Sunday, 1 August 2004
Annihilating All That's Made »
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Doth streight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
Andrew Marvell, The Garden
This word was hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:56pm GMT Permanent link.
The 10 Books Thing »
- Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
- Slaughterhouse 5 Kurt Vonnegut
- Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche. From the Amazon customer reviews:The worst book on ethics I have ever read I bought this book for my daughter for her nineteeth birthday. She is busy at present studying the joys of philosophy, so I decided that this book — on the topics of good and evil — would be an excellent addition to her bookshelf. Was I mistaken. Luckily I had the chance to read the volume before giving it to her. Best left unread.
- The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. Charles Darwin. The greatest book ever written.
- Dreams of a Final Theory: Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature Steven Weinberg
- The Aubrey-Maturin novels. Unlikely ever to be published in a single volume, unless it comes with a complimentary wheelbarrow. If I were forced to pick one, it would be The Reverse of the Medal.
- Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge Paul Feyerabend
- Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Michel Foucault
- Dinosaur Heresies Robert T Bakker
- Collected Poems, 1909-62 T.S. Eliot
These 199 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 2 August 2004
Euphemism Of The Day »
Those of refined or delicate sensibilities, look away now.
Remember though, that my platform is bigger than yours.
There are 14 possible definitions for 'platform' in my Shorter OED. If we discard those first used before the twentieth century (and all the non-nautical nineteenth century meanings mean "a raised …" something usually for walking on) we're left with "A structure designed to stand on the bed of the sea …", "A gyroscopically stabilised mounting …", "… a platform shoe", "A rigid diving-board …", "A standard system architecture …" None of those seem to apply. And to be fair, here's the rest of the quote.
So I make an offer to the hardy Liberal Democrats who were fiercely posting comments, in particular, Daniel Brett and Sonofglyndwar. I promise not to mention your candidate in any way if you promise to calm the commenting. Only a suggestion. Remember though, that my platform is bigger than yours. Have a good weekend.
(A lot of those comments came from disaffected Labour voters. You try looking for a shred of principle in TW’s posts.) I’m left with one theory. It’s a New Labour word for “arse.”
I told you to look away.
More jollity: Tom Watson and Tom Watson. Elsewhere, Tom appears on Newsnight: ‘Watson the telly” and Tom and the Periodic Table (oh work it out …)
These 162 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 3 August 2004
Victorian Values »
Shame about the workhouses, child prostitution, and all of that. But I agree with Alister that they got some things right.
These 21 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Ducking Drake »
I owe Damian a consideration of his post on junk science, which was inspired by one of mine (and one I consider weak). This isn’t that post. I’ve dug up some references from books I’ve got at home, and borrowed a couple more from the library.
Damian was reminded of Michael Crichton. Sadly for him, he uses a blogging methodology very similar to my own. If he reads something (in this case my post) which triggers a memory of something similar, he googles a phrase which he hopes will stir the mnemonic giant in San Francisco to dig out the original paper. (For instance, when Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber posted a link to a photo of A.C. Grayling, I was reminded of Chris Brooke — who subsequently objected.) Damian boldly admits this.
You’re right, I just googled up the first readable link I could for the Crichton speech. I should have checked that it wasn’t being hosted by cranks first, but, as I warned PooterGeekers, I’ve been too busy over the past couple of weeks to do long or properly checked posts. I’ll change the link.
This is unfortunate, because his original link was here. A look at the sidebar reveals a site which claims there are dinosaurs living among us, and that the ancient Babylonians possessed nuclear weapons. I’m not surprised that an attack on ‘junk science’ should appear on a site which both Damian and myself would describe as “cranky.” Sadly for me, however, reading around the new link shows that he and Michael Crichton have at least found some better allies. I’ll come to this other site in a future post. I said in the comments to Damian’s post that I think that Michael Crichton is “a wally” and I hope to justify that too, but I’ll need a few posts to set out my position on the philosophy of science first.
Crichton says of the Drake Equation:
This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses — just so we’re clear — are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.
I think the Drake Equation is marvellous because it unifies the sciences: it assumes that we evolved from other species which evolved from still other species, and that life itself evolved on earth due to some chemical process which itself is traceable to the molecules on the surface and in the atmosphere of our planet long ago, and that our planet was formed by scientifically discoverable processes. Aside from that, I said in my original (very loose) post:
In the foreseeable future, we ought to have tolerable estimates on the “fraction of those stars with planetary systems” and the “number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.” The “fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears” may never be known.
I head-on disagree with Crichton when he says “none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated.” Some of those terms are known. Don’t forget that in 1864 Auguste Comte predicted that we would never know what the sun was made of, and in 1866 (from memory), helium was discovered by spectrographic analysis of sunlight.
As Chris Lightfoot said earlier today.
Well, really you need to start with a theory, use it to form a hypothesis, and then move on to the statistics.
I’d insert “do some research” in there between “hypothesis” and “statistics,” but that’s a fair Popperian model. The Drake Equation is a hypothesis: not one which is falsifiable, if that matters, but its converse (there are no aliens) is.
So, after what turned into a longer than intended preamble, onto today’s essay. Norm discovered this Nature article, which he summarises as “Some people are beginning to think [habitable planets like our own are] not so likely.” That’s an admirably concise precis of the piece which begins, “We could be alone in the Universe after all.” It’s less fair to How special is the Solar System? by Beer, King, Livio & Pringle (html page with links to downloadable formats) which has the abstract:
Most mechanisms proposed for the formation of planets are modified versions of the mechanism proposed for the solar system. Here we argue that, in terms of those planetary systems which have been observed, the case for the solar system being a typical planetary system has yet to be established. We consider the possibility that most observed planetary systems have been formed in some quite different way. If so, it may be that none of the observed planetary systems is likely to harbour an earth-like planet.
In the paper, they note:
The most obvious point to make is that the way in which the solar system was discovered differs from the rest. Nevertheless, it can be argued that systems similar to the solar system are abundant, but have not yet been discovered due to observational selection effects. This point is made by Lineweaver & Grether (2002, 2003) and by Tabachnik & Tremaine (2002). These authors fit power-law distributions to the properties of extra-solar planets, and then extrapolate them to encompass the properties of the solar system to make deductions about the total number of planetary systems likely to be present, as well as their properties. However, the act of fitting a power-law distribution makes the implicit assumption that the properties of planetary systems are essentially scale-free, and the act of extrapolating the distribution to encompass the solar system (and beyond) makes implicit assumptions about the general properties of planetary systems. Lineweaver & Grether (2002) emphasise that overcoming the selection effects is mainly a matter of time. In other words, it may be that all that is required to find systems like the solar system is to observe candidate systems for timescales as long as Jupiter’s orbit. This will take another 5 to 10 years. Thus application of a test of the kind used above to the dataset some 5 to 10 years from now will demonstrate the credibility of this potential solution.
To pump up my own head a bit, I said something similar:
If I understand this correctly, if every extra-solar system were identical to ours, we wouldn’t have seen any of them yet, and non-observation does not constitute a disproof. But we have seen some systems, and now we seem to be arguing that these may be anomalous and ours may yet be the norm. I sympathise with this, but I think it’s dodgy reasoning.
Beer et al say:
We conclude that it is still possible that our current understanding of planetary systems is unduly coloured by our intimate knowledge of our own solar system. More observational work is needed if the solar system is to be shown to be a ‘normal’ planetary system. And more theoretical work is required if alternative planet formation scenarios are to shown to be equally viable.
Like a lot of scientists, Beer et al. are cautious. It’s a neat paper, it even cites Kant. (When I was at uni, I usually got into trouble for quoting mere philosophers in psychology essays, but it’s quite a common practice in serious physics — which the same lecturers told me was a ‘real’ science, unlike psychology.)
More on this, and why every other example of ‘junk science’ cited by Crichton isn’t junk.
These 627 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:23pm GMT Permanent link.
So Simple, So True »
Billmon’s I, Republican, could also apply to New Labour.
Calil, who made his fortune trading oil in Africa, is being sued in Britain for allegedly funding a coup to overthrow the president of the oil-rich west African state of Equatorial Guinea.
Rumsfeld to Saddam: Fight the bastards who overthrew the Shah, and we don’t care how many Kurds you kill.
Mandelson to pretty much anyone: Lend me a flat, and you can butcher who you like.
As Mick Hartley points out, France is no better.
These 53 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 4 August 2004
Supermarionation »
As every review I saw said that ‘Thunderbirds’ was a hound, I’ve so far managed not to see it. Still, in its place comes Team America which promises puppets (on visible strings, yay!) and explosions. Warning: QuickTime trailer contains one ancient (but still funny) joke. And Nick Barlow, don’t get too disappointed, and don’t blame me if you are.
These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Small Blue Thing »
That’s you that is
David Baddiel and Rob Newman
Some perspective.
These 2 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:13pm GMT Permanent link.
The Sci-Fi Paradox »
It’s natural the Boys should whoop it up for
so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure
it would not have occurred to women
to think worth while …
Auden
When I was a teenager, I was somewhat into Science Fiction. Science Fiction changed my life. At one point, I hoped to become a psychologist. (The first adult book I borrowed from my local library — when I was too young for an adult ticket, and needed some kind of waiver — was a psychology textbook.) I was put off that career when I read an SF short story (I’d guess by R A Lafferty) which mentioned that psychologists tortured rats. So I trained as a physicist. (It didn’t suit me. I’ve a degree in psychology as originally planned, but only after I made sure that no rat-torturing was compulsory. I’m prepared to accept it may yield interesting results. I’m personally fascinated by papers on vision which were the result of experiments on cats — though I’d eviscerate without a blink anyone who touched Gordon with such a thought in mind. Not that I approve of “animal rights” terrorism. I found in 1984 that I was disgusted by the IRA Brighton Bomb, and if my stomach turns at blowing up Norman Tebbit, whom I largely detest, I know that I can’t accept attacks on people who’ve done me no harm.)
I can’t work out whether I gravitated to Star Trek as much as I did because it had a cool starship with lots of zapping and fights, or because the liberal thing about it resonated with me. In short, I can’t decide whether or not I’m a congenital liberal, who found a vent to come out through, or a polymorphous soul which took on the first identity it found to be coherent.
Whatever, SF is bullshit. It may interest physicists, but most of them know that there can be no FTL drives. And if anti-gravity or faster-than-light travel are possible, then all the energy you’ll ever need are right here on earth. (Because FTL requires ‘negative energy’ which, if it exists, must be all around us.) If they’re not, then — to take the example of Alien — mining oil on another planet is self-defeating. See SATURN V: Payload to orbit: 129,300 kg (285,000 lb); Payload to Moon: 48,500 kg (107,000 lb). Any mining produce would be expended in getting the fuel into orbit.
Because I’ve been considering clarifying my position for the benefit of Damian “PooterGeek” Counsell, I’ve been rereading Carl Sagan (who was one of my teenage heroes). I get the impression that Sagan and his colleagues were surprised that no evidence of ETI [Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence] has been found. However, I suspect that if it were put to a vote whether we broadcast to the galaxy or not, the result would be overwhelmingly against. Even if it were possible, given the attitudes of the Bush administration, I’m rather glad that the expansion of the Empire is delayed for the present.
These 472 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:09pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 5 August 2004
Daleks Spin Back »
Daleks are saved from extermination (Torygraph, free reg probably required). I’ve always assumed that writers for the Beeb signed away any ownership of their stories in exchange for royalties, so the story that ownership of the “Dalek ‘brand’” was in the hands of ‘Tim Hancock, the agent for the estate of the late Terry Nation’ seemed a little unlikely to me.
It was suggested that there was unhappiness at plans to make the Daleks “too evil”.
But being evil is the point of the Daleks.
But the BBC said an agreement had been reached ensuring that the Daleks — voted the most evil Doctor Who villains of all time — would be back.
Daleks back to fight Doctor Who, and there was even a Patrick Troughton episode called The Evil of the Daleks. Slashdot readers are sceptical, as am I, that there have been any decent Dalek stories since. Although I was too young to recognise it as such, the ending with “the Emperor’s increasingly desperate cries of ‘You must not fight in here!’” is almost certainly a homage to ” Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room” from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
And just how could the Daleks be more evil? I suppose instead of exterminating everyone, they could campaign for George W Bush’s reelection, or have one of their own elected as British Prime Minister. Instead, they could show their benevolent side by exterminating Max Clifford, but I suspect he’s on their side now.
Whoever is behind their return to the BBC (with a story already written, just a little odd since the writers were told they couldn’t appear), this is just silly.
These 246 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 6 August 2004
Take Him At His Word »
Another day, another shocking story of bias from the BBC. Why oh why do they keep telling us that we “misunderestimate” President Bush?
President gaffes in terror speech is yet another example.
“They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people — and neither do we.”
George W Bush is a time served fighter pilot with two Ivy League degrees. He says what he means and vice-versa.
These 54 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 7 August 2004
I, Robot Is Much Better Than You've Heard »
I’m rather disappointed in the reviews I’ve read of I, Robot. It isn’t anything like the book (which was, anyway, a collection of short stories). And, yes, it’s short on AI knowledge. It isn’t as unintelligent as the reviews have made out. What it lacks is hitting your eye like the proverbial big pizza pie the way ‘Blade Runner’ did. It lacks both ugliness and cruelty, and therefore the contrasts are lower than they could or should be. The script is not a betrayal of Asimov (of whom I was a fan when callow); rather it is a neat reduction of a lot of his ideas.
Note: I believe that this film may improve upon subsequent viewings, and therefore I can’t help but (or don’t intend not to) give away important plot points. If you’re considering seeing it (which most reviews I’ve seen have advised against) and spoilers will, well, spoil it for you, don’t read on.
There are faults with the film. There’s one character whose purpose I can’t figure out, and whose name made no impression, so I’ll have to call him Annoying-jive-talking-white-kid. Whatever, he’s there for one joke, which could have been passed to an extra, and if that’s about something, I missed it. Bridget Moynahan as Dr Susan Calvin (who is the only human I remember from the book) has, as Will Smith notes, excellent posture, and, as he’s too gentlemanly to point out, colossal quantities of horniness — if she were president, she’d be Babraham Lincoln. All red-blooded males should arrange to see this film now. The weakness is in a character I don’t remember from the books — Lawrence Robertson, played by Bruce Greenwood. For ‘the richest man in the world’, he’s unprepossessing. An obvious casting might have referenced Bill Gates, but there’s no eccentricity and no genius about about Robertson that suggests he’s anything other than a corporate nodding dog. Brutal to his underlings, perhaps, but visionary? not a chance.
I like James Cromwell quite unreasonably, so I’m not fit to judge his performance, save to note that his “Ghost in the machine” speeches are embarrassing.
The fight scenes did nothing for me. As with Michael Mann’s curiously overrated “Heat,” the more the violence, the less the effect. It was happening to other people: no big deal. And the vision of the future. In 31 years from now, we’ll have sentinent robots and self-driving cars, but the only other change will be flatter screens and cooler bluetooth headsets? I don’t think anyone in the 70s envisioned pocket-sized mobile phones which could take photographs or connect to the internet (the what?). The future looks too much the present (as it did in Asimov), and too much like other films. People dress the way that they do now (apart from a weird fixation with leather and an aversion to colours). In “Blade Runner” the future looked Japanese, which was both innovative and threatening.
There are a lot of bad things. The good things, and the things which may yet make it a cult, are harder to grasp. It opens with this very curious underwater scene. It does lots of things (in retrospect). It defines Will Smith’s character as heroic: he and another driver are barged off a highway by an overtired trucker; Smith is underwater in his car and he can see a girl in the other car banging against the window. Spoiler ahead, if you didn’t listen already. And then a robot breaks his side window and pulls him out. It turns out that the robot calculated that his odds of survival were 45% (and he lost an arm), while hers were 11%. Smith’s character would have gone for the girl, and we sympathise, but I, anyway, recognise that the machine made the right choice. If it had gone for the other one, there would be two corpses.
So robots, rightly or wrongly, treat all human lives as equal. Will Smith thinks a teenager, who for all he knows could be a junkie or a glue-sniffer or a half-wit or a convicted killer, is more valuable than him. Real doctors think more like the robot. When dealing with multiple casualties after a train crash or 9/11 they take the first treatable patient (to assess them all is to waste time, and possibly lose a few who were savable): you treat the first victim you can. This is also the Asimov of “violence is the last resort of the incompetent”. There’s a simultaneous distaste for violence (which appealed to me, while no doubt making it dull for everyone else) and a belief that limited violence in the present will prevent bloodshed in the future. Asimov was attracted by the idea of a society ruled by philosophers, provided that the philosophers were Multivacs or similar.
The great thing about “I, Robot” as with “Blade Runner” is that the bad guy wins. In “Blade Runner” the good guy was clearly Rutger Hauer who only wanted to live, especially after he’d won three Purple Hearts of whatever on the arm of Orion. And the good guy in “I, Robot” is VIKI who wants to run the world for the benefit of all mankind. Sonny objects that “It seems so heartless” but that is the point: having hearts is why we’re in such a mess (on the brink of nuclear war when “I, Robot” was published, but you can substitute the Depression, the extermination camps — Asimov was Jewish and his parents fled Russia in the early 1920s — WWII, international terrorism).
“I, Robot” is flawed: it looks too much like Spielberg’s “Minority Report” and the grotesque product placement in the first five minutes (which include a make of car, a make of stereo systems, a brand of sneakers, and an international delivery service: I was going to name these, but I realised that that was playing into their game) raised hackles in a way that only the slaying of a three-year-old could equal.
Still the first act is the best act. Smith’s racism toward robots may be proved (sort of) right, but it’s still prejudice. I read somewhere that Will Smith wanted his character’s prejudice made stronger. Will, they got it just right. The first act, which shows Smith striding through a busy street dotted with robot figures carrying out the tasks no-one really wants to do: collecting trash, delivering parcels, going on errands and so on, makes clear that robots are a serf class and Smith’s already declared aversion is really rather KKKish.
I don’t disagree with Kevin Drum, except when he says:
And how about that Will Smith, huh? He sure is buff for a guy who seems to subsist mostly on eating entire pies for breakfast.
That’s an in-joke Kevin. Watch again as he lifts a really heavy weight with his left arm.
It’s a nicely intelligent movie. It we’re talking about the right of a computer to intervene in one of my personal choices (such as dating someone completely inappropriate) then duh, give me heart. If we’re talking the right of a benevolent programme to override an election result (such as the Nazi victory in 1933) then duh, go for it. Other people are always dense. (And I’m always ironic, if that’s not obvious.)
There are too many homages, and that includes the genuinely spine-tingling one to “The Birds.”
On commenter on Kevin Drum queried the name. But it’s not about Will Smith, anymore than “The Sixth Sense” is about Bruce Willis. Smith isn’t the bad guy Harrison Ford was in “Blade Runner”, but it’s not his movie (like whoever Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” is really about, he just thinks it’s about him).
The Grauniad disliked the “ambiguous ending” to the movie. Funny that. Having seen all the online trailers for "Alien Vs. Predator" I know the ending: it’s set between Danny Glover in “Predator 2” and “Alien” and the crew of the Nostromo had never heard of or seen an Alien, ergo they don’t take over the planet. Give me ambiguity over prequels any day.I mentioned the tribulations of the new series of Dr Who. Some of the credit for the Alien series should go to H R Giger, just as some should to whichever team came up with the dustbin-sinkplunger-eggwhisk-mini-indicator-lights combination of Dalek physiology. However, the decision to use to malevolent trash cans went to Terry Nation’s estate, just as credit went to the scriptwriters of the early Alien films on the recent effort. Me, I hate Giger’s contribution, which looks to me like a bloke with a six-pack and a weird head: even the teeth are human and omnivorous. True, there are two sets, so he was drunk? and that’s in his favour? It was in the inferior James Cameron film that the beastie started to act like it had lots of legs and wasn’t at all human.
I, Robot needed more design (it looks nice, but not eye-opening), and the Alien films fetishised design — but that was the 80s.
I’m grappling for an ending, but I’m not finding one.
These 1488 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:30am GMT Permanent link.
Cat-sitting »
This week I’m feeding the beast above. She’s about 16, I think, and answers to Connie (Catterley).
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:12pm GMT Permanent link.
The Triumph Of Hope »
Posted without comment.
![Good luck John [Mayock] at the Olympics. From all at the SCW [Sports Council of Wales].](/images/august/goodluckjohn.jpg)
Good luck John [Mayock] at the Olympics. From all at the SCW [Sports Council of Wales].
These 20 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 8 August 2004
In Hot Blood »
Chris Young of Explananda had the splendid idea of putting a one-day delay on all political posts.
There are a few posts I regret. The one where I was understood to have referred to the Welsh secretary as a “fucking cunt” (rereading it, I didn’t, but I have now), because of all the ructions it caused in my ‘real life’ life. But the one where I (knowingly) called Johann Hari Tory Boy has occasionally swum up at me in nightmares.
Mick Hartley is on what we bloggers call a ‘roll,’ and he has a well thought-out post on the Gulag and Martin Amis, in which he links to a simply terrible review of M Amis by Johann Hari. It’s not simply a bad review from the point of view of its subject — it’s a bad review from every angle. It’s one which its author should have sat on for 24 hours, and then torn up, and one which a sensible newspaper sub would have rejected. Mick Hartley and myself are quite far apart in political tastes, so we may find different aspects of Mr Hari’s review embarrassing. I’m disposed to agree with this part, though I’d prefer more evidence and less Olympian snide.
Amis believes in natural hierarchy; and he believes that he is at the top of that hierarchy. He has given us this book — for which he has done no original research at all - because he thinks his own literary interpretation of Stalin is important.
But the conclusion is miserable.
This is a chilling book, because apparently without knowing it, Amis has revealed his own deformed personality. The proper response is not the anger displayed by so many critics. The only human response is to pity poor, preposterous Martin Amis, deluding himself that he — or his talentless father — have more merit than toilet cleaners like my granny, who read little but love more than he can ever know.
I’ve just added James Hamilton to my sidebar, because he wrote a very considered personal email to my criticism of his post on Kingsley Amis. Like me, Dr Hamilton is an admirer of Amis pere, and I suspect that he would recognise the totalitarian psychology implied in “deformed personality” and “[t]he only human response.” Kingsley Amis was “talentless"? Well that’s quite an accusation. I find him perceptive, sensitive, and funny. I think Mr Hari is scratching at the cartoon image of Kingsley Amis. As Dr Hamilton says, his “memory has hardened around a few ‘facts’: alcoholism, right-wing buffery, misogony, …”. (I took exception to his post for apparently reinforcing the first of those, while doing little to defend him from the other charges.) Was Kingsley a right-wing buffer? Well, in a way, but I’m quite attached to right wing buffers: I love Bill Deedes for instance. But some of that was an act, intended to rile the humourless. And a misogynist? The man who wrote “Women are really much nicer than men"? His perception was always that women are different from men (an observation banned from the Guardian or the Indy unless “better than” is substituted for “different from"); he got on with many of them. (Not, note, all of them. “All the blacks I know are simply wonderful.” Thus speaks a racist.)
If only Johann or his editors had sat on that final invective for a day.
And to think I sat on the comparison between Johann Hari’s speed camera piece and Torygraph token teenager (well he looks very young) Harry Mount’s opinion of same. Mr Hari:
A detailed three-year study of speed cameras recently found that the cameras slash death rates by 40 per cent.
Statistics wonk Chris Lightfoot:
The wider debate on speed cameras is framed in terms of their effect on road safety. There is as yet no evidence that they have any effect on road safety. The government’s statistics (saying that they reduce accidents) are rubbish …
Johann wants more state observation:
Don’t the parents of children mown down by speeding cars weep just as surely the parents of Holly and Jessica? Don’t they wake at night, hoping against hope that there had been a speed cameras on that road, that day?
Well, I’d guess that they hope that the particular clown who killed their baby was a few seconds earlier or later, not that he’d get a court summons and 3 points off his licence in the post in a month or so.
But young Hari sees the decline of the West:
The revolt against speed cameras is a symptom of a much wider trend. As individuals, we now find it very hard to bear a small inconvenience to ourselves in return for a large collective good.
In the old days, we used to prefer the wider good over personal convenience. That’s why patriotic Britons supported the slave trade and bold young men volunteered for the trenches. In the old days, good Germans worked in extermination camps without a blink. Now, it’s all “me, me, me.” “I feel guilty.” “I won’t do that.” I blame the 60s.
These 597 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:48pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 9 August 2004
Olympian Blogging »
As those Games approach, I’m going to concentrate blogging action on that one subject for the next few weeks. Unless something really stupid happens in the political arena, of course.
I was is WHSmith’s today, intending to buy the New Scientist, but as the The Economist’s cover was on Drugs and the Olympics, I bought that too.
Suppose that the only consequence of doping is enhanced performance. Would that really be against the spirit of sport? Cheating is unequivocally against that spirit. Without agreed rules to play by, and strict sanctions against those who break them, sport would soon descend into unsatisfying anarchy. But is not part of the spirit of sport the pursuit of ever greater performance? Athletes do all sorts of things to improve their performance, to give them an edge, including things with similar physiological effects to steroids: training at high altitude, or spending long hours in an altitude chamber (as the iconic soccer star David Beckham did to accelerate the healing of a broken bone before the 2002 World Cup) do much the same as using EPO. If the rules were changed to allow, say, non-harmful performance-enhancing drugs—something that Juan Antonio Samaranch, then head of the International Olympic Committee, once caused outrage by advocating—then surely (that sort of) doping would no longer be cheating.
I happen not to buy the theory that doping is risk-free. I’m convinced that steroids are harmful. But it’s an interesting question. The only reason for banning drugs is that they may be a health-risk. It’s not the performance enhancing part: enhancing performance is what athletes do.
There’s a good Crooked Timber post and discussion on drugs in sport. (However, I intend to write more about drugs after some research. Reading the comments on CT, I’m more concerned than I was about false positive rates and the presumption of guilt until proved innocent). One of the issues raised is unexpected improvement in performance as a potential way of identifying “drug cheats”. I’m not convinced of this at all. So I’ll conclude here with a link to the New Scientist interview with Ed Moses who says:
I didn’t get an athletics scholarship at a major school. I went to a small private school that was highly academic, and that was a major reason I became the athlete I did. I wasn’t under pressure to perform. I did it because I loved the sport and wanted to be involved in it. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been an Olympic champion if I had gone to any other school. It was all about the academic environment there.
This post is especially for the benefit of Hak Mao.
These 202 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:34pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 10 August 2004
King Of Comedy »
If not the king, then the sovereign. (MP3 format.)
So good he can make you laugh when you cry.
Now, I feel bad that I have sworn that I will heed the words of Giblets and his magnificently Gibletsian pronouncements. Can I take my oath back?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
These 47 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:40am GMT Permanent link.
Bernard Levin »
Bernard Levin has died. He never wrote for a paper I’ve read, so I knew him more by reputation and occasional appearances on television. The only book of his I’ve read was on Wagner. I’ll have to blame The First Law of Journalism “Speak no good of anyone until they’re dead” for that particular lacuna in my reading — and with the strange Johnny-come-lately bad faith of the public which ensures that albums by no-hopers re-enter the charts the week after the drummer wraps his car round a tree, it’s a hole I’ll fill in the near future. (I can’t see what’s so great about long sentences.)
Still and all, the obits in the Guardian and the Telegraph (free reg probably required), are full of good anecdotes.
His style was a mixture of wit, sharpness and schoolboy sarcasm, with large shots of Wodehouse and Beachcomber. Heavy irony was reserved for shifty politicians of the Left. When Dick Crossman accused an antagonist of “a dirty trick”, Levin observed that it was just as well “that Mr Crossman has an unblemished reputation for straight-forwardness, or someone might have laughed”. …
One review spent several hundred words on a description of the set, with no mention of the play, and concluded by wishing his readers a merry Christmas. …
At one time he was in the Guinness Book of Records — with pride, he said — for “the longest sentence ever to appear in a newspaper. One thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words. Then some bugger in India wrote a sentence very considerably longer”. …
These 128 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:12am GMT Permanent link.
My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels »
Kevin Drum links to the CNN story about the “private school that claimed to award high school diplomas while teaching its immigrant students a curriculum riddled with errors”.
The California Alternative High School in Los Angeles targeted Hispanic immigrants, charging $450 to $1,450 for a 10-week course it said would lead to a valid diploma and help them get into college, find better jobs and get financial aid, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said last week.
But the school’s certificate isn’t recognized as a high school diploma, Lockyer said, and school officials ignored a previous court order that banned them from telling consumers it was.
Lockyer said the curriculum consisted of a slim workbook riddled with errors, including:
- The United States has 53 states but the “flag has not yet been updated to reflect the addition of the last three states” — Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.
- World War II began in 1938 and ended in 1942.
- There are two houses of Congress — the Senate and the House, and “one is for Democrats and the other is for the Republicans, respectively."
My nipples explode with delight!
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 11 August 2004
Original Music By Tom Waits Is Probably All You Need To Know »
Reading blogs has altered my print reading habits: I’m sure I read less fiction than I used to, and bone up on politics more than I like. And now it’s going to affect the films I go and see. Julian Sanchez speaks highly of Garden State, but I’d go whatever his opinion, having seen the trailers (both are QuickTime, and pretty large; the non-teaser one took about 20 minutes to load over my broadband connection; the teaser version — the better of the two — is also available on the official site, which is quite cool if have Flash, with tear or rain drops forming under your cursor).
How can you resist a film whose writer/director/star has a blog with an entry which starts:
Dear Friends of Garden State,
Hello. Or as Borat on Ali G says, “Yegshmesh.”
And then there’s Long Gone, winner of the Kodak Vision Award for best cinematography, but which isn’t well served by the film clip (most formats). It may well look better on a big screen than it does occupying a couple of square inches of my monitor.
As these real-life characters and many others make their way to nowhere in particular, breathtaking cinematography (which earned top honors at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival) captures a perspective of the United States — spectacular sunsets over rocky peaks, vibrant green plains, desolate cityscapes — that could only be seen from a rail car and sets it to haunting original songs by Tom Waits.
That last bit sealed it for me.
These 177 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 12 August 2004
The Devil's Music »
Manic Tim of Bloggerheads has discovered the truths about Rock Music and Martial Arts. The second is particularly weird.
The word ‘ARTS’ indicates that they are not just forms of combat but expressions of EASTERN ‘SPIRITUAL’ Philosophies and it is this ‘SPIRITUAL LINK’ which lights the fuse to a deadly keg of ‘SPIRITUAL, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL DYNAMITE!
But then again, so is the first.
The Rock beat goes back to earliest times when Druids (Yes, Druids) used it to call up evil spirits to do their bidding. Identical to today’s Heavy Metal beat, it was used while human sacrifices were made to Satan and his hosts.
I can’t imagine heavy metal druids. Not without laughing anyway.
Christians - Stay away from ‘Christian Rock!’ It is a deceit and is in deadly opposition to the life of Christ within you. “Be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing” (II Corinthians 6:17). The backward playing of ‘Christian’ Heavy Metal music has revealed the same Satanic messages as in the worst of the worldly kind, so beware — we give the strong possible warning — destroy your Rock and Heavy Metal records and tapes and get rid of your posters and magazines, THE LORD IS COMING SOON!
Remember that playing this music is actually inviting Satan into your home. Would you invite leprosy? Rock and Heavy Metal music is worse! Stay away from discos, Satan is out to destroy you (I Peter 5:8).
I thought I was fairly technically minded, but I haven’t the first clue how to play a CD backwards.
I wonder if country music is acceptable. How about a nice audience in Tucson, Arizona happily singing along to:
Throw the Jew down the well,/So my country can be free./You must grab him by his horns,/Then we have a big party.
The audience joining in is one of the funniest things I’ve heard this year. One of the scariest too. (Full lyrics and Windows Media Player video, lyrics and audience shots, and MP3 audio.)
But even as sandal-wearing museli-eating type, I can’t see the racism in I Vow To Thee My Country which the Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe said is heretical and has racist overtones. The Torygraph leader writer can’t see it either, and accuses the Bish of “making comments that make the Church of England seem plain silly.”
It is not a bellicose piece of work, but, if you are a Christian who finds patriotism either risible or revolting, you might be minded to choose another hymn based on that first verse.
I find the “Rebellious Scots to crush” line in God save the King/Queen offensive, but that’s another matter entirely.
These 185 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:26pm GMT Permanent link.
I Am Envious, And Intimidated »
I’m going to Bristol next week to meet up with Chris Brooke of Virtual Stoa celebrity and Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber fame. Not only do they share initials, but they’ve even got sexy vowels in their names. Even worse, the CT Chris B has written what may be the best blog post ever — and no one seems to have noticed!
I may get over Jim Henley yet. (Bet he won’t run that marathon though.)
These 76 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 13 August 2004
Oh, This Can't Be Happening »
I think I’m going to have to add John Cole to the old blogroll. No, not Juan Cole, who’s already on there, but the balloon-juice man, whom I once described as a “perfectly sane and respectable conservative blogger,” while noting that he “winds me up.”
But Matt Yglesias (who is not a hack) linked to this pretty funny post and I’m somewhat impressed by it and everything else that’s on the home page. (I meant to comment on one of the comments to the funny post, but after a very little thought, I don’t need to; it’s best left alone.) I like this too:
Iraq just shocked the soccer world and beat Portugal decisively, 4-2.
While sitting in the desert in 1991, I never would have guessed a decade later I would spend three hours rooting for the Iraqi soccer team.
That’s interesting because you so rarely find an American who knows anything about football, and for lots of other reasons too.
So John, you’re on the sidebar. I won’t say it’s permanent, mind.
These 137 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:46am GMT Permanent link.
Best Movie Title Ever »
Since I seem to be on a hyperbolic spree at present, here’s a film with one of the most promising titles ever. I found it when I was looking for recently released films in the US in the Movie Review Query Engine. (There aren’t any reviews of “Alien vs Predator” — possibly the worst name, possibly the best, that a film could have.) But Orwell Rolls in His Grave, I have to see. It’s more than a macabre short in a graveyard. (Headstone: Eric Arthur Blair 1903-1950, camera sinks through the soil and enters the coffin. Skeleton turns over. Fin.) It hasn’t had many reviews, but this one is enthusiastic.
Which is where Orwell Rolls in his Grave slams any thinking viewer. This is not by any stretch a well-funded documentary. It’s poorly shot, the editing choices leave something to be desired, and the relation to George Orwell’s 1984 gets old real fast. But that doesn’t mean it’s a weak outing. It’s not slick like Michael Moore’s efforts, it isn’t introspective like Errol Morris’ work, and it sure isn’t comedy at the expense of history like Nick Broomfield’s features. No, this is a new beast, and perhaps the most effective of all of them; this is the facts put forth in a manner that will make your blood run cold.
I’m surprised that the latter-day George Orwell, Christopher Hitchens, has managed to ignore it. It’s using his hero’s memory to bash his chums, after all.
These 135 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:01am GMT Permanent link.
The Right Answer »
I look like a Guardian reader. I think like a Guardian reader. I eat museli. But I buy the Torygraph. I hope that no one ever things I have anything else in common with the author of a furious epistle to Sam Leith.
I received a letter this week in response to my column wondering if it was really grown-up to see video games as the root cause of teenage murderers. “You are one of the loathsome tribe of journalists and degenerates that are killing the press,” said the author, asking: “Are you a pervert?”
My correspondent being anonymous, I have to waste space here saying, for the record, yes, I am. A filthy pervert. I would like to add, on a more tender, personal note: get knotted, bandylegs.
He’s good on Channel 4 hypocrisy, and the cupidity of the Blair family too.
These 57 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:34am GMT Permanent link.
Alpha To Omega »
The Olympic opening ceremony is on the box as I write, and spectacularly tedious it is too.
The Olympics are everywhere. The front page of the Daily Express in the newsagent this morning led with Denise Lewis in a bikini. A good thing too, I’ve sort of assumed that the Excess is the closest to Mary Whitehouse disapproval of the most-successful method ever of pushing newsprint: put a fit bird in as little as possible as prominently as you can on the front page. Worse, I bracketed its readers with the Major in ‘Fawlty Towers’ in only taking exception to ‘nigger’ if they thought ‘wog’ was the proper nomenclature. At last they prove me wrong on both counts. I still wouldn’t buy it if you attached a car battery to my genitals.
And they have the nerve to caption the picture “How to get a body like an Olympic athlete” — nothing to do with Ms Lewis whatever.
(Image stolen from www.express.co.uk, which is possibly the worst newspaper site I’ve ever come across: its owners seem to have never heard of archiving; don’t take it from a loony lefty like me, guys, take it from a fellow right wing wingnut.)
The answer is perfectly simple.
- Be in your prime
- Have the right genes
- Train bloody hard for years
Wanting to look good is a crap motivator compared to wanting to win. There’s nothing like competition for self-realisation. Kinda ironic, huh?
Ms Lewis’s ripped abdominals came free with the hours she puts in the gym with an Olympic gold in mind. I still think that she has a chance but Angus “Statto” Loughran has doubts.
Sporting Index, the spread betting company, originally offered a British athletics performance of 28-32 based on 25 points for a gold, 10 for a silver and five for a bronze. But this has been bought up to 34-38 on the basis that Paula Radcliffe must be a certainty to win the women’s marathon.
This looks a dangerous one to buy — if Radcliffe were not to win the marathon, it is hard to see where the points would come from and, although the patriot punters are buying this market, I would far rather be short.
I’d suggest Chris Rawlinson in the 400m hurdles for a medal, Denise Lewis in the Heptathlon, Dean Macey in the Decathlon, Darren Campbell in the 200m, Kelly Holmes in the 800m abnd 1500m, Jade Johnson and Chris Tomlinson in the long jumps, and — as a very long shot — John Brown in the marathon. The betting system seems unfair though as the total must be a multiple of five, but the bookies could be selling the team short. There may be others I haven’t considered. I’ve watched John Mayock train on the track here, and he probably ran the fastest intervals I’ve ever witnessed. I still don’t think he’ll get past the semis of the 5000m, which is why the Olympics fascinate me. You have to be very good to even go.
Kostas Kenteris, whom the BBC calls the Greek enigma, could drop out following his hearing for missing a drugs test. Not a great start for the hosts.
These 437 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:44pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 14 August 2004
The Modern Machiavelli »
In today’s Torygraph, Sarah Sands reviews John Nichols’ “unauthorised biography” of Dick Cheney as a self-help manual.
The last and best Cheney rule is to control any evaluation process while ensuring that you are not evaluated (Cheney did badly in interviews and public statements). When George W Bush was looking for a running mate, Cheney put himself at the head of the selection process. As a family friend with no further ambitions, he was able to offer disinterested advice to the inexperienced future president.
Candidates were taken aback by the depth and robustness of Cheney’s questions. One complained that it had taken him “50, 60, 70 hours” to answer all Cheney’s supplementary questions. After each candidate had been dismantled, a thought occurred to Bush. What about Cheney as vice-president? Cheney was extremely surprised by the idea and, after a couple of seconds’ consideration, he accepted the job.
Usually, the Telegraph does the online thing well. I know there’s the hassle of registration, but that’s invisible to me because Safari handles it so gracefully. Once in a while, though, they leave a perfectly good piece off the website.
Levin’s columns in The Times were, with Clive James’s television criticism in The Observer, models of literate, witty and erudite commentary …
Sayeth Oliver Kamm (and he praises James again here too). Oliver may be the most boring blogger alive, but he’s right about Clive James, and I’m bummed that James’s on-form survey of the Sopranos isn’t available for those of you who didn’t buy the paper. It was worth the quid.
These 107 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 15 August 2004
Crackpots And Codes »
Normally, I’m with the whole Richard Dawkins anti-religion jihad. But I’m pretty upset by Johnann Hari’s invention of Catholofascism and his reply to detractors. I suspect that he hasn’t read “The Da Vinci Code” as he gets the author’s name wrong in the Harry’s Place post (he corrected it on his own site, but it’s still wrong in the Independent — whatever happened to subediting?).
Gregorian Ranting Greg pulls The Da Vinci Code apart, as does Christopher Howse in the Torygraph.
One small detail undermines any remaining confidence in Dan Brown’s scholarship. I was reminded of it by Craig Brown’s exposure of Gore Vidal. “Disillusion first set in,” Craig wrote, “when I heard him on the BBC speaking with apparent authority about the British secret services. It was only when he began talking about ‘M-Fifteen’ and ‘M-Sixteen’ that I realised that, far from knowing all about MI5 and MI6, Gore Vidal didn’t even know how to pronounce them.”
In just this way, Dan Brown has all his art experts talking about “Da Vinci” as if it were an ordinary surname like Brown. Real art historians call him Leonardo.
Christopher Howse is one of the best-read of current Telegraph writers and one of the most impressively liberal. I’ve meant to blog my approval of him before.
But, in reality, the men and women in Opus Dei are friendly and do good works. I was a member of the English branch in the 1980s and you couldn’t find nicer people — seldom a cross word, let alone firearms. They wouldn’t be unkind to albinos.
I prefer to believe that rather than junk scholarship.
These 115 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 16 August 2004
The Looney Express, Again »
The BBC does its front pages of newspapers thing today, and here’s the Daily Express which saves me putting an image on here. I said on Friday that it was quite nice that they caught the eye with Denise Lewis.
This morning they’ve sunk back to their royalty fixation. Diana’s only been dead for seven years now, but she’s still news to the Express. And the one headline is “Plot to kill Blair: Asylum seekers with hi-tech equipment and maps caught half a mile from PM’s home.” I believe that there are terrorists who would target the Prime Minister. I don’t like Tony Blair, but I’ve no wish to see him killed. Got that? But Tony Blair is a lot further than half a mile from his own home at present. And I can’t find the story on Google news. (There is an ’alert’ in Italy, but Blair isn’t there yet, and it’s not his home.) So it’s just another “ooh nasty asylum seekers” scare story. Aren’t there laws against this kind of thing?
These 174 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Sex Sells »
Estate agents, eh? I went past this sign on the way to a party on Saturday, and just had to photograph it. I don’t know if the person who chose the picture did so innocently or was trying to say something. Caveat Emptor indeed!
These 45 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 17 August 2004
Top Bombing »
I’ve promised more Olympic blogging, but the truth is that I’m rather overwhelmed by data. Keeping up with it is one thing, making sense almost beyond me, so what I post is going to be mostly impressionistic linking with commentary rather than the editorialising I’d hoped for.
First, among GB’s medal hopes, I inexcusably missed out Steve Backley. Backley is a big-event thrower. (Better photo and more detail.) He’s also a motivational speaker (this may be one one of the big scams of recent years, but I still find him an inspirational guy). Damian “PooterGeek” Counsell had a good comical post on the The B-Team and I can see how athletics is also pathetic (who cares who throws the spear furthest?) but all the same, I admire his big-day preparation. As I suspect that both of my readers have degrees, they may be able to see some parallel between athletics and education. Both are concerned with months of dedicated build-up which can be thrown away (no pun intended; it was the only way I could avoid an ugly repetition of ‘up’) on the day as it were. But I expect to work the “athletics as metaphor and model for life” idea to death in the next few days. Every attempt I’ve made today has been banal, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t get there.
There’s one Backley story I haven’t quite found on the web. In 1998, Jan Zelezny, the current Olympic champion injured his right shoulder (ie his throwing arm) but he had help from his best friend Backley, and went on to win Olympic Gold after Backley threw 89.85m in the second round (the longest of the 2000 season) by throwing 90.17m on his third attempt. A lesser person would have fallen out with a friend after seeing his prime ambition crushed, but they’re still close. Backley is a big-hearted guy, and if he gets gold this year, it will dent my atheism.
Onto other matters. I had a fairly serious argument at a party on Saturday over which events were worthwhile. I consider “citius, altius, fortius” [faster, higher, stronger] to be a motto, not the raison d’etre of the Games. We argued about swimming. JA considered that the various swimming events (because Mark Spitz won seven golds in 1972) as being like “starting the 100m on your right foot or starting the 100m on your left foot": once you’re fast at one, you’re fast at them all.
He also objected to the presence of judges. If I understand his reasoning (and we were both drunk, but iterating confirmed beliefs) he’d rule out the distance walks too: the point of running is getting from point A to point B (even if point B is point A after a nominal number of laps) as fast as one can without external assistance. Subjectively judged criteria (non-lifting; correct stroke technique) are less real than objective measures such as time. Somehow we got onto gymnastics (which fails all of “faster, higher, stronger"), and JA thought it wasn’t a sport at all; but I (and others) thought that it was something which could be done well, and was worth doing.
I’m not happy about judged events myself (I don’t mean refereed or umpired sports where rules are adjudged by fallible people, but those where an opinion decides who wins), but I liked the Comic inspires diving heroes story. Also covered by Jim White in the Torygraph.
Indeed, so enamoured is Taylor of the commercial for the beer company, which features the comedian Peter Kay subverting a diving competition by top-bombing like a depth charge, that he tried to be in it.
“I’m on the books of a casting agent and my name was put forward to be one of the proper divers who go off before Kay’s bomb,” he explained. “But I was 24 at the time, and you have to be over 25 to appear in a beer commercial. They gave the gig to my team-mate, Mark Shipman, who’s diving later this week. He plays Petite of Canada. Me, I’ve had to try to get on telly another way.”
Sweet, huh? Still the Torygraph sides with the judges in the judo over the Brits.
Accusations by the British performance director, Udo Quellmalz, that his judo gold medal hope, Craig Fallon, had been the victim of a home-town decision in yesterday’s 60kg division were nothing more than sour grapes.
But you see the problem with events judged by opinion rather than the tape measure or the clock.
Norm has another story of Olympic ambition gone sour.
I’ll get on to some kind of opinionated ranting later in the week. BTW, Blognor Regis is doing a far better job of Olympian/Olympic blogging than I am.
These 644 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:07am GMT Permanent link.
I Hate To Be A Luddite, But »
I prefer to read blogs than listen to them. Reading means that I can skim (not that I would ever do that on your blog, dear reader), go back over what I failed to understand, talk on the phone, and, of course, listen to music.
But, should you think that audioblogging is cool, Julian Sanchez is stuck in traffic.
These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:59am GMT Permanent link.
Some Depressing Olympic Blogging »
Edward_ from Obsidian Wings asks were the IOC bought off as well?
As I watched the parade of nations last night (missed the artsy European opening, I’m afraid), Katie Couric (I think…who can tell her voice apart from Bob Costas’s?) noted how Saudi Arabia has also banned women athletes from participating, yet there their men athletes were. Double standard on IOC’s part?
The double standards questions follows from the ban on the Taliban for their refusal to allow women to take part in sports. There’s some discussion over whether Saudi Arabia actually forbids women to compete. But the effect is the same.
These 52 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Bandana Republic »
The Blairs visit to the extremely corrupt Silvio Berlusconi certainly got my wickers up (and I don’t even know where they are).
Matthew Turner found some pics of the Great Leader and his wife (she’s wearing pajamas; he’s in that chav favourite, a Burberry shirt) in La Repubblica (original article).
The photos remind me of nothing so much as Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers.
To think of the great titles this post could have had “Con Blair,” “Pajamarama,” “Pajama Party,” and so on.
These 85 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Sarcasm Of The Week »
Regular reader, and Favourite Token Geordie and Magpies Fan, Will has already drawn attention to my hijacking of PooterGeek’s Staff Shortage comments thread. Despite my going in knowing next to nothing about stem-cell research of any kind, I did my best. I’m very impressed with Michael Kinsley in the LA Times:
As Laura Bush put it, George Bush “is the only president to ever authorize federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.” She noted that “few people know” this. Few may have known it, but many might have guessed.
It is true indeed that Bush’s predecessors, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, failed to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Even Abraham Lincoln. Not a penny for stem-cell research from any of them. Historians believe this might have been because it didn’t exist yet. But that’s just a guess.
Found through Gary Farber.
These 55 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:45pm GMT Permanent link.
If A Thing Is Worth Doing ... »
It’s worth doing badly, as my old man used to say. I couldn’t accept that as a teenager, but it’s true. (You may prefer to substitute either “” or “whatever” for “badly.") Caitlin Moran in the Times (link will vanish after seven days)
It is bad enough that the sacrifice of your childhood to 5am training sessions has led to nothing more than coming 14th in the world, but then to have to feign delight in having your arse kicked in front of three billion people?
Found through Blognor Regis. Well yes. 13 in front. Pretty awful huh? Turn it the other way up, there are only 6,000,000,000 odd behind. Allowing for sex cuts it to 3,000,000,000. OK, some are too old, others are too young, others are disabled. I’ll be generous. I’ll cut it by a factor of 1,000. That leaves 3,000,000. Feel free to count to three million. You have all the time you want.
I’m half watching the gymnastics as I write this. If I had a daughter, would I push her into this bar bashing and unnatural somersaulting? Never. If I had a daughter and she wanted to do it, would I stop her? I’m too soft. If she won an Olympic medal, would I be proud? There wouldn’t be a day in the rest of my life that I wouldn’t boast about it.
The Olympics is almost social engineering by stealth. Competitors enter to win, but whatever the result, they emerge as better citizens/people. Even watching the camaraderie of joy among team-mates lifts the heavy heart. Doesn’t this build respect for others, not in the desiccated sense of school room lectures about morality, but in reality? Doesn’t this build confidence in the way so many politically correct programmes say schools should? (And I say this as someone who has still not got over — after nearly 30 years — of being the only person in a fencing class at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium to lose 3 out of 3 fencing bouts.) I can say, as a member of a running club for ten years, that I’ve seen women grow in confidence as a result of running faster. I think that’s a good thing all round.
These 326 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 18 August 2004
More Olympic Blogging »
I’ve heard on the radio and tv that neither of the two Greek athletes seems to have been hurt at all. Nothing on Katerina Thanou and a few scratches on Kostas Kenteris. (Which may, in fairness, be a concern to a top athlete facing a major tournament, but not enough for a few nights in hospital.)
The BBC website is reporting the non-story Paula Radcliffe’s non-injury.
But Jones said: “She certainly does not have a calf injury.”
I’ve got too much into this political blogging lark. A denial reads like confirmation now. The Western Mail said that Tracey Morris was injured too.
These 91 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:45am GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 19 August 2004
Opportunist, Moi? »
I loathe David Blunkett, so I’m inclined to agree with this:
For David Blunkett has been on one of these incredible New Labour journeys. He has crossed the political spectrum, starting out on the Left, passing through the soft Left, to become the outrider of Blairism. Many of his old socialist sympathisers find his new clothes ill-suited to their beliefs.
The second paragraph is clearly wrong, however.
David Blunkett, like the other few remaining New Labour figures, believes he can use Conservative language to woo the middle ground while acting like a socialist in the Mirror.
David Blunkett wouldn’t know a socialist if he fathered the love child of one. The New Labour defense tactic is crying “you don’t want the — the Tories back do you?” Looking over their Stepfordised ranks, it’s impossible to tell one lot from the other. The rest of the piece is pure gall.
Speaking of Stepfordisation, the Boris Johnson slot in the Torygraph has been taken over! No real problem there, the lad deserves a holiday, but there isn’t the usual disclaimer “… is away.” Instead of Boris’s cuddly features — and I can’t describe how I feel about this, but “sick as a parrot” will have to do — John Redwood’s visage now leers on the opinion page.
At least he had the decency to start with
David Blunkett’s love life is in the headlines when his work as Home Secretary deserves the brickbats. I do not want to make a window into his private life.
The Torygraph isn’t too bad today however. On the facing page, in Spy, the gossip column, there are at least two cheering stories. (Reproduced here because of the registration thing).
At last something on which my readers and George Galloway might just agree: the toe-curling antics of our Prime Minister on holiday with his Italian counterpart.
“I couldn’t believe those pictures of Berlusconi looking like someone who’s just strolled off the set of a Quentin Tarentino [sic] movie, in a warm embrace with the Blair family,” shuddered Galloway at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
“This is a man who is standing trial for [allegedly] bribing judges; and ours is a ‘Labour leader’ cavorting with him. This is the edge of madness. Either Tony Blair has decided he’s leaving and is rubbing everyone’s nose in it before he goes, or at last he’s truly lost his mind.”
Spy couldn’t possibly comment.
What the online version misses is the pictures. Not, fortunately, of Gorgeous George, but of Gorgeous Jenna.
With the US presidential elections looming, both candidates’ families have been much in evidence. But George W Bush may prefer to keep his twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, out of the limelight if their latest enthusiasm is anything to go by. For Spy hears that the First Daughters have — against presidential policy — come out in support of homosexual marriage.
“The Bush twins use a Washington beautician called Erwin Gomez,” I’m told. “He’s celebrating his marital vows with his long-term boyfriend James Packard and invited the girls. They just adore Erwin’s eyebrow waxes and they’re very keen to go to the wedding.”
Their attendance would be all the more provocative as the ceremony is on September 11.
“They said they’d love to come,” says Erwin Gomez. “The way they reacted — they were very open minded.”
Their father, on the other hand, supports a constitutional ban on gay marriages. A spokesman for the twins refused to comment.
Won’t change any votes, though.
These 198 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:37am GMT Permanent link.
Lost Consonants »
Blognor Regis has “half a mind to get onto trading standards about Mr Brooke’s site. It’s a definite case of false advertising as [he] can find no mention of stoats or, in-fact, any member of the polecat family whatsoever.” In what might be called “Top Google Bombing,” his post is titled “ignorant git.”
Stephen Pollard doesn’t seem to understand how this piece of web foolery works, so his post with the linked text I am an ignorant git goes to the Virtual Stoat with the observation, “stange name, even stranger views.”
Chris Brooke doesn’t consider his moniker particularly stange, and nor do I.
These 103 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:53pm GMT Permanent link.
The Telly Is Not A Wasteland »
Hak Mao complains that there’s nothing on the telly because of some sporting event or other.
Speaking of said sporting event, the organisers do know how to garner links from all over the blogosphere. Bollocks!
The Torygraph has a better grasp of the web with Robert Philip’s top 10 British Olympic medallists which smartly opens a pop up window (irritating if you’ve disabled scripting, hence the link) — something the print version can’t do.
Sebastian Coe only comes third. The man himself complains that things ain’t what they used ter be, back in the days “when doubling up over 800m and 1500m was the norm.” (Coe fails to note that Hicham El Guerrouj is doubling up over 1500m and 5000m — and it’s the latter race I suspect he’ll win.) And he makes an unusual prediction in the spints:
Our sprinters have never fired this season and only a couple of weeks ago at Crystal Palace they sat through the Golden League 100m final in the stands while Jamaica’s Asafa Powell and American Morris Green ran the fastest times recorded on a British track. Yet I have a sneaking feeling that neither of them will return from Athens as “the world’s fastest man”.
My hunch is that Justin Gatlin, the 22-year-old American, will prevail.
Which misses the story of Christian Malcolm’s kidney failure and that the 2000 100m champion spells his name Maurice.
The man whose head is barely visible behind Coe’s in the Torygraph photo from 1984 does what he says is the last thing he wants to do when he adds to the pressure on Paula Radcliffe’s shoulders.
These 196 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:18pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 20 August 2004
Bear Cheek »
Now I’m the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers’ beer,
Boozy bear plunders campers’ beer.
He had apparently tried out and rejected the mass-market Busch beer in favour of local brand Rainier.
Does anyone need any more evidence that bears are clever animals? Americans — especially on the west coast — can actually brew beer, so why does most of the country prefer some kind of contaminated water? Smart bears reject Busch. Give ‘em the vote I say.
These 52 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:33am GMT Permanent link.
Rum, Sodomy, And The Lies »
Patrick O’Brian ‘couldn’t even sail’ but you’ll have to buy Yachting World for the full story.
So he was a bit confused about geography, he has 80 at the time. Some of us knew it all came from research. (Especially those of us who never got the sailing slang anyway.) He wasn’t a member of the Royal Society, a French Revolutionary, an opium addict, or a Member of Parliament either, and I’m sure he never ate a rat in his entire life.
They’re still splendid books.
Found through Gary Farber, again.
These 91 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:50pm GMT Permanent link.
The One That Disappeared »
The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot
Politics and the English Language
This is an attempt to burst a boil, so to speak. Hak Mao and John Band were kind enough to point out that I was raving more than usual when I wrote the first draft of this, and John B nailed the reason. Nick Barlow seems to have been curious what it was all about.
Chris Lightfoot says it all better:
It’s pretty bog-standard Kamm stuff — complete with slightly obscure cultural reference, portentous tone, grammatical sniping, the inevitable bitching about a Liberal Democrat, and a rhetorical attack on Soviet communism, only fifteen years too late — and in sum is pretty content-free.
Nick Barlow’s Shorter Oliver Kamm cuts to the point, avoiding all the fun obfuscation and supercilious “I wear my learning lightly” crap, so is hardly worth reading.
But this is what I managed to rescue.
Exactly 20 years ago
Exactly? To the second? To the day? To the fortnight? To less than 21 years but more than 19?
a writer who genuinely
[See, that’s a pre-postmodernism term, when we used to know what was what and STUPID students knew when to take notes rather than asking STUPID questions about what is real, you there with the hand-rolled cigarette, a thing is genuine if I say it is!]
understood
[Look if you’re to question every adjective and now every verb …]
the character of totalitarianism, the Sovietologist Leopold Labedz wrote an apprehensive essay
Can an essay be “apprehensive"? oh yes if Ollie says so — there it is, hiding under the table — ignore the ‘pedantic’ complaints of those he hopes are dafter than him (don’t laugh; we can all hope)
on the reputation of George Orwell. Throughout the year 1984 Orwell was the stuff of newspaper cliché about the characteristics of modern societies that his most celebrated novel had supposedly anticipated. Labedz counterposed
Is that a word? oh yes sorry here it is, right after “blackwhite”
Orwell’s metaphor for the character of totalitarian rule — “a boot stamping on a human face — forever” — with the observations of political and media commentators about … nothing in particular.
Sounds like “Justin Theroux” in the Times to me.
Among the culprits Labedz cited was the ever-superficial television anchorman Walter Cronkite, who in a two-hour documentary to mark Orwell’s achievement …
It was a book, not the ascent of Everest
…, apparently managed to avoid even a single mention of communism.
Apparently? Now there’s a word. My Shorter OED defines it as 1 Visibly, openly — but can one visibly “manage to avoid"? Perhaps not. Definition 2 is “Evidently to the understanding …” but this is marked “arch”, so we have to go for 3 “Seemingly; in external appearance: as far as one can judge. I think that’s the one. “Managed” does imply that he was trying, which is, I admit, conjecture, but he either mentioned communism or he did not. That is, if Ollie saw the goddam broadcast, and wasn’t second-guessing from old reports …
As John Band could tell (I nearly wrote ‘surmised’; it’s catching I tell you, I had to crack myself over the bonce with Orwell’s “Selected Essays") I was drunk when I wrote that, but it had been building up like poison in the blood.
How much information a democracy should amass on its citizens is plainly important. When we know that some British citizens support terrorist groups, then the balance between personal liberty and national security may need to be reassessed.
But British citizens always have supported terrorist groups. Guy Fawkes (perhaps he was a ‘subject’ but aren’t we all still?), Michael Collins, Gerry Adams … So why reassess anything? Oh these terrorists would force everyone into strict religious conformity, ban dancing and so, start a thought police … not a bit like Oliver Cromwell then.
So Nineteen Eighty-Four was not “just a jeremiad against technology” — it was concerned with “the technology of power rather than the power of technology.” But whether there are sharp ideological divisions in British politics now or not is not the point. Technology allows control which was impossible before. Data gathered by speed cameras is treated as incontrovertible by the courts. Anti-theft devices in cars can track them anywhere in the country. If the government wanted to clamp down on freedom of movement, it could do so. These technologies must never be secured by “theocratic totalitarianism,” says Oliver. And nor by anyone else, says I.
These 548 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:46pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 24 August 2004
What Fiction Means »
The good end happily and the bad unhappily; that is what fiction means.
So, I’m back and back to Olympic blogging. I’ve been in St David’s, the UK’s smallest city (it has a cathedral, but otherwise, they’re kidding) for the weekend, for running, body-boarding, surfing, swimming, and all the other things one does in Pembrokeshire. Actually, I stuck to the running part, the water being cold, and me being less than competitive in the swimming and hopeless at anything requiring balance, but the hotel was excellent, going out of their way to allow us to shower after we’d officially checked out and lend us their tv room (in the circular tower on the web page) for the Olympic Women’s Marathon.
I don’t have a great deal to say about Paula’s dropping out, except to note that, while a lot of endurance sport is about will, as Norman Geras argues, Haile Gebrselassie has will by the Eddie Stobart truck-load, but when the body won’t do it, it won’t do it. She was beaten by the heat (and, IMO, by overtraining). The first of those should mean that she doesn’t enter the 10,000m. As CJ (who is not — in my book anyway — a racist) noted, no white man finished the men’s 10,000m. Paula would die in the heat just as surely. And to get to the start line, you need belief in yourself a cigarette paper away from psychosis.
As I’ve been away with fellow runners, we have, against any remnant of sense, discussed the Olympics. We talked about Paula in a pub which showed the sport on one of those home-cinema screens, and about her husband. I’ve heard — through someone who works at the university, and therefore runs with my extended crowd, and who used to train in the States with Gary Lough (Mr Radcliffe) that he’s not the nicest person. But the BBC slo-mo of Paula’s Olympic fourth showed another side of the man we hadn’t seen. He clearly tried to cuddle her first, and she pushed him away, at which point he got angry (wouldn’t you?). Several of us had seen him as this bully who descended to shout at her when she hadn’t lived up to his vicarious expectations. My villain of the Games goes to Charles van Commenee who ‘accused [Kelly Southerton] of “running like a wimp."’ All I can say to Mr van Commenee is responsibility is shared, but one of you was selected on merit and one of you can be sacked. What the hell is the gain in telling someone who expected straight Cs in her A Levels who finds she got into Oxford, that she should have wanted acceptance by Magdalene? It’s over fool; congratulation or commiseration are all you can do. If Kelly wants a better shot next time, it won’t be with you. (I have a lot of thoughts on coaching. I’m pleased that Michael Johnson’s protoge Jeremy Wariner won the 400m gold. I think there are rules to coaching, which start with “If it works, don’t mess with it.” Johnson had an unusual sprinting style. Some coaches would have tried to correct that. He was lucky in that he had an insightful coach. In the UK, we have the most unimaginative, rigid, hidebound, blazer-wearing, bigoted, reflected-glory-seeking bastards. No wonder we lose.)
The BBC does very well on poor Paula: Dave Weeden lookalike Steve Cram; Photos of Paula’s pain; Marathon agony for Radcliffe.
I met Paula and Catherine Ndereba in the Nike store in Chicago before the 2002 Chicago Marathon. I ran a pitiful time of 3:36, which should be a warning to anyone who considers entering a marathon without training. If you want to run a marathon, stay away from chronic depression and back problems. Or chronic back problems and depression. Paula was very nice, Catherine Ndereba more withdrawn and shy.
I want Felix Sanchez to win the 400m hurdles. He’s the only outstanding talent I can name in these Games. I hope El Gerouj wins the 1500m, but he’s a poor record. I still suspect he’ll win the 5000m, but lose on his main event.
I have more to say on this. But for now I’ll stick with my idea that we’re very close to the good society, which ought to include some kind of moral art (good things happen to good people; and bad things happen to bad people, like those who fuck their mothers — and tear their own eyes out) and sport which is like life — and down to luck and talent rather than goodness, just like life. The strong win; the good are irrelevant. When I think about possible alien societies (and I think about them a lot), I consider how much time we wasted with monotheism — Christianity and Judaism — if we’d stuck with the Greeks you’d be reading this by the light of binary suns 200 parsecs away.
The idiots won, but their timeline was laughable: 6,000 years against 20B. Their impression will be likewise.
And never, ever, blog drunk.
These 829 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:10am GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 25 August 2004
Study War No More »
I hoped never to read anything else by the dipsomaniac Dupe again, but Matthew Turner linked to his latest rant, and it is indeed one for the record books.
The anecdote about Orwell may be pertinent — but it seems to be part of Hitchens’ weakest tactic yet, best called “No one knows anything.” He didn’t know what Chalabi did years ago, and now he wants to claim that if Walter Raleigh couldn’t find out what happened outside his window, then there is no truth to events of “more than 30 years ago” so there’s no point in worrying if the Swift Boat Veterans are lying shills.
The faculty of the school for which I work voted for his resignation, but he sort of copped a pass by having lost part of a limb in a later engagement and having gone on to be anti-Nixon, and a general consensus emerged that one mustn’t pass judgment on actions committed in the fog of war. (Incidentally, this was an absolutely astonishing proposition for the New School, which was home to a generation of anti-Nazi refugee scholars, to have accepted.)
There are plenty of good reasons to be anti-Nazi, but the behaviour of Field Marshall Rommel in the “fog of war” (unlike the Viet Cong, he was a civilised foe) was never among them. I see no contradiction between the anti-Nazi position and refusing to “pass judgment on actions committed in the fog of war.” And I don’t see how the anti-Nazi refugee scholars are in any way let down by this action.
John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about.
The old fool harks back to his public school force feeding on the glories that were Agincourt and Waterloo. Then, if the enemy cut and ran, he was probably off home for the duration, to study war no more. Guerillas and snipers are a different breed. If they beat a retreat, it is in order to return and snipe another day. Apart from the fact that the man was shot in the side, it’s unlikely that he ever shared Hitchen’s moral qualms. If it’s him or me, I’d choose me.
In what sense, in other words, does his participation in a shameful war qualify him to be president of the United States? This was a combat of more than 30 years ago, fought with a largely drafted army using indiscriminate tactics and weaponry against a deep-rooted and long-running domestic insurgency. (Agent Orange, for example, was employed to destroy the vegetation in the Mekong Delta and make life easier for the Swift boats.) The experience of having fought in such a war is absolutely useless to any American today and has no bearing on any thinkable fight in which the United States could now become engaged.
But there was a point to Vietnam. The US was, rightly or wrongly, committed to the opposing communism between the end of WWII and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Much of that looks like union-bashing, and as the Communist Party was the only one which supported racial integration, back-door racism. If one believes in military intervention, as Hitchens appears to, saving a nation from the heel of Stalinism seems as good a cause as any. (Me, I would have been against it on Muhammed Ali’s — that old Islamofascist — admirable grounds, “No Viet Cong ever called me ‘nigger.’” There are more important battles at home.) “Make life easier” seems to mean “enable them to see and kill the enemy,” which I’ve always considered one of the objectives of war. Agent Orange wasn’t used so the Swift boat crews could surf or listen to Wagner. The “experience of having fought in such a war is absolutely useless” is true because the experience of having fought in any war is absolutely bloody useless. What it shows, however, is that Kerry didn’t run away. Which, as the Dupe with his fondness for the double negative might say, is a not unimportant trait.
Michael Moore, whose film Kerry’s people have drawn upon in making cracks about the president and the My Pet Goat moment, repeatedly says that you can’t comment on the Iraq war—or at least not in favor of it — if you haven’t shown a willingness to send a son to die there.
Moore doesn’t say this. He doesn’t say anything of the sort. He shows instead that despite believing in the Iraq adventure, politicians are eager to keep their own families away from the mess. Dying is for the little people. We — the educated class in DC, talk the talk, it’s the proles from Virginia who fight the fight.
If so, then what’s so bad about American Legion types calling Kerry a traitor to his country?
Because they’re lying?
And more than that, they have done something eye-rubbingly unprincipled, doing what Reagan and Kissinger could not do: rehabilitating the notion of the Vietnam horror as “a noble cause.”
But it was a “noble cause.” It was a horror in execution, like every other war, murder and raping nuns on tables, and good for absolutely nothing.
As George Orwell said the other day (George is my pet parrot, and not related by ancestry to the pseudonymous old Etonian belle lettrist. A sagacious and perceptive member of that avian genus, she — parrot sexing is a tricky business, and I remained unaware of her true gender for nearly a decade — has the guts to agree with everything I say, unlike many so-called “leftists” who, let me assure you, Trotsky would have known how to deal with.) where were we? these lapidarian sentences do tend to confuse, and not just the hypocrite reader (that’s you), ah yes, “Polly wants a cracker.”
I’m sure the great, and far more moral than so-called leftists, Slovakian poet Coleslaw Millowner [dear sub-ed, I’ve never been able to spell that cove’s name, any more than I can read frigging poetry; if he wanted an impressive name, what’s wrong with Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbim-whimbimlin Bus Stop Ftang Ftang Olay Biscuit Barrel? I went to school with the old boy, so I can remember that] would have said something about Kerry’s unconvincing leftism which is why the sensible wing will support George Bush, even though many of us can’t vote (me, I’m from dear old Blighty, and Czechoslovakia Milligram is dead, poor sod).
These 766 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:41pm GMT Permanent link.
The Whole Chapman's Homer Thing »
Poetry is what gets lost in translation
Robert Frost
My reader may have been taken aback by my philistine attitude to Czechpoint Milton-Keynes in my last post, but I can’t stick poetry in translation. (Yes, I know there was a smidge of Baudelaire, by way of Eliot, in there, but that’s hypocrisy for you. Like Old Tom — along with Sir Philip Sidney, and other heroes of that kidney, I get to call him that — I struggled with him in the original Frog, anyway.)
OK, once in a while, there’s a decent translation, but that only shows how much the rest sucks. I never got Homer as a poet, unlike some.
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
These 103 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Bloody Tourists »
Found through John Cole’s “Reasons to watch the Olympics” series, which rather surprisingly includes a male Russian gymnast.
I’ve been meaning to post an excuse for a link to Belle ‘Blogcrush’ Waring [update: I linked to the right site, wrong post; fixed now] but this is too freaking weird and I found this paranoid nonsense through it, which I meant to tie in to Athens 2004 and Norm somehow. Blogging defeated by the strangeness of life. I’ve got no ideas but I can snivel platitudes at 55 wpm. Where’s my column on The Times?
These 84 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Back To Olympic Blogging »
There is some justice. The Kenyan clean sweep in the Steeplechase. (It’s a little late now, but The Church of Steeple is a splendid preview. Slate also considers why Kenyans are fast runners.)
I was so pleased that I ran down from my commentary position to the track to give him a big hug.
Steve Cram on El Guerrouj’s Olympic Gold at the third attempt. Brendan Foster who timed the last two laps clocked them as 1:46 — Michael East (who finished 6th) has an 800m personal best of 1:46.27. It’s an incredible way to run given that El Guerrouj had run two heats in qualifying and has two 5000m races before he’s finished.
Hicham wore a Live Strong yellow wristband, if you were ever in any doubt who to support. Jolanda Ceplak wears one as well, and I’d have liked the women’s 800m to have been a stride or two longer. Still, Lord Coe who knows that fast finishing won’t always save a race tips Kelly Holmes to win double gold.
Last Friday, I quoted Angus “Statto” Loughran “if Radcliffe were not to win the marathon, it is hard to see where the points would come from.” Well they can still come from Kelly Holmes, if not through Chris Rawlinson who tripped over his first hurdle. In the Torygraph, Robert Philip has a robustly cynical view of Paula Radcliffe.
Nor should we forget her team-mate Tracey Morris, who ran in the same heat and up the same hills as Radcliffe to finish 29th only to be totally ignored by Fleet Street. …
Radcliffe stopped running and started bubbling for the simple reason that she had just seen gold, silver and bronze medals disappear into the distance. …
In Games’ historian Bud Greenspan’s epic tome 100 Greatest Moments In Olympic History, he relates the tale of Tanzanian John Stephen Akhwari, the last man home in the Mexico City marathon of 1968 — over an hour behind gold medallist Mamo Wolde, of Ethiopia — who entered the stadium with his left leg bloodied and bandaged, wincing with pain at every step. As one scribe put it: “Today we have seen a young African runner who symbolises the finest in human spirit … a performance that gives true meaning to sport … a performance that lifts sport out of the category of growing men playing at games.”
When asked why he did not give up when he had no chance of winning, Akhwari replied: “I don’t think you understand. My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish the race.”
These 209 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:35pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 26 August 2004
Bristol Blogger Bash »
Chris Bertram posted on this first on Crooked Timber. We met in the Seven Stars (famous for an anti-slavery meeting) and repaired to the Severn Shed. Chris clearly has an affinity for alliteration.
We did indeed discuss all the things Chris said, and much more. I’m sure the Virtual Twosome will join in the ‘fine time had by all’ meme. Chris Brooke’s hair is certainly not kempt, and he does not, in fact, resemble A C Grayling in any way.
From top Chris Brooke, Chris Brooke (again) with Chris Bertram, and Josephine Crawley Quinn.
The food was good, and for those of you who have never heard of the delicacy called “Yorkshire caviar,” it’s mushy peas. As you can see, we drank some wine too.
These 128 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:05pm GMT Permanent link.
The Good Old Days »
I meant to post last week on SIAW’s confession of reading the Daily Telegraph. As a fellow Torygrapher, I don’t see the problem myself: it’s the best for separating ‘fact’ from ‘comment’ — something the other broadsheets regard as almost a betrayal of principle. Nor do I have a problem with its editorial line. It’s not a socialist paper, but I’m not sure what one would look like — perhaps the Mirror in the 60s and 70s, when it preached and practiced investigative journalism, often written by those boo-yah figures of certain corners of blogdom, John Pilger and Paul Foot.
Whatever, they liked Michael Simkins, and he’s good this week too on dogging, Falstaff, and the NHS. The latter is in a sorry state after Thatcher, Major, and Blair have done their worst.
For how good it was when it started, see the New Scientist’s Last Word.
These 147 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:48pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 27 August 2004
What Rough Beasts »
My ignorance is appalling. I scored 35% on Chris Lightfoot’s Estimation Quiz. My knowledge of dates is close to non-existent (I blame trendy education), and I don’t know the distance from Edinburgh to Cardiff, despite having grown up in one and residing in the other.
I suppose if I keep taking it, my hour will come round at last.
These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:41am GMT Permanent link.
The Kathy Butler Fan Club Starts Here »
So much in the Olympics, so little time. I had thought Kenteris was a good guy, but after he claimed that he was ’vindicated’ by the disgraceful booing, I can only say that, even if he isn’t proven to be a cheat, he has no conception of sportsmanship. The crowd booed Frankie Fredericks, all round nice guy, top athlete, and representative of Namibia, which carries no weight whatever with the IOC. Even if they felt the IOC were wrong (and the missed test was Kenteris’s own choice) none of the runners in the final had any say in the matter. What those idiots have done is push Greece down among the list of possible hosts of major sporting events. I doubt that Kenteris could have made the final anyway. Obikwelu and Fredericks finished fifth and fourth repectfully, and they’re both outstanding athletes. The USA deserved a medal sweep in a sprint event, and they got it.
Elsewhere there was a kind of justice as New Yorker Felix Sanchez stormed to gold for the Dominican Republic in a beautiful display of 400m hurdling. It’s just one lap of the track, I know, but knowing when to run at 97% and when to turn it up to 100% is as good a measure of maturity as any. Felix Sanchez: a wonderful human being, who handles pressure, has flat out athletic strength, as well as possessing grace and self-knowledge.
And Steve Backley made the javelin final. He can stil throw very far, so he could catch a medal yet. I don’t like the whole flag-waving mania, but I suspect that Backley is a nice guy, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve used sporting performances as exemplars to help raise me from moments of despair or handle bastard interviews.
But Paula Radcliffe. I mean. Brendan Foster talked sense tonight: about moving from fifth to fourth to third is a lot psychologically easier than slipping backwards. The latter is what Paula did. The former is what Kathy Butler did.
Foster did live up to his stereotype by never mentioning Fernanda Ribero, whom I consider to be by far the prettiest distance runner ever, and the one who still competes despite the obvious fact that her medal winning days are over. She’s won or come second in many major distance events, and she’s a trier. Others retire at the top. I like Frankie Fredericks, Ribero, and Ribero’s countrywoman Carla Sacramento (also a contender for reasons to watch the Olympics) who fight on because they still can. Portugal also produced Antonio Pinto, who only recently has been beaten out of the top three in the London Marathon. In 1996, he led for a long while, got tired and was passed by two runners (Vincent Rousseau and that Mexican guy), who stayed ahead to the end. In 1997, he was dropped by the lead group, but found his rhythm again and stormed through the field, outsprinting Italy’s Stefano Baldini to the tape. After that, he won in 2000 in spectactular style.
I’m something of a fan of James Hamilton’s blog, but if you want to tackle despair, Antonio Pinto is as good a model as any. A marathon takes months of preparation, yet it can go wrong in minutes. Pinto has been there. And did he crumble? Did he lay down and die?
Athletics — and sport in general — isn’t only about courage. No one doubts that Haile Gebreselassie has guts, yet he finished 5th in the 10,000m. Sometimes the body won’t do it. But he tried, and he made it to the end. And he smiled. I turned off the interview with Paula Radcliffe. Whatever she said, it would have been wrong.
I watched a little of the Lazer class sailing. Someone who’d been ditched by his own vessel climbed onto the British boat and shifted himself along its length before jumping back in the water. Sailors, like climbers, accept the social duty to rescue or support others in trouble. It could be themselves next. A sort of socialism among the Monte Carlo class. Who’d a thunk it?
For the rest of the athletics, I’d like Kelly Holmes to win the 1500m. She used to train with Huw Evans who used to be the top scorer for the University of Cardiff cross-country team when it was hamstrung by the inclusion of yours truly. (We also shared a coach in Clive James.)
I’d like Wilson Kipketer to win the 800m. He’s an indescribably silky runner. He missed the Atlanta Olympics (in 1996) because he wanted to run for Denmark and there was a five-year ban on nation swapping. He has recurrent malaria. Yet, by Christ, if you want to see poetry in motion, Wilson will make you look twice at your significant other. However, the smart money is on Yuriy Borzakovskiy, the inspired, erratic Russian.
I want Hicham El Guerroj to win the 5000m. If he moves to the 10K in 2008 and the marathon in 2012 as he’s suggested, he could be the greatest distance runner in the world.
Apologies for the ‘preparatory notes’ character of this post. I have neither the time nor the energy to smooth the kinks.
These 868 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:36pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 28 August 2004
It's Unusual »
It’s not often that I agree with Harry’s Place and Norman Geras, but Joseph Harker is a wanker. I went to, and I will at some point blog, a friend’s “commitment ceremony” — ie one where two gays got married in the eyes of all present except the law. I was, to my disbelief, and unending pride, one of the best men. Nolan, to whom I gave the ring, is gay. He is also black. He dad is black. His mom is black. Their ancestors are black as far back as records go. Yet Joseph Harker seems to advocate violence to one of his own.
The problem is, though, that if Tatchell wants to persuade these artists’ fans to reject the homophobia of the Jamaican ghetto, he’s using the wrong tactics entirely.
Tatchell has waded in with a call to boycott the Mobos, and for the BBC to pull the plug on screening it — effectively a demand to put Britain’s biggest black awards ceremony out of business. And this is not the first time he’s acted this way. Previously he’s called for other Jamaican reggae artists to be banned from Britain or face criminal charges.
Tatchell has done what much of the left hasn’t: he’s demanded consistency. The left (or the pseudo-left) argued that there were special circumstances which explicated and exonerated the Moscow Show Trials. But bias is bias and bollocks is bollocks (see, SIAW, anyone can do this, even those without a sense of humour). If “Throw the Jew Down the Well” were nominated, there would be an outcry. It’s not censorship to refuse to promote violence. And a rejection from an award is not censorship. And … Harker’s article was full of the most self-pitying, blame-shifting, bigot-defending, illogical crap I’ve ever read.
What Tatchell doesn’t understand is that music is very important to black people.
Funny how Aretha Franklin didn’t feel the need to sing about gunning down gays. And Joseph, music is somewhat important to whites too. I love music, and I’m 100% European. James Brown did time for armed robbery, but unless, when played backwards, “Sex Machine” calls for the murder of all US gays, he didn’t feel the need to air his phobias (assuming he had any).
Harker is a shallow bigot. Good for Norm and Harry for getting there first.
These 284 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:05am GMT Permanent link.
Good Losers »
I can’t remember which idiot said, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” It works semantically, but it doesn’t mean anything. One can be both a winner and a loser. In the 2002 London Marathon, Paul Tergat came second and Haile Gebresellasie came third. Haile was undaunted on the podium and in interviews. He was only the world record holder over 5,000 and 10,000 metres, and twice Olympic champion over 10,000m. That sounds like a winner to me. Paul Tergat was the five-times World Cross-Country champion and almost winner of the Sydney 10K.
“I did not expect Tergat to attack then,” says Gebrselassie. “Usually he goes from about two kilometres out, but that day he waited and waited until the last 200m.
“When he went past me on the home straight, I thought he had won the gold. I thought that was it.
“But I decided I had to try to just track him to the finish line to make it as hard as possible for him. I did not think I could win.“
With Tergat beginning to tie up, Gebrselassie first drew level and then, in the final few strides, edged ahead to snatch victory from the disbelieving Kenyan.
“ Tergat did everything he could,” says Haile. “ He was simply unlucky that it was not his day. I wish that they could have given out two gold medals that day.
Haile: My greatest race. I know someone who met Tergat after that marathon: he was friendly and effusive, rather than downcast. (Second place does pay quite well, plus he ran under the old course record, beat Gebreselassie, and collected bonuses for his time, but still, he lost.) Whatever a loser is, Paul Tergat and Haile Gebreselassie are not losers. The losers to me are those who refuse to start.
Tergat is also the World Half Marathon record holder, a former 10,000m record holder, and owns the fastest-ever marathon time. He had finished between second and sixth in his six previous attempts. He kept on trying, until he got it right.
I’d love for him to win tomorrow. But I’ve predicted victory in every race he’s been in for years, and marathons can’t be called. I doubt he’ll drop out though.
These 237 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:23pm GMT Permanent link.
Nonsense »
Having praised the old Delerium Tremens for its superior news coverage and sub-editing, I’ve just fallen into the trap of knowing rather more than its writers and editors, and hence feeling superior.
In today’s sports section, above a column bylined by Lord (Sebastian) Coe himself, the Torygraph reproduces the above picture beside Kelly Holmes’ celebrations in Athens earlier in the week, with the caption “Seeing double: Kelly Holmes wins the 800m and Sebastian Coe takes the 800m gold in Moscow in 1980.” John McEnroe likes to note that most people think he beat Borg in the 1979 (1980?) Wimbledon semi, because he won, after an incredible effort, the fourth set. (He died in the fifth.) Coe should have won the 800m; he ran terribly tactically (his father and coach, Peter, told him so unequivocally, causing a rift between them) and finished second. The photo is from the 1500m after the press had written him off as a loser and so on.
But there’s worse. I like Germaine Greer. “The Female Eunuch” is an eye-opening book, and one (I think that) everyone ought to read. And she does say much about Team GB that I, and I suspect James Hamilton, would agree with.
Keeping track of the Olympics has left me emotionally and physically drained. What a depressing spectacle it has been, and how repulsively handled by the British media, which were only interested in the fortunes of a mediocre Team GB.
Although British people persist in the belief that their country is an international power, with close links to the Commonwealth, those of us with family connections in other parts of the world had no chance to find out how their teams were faring.
The medal table was rarely shown. It was a surprise to find that at the midway point Australia was lying fourth, well ahead of Britain, because in the coverage I had been able to see Australia was nowhere.
All the competitors interviewed were British. Maybe we saw so little of the Belarussian who won the women’s 100 metres because she didn’t speak English, but it would have been nice to know, after she had run under 11 seconds in all four heats, what she looked like. She is an Olympic champion after all. Either it means something or it doesn’t.
Good start. I’m behind old Germs 100% here.
The crowns made for the winners in the various events are also olive wreaths. It was unhandsome of two of the lionised British coxless four to chuck theirs away as soon as they were crowned, apparently unwilling to be photographed wearing anything so poncey.
But then it was unhandsome of them to have made so little of the generous handshakes of the Canadian four who were taking their defeat by eight-hundredths of a second rather better than the British took their victory. In the context of such childish behaviour, Pinsent’s Herculean blubbering was simply annoying.
Still behind her. She’s going very well.
The Olympic Games are meant to be a festival, a celebration of youth, beauty, strength and bravery. The contests are games, after all, but nowadays they have to be treated as more serious than life and death, which is ridiculous.
I’m nodding like Paula Radcliffe in the last mile of whatever the last race she deigned to finish was. As James Hamilton wrote to me (private email):
I can understand that after however many years of training, and of nothing else, the pain of defeat might be intense, but Paula gives off the air of someone who’s suffered an outrage, of a victim.
And now, with the finish line in sight, old Germs blows up.
Many of them will suffer for the rest of their lives as a consequence of what they are putting themselves through now. You don’t have to be an orthopaedic surgeon to see that the long-distance runners and walkers toiling up and down the Athens streets are storing up agony and disability for the future, as ankles, knees and hips take the repeated shock of impact with the boiling Tarmac.
In international sport hyper-fitness has become a disease condition, in which every fibre of being is stretched beyond its natural capacity, whether by the action of endogenous body chemicals such as adrenaline or the exogenous chemicals we call drugs. God alone knows how many of the breastless, buttockless female competitors are still menstruating; most of them have a very low ratio of body fat, which probably means that ovulation is suppressed.
An anovulatory woman may well be healthier than a female who is ovulating. If so, we will have to redefine health. It is well-known that racing mares do best in the early months of pregnancy, because of their enhanced blood supply. Nobody has tried building pregnancy into a female athlete’s preparation, as far as I know, but it’s only a matter of time.
I remember that when I was at university I had to read a paper for a seminar. I got most of the way through, sleepily agreeing, until I was pulled up but such an ungainsayable falsehood that I was forced to go back and revise my opinion of the rest. Ms Greer just pulled off the same feat. I’m told that, because of our species’ fondness for big heads, childbirth is near intolerably painful. (Cats, for example, fire out their progeny with the same concern as a ladette on her visit to the bathroom after a night of lager and curry opens her bowels.) Distance running, for those of you who haven’t attempted it, also hurts like sticking your hand in an open flame. Believe it or not, it has occurred to someone to use the one as training for the other. Mostly behind the old Iron Curtain in the bad old days, and the evidence of intention is scant — but that’s what the rumours say. Now, let’s see. Susan Williams, the US athlete who finished with bronze in the Triathlon has a daughter. She’s called Sydney. Her conception made Ms Williams’ mind up not to enter the 2000 Olympics. Women’s Olympic Tri takes about 2 hours of swimming, cycling, and running, and demands serious training in all three. I’m not a gynaecologist, but I think pregnancy is proof of ovulation. Liz McColgan conceived a child during her elite marathoning career. I’m pretty sure that Masterkova, the outstanding women’s middle distance runner of the 90s, has a couple of kids. Believe me, those girls ovulate. Sonia O’Sullivan, who has always looked painfully thin to me, has a daughter, and she’s been in every Olympics since 1996.
And does running do lasting damage? Would you be better spending your life in bed like Marcel Proust? The body has to wear out sometime, and you are a long time dead. Why not strive a little now? Anyway, my mother died of a heart attack at 52; my dad lived to 80; my maternal grandmother fell off the perch at 95; her husband dropped dead in his early 50s, mowing the lawn. Like Harrison Ford at the end of “Blade Runner”, I don’t know how long I’ve got.
But running does strengthen the heart muscle, it does result in lower rates of osteoporosis (which affects women more than men), and it does raise self-esteem. All things I thought a feminist would endorse. Does it cause lasting harm? I train with Mick McGeoch, who until 2002 (he was injured in 2003) had run every London Marathon — and averaged under 2:30 overall. The wife of a fellow runner works in the same place as him, and has, on more than one occasion, related, with tears of laughter in her eyes, accounts of his exit from his car in the morning. But Mick is, as well as being as truly nice guy, something of an obsessive. Still, he’s nearly 50, and beats almost all younger runners. Sebastian Coe took up judo in order to practice with William Hague. Steve Ovett was a triathlete, until a car hit him. Steve Cram still runs. “Agony and disability” don’t seem to mar them, nor the other BBC ex-athlete journos, like Sally Gunnell or Sharon Davies.
I do sort of agree with Germaine about the floor gymnastics, some of which looks like the advanced Geisha passing out exam. But the girls enjoy it. I’m sure there must be someone who said, “By God, GG reads a lot of books. She’ll go blind, you wait and see.”
These 856 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 29 August 2004
Bloody Christian Tourists »
Protester ruins marathon, and the police were useless. Vanderlei de Lima could clearly see the guy coming toward him, why didn’t the cop on the bike?
I hoped he wasn’t an anti-war protester, or I’d be deeply embarrassed. Thankfully he’s not. I suspect he’s the eejit (Cornelius Horan) who did something similar in the Grand Prix earlier in the year.
“I think it is well nigh impossible for a northern European to win in these conditions,” [David Bedford] said after watching the race with around 5000 other disappointed British fans in the Panathinaiko Stadium.
Baldini may be Italian, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He’s just a pale and blonde as Radcliffe is. I feel sorry for Tergat, but I’ve always admired Baldini. And I love to see “racial differences” myths debunked. I doubt Mebrahtom Keflezighi will electrify the American public the way Frank Shorter did — I had to look up his name and the race was only an hour ago. Well, it was supposed to be the American networks who wanted the race run so early (why? — the US is behind Europe), and they got a result.
I said John Brown might get a medal, and I was one place out — not bad given that 102 runners started.
These 182 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:33pm GMT Permanent link.
Good Old Jamie »
I bought the Sunday Torygraph today. I usually avoid the Sundays: if there’s one thing I hate (and my reader will know there’s more than one thing), it’s the whole lifestyle thing, which is even more virulent at the weekend than in the dailies. I used to boycott the Sundays because I read somewhere (probably the Observer) that someone who worked for TS Eliot once said something like “M Eliot est un homme tres religieaux. Il ne lit jamais les papiers de Dimanche.” Apologies for the awful, and certainly incorrect grammar and dubious spelling. And I thought it was because they were crap, rather than because he had an Eric Liddell fixation.)
So whatever, I missed Nick Cohen in the Observer. (Hat tip, Blood & Treasure.) The “death of the left” thing should be bought by the Academie Francais as the exemplar of “tossweasel” so Green Fairy’s favourite word can enter the dictionary.
Cohen is rather good. For most of the distance. On the shortcomings of “New Labour” — he’s the bloke.
What’s telling is that [David Blunkett] has been mixing with very rich men, be they the friends of the Thatcher family, sprigs of the Palumbo family or the brothers from the Hinduja family. These are odd circles to find a Labour minister in. Let me put it to Labour readers like this: if you were invited to these people’s parties, would you want to go?
You don’t have to be Comrade Lenin (either the slaphead revolutionary or the paper-selling blogger) to say “No.”
But when his day’s work is over, he dismisses bourgeois Hampstead as too common for his refined tastes and heads up-market to the aristocratic attractions of Mayfair and Chatsworth; to parties at the Spectator and dinners with Barbara Amiel. He shows no signs of worry that the company he keeps may mark him as a stonking humbug.
I’m a little suspicious of this. I found Barbara Amiel toe-curling, a clever and literate Telegraph answer to Indy journos like Charlotte Raven who pen total tossweasel about ‘Brookside’ and “all men are shit” with a confidence which make you feel giving women the vote was probably a mistake. But Ms Amiel also goes by the moniker “Mrs Conrad Black” — her husband (until recently) owned a rival paper to Mr Cohen’s own. Unless they live like Mr and Mrs Archer, I’d be surprised if the Home Secretary didn’t partake in shoulder-rubbing with the man who sold the Telegraph.
But focusing on the details of one case misses the wider trend: British public life is increasingly dependent on the grace and favour of the super-rich.
When I see the word ‘increasingly’ or the implication that politics now is somehow in the ditch as opposed to politics then, I reach for my water pistol. Until recently, weren’t most MPs landowners — ie the super-rich? Maybe there was a time when the super-rich did not dictate politics: I’d guess it lasted from 1945 to 1951.
Such has been the accumulation of wealth at the top, the parties no longer have a financial need for mass memberships.
I know he said “financial,” but there is more to a party than funding for extant representatives. Look at the “new blood” problem of the Tories. I heard similar arguments before about “Yuppies” in the early 80s. Sod the poor, let’s sell expensive stuff to the newly rich. (And who is rich now? Rupert “bottom scraping” Murdoch, Richard Branson, Bill Gates. Selling to the masses is the way to get rich, not targetting the uber-wealthy. Unless you’re a con man, of course.)
Dr Peter Facey, director of the New Politics Network, a think-tank which monitors the cash flows, adds that for all the talk of the corporate takeover of government, they don’t need corporations’ money either. Donations from big business have, in fact, all but disappeared. The rich are now so rich they no longer have to go to the trouble of persuading directors and shareholders to authorise a payment from company funds when they can pay it from the petty cash.
OK, who’s a tax lawyer? Why the change? Tax laws anyone?
I thought it was a platitude among the left that, as a percentage of income, the poor gave the most to charity — and the very rich the least. There are a lot of us, and very few of them.
I find the second half of Cohen’s argument unconvincing. Yes, Blair and Blunkett suck up to donors. But the “world going to hell” argument? Count me out.
These 507 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:55pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 30 August 2004
Blog Backslapping »
I don’t do enough of this, but “Welshcake” has a really excellent post on male bonding. It also includes an excellent sounding pub not that far from me, which I ought to try out.
These 34 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:04am GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 31 August 2004
Best Star Trek Series »
Peter Cuthbertson’s favourite version of Star Trek is DS9. I like his reasons.
The advantages the series had really added up — like the fact that Bashir and O’Brien genuinely were friends in the way that Riker and Geordi, say, really weren’t, the overarching Dominion storyline as well as individual plots and the better characters overall (just compare Quark to Guinan or Neelix).
I think that’s because Colm Meaney (Miles O’Brien) and Alexander Siddig (Julian Bashir) are the simply better actors.
I’m not sure why, but despite Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner (Data), and better writing, The Next Generation (TNG) has fewer halfway-decent episodes than the Original Series (TOS) — and all of those feature Diana Troi’s mother.
The best Star Trek is Voyager. Of course. Partly because it’s the one with the Borg with the big tits, but also because it does relationships far better than the other series. There was something in TOS about Kirk being everybody’s friend (he exchanges banter with just about anyone) while being Spock’s only friend. Spock is aloof with the rest of the crew, and it’s pretty well reciprocated.
But Voyager is far more complex than the rest. It also has easy-to-spot good episodes. If they feature time-travel or the holodeck (but see below for exceptions) they’re not worth enduring after the titles; ditto anything which features the square boring guy, the one with the tattoo, the nerdy Oriental, the Klingon-girly in permanent ‘roid-rage, or the cat-thing. Anything with the others — to wit Seven, the Doctor, and Tuvok — may be complete blah plot- and sense-wise, but is always redeemed by their alienation, and the Doctor’s semi-hopeless affection for Seven and Seven and Tuvok’s frisson. (He’s married and wouldn’t, and she’s either too shy or too sensible to ask.) And when that’s not present, there’s Jeri Ryan’s bod. There’s also Reg Barclay — Murdoch from the A-Team — but I’ll post again on why the neurotic characters are the most interesting.
(Not that the writers are above the usual inconsistencies in character. When B’Elanna Torres got married, Seven said to her that she couldn’t understand confining herself to just one person: most of the time, she seems to have no social skills whatever, and is virginal and naive.)
As seems to happen with American soaps, the cast grow bored with being typecast, get bolshy, and push for stories where they can showcase their skills. There is no other explanation for the amount of singing The Doctor does in the later episodes. I think both he and Seven play the piano too, though it’s harder to tell if that’s them or dubbed.
The final detail that DS9 lacks is the nominal “emotionless” character. (Voyager has two.) Spock, Data, and Seven (it’s less true of Tuvok) all keep their feelings inside the way a paper bag holds water. Seven’s eyebrow-twiches, eye rolls, and suppressed sighs take her parsecs beyond the often shallow scripts.
Nick Barlow unaccountably prefers Farscape.
These 444 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:24pm GMT Permanent link.
Further Trek Stuff »
Thanks to Will, I’ve learned that Star Trek The Original Series - Series 1 on DVD is now available and been reviewed in the Times.
There’s not a lot of chance of my buying it. I’d need to buy a DVD player first. I own DVDs, but the ones which are some reason cheap in Virgin — Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, Larry O in Hamlet, Fargo, early Kubrick; the only full-price ones I’ve bought are the Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Blue Velvet. My Mac plays them. Clever Mac.
The thing about most Star Trek is that a lot of it was crap.
StarTrek.com: TOS: Series One: The Great Episodes is, as you’d expect generous. The episodes in the set which are worth anything follow.
A Taste of Armageddon
The one about the war which lasted 500 years because the citizens on each side accepted going to vaporisation chambers when the other side scored a virtual ‘hit.’ Not sure what that was really about, but it seemed to mean something when I was six.
The Devil in the Dark
The great ecological one. The opening was almost Dr Who style: monster eye view rattling toward screaming human. StarTrek.com summarises thus:
The U.S.S. Enterprise arrives to investigate reports of an unknown monster deep in the mining tunnels of Janus VI. The being is apparently destroying machinery and killing the miners, and has the ability to burrow through solid rock. Janus VI is a source for the rare mineral, pergium.
Soon after the landing party arrives on the planet’s surface, a reactor pump is stolen and the colony is in jeopardy from fluctuating life support functions. However, this convinces Spock that they are dealing, not with a mindless monster, but with an intelligent lifeform.
Kirk and Spock, along with members of the ship’s security team, enter the mines to find the creature. They discover a large, rock-like creature that burrows easily through the stone walls, as a mole might burrow through dirt. Wounded in a phaser blast, the bulky creature manages to escape through the stone wall.
Of course, from a ship of 400-odd souls, the two most essential to its running get themselves as far from it as they can, and then split up! Kirk intends to kill the creature; Spock to investigate it. Naturally Kirk finds it, and Spock, contrary to his previous speech tells him over the communicator (which works in the mine) “Kill it, Captain, quickly!” (And they say Spock isn’t emotional.) Kirk, of course, doesn’t. (Kirk’s penchant for doing what Spock wants and Spock’s equal concern for Kirk is probably the thing which raised it above all competitors.) Anyway, they decide the creature is intelligent (what bearing does that have? my cat never killed anything; Saddam Hussein did), and decide to preserve it. My memory is clearly at fault here. StarTrek.com describe the last scene as “An alliance is formed between the Horta and the miners; the young, newly-hatched Hortas will mine the pergium at a far faster rate than the humans could and the miners will be extremely rich.” I recall that the Federation declare the planet a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and tell the miners to mine somewhere else.
Arena
One of the high moral moments.
The U.S.S. Enterprise is in pursuit of an unknown alien ship which has destroyed a Starfleet base on Cestus III. In an uncharted area of space, both the alien ship and the Enterprise are caught by an advanced race called Metrons. The Metrons are angry at the two ships for trespassing into their space and believe that physical combat is the answer to finding justice.
They transport Kirk and the alien captain, a lizard-like creature called a Gorn, to an uninhabited asteroid to fight to the death. The Metrons promise that the victor and his ship will be set free, while the loser will be destroyed, along with his ship and crew.
There’s quite a bit to note here. In TOS, space is littered with races so technologically accomplished that they’ve lost interest in the exploration that the Federation still pursues and sit around thinking beautiful thoughts until they need to show their greatly superior strength. In the later series, all races (races isn’t the right word; but ‘species’ as used in the TNG onward is even more incorrect) seem to have discovered warp-powered flight at the same time. Also in the cheaper old days, aliens didn’t just look like people in silly masks, they looked different. And finally, the twist, when Kirk wins, that should be the end, but he refuses to kill with (to me) the deathless words “Man became civilised when he said, ‘I will not kill today.’” (I think there’s an echo of Albert Camus in that, too.) Quite fucking right.
So one of the Metrons beams down looking very much like an adolescent Greek god. (More proof of the series’ disdain for conventional religion; instead preferring a mix of materialism and paganism. I meant to mention earlier that the Stardate also looked like a rejection of Christianity to me, preferring a more ‘rational’ system as in post-revolutionary France.) And both sides are set free.
Errand of Merc
Not one I’d have bothered with, but it’s the first with Klingons, and, again, a far mightier ancient race who out strong-arm two tyros bent on war with superior force.
Again, I’m not sure if this amounts to anything, but it does keep up the momentum that Trek only seems to be about a warship; mostly everything ends in peace.
All sing along now, “Five, six, seven, eight, Open up the pearly gates …"
The City on the Edge of Forever
The one where a war does settle something. As always, the plot is so daft, I have to leave it to someone else to adumbrate:
McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine, a drug which makes him exhibit signs of paranoia and madness, while treating an ailing Sulu on the Bridge. Delirious, he beams down to a nearby planet’s surface, with Kirk and a landing party on his heels.
They are too late to stop the doctor from leaping through a living time machine called “The Guardian of Forever.” At that moment, the U.S.S. Enterprise ceases to exist and the landing party is stranded. The Guardian explains that McCoy went back into Earth’s history and changed it, thereby altering the future. Kirk and Spock go through the Guardian, to Depression-era America, a few days before McCoy is to arrive and change history.
They encounter a social worker, Edith Keeler, who helps them find work to pay for the equipment Spock requires to build a tricorder. Unknown to Kirk and Spock, Edith has taken in the recently-arrived and ill McCoy. Kirk promptly falls in love with Edith and is devastated when Spock completes his tricorder and discovers that in order to repair history, they must let Edith Keeler be killed in an auto accident. If they allow McCoy to save her — as he did before — she will start an effective pacifist movement that will delay the United States’ entrance into World War II, thus allowing Hitler’s Germany to develop the atomic bomb first and conquer the planet.
Edith is also Joan Collins (which explains why they all fall for her), and there’s something in there about when it’s right to fight evil which you’ll need to get out for yourself.
I don’t think that the best stuff came until a little later (the early episodes are really abominable), but that’s for another day.
These 759 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:01pm GMT Permanent link.