to the Archbishop for making the effort to listen to both sides. I still think he would do better to say less. I do not think Dr Williams is egotistical. His trouble is almost the opposite: he is too easily led to link the Anglican church to embarrassingly temporary fads. I note that Iain Murray has praised his stance on the family. "Even when there was folly, it was often not the WWI cliche kind of folly." More thoughts on Gallipoli. ARC writes:
An excess of monuments ensures none will be remembered. One reason why I was pleased at the elevation of Pope Benedict to his present office despite the fact that some of his more liberal rivals for the job might have had beliefs closer to mine is that he clearly does not regard the teachings of his church as his personal property. He has no desire to innovate in order to memorialise himself, like Mitterand causing a glass pyramid* to be built in the courtyard of the Louvre. In the secular world, if every king seeks to leave his monument they all become unmemorable. The Pharoahs had accounts of their victories cut into stone. True, they are still read thousands of years later, but the accounts are so stylized and conventional that carvings made centuries apart repeat each other verbatim. The very names of the conquered chieftains and the tributes they laid at Pharaoh's feet are the same. No modern ruler is likely to make that mistake: our grands projets differ spectacularly in physical form. There's a sort of sameness of concept about them, nonetheless. Getting back to the subject of the papacy, even an an amoral, vainglorious pope indifferent to the truth of the teachings it is his task to proclaim (in no way is Benedict any of those things - but some of his predecessors were) should beware as a matter of prudence from trying to "leave his mark" on doctrine. The warlike Pope Julius II would be most displeased to know that not one in a hundred of us could name him as the Pope who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the roof of the Sistine Chapel but at least we know that some Pope or other did, and know what a Pope is, because Julius did not mess around with what the church taught. He may have ignored it but he didn't change it. There can only be so many changes in the content of a faith before it becomes too amorphous to transmit. The tablets are no longer stone but mud. If that happens the Holy Father will no longer be father of anything. This is degenerate advice to offer compared to the argument that matters: that while there is scope for men to argue that the will of God might have been misunderstood in past ages, and scope to use logic to deduce what the Church should teach in new situations, there is no scope for a mere man to change God's word. But if (as is likely given Benedict's age) it is soon time for the next conclave to convene, and if (as is less likely) the next Bishop of Rome is of like temper to Julius II, then I submit these musings for His Magnificence to consider. Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Gott in Himmel! Richard Gott, writing in the Guardian, is harsh towards the Prime Minister: By seeking to appease ... the principal threat to world peace at the time, he only succeeded in encouraging that country's appetite for aggression and expansionism.In this case the Prime Minister referred to wasn't Tony Blair but Neville Chamberlain, who features in Mr Gott's book called The Appeasers, and the country referred to is Germany in the 1930s. However Mr Gott does have strong views regarding Mr Blair. Having written a book about how the folly of appeasement encourages the appetite for aggression and expansionism of countries that are a threat to world peace you might think that Mr Gott would be keen on firm action. And you'd be right! Blair is a war criminal who should be locked up behind bars without a vote, not standing for election.Mr Gott is not a man who minimises the threat, either. Blair has followed in his footsteps, and is destined for the same place in history's hall of infamy. Like Chamberlain, he is an arrogant and God-fuelled appeaser, the unseemly ally of an unbridled country that presents a global threat similar to Germany in the 1930s.The United States 2005 = Germany 1939. Wait a minute, doesn't that make Bush the same as... No, that cannot be. Left-wingers only say that sort of thing in slanderous right-wing caricatures. I must say, "God-fuelled" is a good choice of adjective that subliminally adds environmental unsoundness to Blair's other crimes. One does feel that it would have been fairer to have at least given Blair credit for the fact that he is C of E and hence fills his tank with Unleaded God. Despite his name Mr Gott does not appear to be a fan of God, and elsewhere in the article is much peturbed by Blair having a hotline to Him and generally thinking himself the chosen agent of the Almighty. I really think Mr Gott ought to have more sympathy with those taking orders from a Higher Power, seeing that in the good old days Mr Gott himself was the chosen agent of the KGB. I am glad to see the old boy has been reconciled with the Guardian, where he used to be Latin America correspondent and Features Editor. How forgiving of the present editor to take him back after his predecessor so rudely ejected him. A Time Lord goes into politics. Beware spoilers! When the first episode of the two-part Dr Who series that has just finished came out I loved it. I also liked the second episode, "World War Three", but less so. There was a foolish anti-Tony Blair crack near the end that gave it relevance to Biased BBC, so I posted about it there. There are some entertaining comments to that post about evil profit-making aliens and the appalling fact that we seem to have surrendered our independent deterrent to the UN several years ago. It is a pity that one quip obscured the many good aspects of the episode. I particularly liked the way that minor characters such as Mickey and Rose's mother were rounded out. (I agree with Joe Newbery, quoted by Patrick Crozier in the post linked to below, that the Doctor himself should not be rounded out.) Mickey's quiet refusal of the chance to see the galaxy was touching. He stepped out of being a joke character and became a person with self-knowledge. It was sad, too, when Rose's mother pleaded with her not to go. The Doctor was rather a git about that, wasn't he? He could at least have stayed for the meal and done something to reassure her. That he did not was believable: Time Lords don't do reassurance, hugs, phatic communication, or shepherd's pie. They do do status, which is why the Doctor's tact returned when it came to saving Mickey's pride. He made a big show of refusing to have Mickey on board on the grounds that he was a "liability": better to be thought a klutz than a coward. Patrick Crozier says: Doctor Who has always been profoundly political. The Daleks are the Nazis. Davros is Hitler. The Sun Makers (a Tom Baker-era story) was all about sky-high taxes. The Sea Devils is all about the Ulster Troubles. It is one of the great strengths of science fiction that it is much easier to discuss political issues than it is with straight drama. That an episode might try to make an (apparently) left-wing point should come as no surprise. You can’t expect it to go all your own way.I commented: There is a big difference between using SF to examine the underlying structure of a political situation without the distraction of one’s present allegiances (e.g. the Sea Devils series, as you say) and the kind of over-topical political reference that does the opposite, jolts one into remembering one’s present allegiances - and forgetting about the story. The former can succeed in dramatic terms for me even when I don’t like the politics. The latter would be likely to fail even if I agreed with the politics.There was one part of the politics that did not have the approval of my anarcho-capitalist side but which had me cheering anyway: when the MP, Harriet Jones, takes charge as the only elected person there, and in the name of the people commands the Doctor to go ahead and do whatever it takes. You tell him, lady! His initial hesitation may have added to the drama but still came across as pointless. Rose's chances of seeing the next morning were obviously increased, not decreased, by his taking action. A scriptwriter who was fully on the job and not wasting his very considerable talents kissing the BBC top brass better after the Hutton Report would have contrived some way to give this pseudo-dilemma two proper horns. My husband was impressed by the way that the viewer couldn't tell who was going to live and die. No one wore the red shirt. In the first episode the lady pathologist looked done for but she survived. That nice private secretary to the PM did not. Sergeant Price scarpered at the right moment and presumably made it, too. On second thoughts, maybe you could tell he was going to: Russell T. Davies also wrote Mine All Mine and Swansea boys always look out for each other. A few unclassifiable pros and cons: - Nearly all those scenes when the Doctor made a joke before escaping were played too slowly. The soldiers had time to shoot him before the lift doors closed, especially since his joke telegraphed what he was going to do. Every time he stopped to negotiate with the Slitheen they had time to hook him by the throat with those big claws of theirs and crunch his bones like matchwood but for some reason preferred to chat. - The news scenes were convincing. Andrew Marr played himself without exaggeration. I laughed when Rose and the Doctor ended up going home to watch the crisis on TV like everyone else. - It was ridiculous that the Slitheen could be liquefied by acetic acid. Ridiculous, but in keeping with the traditions of Dr Who. There really ought to have been some foreshadowing of this. Perhaps the policeman-Slitheen could have shouted at a subordinate for eating chips with vinegar on duty. - A well-thought-out touch to end the show was that Mickey was given a computer virus to wipe all mention of the Doctor from the internet. Yes. That is what would happen. Monday, April 25, 2005
Remembering Gallipoli. To commemorate ANZAC Day Tim Blair has a selection of links about the doomed Gallipoli landings. Of the Australian troops who were there, Joseph Stratford was probably the first to die. Alex Campbell was the last to live. For all the time I have spent arguing that the "lions led by donkeys" myth of the First World War is a myth, and a harmful one, I still feel about the First World War much as Sean Gabb does. He wrote: I began this jotting with the intention of saying something smart and clever about today's anniversary. But there is nothing smart and clever to be said. When I contemplate the events that unrolled between the 28th June and the 4th August 1914, I become a child again, in the audience of a pantomime. I want to cry out to the person on stage - "Look behind you!" "Don't go there!", "He's coming for you!". But there is nobody out there to listen.None of their descendants can truly project themselves into the minds of that generation, who, as they went to war, thanked God that they would have the chance to fight. No one now, however patriotic, however convinced of the rightness and necessity of a war, can say dulce et decorum est pro patria mori without uncertainty, irony, regret. It was not sweet to die. It remains fitting to remember the dead. To that end I am going to post again something I first posted in 2002, an excerpt taken from the Anzacs.org website: I wasn't aware that there were British soldiers at Gallipoli. Who were they?Allow me to repeat, too, what I said in that earlier post: "I don't think it diminishes the Anzacs' memory in any way to point this out. Their dauntless courage was acknowledged by all who saw it." The Australians and New Zealanders rightly honour their Gallipoli dead. So do the Turks, who fought bravely on the other side. Why do we in Britain forget? Plonkers unaware of their plonkerdom: a particular peril for seamen. Andrew Duffin writes: I do a bit of sailing. Well quite a lot actually.As it happens the guy who pointed out the first link to me is a sailor too. Sailing is a complex activity that can go horribly wrong. Contrariness prompts me to say that there are times when it pays not to know too much. War is also a complex activity that can go horribly wrong. Would it have helped or hindered 2 Para at the battle of Goose Green to have known that their 450 men were pitted against 1,600? I know, I know. The odd counter-example does not disprove the rule: it generally pays to have accurate knowledge. And to make a habit of seeking it. Sunday, April 24, 2005
For all I know the elevated sense of humour of those of the Middle Kingdom does maintain a harmonious parallelity etc. I would be delighted to discover the existence of a Chinese work that made play with what Belloc would have called "the English convention in the Chinese tongue." How, or if, I could ever appreciate it would be another matter. It took me most of my life to get some of the jokes in Astérix chez les Bretons. "However entrancing it is to wander through a garden of bright images," as Wimsey said to Harriet Vane in Holloway Gaol as she stood trial for her life, "are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?" Angie Schulz of Machinery of Night writes regarding this post: You pointed to the .net guy's list of questionsSomeone swore blind to me that in Germany, if you want to sell your house, the law demands that you paint all the walls white even if your purchaser adores your wallpaper. - NS Perhaps rattlesnake venom is used to treat some disorder, and the person wants to ensure that he has access to a supply?If Angie can be sporting enough to admit when she was taken in, so can I. When I saw this passage about the Iraqi election - It's easy to hail the courage of the purple-fingered sheep who sashayed to the voting centers under the protection of armed U.S. soldiers- quoted on some blog I went haring over to the site in a fury ready to make the author taste the Wrath of Natalie. Going back a few years, when first some few words from the sublime Kai Lung entranced my eyes (albeit in the ignoble guise of discourse between imaginary persons in the tales of Wimsey, a barbarian lordling), untrammelled was my rejoicing to discover this evidence (as I thought it) that the elevated sense of humour of those of the Middle Kingdom maintained such a harmonious parallelity to that of the unworthy one before you. |