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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Monday, October 17, 2005
It looks likely that the Iraqis have voted to accept the proposed new constitution. But what if they had not? The New York Sun makes a good point: Even a rejection of the constitution, because of the Sunni turnout, would not be bad news for Iraq. While in sports winning may be almost everything, in democracy taking part is really what counts. By voting the Sunnis have tied themselves to the democratic process. A democratic referendum involves a yes or no option. Only in dictatorships like Iraq under Saddam could a referendum only yield one result. Respected Iraqi democrats, such as Nibras Kazimi, who writes on these pages, have recommended rejecting the constitution, warning it risks giving too much power to clerics. If the constitution is rejected, democracy will continue. Elections will take place as planned in December, and the new parliament will simply start writing a constitution again. And if it the constitution is passed, the agreement made means amendments can be passed dealing with these concerns.On the same lines, every now and then someone raises the spectre of a future democratic Iraq hostile to the US or the West generally. My response is that compared to the spectre of a future Iraqi dictatorship or Islamist gangster state, that ghostie can haunt me any time. So President Chelsea Clinton might have to put up with an Iraqi version of Chirac or Schroeder? Sheesh, that's politics for you. She'll cope. In fact, I'll go further (this part of the post is being written half an hour later). Even if democracy were to fail in Iraq the fire has been lit and it would return. What a tragedy it would be if, after so much courage has been shown by Iraqi voters, the country were to suffer civil war or a military or religious coup. I do not think that likely but I do think it possible. People often say that Iraq, or the Middle Eastern countries generally, lack a tradition of democracy or a culture of legal, rather than violent, settlement of the question of who should rule. There's something in that. But your traditions grow and your culture is what you do. Twice in the last year great masses of Iraqis have voted, and in the same act have voted for the right to vote. For months, stretching into years now, the Shia majority have not turned to pogroms against the minority Sunni despite anti-Shia terrorism. And for their part the Sunni, this time, have also gone home in their thousands with defiantly purple fingers. The Iraqi democratic tradition is young. It may die in infancy. But I suspect that even then it would not stay dead. Look at Turkey. (NY Sun article via Real Clear Politics.) WWF again. Andrew Duffin writes: Not the wrestlers, the other lot. Wednesday, October 12, 2005
You probably won't hear from me until next week. Meanwhile, if you want a really wacky counterfactual, almost too weird for the human mind to encompass, go see what a commenter found for us at Biased BBC Other seeds fell elsewhere, but they fell on stony ground. Major post from Jim Bennett on Columbus and what he can and cannot be blamed for. The New World had been epidemiologically isolated from the Old for geologic eras, and thus was, epidemiologically speaking, a huge tinderbox waiting to be set alight. The first major contact from the Old World would set it alight. As it happened, this was Columbus -- but it could have been Chinese voyagers had the Ming treasure fleets not been cut back, or it could have been Japanese mariners cast adrift on the Japan Current and landing in the Pacific Northwest, or it could have been, as it nearly was, the Portuguese landing in Brazil as they did in 1500, not because they were trying to imitate Columbus, but because they had gone a bit wide turning around the bulge of Africa. Columbus was the agent of this contact, but he can hardly be charged with genocide for it, any more than the nameless Muslim trader from Central Asia who passed on, unwittingly, the bubonic plague to Italy and started the great Black Death epidemic in medieval Europe can be charged with Muslim genocide against Europe.That sense of the adventitiousness of history ties in with my disbelief in racism or national destiny. In one sense I believe that what the Albion's Seedling bloggers are calling the Exit (the take-off point in history when productivity started to pay more than predation) could only have started in England, with its particular history and geography. Other seeds fell elsewhere, but they fell on stony ground. In another sense... well, to look deep into the pool of "could have" is perilous and wonderful. Some see themselves reflected there, others quantum physics, others God. Events either happen or they do not. If they do happen they must happen in circumstances in which they could happen. If another seed had flourished, men of Africa might tell each other that it could all only have begun in Timbuktu. Tuesday, October 11, 2005
In which I devote 73 times more effort than it is worth into debunking an Independent Statistic of the Day. EU Rota is unimpressed by the World Wildlife Foundation family blood testing survey that gave birth to last Friday's Independent "statistic of the day." That was the statistic I got a bit strange about in this post here. Remember? The Independent said that 73 is the "average number of dangerous chemicals present in the blood of Europeans." It gave no indication of how dangerous a chemical has to be to be called "dangerous", whether "present" meant anything more than present in traces, and how it is demonstrated that these chemicals originated from computers, textiles and cosmetics rather than trees, organic food and wrestlers. The WWF survey did talk about these things, but for the Independent to omit the slightest mention of them converted that great big 73 into nothing more than a great big boo! to frighten the children. And then I noticed that the dear old Indy couldn't even get its own meaningless frightening statistic right. It said that 73 was the average number of dangerous blahs found blah blah. Yet according to page 20 of the WWF document, of the 107 chemicals analysed for, 73 were detected in the whole survey. The median number was 29. Back to EU Rota. He, she or they - it appears to be a group blog*, and the author of this post is known only as "GEA3" - took a look at the WWF survey and discovered the number of persons studied. What does the WWF base their far-reaching 'scientific' study upon? Ahh, page 16 of the report:That's thirty-nine as in three-nine as in one less than forty. I mean, I'm not saying that a careful study of thirty-nine people has no value to science, but it does seem a little skimpy as a basis from which to draw the rather large policy conclusions that Karl Wagner, the director of the WWF's DetoX campaign, does draw. He is quoted here as asking, "How much more evidence is needed before industry and European politicians accept that these hazardous chemicals cannot be adequately controlled?" Quite a lot more, Herr Wagner. Read the rest of EU Rota's post or I will boil your kidneys with 73 different hexes. Finally, what's with the WWF being a "Foundation" nowadays? A mere Fund was good enough for Sir Peter Scott. *GEA3 later emailed to say he's a he and there's only one of him. Warned me to stay away from the killer hand soap, too. A kindly thought. Monday, October 10, 2005
Just one problem, Minister. Last week, Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, was telling the press that the current system of allocating places at university based on predicted A-Level grades was systematically unfair to poorer students. The Guardian on 4 October: He [Mr Rammell] told the Press Association that his critics were wrong. "It is a difference of view. I think we are absolutely right to be wanting to deal with what is an inherent unfairness in the current system." To back up his claim, Mr Rammell referred to research carried out by a team from Oxford University on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills. Just one problem. The research did not say what the Minister said it did. It said the opposite. In this report for the Times by Tony Halpin, "Minister accused of twisting facts on university admission" (8 October), one of the authors of the report is described as being mystified and annoyed by the way the DfES has presented his research. The Times report says: The DfES based “the case for change” on the fact that only 45 per cent of predicted A-level grades turn out to be accurate. They were most inaccurate for students “from the lower socio-economic groups and those from certain school or college backgrounds”. For the record, I am not a defender of the system of conditional offers based on predicted grades. Better to let the students find out their true grades before applying, as Mr Rammell seems to want. But his means of attempting to persuade us ought to get someone the sack. I'm guessing it won't be Mr Rammell himself. He's a sly one, he is, and is far from out of tricks. Read his reply to the Times. I have never sought to deliberately mislead anyone. One sentence in the original DfES press release is incorrect. This was a genuine mistake, which I regret and apologise for.[Here is said press release. It's dated 9 October so it ought to be the amended version. However it still contains the claim "The highest socio-economic groups are more likely to have their grades over-predicted, compared to the lowest socio-economic group, who are more likely to receive under-predicted grades." What is going on? I give up.] The Minister continues: It does not, however, invalidate the central argument made in the release and repeated in countless interviews since: only 45 per cent of predicted A-level grades are accurate.Inaccuracy per se was not his central argument then; systemic bias against poorer students was. This is of concern for students, whatever their background. However, the predicted grades are most inaccurate for students from lower socio- economic groups and these students are vastly underrepresented in higher education.Mmmmm, drink that last sentence in. Admire the masterly restraint with which the two quite separate ideas "predicted grades are most inaccurate for students from lower socio-economic groups" and "these students are vastly underrepresented in higher education" are linked by a simple, unadorned "and". He knows full well that the human love of a story will take that "and" and construct from it a chain of cause and effect. Only those readers who paid particular attention to the earlier story will see what is going on. The Minister wisely does not recap in his letter what the misleading claim he is accused of spreading actually was. Few will check back. In the rest of the letter Mr Rammell explains why both under- and over-predicted grades are a problem. All very true, but little to do with what he was saying last week. Last week the claim that deprived students were being underestimated was "crucial". His line then was, "Yes, this is social engineering and I'm proud of it." All this argument about over-predicted grades also being a problem for poor students has been dug up in the last few days. No Labour minister ever born would describe action to stop the poor being overestimated as bold social engineering. It's as if the star of the show died and an understudy had to be squeezed into the old star's costume whether it fitted or not. Saturday, October 08, 2005
Nitpicking masterclass. Squander Two writes: I wasn't thinking of size, I have to admit, but, nevertheless, allow me to pick the nits out of your nit-picking. By the time the Germans marched into France, they'd already taken Austria, Belgium, Prussia, and Czechoslovakia, making their territory the bigger. I think.UPDATE: Honest, on the grave of me sainted Great Uncle Gargantua, when I posted this I didn't know he'd called me the greatest blogger in the universe. Another example of the dreaded peverse incentive (first formally recorded by me, I believe, but then that is what you would expect from the greatest blogger in the universe) whereby Blogger A being praised by Blogger B is an incentive for A to avoid linking to B for the next few days because it looks so crawly otherwise. Really the greatest? You don't think that XenoPundit on Betelgeuse IV might have the edge? The ceremony of Explaining the Joke is at once one of the saddest and the most picturesque in the rich pageant of Comedian ceremonial. The unfortunate wretch whose incompetence has made the Ceremony necessary and has thus betrayed the profession is paraded in full view of the Regiment and ceremonially stripped of wig, red nose and floppy shoes. In a final humiliation the culprit's tickle stick is broken over the knee of the Jokester-in-chief. That last post ... it was ... about the fact that the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund had a big argument over who got to use the initials WWF and I ... sort of ... wanted to - to w-w-work in something about the Independent's statistic being so innumerate and vague and - and - and - not even sss-s-saying who the WWF were and their logo is a panda and can I go to Devil's Island now? Friday, October 07, 2005
73 the average number of dangerous chemicals present in the blood of Europeans, absorbed from computers, textiles and cosmetics.That is what it says as the "statistic of the day" at the top of page 38 of today's Independent and, to be sure, it is very worrying. Personally I would not want anyone from the WWF to take my blood. Sure, they say those chemicals were put there by computers, textiles and cosmetics but how do we know it was not the wrestlers who did it themselves? A lot of these people are very bad-tempered since the panda-lovers stole their initials, and have taken to using cosmetics in an immoderate manner. I do not know what the EU was thinking of, sending wrestlers round Europe to take people's blood. Maybe when wrestlers turn up at their doors demanding blood European people give in to them, but we are British, thank goodness. I do not want to be prejudiced but the fact is that one can never be sure that a toilet seat has not last been used by a European or a panda. Joy reigns in the Who community over the recovery of some clips from the lost 1960s Dr Who series The Power of the Daleks. Patrick Crozier explains why the find is so significant. In the comments to the BBC story, "Andyo" says, Wow. Some toy Daleks being pushed along in a line and four "real" ones (one of which nearly falls over) bumbling about in front of some cardboard cutouts.Andyo has since been converted into a roboman. The industrial revolution was a terrible thing, in which people were exploited, overworked, dirty and died young due to the evil capitalists - writes Michael Jennings. Burn the apostate. No, wait, he has more to say: This is appoximately what I was taught when I went to school, come to think of it. That the industrial revolution was in fact one of the two key events in the development of human civilization (the other being the invention of agriculture, and the invention and development of the computer in the last 65 years is a third, I think) was something I had to figure out for myself. Thursday, October 06, 2005
I am shocked, shocked. Jim Bennett caps my post about the Gauge Commission of 1845 with a tale of skulduggery. Yes, that's two "response" posts in a row. Sue me. Truth to tell, I got myself distracted by a composing yet another response, this time to a commenter at Biased BBC. Continuing the theme of Victorian entrepreneurs, he suspects that Biased BBC is run by "a mutton chopped mill owner from 1850 who cryogenically froze himself and has just come out of hibernation." Well put, but I can definitively state that I have no mutton chops. Pity I haven't got the mill, either. Through the magic of compound interest I would now be very rich indeed, and even richer once I had sold all the fabric designs to Zoffany's. Incomplete cortical inhibition. Normblog rounds up responses to his question about dreams, starting with mine and moving on through others both more erudite and more strange. Oh dear. I'm not sure it's cool to be a well-organized dreamer. Some people say they are only truly free when they sleep; I only truly have my filing done. I've had the pattern I described just often enough to recognise it, but usually I can't remember my dreams at all. Although the other night I did buy an orange lolly from an ice-cream shack run by the Taliban. Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Because you pinched yourself and it didn't hurt. Rubbing his eyes, Norm asks: OK, so can anybody answer me this? Why is it that you sometimes know, from within a dream, that it's only a dream? Example: a couple of nights ago I dreamt that one of the phones in our house was missing. I don't mean a mobile (aka cell) phone. I mean one of the land-line phones. It was gone, as in misplaced or stolen. And this bothered me. But I sort of sensed that when I woke up the phone's absence would turn out not to be real.My serious answer is that you know because you are coming out of the dream. My dreams sometimes go through orderly stages of disengagement. At the deepest stage what is happening to me in the dream seems utterly real, emotional, perilous. Then after a while I cease being the protagonist and instead it becomes my friend / relative / generic companion worthy of concern (exact role varies even within one dream but gender is usually preserved) who is the person in peril or whatever. Then it becomes a play I am watching at the theatre, or a TV show - quite often a cartoon. Then, sometimes, I become aware that I can change what is going to happen on the TV. Finally, for a tantalisingly brief period, I become aware that this is a dream and I can control it. I attribute this progression from "first-person, feels real" to "third-person, known dream" to a gradual mental process of reconciliation between the unlikely or impossible dream-things and reality. A sense of belonging. In response to a commenter, Squander Two has up, not exactly a defence of Unionism, but what you might call a pre-defence. He runs through the arguments you have to have before you can have the argument about whether people in Northern Ireland should vote for a parliament in Dublin or London. First, answering the comment "I can see that the whole island of Ireland belongs to the Irish at its most basic level", Squander Two makes a crucial distinction: Everyone makes this mistake. Tom is confusing "belongs to" with "is run by the government of the nation-state of". The whole of this island does not belong to "the Irish" or to anyone else. For instance, I live in one small bit of it that belongs jointly to me & Vic. That's not a frivolous point.In response to "I mean, just look at the map for heaven's sake", S2 says: This popular argument only works on small islands. It justifies not only giving Northern Ireland to the Republic, but also the German annexation of Austria, Belgium, and France; the Chinese invasion of Tibet; Saddam's invasion of Kuwait; and, should they ever feel so inclined, the American take-over of Canada. Funny how the IRA's allies in ETA never invoke it.As part of my work towards my Nitpicker badge, I'd have to query whether France comes under the heading. France is bigger than Germany. However that argument would certainly justify giving Portugal to Spain and would mean that any desire Wales or Scotland might have to separate their government from that of England would have to be ruled illegitimate. While the Conservative Party Conference takes place there has been a great deal of earnest media discussion of how the Tories need to change. Much of this has come from people who do not vote Conservative, but I am willing to take them at their word when they say they want a strong and effective Conservative party for the long-term good of the nation as a whole. We are told that the modern Conservative Party needs to be:
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
A geezer writes: I'm sending this to you because yours is the only Brit blog I regularly read, and you were kind enough to answer a question about Brit slang for me once. Is it widely known in your fair land that Piglet, Winnie the Pooh's friend, is now banned from some government offices? (Link from Michelle Malkin.)In answer to your question: yes. UPDATE: More discussion at Samizdata. There is also another post about the suggestion from the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding that we must find a new flag and new patron saint not associated with the crusades. If the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding had sat down and tried to think of ways to increase hostility to Arabs and Muslims, they could scarcely have done it more effectively than by this proposal. Albion's seedling is an Anglosphere group-blog featuring (natch) Jim Bennett, along with Lexington Green, Helen Szamuely and others. I particularly liked this post of his on resilience and disaster. The resilience and disaster post features steam trains. For most of my male relatives that is reason enough to go there. For those eccentrics who want politics too, be advised that Jim Bennett argues that the apparent wastefulness and incoherence of infrastructure systems built for profit by many different companies (a) helps sort out what actually works, and (b) comes in handy in an emergency. Point (a) reminded me of the story of Brunel's broad gauge railway. Stephenson adopted the 4' 8½" gauge for no better reason than that was the gauge commonly used in horse-drawn colliery railways. (Saying "no better reason" as I just did is unfair: being able to use existing trucks & truck-building stuff¹ must have saved a packet.) In tests carried out by the Gauge Commission in 1845, Brunel's wider gauge trains satisfied the testers that they could pull heavier loads faster.² Yet it was the narrower gauge that prevailed, mostly because it already had prevailed on the main national trunk route. The Great Western eventually had to convert from broad to narrow gauge at vast expense. Thus far this story looks like - and often is - a textbook example of path-dependence. Some people wrongly see path-dependent choices as irrational choices. In his book for the IEA, "railway.com", Robert C. Miller argues against this view. He also makes the point that in the history of the railways the path-dependent choice was not necessarily inferior: While the broad gauge may have had some advantages, these were offset by its extra expense - wider tunnels, cuttings, bridges and embankments, and the extra land required.Standard didn't get to be standard without something going for it. Robert Miller makes another point too. Converting down from broad to standard may have cost a lot, but it was still an awful lot less than converting up would have. Jim Bennett's point (b) reminded me of something, too. Unfortunately all the effort I put into remembering how to spell "gauge" and do fractions in HTML has un-reminded me. Wait! It's come back! The internet! We free-market types cannot claim the internet as our own. It was created by the government - the dear old Pentagon, to be precise. (Folk religion has it that a sinner in Hell may have his tongue moistened once a year on account of one long-forgotten good deed. Tim Berners-Lee will take an annual cold beer across the chasm to some bigwig of the military-industrial complex under this clause.) However the demands of defence had a similar effect to the results of the market: this new internet thing was meant to withstand nuclear attack, so it had to be decentralised and endlessly re-routable. It worries me that government schemes to control the internet in order to catch terrorists may in fact wipe out its structural resilience against terrorist attack. ¹Spot my effortless grasp of technical terms. ²Actually railway experts are still arguing about this. It may have been Brunel's engine design rather than his choice of gauge that was better. Monday, October 03, 2005
News just in. A report put out by Human Rights Watch says that the Iraqi insurgents are wrong to target civilians. Don't laugh. Although it is inconceivable that this worthy report ("The justifications for attacking specific groups of people misread or misapply the definition of a civilian as it applies under the laws of war") is going to worry the killers of teachers, it might have some effect on their supporters. Mark my words, if you go flouncing off to that there fancy "Britblog roundup" you'll be coming back here in five seconds flat. Friday, September 30, 2005
I often like to muse on how vastly superior I am compared to those younger and older than myself. Compared to the rising generation I am better educated, have better morals and more elevated pleasures, and am more honest and peaceable. Compared to the old I have fewer grey hairs and smoother skin. And I can do sit ups, which a lot of them can't, you know. Despite my evident superiority I do try to see these crumpled-looking creatures as fellow human beings (fellow citizens, even!) with the same rights and duties as the rest of us. Do you think I am over-optimistic? Would it be more realistic of me to think that, like toddlers, old people should be ignored when their bellowing disrupts social functions? Along with half the country, the leadership of the Labour party seems to think so. I didn't see, either on film or in person, Walter Wolfgang being ejected from the Labour conference, so I don't know if the amount of force used was reasonable or not. (Perhaps I still wouldn't know even if I had seen it; like sporting fouls these things are difficult to judge from outside.) If the fulsome apologies coming from the Labour leadership are for excessive force used upon an elderly man then apologies are right and proper. However from what I have heard they are apologising for the ejection itself. Why? Surely the Labour party is entitled to set the rules for its own conference. If the rules specify "no heckling" then hecklers old or young must expect to be ejected - although the stewards should be careful to use no more force than is absolutely necessary, and be doubly careful if the heckler is old or frail. But that wasn't the only way in which the apology seemed misdirected. Buried in the story and not, at first, attracting much comment was one thing that left me flabbergasted. For this Tony Blair and his entire government should get down on their knees and humbly beg forgiveness, swearing at the same time not to rest until the harm they have allowed to flourish is undone: Police later used powers under the Terrorism Act to prevent Mr Wolfgang's re-entry, but he was not arrested. Wednesday, September 28, 2005
I am amazed to discover that the WRP still exists. Years ago they were the outfit Bernard Levin always used to call "Vanessa's Loonies." The party had a brief moment of tabloid fame in the mid-eighties when its onetime leader, Gerry Healy, was denounced after one of its innumerable splits for activities that gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "revolutionary congress". In one of the columns in his collection Now Read On, Levin speculated that "if a quarter of the conquests attributed to Mr Gerry Healy (Vanessa's chef de cabinet) were real, he must have spent very considerably more time at, er, bonking than at planning the expropriation of the capitalist hyenas, which may account for the fact that the capitalist hyenas are still unexpropriated." History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second as farce. So said Karl Marx. A fine saying - pity about the rest of his legacy. He would not have intended it to cover such a frivolous sort of history as the doings of playwrights and players, but it does, and the little bit of repeated history I would like to post about features some of his most loyal devotees. The BBC has cast Corin Redgrave's Marxist wife as Margaret Thatcher according to the Telegraph. In what could be seen as a perverse insult to Lady Thatcher, the BBC has cast Kika Markham, a member of the Left-wing Redgrave dynasty and supporter of the Workers Revolutionary Party, as Britain's first female prime minister.I think we can dispense with the "could be seen"; of course it is an insult, although not a particularly peverse one. Who cares? Political insults are the stuff of life, and books and plays. For all I know the results will be splendid. Ms Markham is saying the right things: Markham said: "I think portraying someone like this can be more difficult if you are a socialist because you have such strong preconceptions and views about her. As an actor, however, you have to wipe those away. You have got to be as truthful and objective as you possibly can."Then again, if she's a supporter of the Workers' Revolutionary Party she may have an idiosyncratic view of the meaning of the words "truth" and "objectivity." Perhaps Ms Markham could go for advice to her sister in law. In 1980 I watched a TV movie called Playing for Time, written by Arthur Miller. The film told the story of Fania Fénelon, who played in the infamous camp orchestra at Auschwitz. Vanessa Redgrave played Fénelon. (Vanessa's brother Corin is Kita Markham's husband.) Her performance was widely praised, and I remember it as being excellent. Yet I also remember catching one of those short "personal view" programmes where someone talks direct to the camera about some issue dear to his or her heart. The speaker was an old woman, Fania Fénelon herself. She described how hurt she was that her life story, that of a Jew persecuted for being a Jew, had been depicted on film by a woman who said that the remaining Jews had no right to find refuge in Israel. Tuesday, September 27, 2005
"Cooing should be a thing of the past," says a newly famous ward sister at Calderdale Royal Hospital, where visitors to the maternity wing have been ordered not to fuss over babies lest the babies' right to privacy be violated. Staff in one of the wards have put up a display of a doll in a cot with a message saying: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"Since you ask: the custom and practice of all cultures past and present; the massed opinions of psychologists, paediatricians, doctors and midwives; and the instinctive and joyful reaction of every new parent that I have ever met. The hospital is now backtracking like mad and saying it's all to do with avoiding infection. Fair enough, I can see that might be a problem for premature or sickly babies. But the slogan on the doll didn't mention infection. Monday, September 26, 2005
"Students' writing skills have worsened so dramatically that lecturers at some of the country's most prestigious universities are calling for undergraduates to gain literacy certificates before submitting coursework," reports the Independent. The article continues: Despite ever-improving A-level results, academics at universities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow complain that school-leavers arrive ill- equipped to perform the most basic essay-writing tasks. To deal with the growing problem, institutions are now being forced to offer remedial classes in English, and lecturers want students to prove they have reached a certain level of competence.It is a teensy bit unfortunate that the next paragraph begins: With drop-out rates risisng... Sunday, September 25, 2005
The Blackboard Jungle - wilder in Suffolk than Glasgow JEM writes:
Friday, September 23, 2005
Disaster strikes - massive death toll - fissures in society revealed. According to the BBC the World of Warcraft has been hit by a virtual plague. The digital disease instantly killed lower level characters and did not take much longer to kill even powerful characters.The first place hit was the Orc capital, Ogrimmar. (My local expert tells me that Orcs are by no means necessarily bad guys in Warcraft.) Some say the plague was started deliberately. I blame G W Bush. It would be interesting to see if the virtual plague mutates into a less instantly lethal form, as in the real world syphilis did. The hypothesis is that a disease that has a long incubation period has an evolutionary advantage, in that the carrier has years of life in which to infect others. The experiment will not take place: those in charge of the game don't want to lose vast swathes of their customer base and are trying to edit the disease out of the software that runs the game. Deus ex machina indeed. UPDATE: More on this story from Black Triangle. My daft dog. Enough politics, on to the important questions in life. I often take my dog for walks down the old railway track in the company of a friend of mine and her dog. On the outward leg of the walk the two dogs get along fine. On the return leg, however, my dog gets embarrassing. He, um, exhibits dominance behaviour. I don't need any explanations about the behaviour itself, but why does it only happen on the return journey? Another thing: children will be exposed to more X-rays. Wednesday, September 21, 2005
More bishop-bashing from A Progressive Viewpoint. (Hat tip: Laban Tall). The writer, Paul Dennett, concentrates on the report of the working group itself and leaves the apology stuff as a coda. He says he's read all one hundred and one pages. Strong man. So far I have but skimmed it. It isn't so bad. Much of it I would praise if it came served in bite-sized chunks from some liberally inclined blogging collective. One wouldn't want to make them lose confidence... What? Curse that Dennett knave, he has already bagged the absolute prime bit of nonsense that I had reserved for myself. The bishops said: The Strategy emphasises providing security for the American ‘Self’. This ‘Self’ should not be compromised either by institutional arrangements, or by ‘Other’ states’ understanding of security. This policy of American exceptionalism reserves for itself the right to determine who are its friends and enemies.Dennett writes: It is truly remarkable how a statement wreathed in academic and quasi-psychological terminology can be so completely facile. If the right to determine America's friends and enemies does not reside with America, then with whom precisely does it reside? What about the UK? Who gets to choose our friends and enemies? What about Russia? What about any other country in the world? But no, let's single out America.All he's left me with is that bit from page 13:"Although the Church has no direct contribution to make in the field of intelligence..." You don't say? Father Unwin won't be on the case, then? The teacher's tale. Ah, I had heard of "Shuggy's blogspot" after all, just yesterday. Laban Tall linked to this tale from the trenches. It seems that Shuggy's colleague, "Fred", who like him teaches in a school in Glasgow... Stop right there! Just because you heard the words "school in Glasgow" you needn't just assume you know how the rest of the story is going to go. OK, in this case your assumption would be right, but I'm sure it isn't always. (Outraged Glaswegians, do feel free to write in with examples of why "school in London" is about as good a bet that a tale of mayhem unpunished is about to start.*) An update gives the flavour: The offender hasn't been excluded but simply shifted from one section to another. The reason? Fred has been informed that this is because the allegation concerning the swearing cannot be disproved since there were no witnesses! Fred said to his head of department, "So that means I can give you a slap and get away with it if I claimed you swore at me afterwards?" *Come to think of it, I'll save you the trouble. When I taught at a school in London I remember the headteacher (an energetic man who had considerably improved the school) frankly confessing that there was little point in excluding pupils as they would only be shunted off to another school, and that other school would then take revenge by shunting its troublemakers our way. Sometimes, just sometimes, the mere move would improve the child's behaviour but that was unusual. How pirates really talked. Odious of Odious and Peculiar has posted what I think is the constitution of a pirate company. XI. The musicians to have rest on the Sabbath Day, only by night, but the other six days and nights, not without special favour.I am glad that the musicians' need to have an acceptable work-life balance was respected to some extent. Not to mention the Sabbath. Article VI suprised me. At least it brought people together. Folk of many faiths and none agree what twits bishops can be: me, That was just a morning's surfing; skewed, naturally, towards my blogroll. But I thought it was significant that so many of these posts were not triggered by other bloggers. Quite a few people independently saw reports of the bishops' proposal for an apology to Muslims for the Iraq war and were annoyed enough to write about it. Added later: I expect more commentary as bloggers do pass the story on. The interest this has generated is of interest in itself. Some more posts follow. I may keep adding to the list for a while: Talking Hoarsely, Tuesday, September 20, 2005
All this business in Basra is very odd. Stuff is going on. Some of this story seems ominous (the reported infiltration of the Iraqi police by the Mehdi army) and some of it, frankly, is funny. That wall coming down will be in a film some day. I suppose I shouldn't say that if reports that two or three rioters were killed are correct. If. They seem curiously nameless. Many people were shocked by TV pictures of the riot that showed soldiers in burning uniforms abandoning their Warrior fighting vehicles (sort of APCs with knobs on.) The rioters paid the British Army quite a compliment: they relied on the basic decency of the people they were attacking. My husband talked for forty-two seconds on the stuff for killing people that a Warrior fighting vehicle has on it. Can't quite recall it all, but stuff like "30mm RARDEN cannon" and "7.62mm chain gun" was in there. Not that they needed it; they could have escaped by pressing the accelerator if they had been willing to drive over a few human bodies to do it. Instead they got out and ran. Doesn't look as cool but doesn't kill anyone either. Since as far as I can tell that section of the rioting crowd threw stones at them but didn't try to kill them, their judgement call was vindicated. I denounce them and curse them! Blogger people! Here are some bloggers I have been jealous of recently: Bilious Young Fogey. He has the ability to coin aphorisms. See here ("Special treatment always backfires - equal treatment never does") and here ("Transcending one's own nature to do something is admirable, but transcending human nature to do something is heroism"). Tim Blair documents the explosive memoirs of Mark Latham. Scroll up down and sideways for more and more and probably more to come. I am rather glad Mr Latham did not become the Prime Minister of Australia in the recent election. So is nearly every member of his own party with whom he has ever had dealings. Sporadic Chronicle reports on how Robert Fisk in the Independent has switched from saying a civil war in Iraq was imminent due to American machinations to saying that a civil war in Iraq is unthinkable and anyone who says different is an American puppet. The Chronicle also knew that I needed to see a picture of a cat stuck to a wall and linked to the supremely funny reaction to Team America from which I took the title of this post, although the person quoted, a correspondent to a pro-North Korean forum, did not actually say "blogger." Monday, September 19, 2005
Not with a bang but a simper is the way the Church of England will end. I learn from the BBC that a new report is out in which some Church of England bishops suggest that Christian leaders should apologise to Muslim leaders for the war in Iraq. The BBC story says: A report from a working group of bishops says the war was one of a "long litany of errors" relating to Iraq. Here are my objections, in no particular order.
ADDED MONDAY EVENING: I have added one or two connecting sentences to the post above. And here is a story in the Guardian about the same report. It said the working party consisted of four diocesan bishops, all from the liberal wing of the C of E. Later post here. Sunday, September 18, 2005
Just explain already! The lesson in church today was the parable of the workers in the vineyard. For years I didn't understand that parable, until someone explained to me that it meant that people who have striven to be good their whole lives have no right to say to God, "Hey, you owe me first-class heaven after all I've done for you! That reprobate over there who repented on his deathbed should only get eighth-class heaven." On the subject of needing to have things explained, someone sent me a very angry email about this post. I shot them back a reply just saying "read the last line again." However, while still under the good influence of church, I have reflected that if I didn't get this famous parable until it was explained to me, despite millions of others having understood it without difficulty, maybe it would be better if I simply stated what I was trying to say in my possibly rather obscure post in explicit terms. So here's the explanation. The post was intended to use irony and understatement to lead the reader to the opposite conclusion to the meaning the words held at first sight. The intended moral was that one should judge by other criteria; that to be an innocent person who dies in agony, or to be a brave person who dies in an unsuccessful attempt to help others, is infinitely better than to be an evil person and triumph in your goals. |
