Tuesday, 1 February 2005
George Orwell In Anti-Semitism Row »
The novelist George Orwell was attacked yesterday for portraying Leon Trotsky, the son of a … well-to-do jewish farmer, as “Snowball”, a pig, in his fable “Animal Farm.” “The intention was quite obvious” said Mendicant Philippic, of the Hate Mail. “In his essays, Orwell singled out the ‘classic’ writers Dickens and Shakespeare for special praise,” she went on, “he couldn’t have been more blatant if he’d rolled up a trouser leg and started giving funny handshakes. Of course, he claimed that that was ‘literary criticism’ but that is merely liberal cant for ‘academic brainwashing’.”
Ms Philippic demanded that all copies of “Animal Farm” be withdrawn by the publishers and only reprinted if Snowball were a less offensive animal.
These 118 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:20am GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 2 February 2005
The Torygraph Sees Sense »
The Telegraph is turning into the Tory Party voicebox, so How to tackle a burglar within the law must mean that the “change the law” campaign is exiting hurriedly, pursued by an angry householder.
They publish a useful cartoon which makes clear that Tony Martin and co are outside the law (and any likely sensible law).
These 57 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:58am GMT Permanent link.
The Patronising Patriarch »
Schopenhauer was rather fond of quoting “Le style c’est l’homme meme.” At least that’s a lot of what I remember, apart from something about barking dogs and some bloke called Will. Yeah, I googled it, and it was Georges Buffon, if you’re desperate to know.
The BBC allow us to contrast Frederick Forsyth, who writes from experience and to the point, with Eric Joyce. The latter’s style is revealing.
Most people agree that …
Good start Eric.
… global-reach terrorism presents a very real, and daily, threat to us all.
Terrorist work weekends too now. I blame globalisation — and Thatcher of course.
Few demur from the view that …
The same thing in different words. Let us hail the pusillanimous! But how does he finish this sentence-paragraph thing? (Later on Mr Joyce shows that he knows that sentences and paragraphs are not the same thing, which ought to bring a smile to the former Education Secretary’s face.)
Few demur from the view that the home secretary’s principle role [sic] is to preserve our democracy by defending us against that threat.
I count myself as a demurrer already. I disagree with the idea that politicians’ roles are neatly hierarchical and there are principal (heh — Fowler merely says, “Misprints or even mistakes of one for the other are very frequent, and should be guarded against” so much for Mr Joyce’s guard) roles. Secondly, I disagree with the view that the Home Secretary’s role (which should be defined somewhere between what Constitution we have and what was in the incumbent party’s manifesto) was ever defined as defending us against “that threat.” For one thing “global-reach terrorism” was so unimportant to the government until September 11, 2001 (after it was re-elected) that a political appointee thought that “burying bad news” was more worthy of civil servants efforts; for another, “global-reach terrorism” sounds like a Foreign Office job to me.
The question for us all is whether Charles Clarke’s new anti-terrorist proposals strike the balance he himself seeks, between assuring our individual freedoms and protecting our lives.
“Strike the balance” doesn’t mean “hang between the two like a plumb line” but “lie at some point between.” And the question is what balance does Charles Clarke seek? Frederick Forsythe implies that that balance is far too close to the interests of the State and against the individual. Whether Mr Clarke’s drafting is a incompetent as his predecessor’s remains to be seeen.
It is fundamental that we should all be concerned about that balance — get it wrong and we risk the very democracy we’re trying to protect. And of course there are no easy answers.
“It is fundamental that” is empty pleonasm. Saying “there are no easy answers” is platitudinous waffle.
But the facts are that Mr Clarke’s proposals are neither out of whack with our historical responses to grave national threats, nor disproportionate in their effect on our liberties.
But Mr Forsythe argues that they are, and Mr Joyce’s response is unsatisfactory.
The Cold War lasted 43 years, but we remained a parliamentary democracy.
By the early seventies it was terrorism as well. Al Fatah, Black September, Red Brigades, but most of all for us the IRA and the INLA.
Thirty more years; 300 policemen and women, over 600 soldiers, more than 3,000 civilians dead, but we won because even IRA bombs could not force us to become a tyranny. That was why the tyrants lost.
Civil rights were infringed as little as humanly possible. Evidence had to be taken in secret to protect covert sources; yes , and one judge, no-jury courts had to be instituted when juries were terrorised.
Informants had to be given immunity from their own crimes to win the bigger battle. But habeas corpus did not die; right of appeal was not abolished.
Joyce:
Judges have accepted that the present detainees present a serious threat to us but that the intelligence which convinces them of this is inadmissible as evidence in court.
Trials, ideal of course, are therefore not an option.
This doesn’t seem to answer Mr Forsythe’s call for the return of Diplock-like courts.
So should we therefore simply let these people go unchecked and accept the risk they pose — the direct consequence of Frederick Forsyth’s position? Of course not.
It doesn’t require a careful reading of Frederick Forsyth to discover that he’s not saying that at all.
The issue remains one of the right to trial, and it’s an issue both Charles Clarke and Eric Joyce duck.
These 416 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:21am GMT Permanent link.
I Do The Irony Thing Again »
Sadly, No! posts on the reaction of certain bloggers to the German woman offered job ib brothel by Jobcentre story.
As Sadly says, here’s Living on the Edge:
So you want all those yummy European social programs here in the U.S.A?
Well here is what you have to look forward to!
I wonder how many of you would what this to happen to you or your kids.
Interesting that that link goes to ’Work As A Prostitute Or Risk Losing Benefits’. (Update: I didn’t read that link because I read it in the Telegraph yesterday. Oh, dear. The comment by David Irving is a gem.) Here’s the rub:
Well if you’ve read many of my entries here, you will know how the idea of “Wants” being labeled rights drives me crazy, so I did a bit of educating myself. I explained the difference between true “Rights” and his “Wants” which he seemed to understand. He then totally then ignored all this to tell me how much better off we’d all be as a society with “free” healthcare, and that he would rather see a portion of his tax dollars go to that then anything else, and that is was the caring/humain “right thing to do”.
Living on the Edge: January 10 2005. He’s against cutting benefits, but he doesn’t believe in benefits in the first place!
Ditto Scrawlville who said last August:
Social Security: Face it, the system is a disaster. Kerry wants to continue the present course. Bush has this wild-eyed idea that your money should be placed into an account with your name on it … and account that you can exercise some control over. ‘Nuff said.
Europeans are bad for allegedly cutting benefits our Libertarian friends would never have paid. Makes sense in asshat land.
These 92 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 3:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 3 February 2005
The Colour Purple »
Purple? What kind of a homosexual are you anyway? That’s not purple, Mary, that color out there… is mauve.
Tony Kushner Angles in America
Wassily Kandinsky was pretty down on purple in Towards the Spiritual in Art and Painting, and I bet he’d have been chuffed that the “In Vino” party has chosen it for their website and rosettes.
Nick Barlow, Matthew Turner, and Daniel Davies are unimpressed. Anthony Wells hasn’t commented yet, but he will.
The one thing the permatanned loons (to use Nick’s phrase) are certainly against is grey areas.
If you want a party that tells the truth and only the truth, this is the party for you. If you want a party that talks straight, this is the party for you. If you are tired of the lies, the deceit, the evasions and the spin of the old parties in Westminster, then join us, because so are we.
Never say never but — never trust anyone who tells you the truth is simple, that they happen to know it, and it fits onto a press release. Veritas spend an awful lot of time declaring that they tell the truth (which I’ll note is only likely to be their first lie of many).
- a country that is innovative, entrepreneurial and outward-looking;
- a country that is based on the concepts of justice and fairness;
- a country where our traditional democratic freedoms and values are cherished and protected;
- a country where individuals are encouraged and helped to take responsibility for their own lives — but which is compassionate towards those in genuine need and protects the weak and vulnerable;
- a country where everyone is equal under the law and no-one is discriminated against on the basis of race, colour, creed, sex or age.
Apart from my doubts about Charles Clarke’s plans for “House Arrest” which of those wasn’t in some sense true of this country under every government since WWII? Thatcher was heavier on the “responsibility for their own lives” part (but we still had a welfare state) and Wilson was more in favour of the “compassionate towards those in genuine need and protects the weak and vulnerable” idea. Given that they’re irreconcilable, everyone seems to like a little of both.
VERITAS will openly and fearlessly speak up for Britain and the British way of life and in everything it does — every policy, every political initiative, every decision — be guided only by what is in the interests of the British people[.]
And what happens when the interests of the British people conflict? (What we on the left used to call “class war"?)
The Telegraph asked Do you trust Veritas? Graham Turner was admirably succinct.
Yes, of course Robert Kilroy-Silk is utterly trustworthy. And I am Marie of Romania.
I’d leave it at that, but for the contribution further down by “Prof Joseph Chikelue Obi.” I’m suspicious of anyone who uses academic titles, and “Prof” Obi is what you might call a character. This is from the background added to a press release from RCAM Provost, Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi.
RCAM (Royal College of Alternative Medicine) is an Officially Registered, Dublin-Based, Independent, Regulatory, Training and Empowerment Body for Qualified Wellness Consultants and their Associates from all over the world ; which solely aims to Protect the Public ; by raising Ethical Awareness ( and optimizing Best Professional Standards) in Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM).
RCAM has absolutely no links whatsoever with any ‘Royal Entity’ of ‘Similar’ (or ‘Presumed Similar’) Nomenclature , Title , Calling , Being or Eminence.
Since Eire doesn’t have a monarchy, that second paragraph should surprise no one.
These 297 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:24pm GMT Permanent link.
For Ayn Rand »
It seems to be the crazy Russian’s centenary. Though what do I know? I’ve barely heard of her. Angels in America again, and I fixed the last dodgy link.
Belize: I hate America. I hate this country. Nothing but ideas and stories and people dying. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word free on a note so high no one could reach it. That was deliberate.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:59pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 4 February 2005
The Friday Quiz »
So much for the return of cat blogging: no photos for you! Instead, I’ve got two case histories of alleged criminals — neither has been tried properly; both have been suspected of having “senior leadership roles” in radical political organisations. Neither is presently welcome in his home country (unless you count the promise of detention for several years at the taxpayers’ expense as a welcome).
Suspect X: “sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labour for bank fraud"; suspected of misleading intelligence agencies in several countries; currently has an arrest warrant in his own country also for fraud.
Suspect Y: “attempt[ed] to steal money from Marks & Spencer. In the autumn of 2001, he and others travelled from Luton to M&S stores in Brent Cross, Wembley, and other parts of west and north-west London. They bought some fairly low-value items by cheque and then tried to take them back, presumably for cash refunds.” He had also been “tried in absentia by an Egyptian court and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.”
Both men, note, are middle-Eastern. Both have an understandable preference for being tried in absentia, as trials of the other kind in Arabic countries lead to nasty consequences for the defendant — being hung, stoned, flogged, or sent to prison — all outcomes the wise villain is careful to avoid.
Both Egypt and Jordan are “friendly” powers. However, one of these men is likely to spend his time under house arrest in this country; while the other was looked upon by no less an authority than the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz as a possible interim leader of Iraq.
It’s a funny old world.
Sources and answers: here and here.
These 290 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:48am GMT Permanent link.
Truth And Utility »
I didn’t read the papers much yesterday, so I didn’t hear about the got-up row over the Glasgow heroin study until the Radio 4 6pm news.
Anti-drug worker David Pentland said: “To put this information out into society is totally irresponsible.”
The Telegraph is scarier.
Shona Robison, the Scottish National Party’s health spokesman, said the research, by a team at Glasgow Caledonian University, seemed “like a waste of money”.
It seems that she doesn’t understand what studies and research are for. Don’t bother with the truth: give us the myths which lead the flock along the path of state-approved virtue. I think you have to be very blinkered not to realise that drug-use is compatible with “normal” life.
The BBC’s Your Views has an interesting new spin on the overused phrase “the real world.” Apparently it’s governed by stereotypes.
What cloud cockoo land are these people living on, I think they must have their heads buried in the sand to spout claptrap like this. They definately need to get out into the real world.
I’m not sure why there are so many contributions from South Wales, nor why the above comment was from a person in Llantwit Major (a comparatively well-off commuter urb) while Jock in Blackwood (mostly known for deprivation and the Manics) can add the more sensible:
To be honest I think the study is actually saying that it is POSSIBLE to take heroin and lead a ‘normal’ lifestyle-this is a fact. However it’s not very PROBABLE-something people seem to be missing!
Anyway, I had a bit of a rant in the pub last night, after DL pointed out former Welsh Tory minister Rod Richards lurking by the bar. All profiles of Mr Richard are very careful to avoid using terms like “alcoholic” — “a long battle with alcohol-related stress problems” seems to be the Western Mail’s favoured euphemism. His downfall is usually blamed on assault charges and bankruptcy allegations, lapses in judgement perhaps — otherwise his well known drinking doesn’t seem to have prevented his scaling the political and business ladders.
Julie in Cardiff has some thoughts on drug-taking.
Yes, but not after a certain amount per day, moderation as always is the key on this. Some people just can’t control moderation… hence binge drinking for instance, and 40 a day smokers. Drugs may not be ‘physically’ addictive…. but the can certainly be mentally. So if we are mentally strong enough then yes I believe you can live a ‘normal’ (what ever that means these days) life.
Just so no one thinks I’m bashing the Tories by raising old Rod, there’s always George Brown, as remembered by Harold Wilson in Memoirs: The Making of a Prime Minister, 1916-64 (1986).
I was taking a risk with George Brown, with his erratic habits. The drink problem was always with us. It was not that he drank more than anybody else but that he could not hold it. For a time he was on his best behaviour. He had high ability and a very sharp mind, enjoyed a solid position of trade union support in the Party and would I knew face down the Treasury whenever the occasion arose.
It’s not the drink in the man; it’s the man in the drink. Or something like that.
These 292 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:34am GMT Permanent link.
Hung Up On Words »
When I thought about the last post, I realised it all came down to words, and what can be spoken and what cannot. I’ve been rewatching Angels In America (and I’ll probably watch it once more this weekend: it’ll be at least a decade before something this good is made for TV again) and there’s one great scene at the end of Chapter One between Henry, a private doctor (James Cromwell) and Roy Cohn (Al Pacino).
RC: Very interesting, Mr Wizard. Why the fuck are you telling me this?
H: Well, I have just removed one of three lesions which biopsy results will probably tell us is a […?] sarcoma lesion and you have a pronounced swelling of glands in your neck, groin, and armpits. Lymphodenopathy is another sign, and you have oral candidiasis and maybe a little more fungus until the fingernails of two digits on your right hand. So. That’s why I’m …
RC: So this disease …
H: Syndrome.
RC: Whatever. It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.
H: Mostly. Haemophiliacs are also at risk.
RC: Homosexuals and drug addicts. So why are you implying that I … What are you implying, Henry?
H: I don’t think I was implying anything.
RC: I’m not a drug addict.
H: Come on now, Roy.
RC: What? What? ‘Come on now, Roy’ what? You think I’m a junkie? Henry? Do you see tracks? [Pulls up sleeves]
H: This is absurd.
RC: So say it.
H: Say what?
RC: Say Roy Cohn, you are a …
H: Roy?
RC: ‘Roy Cohn, you are a …’ Not ‘Roy Cohn, you are a drug fiend’ but ‘Roy Marcus Cohn you are a [makes mouth noise] …’ Come on Henry, it starts with an ‘H.’
H: I’m not going to get in to th …
RC: With an ‘H’ Henry, and it isn’t haemophiliac. C’mon!
H: Why are you doing this Roy?
RC: No I mean it. Say it. Say ‘Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.’ And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation. And your practice. And your career. In the State of New York, Henry. Which you know I can do.
H: Roy, you have been seeing me since 1958. Apart from the facelifts, I have treated you for everything from syphilis …
RC: From a whore in Dallas.
H: From syphilis to venereal warts. In your rectum. Which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas, but it wasn’t a female whore.
RC: [Nods.] So say it.
H: Roy Cohn, you are … You have had sex with men. Many, many times Roy. And one of those men, or any number of them, has made you very sick. You have AIDS.
RC: AIDS. [Shakes head] You know, your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words. On labels. That you believe that they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with. They don’t tell you that.
H: No?
RC: No. Like all labels, they tell you one thing and one thing only. WHERE does an individual so identified fit in the food chain? In the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler. Clout. Not who I fuck, or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call. Who owes me favours. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, ‘homosexual’ is what I am because I have sex with men. But, really, this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men, who in 15 years of trying cannot pass a pissant anti-discrimination bill through city council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody. And who nobody knows. Who have zero clout! Does this sound like me Henry? …
And what is my diagnosis Henry?
H: You have AIDS Roy.
RC: No. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.
Let’s not go back to those times.
These 83 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:44pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 5 February 2005
Hello, I'm A Pudgy Austrian Shortarse With Only One Testicle And A Moustache »
They probably wouldn’t take me for the ‘Austrian’ part; and I couldn’t take the ribbing about kangaroos and walking upside down. Still, if you want to give it a go, pop along and introduce yourself.
No thanks to ‘Dave’ —
Dave Davies, 38 wife, four kids, live in Darlington, would prefer if people used real names, I was in UKIP for far too long.
On behalf of Daves everywhere, I’d rather you didn’t.
As Nick discovered, he’s “the chap who was going to stand against David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary.”
These 68 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:38pm GMT Permanent link.
Good Catch By Guido »
Guido Fawkes spotted something in the new New Labour slogan, which the bad old media missed. Howard: We must look forward — not back: Speech announcing his candidature for the Conservative Party leadership at the Saatchi Gallery, London. Did nobody tell Alan Milburn that stealing is wrong?
As Guido says, The Plain English Campaign isn’t happy about the grammar.
The Telegraph splendidly reports: Labour showed yesterday that its fighting spirit remained undimmed by launching another attack on the verb.
The Torygraph is quite wrong. This is the future of English.
The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity. Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below all inflexions followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs the preterite and the past participle were the same and ended in -ed. The preterite of steal was stealed, the preterite of think was thinked, and so on throughout the language, all such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken, etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by adding -s or -es as the case might be. The plurals of man, ox, life, were mans, oxes, lifes. Comparison of adjectives was invariably made by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest), irregular forms and the more, most formation being suppressed.
These 92 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 5:15pm GMT Permanent link.
And They Call It Puppet Love »
Went to see Team America: World Police the other night. It has some good jokes: “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team America’ …”, the computer called “I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E”, the ‘mind-reading’ one, who isn’t, Matt Damon, the cats (I loved the cats), the secret signal, the wanton destruction of Egypt. But you still have to be pretty drunk to find it laugh-out-loud.
Add me to those who liked it; just not enough to remember it next month.
I’ll do anything for a bad pun, me.
These 82 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:29pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 6 February 2005
My Eyes Are Dim »
Mark Holland is upset by Police chief splashes out on new logo because the old one ‘discriminated against short-sighted people’. I was going to say something, but it’s too ridiculous.
I did think the proper PC (ahem!) term was ‘myopic’ while the more radical wing of the vision-impaired were taking back former forms of abuse and calling themselves “four eyed.” The umbrella group being called the ‘Alliance of Short-Sighted, Myopic, and Four-Eyed Sufferers’ (but they prefer Spectacle!) and can be seen outside Parliament chanting “Tony Blair is a four-eyed git” and “Put your specs on Tony” in an attempt to persuade the Prime Minister to wear glasses in solidarity. (Photo taken from here.)
I was worried that the new New Labour logo would be illegible to the colour-blind (who, unlike the short-sighted, don’t have a commonly available corrective), so I ran the image through Vischeck. It came out far better than I expected.
The colour-blind are predominantly men (I’ve seen various evolutionary explanations for this, but they’re largely unconvincing) and white. I think this shows that discrimination is careless rather than intentional. The only boy who was tested as colour-blind in my class at school went on to art college. (Write your own jokes; he was very talented.)
I’m not colour-blind (though anyone who has seen me wearing a tie or a Gyles Brandreth-like jumper may have had reasonable doubts) and I’m long-sighted — and I mostly wear glasses for cosmetic effect.
These 223 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 3:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Course There'll Be Some Fighting »
I hope I get to see some bare breasts
Me too
Why are the men such losers?
Nice to see the lesbians in
Cocksuckers!
I hope there’s some fighting
Course there’ll be some fighting, you stupid asshole
Audience Very Plainsong, Jerry Springer: the Opera
I’m in total agreement with Nigel Farndale’s Neil Hamilton, you’re now my superhero.
What are we to make of Neil Hamilton? On the plus side, the former minister turned pantomime dame did face bankruptcy and public humiliation with a steady eye - and he did once, on a celebrity edition of Mastermind, describe himself as “a professional object of curiosity”, which is endearing. On the minus side, that cash-for-questions business did not look good. And he is in the habit of wearing bow ties. And I often see him jogging in my local park and can testify that he favours the skimpiest of skimpy shorts.
I cannot properly express how much the photo of a dejected looking Clifford in the Telegraph on Thursday gladdened my heart. I seem to remember reading somewhere that he claimed to be a Christian and if I could have found a reliable reference to bear this out, I’d have had great pleasure in citing Exodus 20:16 “Thou shalt not bear bear false witness against thy neighbour” and Exodus 23:1 “Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.”
I did find a glorious story linking Max to the other loser in the news this week.
Some journalists can boast that they liberated Port Stanley. Some can say that they were on the road to Basra when the Gulf War entered its final conflagration; some have been in Beirut or Belfast or Bosnia.
It fell to your correspondent yesterday to witness at close hand what will surely enter the annals of conflict as the great Kilroy not-quite-fisticuffs of January 1997. And when my grand-children cluster round me and ask what it was like when Max Clifford threw a wobbly on a daytime chatshow, what a story I will have to tell.
Even bicycle thieves can’t keep a good journalist down.
These 127 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 3:38pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 7 February 2005
I'm Such A Moron »
Skimming my RSS reader, do I bother with stories like Rice sees hard choices for Israel? Nope. The first — and only — one to get my attention was Car chase spans five countries which naturally led to the thought “Was there shooting? Were there crashes? Were there explosions?” The answer to all three being “No.” Pretty boring really.
These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:12am GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 8 February 2005
Ward Off »
I’m not sure that I agree with Ophelia Benson about Ward Churchill. She quotes the following passage (I can’t tell where it was from):
David Bradley, a well-known Indian artist in Santa Fe, earned Churchill’s wrath by championing federal legislation that required those selling their work as Indian art to be able to prove their tribal ties. “In the 1980s, money was flying like confetti around here. You had dozens of people pretending they were Indian and selling their art,” Bradley said. “We had everything stolen from us for 500 years, and I wasn’t going to let them take our art as well.” Churchill, who is also a painter, took issue with the effort. “He wrote this slanderous attack about me. He tried to impugn my motives,” Bradley said. “He ought to be fired. Shame on CU [University of Colorado] for giving this con man a job.” Bradley believes Churchill opposed the law because it affected his ability to sell his paintings. Churchill attacked the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts legislation, saying it gave rise to “witch hunts” among tribes looking for phony Indians and put undue importance on racial purity.
In things like this, I tend toward being a minimal government man. If you buy a painting, it’s something you hang on a wall. It you like it, it’s good; if not, not. If you pay a premium because of something about the artist other than talent, you’re an idiot in my book. Caveat emptor and all that. I don’t know what Churchill’s motives were, but any importance given to racial purity is too much for me. So i don’t follow Ophelia’s snark:
Oh yeah? Undue importance? Well what are you doing teaching ‘ethnic studies’ then?
Because one can teach ethnic studies without being ‘ethnic’ I’d have thought. For years universities have taught ancient Greek philosophy without employing any actual ancient Greeks.
Whatever, if there’s a market for ‘Indian’ art and you’re a painter struggling to see your daubs, help is at hand. I can make you talk like a Native American.
Boom! Tssch!
Move along now, nothing to see here.
These 172 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:08pm GMT Permanent link.
Whatever Will Hak Say? »
Cherie Blair can’t tell New Zealand from Australia. She charges £125,000 for this? And the audience thought she was “boring.” Peace-loving anti-nuclear hippies. (They’ll be next on the list. If you want to avoid the righteous wrath of Tony, make like Kim Jong-Il. You know it makes sense.)
Sharlene McDonald, 45, also an insurance executive, said: “I’d give her three out of 10. We were expecting nine out of 10. There was only a fleeting reference to raising funds for charity.”
She is rasing money for charity: the “Impoverished Former Prime Minister and Lady Wife” charity.
She smiled and turned away when reporters politely tried to question her.
Bet it’s New Zealand’s taxpayers’ money going into her pockets — but that’s no reason to speak to the Hoi Polloi.
Mrs Blair, wearing a bright turquoise silk coat and dress, entered the conference hall alongside the prime minister, Helen Clark, to a standing ovation and the strains of a song called You Are Amazing.
The fabled Cherie dress sense: she wears clothes which look stunning on Carole Caplin … and she’s still a dog.
“I thought Cherie was very poor,” said Caroline Canning, 34, an insurance executive. “She flogged her book, and for a woman of her credentials she could have had a lot more weight and talked about her work with human rights. Instead it was all about who painted which walls in Downing Street - peripheral crap.
(Trivial fact: the only person I know who’s met her — her chambers represented his employer in court — described her as ‘not very bright.’)
These 129 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 6:37pm GMT Permanent link.
The Philistine Conversion »
A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever
Endymion, John Keats
Both Bobbie and Simon comment on the latest Oliver Kamm wordfest. Simon got the medal for almost finishing the piece, and he made me read it too.
But Morris celebrated art, not folk wisdom. His protest against industrialism was that it foreclosed the cultivation of beauty, which he looked forward to becoming “a necessary part of the labour of every man who produces”. Today’s radical knitting, by contrast, extends to patterns for “a knitted willy with realistic head and veins”. Clearly, we have the philistines always with us, after all.
The fellow on the right looks like a nice boy, shame about the small member. Now, where’s me Shakespeare?
These 47 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:23pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 9 February 2005
I Also Offer My Most Enthusiastic Contrafibularities »
Dr. Johnson: This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
Edmund: Every word, sir?
Dr. Johnson: Every word, sir.
Edmund: Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Dr. Johnson: What??
Edmund: Contrafibularities, sir. It is a common word down our way.
Jamie, Lenin, and Matt yield to temptation and link to Michael Totten’s hilarious post.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but it wasn’t up to me where I was born,“ Hitchens said.
…
“So you’re saying, sir, that you can be bought,” Hitchens shot back.
I see in the comments that Ted Barlow considers the second of these not the right answer. The question?
“If you wanted more Iraqi support,” Atiyyah bellowed at Hitchens,“you should have given us more money and food once you got there!”
The ‘you’ in Hitchens’ reply is a personal ‘you’ despite the ‘us’ being a collective pronoun. But then pronouns get Michael a little confused as well.
“I agree with Christopher,” I said. “We didn’t invade Iraq to let it turn into another Iran.” I knew damn well all the Iraqis at the table were staunch opponents of religious fascism. This shouldn’t have been a point of contention. But, boy, was it ever.
…
“What do you mean when you say we” Hassan Mneimneh said to me.
“I mean the US and Britain,” I said, “along with — hopefully — everyone here at this table.“
When did Australia and Spain fall off young Mike’s radar? And what does he mean by ‘we’? The freedom to make mistakes and choose your own path to hell is not a right Michael recognises.
(I find Michael confused on issues of collective responsibility: in Yes, It Was Appeasement he’s right about the dictionary definition of appeasement, but misunderstands the point of voting in a general election, unless one believes that all elections are single-issue these days. Anyway, governments are not selected by the mass, but by the floating voters, a very small percentage of people found they preferred the Socialists — and they won. To believe that the entire Spanish nation had some kind of collective cheese-eating surrender fest is absurd. Some polls called the election for the Socialists before the Madrid atrocity.)
Later he told me he recently saw “that little weasel” Juan Cole speak in public.
James Wolcott summons up Juan Cole (and gets onto the blog roll).
Juan Cole looks like a professor and acts like a professor, but don’t let that fool you—he actually is a professor. But that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of administering a righteous punk smackdown. Get his glasses steamed, and he’ll punt you into the next time zone, as Jonah Goldberg has just learned to his bruised chagrin. Goldberg, a.k.a. “Jabba the Hack,” presumed to challenge Cole on the subjects of Iran and Iraq, venturing into the field of combat armed with nothing save a brazen gall that could be sold on the open market as seal blubber.
Splendid.
These 206 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:04am GMT Permanent link.
So What Went Wrong? »
Children of rich parents are better at reading.
These 9 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:34am GMT Permanent link.
Some Random Iraq Stuff »
Have you seen the CIA Factbook entry on Iraq? It’s most bizarre. If the CIA spent the 1990s trying to assassinate “SADDAM Husayn” is it any wonder they failed? I looked it up because I wanted a crutch for my terrible sense of Middle Eastern history, so I could attempt to say something sensible in a comment on Matthew Turner’s second post on Michael Totten. CIA bods clearly tend toward the “strong, silent” type as this sentence is a model of laconism.
Territorial disputes with Iran led to an inconclusive and costly eight-year war (1980-88).
Rotten.com’s entry on Donald Rumsfeld is more revealing:
Perhaps the most memorable of these roles came during the Reagan administration, when Rumsfeld was named special presidential envoy to the Middle East. According to the Washington Post and others, Rumsfeld was a major proponent of the Reagan administration’s support of Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.
As a conciliatory gesture, the U.S. removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, paving the way for Rumsfeld to visit Baghdad in 1983, about the midpoint of the decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
At the time, intelligence reports indicated the Iraqis were using illegal chemical weapons against Iran “almost daily.” During several trips to Iraq, Rumsfeld told government officials that the U.S. would consider an Iraqi loss to Iran a major strategic defeat. In a personal meeting with Saddam Hussein in December 1983, Rumsfeld told the Butcher of Baghdad that the U.S. wanted to restore full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
In 2002, Rumsfeld tried to put a gloss on this meeting by claiming that he warned Hussein against using banned weapons, but that claim was unsupported by the State Department’s notes on the meeting.
As a result of the openings created by Rumsfeld’s diplomatic triumphs, U.S. companies were recruited and encouraged, both covertly and overtly, to ship poisonous chemicals and biological agents to Iraq, by the administrations of both Reagan and George Bush Sr.. Care packages to Saddam included sample strains of anthrax and bubonic plague, and components which would be used to develop nerve poisons like sarin gas and ricin.
See, they call him “Saddam Hussein” not “SADDAM Husayn.” Typical MSM! With all that, Saddam still couldn’t win against the only state in the world more backward than Arkansas.
I promised “random iraq stuff” and the above was my going off my own topic. I meant to call your attention to Norm’s superb post and mention that an almost accidental sentence gave me a sort of epiphany.
True, [World War II] was not fought on behalf of the Jews, or to save them, but amongst the reasons it was fought was to defeat Nazi barbarism, and those making up the Jewish remnant were beneficiaries to that extent.
I think there’s the seed of Norm’s and the other “humanitarian war” supporters’ rationale: whatever the ostensible reason for the Iraq invasion, the victims of Saddam Hussein would be beneficiaries. For myself, I think that Saddam was an unspeakably awful tyrant, but “sexing up” intelligence reports and deceiving Parliament are no way for a government to behave; Rumsfeld is unworthy of any trust whatever; and I’m very dubious about the positive outcomes of any war. As Norm’s post shows, even the beneficiaries of the Second World are reluctant to be grateful. That reminds me of one of the better comments to Michael Totten’s post
I’ve always thought that the “hearts & minds” part of the equation was going to be tricky, to say the least. There’s a Japanese saying to the effect that if you do a favor for someone you must humbly apologize, because you have caused them to lose face.
They hated us when we did invade and they hated us when we didn’t. Me, I was for staying at home. Better to be alive and hated than dead and hated. Or just dead.
These 296 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:52pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 10 February 2005
Pigs Might Fly »
Guido unearths the important bit in Anthony Wells’s post on the weekend’s YouGov poll.
The poll also asked about the two Labour posters that were accused of being anti-semitic. In both cases most people thought the posters were not anti-semitic, though a third of people thought they were. In one case (the data on the website does not indicate which poster relates to which question) 21% though the poster was deliberately anti-semitic. As one might expect attitudes towards the posters divided along party lines - over half of Conservative voters thought the posters were anti-semitic, while two-thirds of Labour voters thought they weren’t. There were significant minorities of Labour voters though who thought the posters were deliberately anti-semitic (8% and 13% respectively).
Perhaps more important are the proportions of people who said the posters would make them more or less likely to vote Labour. Overall people said the posters would make them less likely to vote Labour, but this was largely because of current Conservative voters’ answers. There are practically no Conservative voters who say the posters make it more likely they will vote Labour, and almost as few Labour voters who say the poster makes them less likely to vote Labour. Amongst current Lib Dem voters, both posters made more people less likely to vote Labour than more likely to vote Labour.
Because I really can’t see the posters as anti-Semitic, I don’t believe that that many people saw them that way: there has to be some suggestion in there. (And I think Labour voters are more likely to racial stereotyping than Conservative voters, so those figures suggest an element of bias to me.)
There’s a really splendid cartoon in the Telegraph (no permalink available).
I see the Re-elect Blair campaign has already started.
Melissa’s boss thinks more MPs should have blogs. Maybe if they set an example to children, unlike ‘Wayne Rooney.’ Or indeed Alastair Campbell.
Just spoke to Trev [Trevor Beattie, creative chief at Labour’s ad agency TBWA] think tbwa shd give statement to newsnight saying party and agency work together well and nobody here has spoken to standard. Posters done by tbwa according to polotical [sic] brief. Now fuck off and cover something important you twats.
Naturally, despite mentioning Trevor Beattie in the third person, telling the recipient to “fuck off”, and the fact that ad agencies don’t cover things, Campbell attempted to pass this off as sent to the wrong person. Pigs are clean animals. Alistair Campbell lives in shit, though.
These 156 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 4:00pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 11 February 2005
I May Be As Thick As A Whale Omelette »
Oh dear, Mark’s not impressed by Stephen Pollard’s curmugeonly antics.
I’m rather proud of Ellen MacArthur (but then I am proud to be British, so that’s not so surprising). I thought that Stephen Pollard’s $890 Ducasse disaster was actually entertaining — perhaps because it was about something other than “bloody football, the gee gees and classical music.” And Pollard’s reasoning is suspect:
But on Tuesday, when Ariel Sharon shook hands with the leader of the PA, there was only story across TV and radio: a woman who had gone sailing.
Well, Scott Burgess says why.
But Mark has to cite Kim to Toit in support of his position:
Good grief. Sailing around the world: balls. Sailing around the world solo: more balls. Sailing around the world solo, and breaking the record by 32 hours (equivalent of 500 miles if raced side by side): balls of stainless steel.
Think about the bit in the brackets for a minute. And remember that he shares a name with a North Korean dictator.
Over to Tony Parsons:
She’s not my idea of a Miss Wet T-Shirt.
Far from it.
Baggy clothing. No make-up to write home about. And where’s the cheeky smile, eh?
Isn’t it time someone told Ellen to make more of an effort before she goes out?
And please, please, puh-leease could someone tell me what in heaven’s name all this round-the-world nonsense is all about?
You set off from Point A. You sail all the way round the world. And 77 days later, where are you, love?
Back at Point A.
If all you’re doing is getting back to where you set out from, why go to all that trouble in the first place?
So what’s the point of Ellen MacArthur?
Can she sing? Nope.
Does she ooze sexuality like it’s going out of fashion? Nope.
Is she a close personal friend of top rock star and all-round good guy Bono? Nope. ‘Nuff said.
A word in your ear, love. Next time you sail round the world, wear a decent pair of high-heels and something figure-hugging from Versace.
And one last request. As you’re on your feet, be a dear and fix us a nice cup of tea.
These 106 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:32am GMT Permanent link.
Come On, Tony »
Tony Blair has begun a day-long tour of England. Backword suggests, in the British spirit of fair play, that readers encourage him with a shout of Come on, Tony!
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:56am GMT Permanent link.
Nero And Zero »
Dear readers, the phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” is no more. Who reads Gibbon these days? Thanks to Manic, the Independent’s Bush team tried to suppress pre-9/11 report into al-Qa’ida.
Federal officials were repeatedly warned in the months before the 11 September 2001 terror attacks that Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida were planning aircraft hijackings and suicide attacks, according to a new report that the Bush administration has been suppressing.
Critics say the new information undermines the government’s claim that intelligence about al-Qa’ida’s ambitions was “historical” in nature.
The BBC has US airports had warnings of 9/11.
The commission report said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaeda’s training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation.
However, none of the warnings specified what would happen on 11 September.
The report said there was a “striking” false sense of security at the FAA.
“Intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 11 September did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures,” the report said.
The thing to say now is “reading ‘My Pet Goat’ while America is attacked.”
Remember that. Warnings of 9/11. The response:
One more time.
These 66 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:43am GMT Permanent link.
My Sweet Lords »
Lords could sink ID bill, admits Clarke.
These 7 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:09am GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 12 February 2005
Some Angry Stuff Better Written While Sober »
Something has to be rotten when the normally jolly Harry Hutton sends one off into wailing and teeth-gnashing despair.
Right-wing or left-wing, if your reflexes are sound the very idea of these things [ID cards] should make you want to vomit with rage and hatred. I would forbid my daughter to marry a man if that man were in favour of a compulsory ID card scheme, if I had a daughter.
I don’t know what bright spark decided that the screen-shot taker wouldn’t work when there’s a DVD in the ‘puter but I meant to illustrate this with a still from the scene in The Pianist (top-hole film, BTW, I usually avoid things that win awards decided by actors the way I avoid actors, but this is excellent; perhaps the best boys and key grips got the important votes) where Frank Finlay is pushed into the gutter by two guys dressed like Starship Troopers, so Adrien Brody with his ID on his sleeve will have to suffice.
We don’t want or need ID cards in this country.
But I wanted to vote against, because I loathe the idea on principle. I never want to be commanded, by any emanation of the British state, to produce evidence of my identity, when I am doing nothing more than amble down the Queen’s highway, and breathing God’s fresh air. I believe that the state will use the mandatory ID card to store ever more information about us, and I believe that information could be used against the interests of liberty.
Boris Johnson bounces back to form.
I’ll come back to ID in a minute (and no doubt regularly for the rest of the year). John Cole (easily my favourite conservative: never mind that I frequently want to punch him) puts a very persuasive case (to me) for voting Republican, based on Kevin Drum’s post on the Labour Party’s pledge card. I’m very impressed with the Republican Contract with America (for the full thing, read John or follow the link):
- FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
Too fucking right. The David Miliband scandal should have been much, much bigger. If MPs aren’t bound by our laws, what’s the point of any of this government business?
Kevin reproduces the Labour pledge card pledges and I call bullshit on all of them. Low mortgages aren’t being fed through to renters; and those on or near the minimum wage can’t hope to buy. What is a ‘modern school’? ‘Strong discipline’? where? You don’t have to be a reader of the Hate Mail to double over at that one. Do apprenticeships even exist these days? OK, the Sure Start thing may be working (it seems to have been inspired by Lyndon Johnson’s Head Start programme — one of his unmitigated successes). The NHS? Not in Wales. Local policing teams? I live in a working-class inner city district, and I never see the police. And ‘cracking down on drug dealers’? Simple, legalise the lot. Then we won’t have scenes like this (via Jim Henley). And finally: “Your country’s border’s protected” (actually we’re an island…) “ID cards [but not for how long? and every other government database has been a fiasco] and strict controls that work [as opposed to strict controls that don’t I suppose] to combat asylum abuse and illegal immigration.” No I don’t know how ID cards wil combat asylum abuse either.
Nasty asylum seekers, who wants ‘em. (Without the old fool in the picture, we’d never have the divine Lucien.)
As Kevin adds, the funniest comment was They omitted: “Your language’s verbs now redundant."
These 462 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Geology For Beginners »
This word was hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:15pm GMT Permanent link.
Protecting Our Borders »
Splendid story on the Torygraph site: Howard: Grandfather might have been illegal immigrant. (I was going to say “Now I’m in favour of immigration crackdown,” but it’s not remotely funny.)
Conservative leader Michael Howard has revealed that his grandfather may have entered the UK as an illegal immigrant.
Mr Howard’s father, Bernard Hecht, who came here in the 1930s, falsified details about his parents when he applied for British citizenship in 1947.
The Tory leader’s grandmother died in Auschwitz but at the time his grandfather was living in London.
However his father, who anglicised the family name after settling in Britain, claimed they both died in his native Romania.
In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper, he said: “I have speculated on the reason and I suppose one possibility is that my grandfather might have entered Britain unlawfully.”
His “grandmother died in Auschwitz” and presumably his grandfather fled in fear of his life. In which case, you’d do anything. So he “might have entered Britain unlawfully.” Who is in the wrong here? The grandfather or the law of the land?
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Falling Into The 'Me And My Big Trap' Trap »
I posted on the new New Labour pledge card thing today before I read the Torygraph editorial: Still we fall for the same old story from Tony Blair. It has some good points:
If you take apart the education pledge, it offers hardly anything that hasn’t been on offer in this country for decades: “Modern schools for all, strong discipline and a guaranteed place in training, sixth form or an apprenticeship.” Modernity is no guarantee of quality: the Darfur slaughter is as modern as a state-of-the-art Blackberry or Ellen MacArthur’s global positioning system.Whether discipline is weak or strong is an entirely subjective judgment. As for the option of staying on into the sixth form, that has been open to generations of schoolchildren. The difficulty has been in persuading them to do so in a worthwhile way that goes beyond dumbing down school exams and university education.
And so the relentlessly upbeat but essentially meaningless promises go on. To meet the pledge that he will keep “mortgages as low as possible”, the Prime Minister has to do no more than ensure that rates stay somewhere between 0 and 100 per cent; in fact, there is no way that he can’t keep the pledge.
And then it misses the biggie, which I, as a soft-hearted whatever-it-is-I-am, can recognise as the fatal flaw:
The only pledge that involves a hard promise is the one saying that no one will wait more than 18 weeks for hospital treatment. Not only was this already promised eight months ago as part of the NHS improvement plan, but the Prime Minister is giving himself until 2008 to pull it off.
Nay, nay, and thrice nay! It’s not even that — if I understand the pledge — 18 weeks is the gap between seeing a specialist and going into theatre. There’s no such promise about seeing your GP about your disintegrating hip and surgery. And the waiting list for specialist assessment is very long.
If seven words sum up New Labour, they are “A good day to bury bad news”. My German washing machine is a beginner at spin compared to these wankers. Until Tony Blair does the lamppost polka, everything they say is a lie.
These 146 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 7:52pm GMT Permanent link.
Pinot Envy »
Reader, I loved it. Really, Sideways may be the best film I’ll see this year. It didn’t raise as many laughs as I’d hoped, but it grew. And if I saw it again, I think I’d laugh more.
There is so much in it. The only overt references are to the American demotic tradition (Miles quotes Bukowski; and there’s a passage from an author I can’t identify — he’s somewhere between Twain and Stephen Crane though). However, there is a conversation between Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church where one says that he can’t even kill himself (with references to Plath, Sexton, Woolf, and friends) and the other mentions the guy who wrote “A Confederacy of Dunces” [John Kennedy Toole] who did kill himself before he was published. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus mentions an author who did kill himself before his book was published. “[It] was judged no good. [from memory].” Jim White liked it, but thought the ‘optimistic’ ending was a cop-out. It’s only the liars and the blind who can make art. The rest put their heads in gas ovens like Sylvia Plath. Of course art is stupidly optimistic like the human race! Excuse me, I left the gas on …
These 205 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 13 February 2005
No Time To Blog »
So here’s the best cartoons over the weekend:
These 10 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:48pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 14 February 2005
Sometimes Only The C-word Will Do »
Thanks to Mark, Jeremy Clarkson on swearing.
[My wife has] even developed it into a test at parties, using it as soon as practicably possible, whenever she’s introduced to someone. Her argument is that those who fall into a dead faint and need to be brought round with smelling salts weren’t worth talking to anyway.
I think she has a point, because many years ago my grandfather told me that those who swear are simply demonstrating they have a limited vocabulary. That can’t be so because when Tony Blair comes on the news you feel naked and underequipped if you don’t have some choice profanities in your quiver. Sometimes only the c-word will do.
These 7 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:24am GMT Permanent link.
Journalism, Jim, But Not As We Know It »
Jeremy Clarkson yesterday:
Why? You use the f-word all the time, and so do your children. Buzz Aldrin used it on the moon and we know it nestles in the vocabulary of both Prince Philip and Princess Anne. We think Alastair Campbell uses it, too, while addressing the Newsnight team, but we can’t be sure because journalists can’t use it in print. Don’t you think that’s weird?
So to give readers’ minds a rest from trying “Fack”, “Feck”, “Fick”, and “Fock” I can reveal that Alastair Campbell [told] BBC to ‘fuck off’. You needed to know that didn’t you?
Tim Ireland Killer Fact!
FACT: Geoff Hoon claimed at the Hutton Inquiry that he had at all times tried to protect Dr David Kelly’s anonymity. This diary entry by Alastair Campbell tells an entirely different story:
“GH [Mr Hoon], like me, wanted to get it out that the source [Dr Kelly] had broken cover to claim that AG [Gilligan] misrepresented him. I agreed it would fuck Gilligan if that [Dr Kelly] was his source.”
The Telegraph profiled Alastair Campbell yesterday.
Not that Campbell lacks supporters. Mr Blair’s hand is clearly behind the move to bring him into the election campaign, and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, spoke up for him last week. “Alastair is very talented,” he said. “The only thing he needs to work out is how to use a BlackBerry.” And there is no doubting his skills as a propagandist. The biggest story Campbell ever broke in his time as a newspaper reporter was that John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants. And where did this information come from?
Campbell made it up. The story never appeared under his name, but it quickly helped to establish an image of Mr Major as the hapless grey man with the Y-fronts that bulged for all the wrong reasons.
A story I missed: Are bloggers journalists? Do they deserve press protections? If Alastair Campbell is a journalist, I’m the bald king of France.
Chris Dillow analyses The Campbell Cancer and cites Matthew Parris.
Backword says: Alastair Campbell, fuck off you fucking cunt.
These 88 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:04am GMT Permanent link.
Intellectual »
It’s fitting perhaps, that the word ‘intellectual’ is one of the most opaque in the language. The OED is no help whatever, defining the word as “Characterized by or possessing understanding or intelligence” [Early C19] and “A person of superior (or supposedly superior) intellect …” [Mid C17]. Last week, Chris Dillow opined that:
And personally, I’m wary of regarding works of fiction as philosophical or political texts. Once we start doing that, we’re on the slippery slope to thinking Harold Pinter is an intellectual.
I regard Harold Pinter as an intellectual. I think he’s the greatest English language playwright of the last century (and I am familiar with O’Neill, Beckett, Miller, and the rest). I like the recent politically angry Pinter (as I’ve said before) personally, but I regard the greatness of Betrayal, The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, etc as unassailable.
While Chris’s post has rattled round the vacuum of my brain for 9 days now, it’s this bizarre review of Sideways that set off the grenade.
Everything he [Alexander Payne] sees or conceives of seems to be presented in the most reductive, anti-intellectual way possible.
I thought that Payne’s Election was subtle, thoughtful, funny, oblique, multi-layered, and true to life, amongst other things which will occur to me once I’ve posted this. ‘Reductive’ makes me think that ‘anti-intellectual’ must mean “simple, rather than complex” but that’s not how I see Payne’s films. “Anti-intellectual” may therefore mean something like “studiedly low-brow” but Sideways is not anti-intelligence, as far as I can see. It is inspired by the road novel/movie of great American sensualists like Kerouac or Hopper, but one hundred years from now, when even fewer people (if that can be imagined) have heard of Roger L Simon, they will be regarded as the cultural pioneers of our age. True, the only poet quoted in two hours of ‘literary’ dialogue is Bukowski, but would you prefer the limp emoting of Andrew Motion? Seamus Heaney?
Quotation time:
The Verrocchio is light, nimble, smiling — and clothed. The Michelangelo is vast, defiant and nude. It’s rather the same as the progression that we shall find in music between Mozart and Beethoven.
Seen by itself the David’s body might be some unusually taut and vivid work of antiquity; it is only when we come to the head that we are aware of a spiritual force that the ancient world never knew. I suppose this quality, which I may call heroic, is not a part of most people’s idea of civilisation.
Kenneth Clark [p123].
Thinking of good quotes about “intellectuals” I of course considered Don Juan. There are things in this consideration I love:
There’s some pretty unkind satire in Byron’s treatment of the educated woman (Although Byron denied any connection, certain aspects of this section seem to reflect Byron’s attitude to his wife, from whom he separated after one year of marriage.) Note the way that Byron uses bad rhymes to make fun of Donna Inez and to ridicule her seriousness ("so fine as” to rhyme with “the brain of Donna Inez"; “intellectual” to rhyme with “hen-pecked you all.") Part of the humour derives from the apparently-common assumption that the educated and intellectual woman will be aggressive and domineering. Remember that Mary Wollstonecraft, in arguing for a better education for women, felt it necessary to reassure her readers that they need not fear that women would then become “masculine.”
Mary Wollstonecraft was fortunate in not reading bloggers’ opinion of Germaine Greer (for it is written that, as cows in a field all face in the same direction, all bloggers think alike in time).
In stanza 40, Byron exposes the contradiction of elevating the classics as an important part of education, yet then being embarrassed by the sexual component in ancient myth and epic.
Reminds me of Oliver Kamm delicately blushing at the thought of “a knitted willy with realistic head and veins”. (Because Sappho and Catullus, not to mention the dreadful Socrates, were terrible philistines.)
But what would I know? I learned the word through a song:
Top Cat! The most respectable
Top Cat! Whose intellectual
Close friends get to call him T.C.
Providing it’s with dignity …
Top Cat, part Sergeant Bilko, part Tony Soprano. All he needed was an analyst … Now that’s an intellectual.
These 397 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:53pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 15 February 2005
Irony (February Edition) »
Gene (the one I thought was decent at Harry’s):
An early test of the Bush administration’s commitment to promoting democracy in the Middle East is coming up, according to Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl.
The good blokes of Harry’s Place think “democracy” means “voting.” Cynic that I am, I think it means “people [demos] power [kratos]” — and the good people I know would no more run for political office than suffocate a kitten.
Abu Aardvark on our allies in Saudi Arabia.
These 57 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:32am GMT Permanent link.
Curious! I Seem To Hear A Child Weeping »
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!
Paul Anka
There are some stunning illustrations to Nicholas Garland’s What makes cartoons great in the Torygraph. I’m sure the illustration below went down like a Steve Bell cartoon with the jingoes.
My father was at Dunkirk (as a very reluctant infantryman). If Clemenceau had been any luckier, yours truly would not have been here. I so love these brave thrusting moral fatsos in their safe bunkers and cloisters. And calling that epicene, enervate baldy ‘Tiger’! Irony was dead by 1918.
These 80 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:29am GMT Permanent link.
My New Favourite Word, Ever »
Bathosphere n presumably in reference to Bathysphere, as well as bathos and “sphere” as in blogosphere.
What really makes these critics hate “Million Dollar Baby” is not its supposedly radical politics - which are nonexistent — but its lack of sentimentality. It is, indeed, no “Rocky,” and in our America that departure from the norm is itself a form of cultural radicalism. Always a sentimental country, we’re now living fulltime in the bathosphere. Our 24/7 news culture sees even a human disaster like the tsunami in Asia as a chance for inspirational uplift, for “incredible stories of lives saved in near-miraculous fashion,” to quote NBC’s Brian Williams. (The nonmiraculous stories are already forgotten, now that the media carnival has moved on.) Our political culture offers such phony tableaus as a bipartisan kiss between the president and Joe Lieberman at the State of the Union, not to mention the promise that a long-term war can be fought without having to endure any shared sacrifice or even too many graphic reminders of its human cost.
Frank Rich takes on the wingnuts. And can you believe Bathos Time for Bonzo? If I were a conservative I’d lynch him for flag-desecration.
(Via Jamie.)
These 42 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:46am GMT Permanent link.
Media Killer Fact! »
From the Sunday Telegraph’s TV & Radio guide’s ‘Television choice’ for Saturday 19 February.
Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet
ITV1, from 9.25am
The indestructible 1960s puppets have been updated for the Noughties with the latest CGI technology and are now filmed in ‘hyper’ rather than ‘supermarionation’. Purists and fortysomethings will hate the changes. As ever, Scarlet’s enemy is Captain Black, whose first name, we now learn, is Conrad, which happens to the same as the proprietor who previously held the strings of this publication. We couldn’t possibly comment.
These 14 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 3:18pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 16 February 2005
This City On A Hill »
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5
Via Obsidian Wings, Fred Clark plans to create a model outpost of democracy, freedom and human rights at the very gates of tyranny and despotism.
This outpost — a little piece of America — would create a clear demonstration of the contrast between our values and the values of antidemocratic societies.
Ideally, to make this contrast as clear and stark as possible, this City on a Hill should be directly adjacent to one of the countries that persists as an opponent of American values. We would want this beachhead of democracy to stand in contrast to the tyrannical regime alone, uncomplicated by cluttering comparisons to other neighboring countries in the area.
The best situation, then, would be an island nation, preferably one nearby, where democracy and human rights were routinely denied. Our model American outpost could be established on a small part of that same island — some distinct cove or bay. And there our model outpost could demonstrate in microcosm who we really are and what we really stand for.
To multiply the impact of this bold example, we could find people from all over the world — especially people from places where tyranny is rampant and democracy is only a vague, foreign word — and invite them to come and live for a time in our model island outpost. There our guests would see and experience our American values firsthand.
Word of this experience would spread to their countrymen and their homelands: This is what America is really like. This is what America is all about. No amount of rhetoric on behalf of freedom and democracy could compete with the message such an outpost would provide. Our ordinary rendition of democracy and freedom is powerful, but this model, this extraordinary rendition, would be even more powerful.
If only we could find such a place.
Quotation from Matthew found here with the interpretation:
The message … is that we should be more mindful of our own faults than those of others.
No, really?
These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:55am GMT Permanent link.
100 Years Of Anti-Semitism (And Some Other Stuff) »
Last night I finished Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation by João Magueijo which, besides making proper science accessible, being very well written (and using the word word ‘shit’ more often than any other physics book I’ve ever read), is loaded with aphorisms and anecdotes. Here’s one which is topical both because of the recent Auschwitz memorials and the centenary of Einstein’s breakthrough year.
You may read this as being anti-American. I don’t see it that way, and I don’t reproduce it with any intention of anti-Americanism.
I once met a girl in New York who was thrilled to find out I was a physicist; but she became terminally disappointed upon hearing that I lived in England and harbored no ambitions to move to the United States. She simply couldn’t understand that. When I asked why, she tried to reply with an example, but she couldn’t remember the name of the physicist in point. She asked me, “Who was the physicist who was better than Einstein, but never came to the U.S. so he never made it?”
To this day I have no idea who this mythical character might be. But her views on Einstein and on American virtues are more than laughable. Poor Albert: as if he had derived his greatness from having moved to the United States! At the time he crossed the Atlantic his best work was finished anyway, and he had already received Nobel Prize-level recognition. He moved only because of the Nazi regime, which he had antagonized from the very start, at a time when everyone else, including many rich Jews, was still trying to strike a compromise. Indeed, his political outbursts quite often caused embarrassment, and in this respect Einstein sometimes reminds me of Muhammad Ali. Unsurprisingly, Einstein was unceremoniously expelled from Germany in 1933, with all his worldly belongings confiscated and amid rumors of planned attempts on his life.
Einstein was received in the United States with open arms at a time when he desperately needed such hospitality.* Perhaps if that girl had seen it in this light she would have had a better and more proper reason to be proud of her country.
The asterisk indicated this footnote:
*At least if one discounts the protests of an American organization called the Women Patriot Society, whose opinion of Einstein was that “not even Stalin himself was affiliated to so many anarchic-communist groups.”
P169-70. American spelling in original. (The worldly reader will be surprised to learn that Stalin was ever affiliated to any anarchist groups.) If you thought that American ‘patriots’ would know that being a refuge from religious persecution was one of the things the United States was unquestionably for, you’d be wrong apparently.
The Women Patriot Society came to mind when reading Fred Clark (see last post) on Tim Lahaye:
Note that Tim LaHaye’s wife is something of a professional misogynist. She runs the 500,000-member “Concerned Women for America” — jokingly referred to by its critics as “Ladies Against Women.” For years, while Beverly LaHaye’s husband pastored a church in San Diego, Mrs. L. spent most of her time 3,000 miles away, in Washington, D.C., running a large organization committed to, among other things, telling women they should stay at home and sacrifice their careers for their husbands. She is not an ironic woman and doesn’t seem to find any of this inconsistent. (Nor, as I found out firsthand, does she appreciate jokes about the Freudian implications of the view from her L’Enfante Plaza office window. Sometimes the Washington Monument is just a cigar.)
João Magueijo isn’t finished with U.S. yet, and the Women Patriots (or those like them) strike back:
Leopold Infield was a Polish scientist who worked with Einstein on various important scientific problems in the 1930s. Einstein began to act as his mentor, and it became obvious that a German invasion of Poland was in the cards, Eistein realized what lay ahead for Infield should he remain there. Naturally, Einstein took it upon himself to save his friend. But by the late 1930s, he had supported the immigration of so many Jewish families that his affidavits were essentially worthless in the eyes of the U.S. authorities; in particular, they ignored his pleas on behalf of Infield. Einstein tried to find him a professorship at a U.S. university, but times were tough and that failed, too. As tensions mounted in Europe, Infield’s prospects looked very grim indeed.
Out of desperation, Einstein hit upon the idea of writing a popular science book in partnership with Infield. This was nothing less than the The Evolution of Physics—the book that so many years later, with its unique beauty, would seduce me into becoming a physicist—written in great haste in a couple of months, to become a huge sensation, making Infield suddenly desirable to the U.S. authorities. Without this success, Infield would most likel have gone up in smoke in some Nazi hell.
Page 260. (If you follow the link, you may laugh that Infield’s name is clearly visible on the image of the cover, but Amazon only credit his more famous co-author.)
There’s a lot of physics in Faster than the Speed of Light …, and some brilliant stuff about physics journals which you should read before any discussion of Alan Sokal. I’ll finish with this apothegm, accidentally redolent of Karl Popper’s takedown of Marx and Freud.
As Andy Albrecht once exploded, string theory is not the theory of everything, it’s the theory of anything.
These 259 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Dirty Tricks »
Tim Ireland, fearless campaigner for bloggers, blogging, political activism, and Flash silliness, seems to have come under an attempted DNS attack? From whom? As Tim says, Here’s why this matters. That link takes you to the [Welsh] Assembly Online site, from whose NHS Wales: people waiting for hospital treatment, April 2000 to December 2004 I stole the graphic below.
I’d like to see that mentioned on the Labour Party pledge card.
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 2:03pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 17 February 2005
David Bowie -- A Man Ahead Of His Time Shock »
Is there life on Mars? Via The Panda’s Thumb.
I can hack that. Robert Mattews in the Torygraph goes weird: QED: MoD comes clean at last over those little green men.
For example, sceptics have argued that while life may well exist elsewhere in the universe, the probability that it is both intelligent and relatively close to Earth is extremely low.
Yet as the authors of the paper point out, since the mid-1990s, several methods for faster-than-light travel have been put forward in serious physics journals, thus undermining the argument that the sheer size of the universe makes alien visitation implausible. The authors concede that while possible in principle, no practical scheme for faster-than-light travel has yet been put forward.
Well, not really. That there are so many ‘methods for faster-than-light travel’ reminds me of John Locke arguing that the many representations of God must mean that something is ‘there.’ On the other hand, it could all be nonsense. Few of these theories actually deal with FTL travel; most are concerned with signalling. Those that aren’t, are overwhelmed by problems in principle. The Alcubierre warp drive was comprehensively demolished.
It’s also noticeable that aliens like to confine themselves to desolate regions of the United States: reports from areas in the world which don’t broadcast the ‘X-Files’ would be far more convincing.
These 132 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:04pm GMT Permanent link.
You're In A No-Win Situation »
That was on the back of the t-shirt of a student-age girl in a circuits class the other week. I think it was for some netball team. She wasn’t unpretty, but going by her fitness any opposition her team played must have been pretty crappy. Anyway, it’s a title.
Belle Waring reads Christopher Hitchens:
Unless the United States chooses to be defeated in Iraq, it cannot be. Therefore, the insurgency, so-called, will be defeated.
That’s a novel use of ‘therefore’ Chris. Just because the ‘insurgency’ can’t defeat the United States (or, as some of us still call it, the Coalition), does not mean that the Coalition (or, as the Dupe would call it, the United States) can defeat the ‘insurgency.’ It’s what they do in the Middle East — go on fighting when no one can win.
These 117 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 18 February 2005
One Down »
No blog for you! I had a wisdom tooth out today — after three days of agony. My regular dentist is on holiday for a whole month; by this morning I could wait no longer. 31 teeth left. I feel crap.
These 42 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 1:23pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 19 February 2005
Schadenfreude »
It’s wrong but I so enjoy this after this.
Earlier, Mr Adams told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was confident the peace process could be put back on track.
…
He said he did not believe the IRA was responsible for the Northern Bank raid and he urged Mr Blair not to “get carried away with the spin of the moment”.
But now, according to the Guardian.
Sinn Féin was in grave crisis last night as one of its prominent members in the Irish republic was dragged into the multimillion pound IRA money laundering investigation which police say may connect republicans to the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery.
As the first of several people arrested this week in raids across Cork and Dublin appeared in court charged with Real IRA membership, a former Sinn Féin vice-president and one of the best connected bankers in Ireland was helping police with inquiries.
The IRA connection looks watertight. Gerry Adams is a terrorist, a liar, and an arsehole. He’s an enemy of democracy, to boot.
These 37 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:28am GMT Permanent link.
A Reverie »
I hit the ‘post’ button too soon. And as I did, I had a thought. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness go back to Chequers where they are abducted and taken away black helicopters before being transferred to the hold of a transatlantic plane and taken to Cuba.
Orange Jumpsuited Prisoner: So whit kind o’ Christians are ye? Are ye Sunni Christians or are ye Shia Christians? Pit it this way, did ye support Iran or Iraq in the World Cup? Because ah don’t like yer face … Updated to replace “Muslims” with “Christians.”
Won’t happen, of course. Adams and McGuinness are white, and guilty of nothing more than, as terrorism expert Michael J Totten has it, “a pipsqueak of a bomb in a trashcan at the mall by the IRA.” Trashcans? Malls? In Ulster? What is Mikey talking about?
The attempted decapitation of a democratically elected government by fascists counts as a pipsqueak.
These 147 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:45am GMT Permanent link.
What Ted Said »
I second Ted Barlow. Glenn Reynolds’ wife is in hospital, but [t]he results, unfortunately, weren’t great. He’s blogging faster than ever. I assume this is displacement.
I hope she gets well soon.
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 20 February 2005
When I Said The Wrong Thing »
DL and I were plodding along the Taff Trail yesterday. Me because I’d hardly eaten for three days with the wisdom tooth; I’m not sure what his excuse was — me probably — he shouldn’t have been hung over as he spent the previous evening watching his daughter’s theatre group’s half term production of ‘Robin Hood.’ He’d been talking about how the actress in the Maid Marion part had reminded him of Cicely Boyd in “The Rotter’s Club” — being very pretty but wooden (and unlike his daughter in the latter aspect), and I’d started on why “Million Dollar Baby” was so good on South London argot.
When we rounded the bend just after Western Avenue, where the Trail loses the river for a while, a jogger was coming the other way at about our pace (and we were painfully slow, far on the wrong side of 8-minute miling) wearing a faded red top and who looked a lot like Christopher Eccleston. We were both trying to work out if he was with an arty looking girl on a bike (all black clothes, black berry, black bike even). He looked older than I thought Christopher Eccleston was, and a little shorter. I said “Hi” or some such and he didn’t say anything.
“Was that Christopher Eccleston?” I asked DL.
“Who’s Christopher Eccleston?” he replied, which seemed to settle it. What I should have said was, “Exterminate.”
These 236 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:45pm GMT Permanent link.
Stats All Folks »
Lenin understandably puffs The British Blogs Top Ten (add a zero, and it’ll be presented by Jimmy Carr on Channel 4) and adds some sensible caveats, like where are Harry and Norm, but misses the all-important one, where the hell is backword? This blog is pure hand-rolled, no sitemeter here. There is a counter somewhere down the sidebar, and for my own information there’s a page with the time and date of every 1000th hit (it’s called 100.dat, because it used to record every 100th), and I’ve uploaded my most recently analysed server stats. My own counter isn’t supposed to record most robots, but that script is probably a bit dated. Whatever, this seems to place me in the top 25. Which must be a mistake.
Tim Worstall (British Blogger #3) offers a widely-linked to BritBlog Roundup. Spot the glaring omission. Otherwise v good.
These 144 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:17pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 21 February 2005
Eternal Sunshine Of The Jaundiced Cat »
Gordon hasn’t been well lately. He’s been very fussy about food, which isn’t like him. I’d have taken him to the vet sooner, but last time he went, he’d ruptured his cruciate ligaments because he was too heavy (over 7 kilos). I was reluctant to take him in for losing weight, and otherwise being ill without any concrete symptoms, just not being ‘right.’
Apparently, he has jaundice. He spent Friday night on a drip to rehydrate him and pump steroids and anti-biotics into his system, having been shaved in various places for blood tests. The vet seems sure that he has a tumour on his liver (though that may only be breaking the worst possible news so I don’t get my hopes up). I hope he has years rather than months left, but he’s being very stoical about the whole thing.
These 144 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:56am GMT Permanent link.
Hunter S Thompson Commits Suicide »
BBC. He was a great man.
These 6 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:16am GMT Permanent link.
Down To A Sunless Sea »
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
New Scientist email NEWSFLASH: ’Pack ice’ suggests frozen sea on Mars. The BBC goes off the deep end in dispensing with the “suggests” and “may” of the New Scientist: Mars pictures reveal frozen sea.
Wonderful stuff.
These 36 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:02pm GMT Permanent link.
Splatter And Gloop »
Don’t have a cow, man
Bart Simpson
Jim White is especially good in this morning’s Telegraph: Surely Jamie Oliver shouldn’t have to tell us how to feed our children:
Oliver found that dinner at many schools now consists exclusively of chips and small fried things called drummers or dippers or curls, items made up of the reconstituted splatter and gloop sprayed down from the walls of abattoirs.
I suppose this is a kind of proof of familiarity breeding contempt. Auberon Waugh used to tell a story about his family getting a post-war ration of bananas, which his father selfishly ate himself. You wouldn’t hear children moaning today about not having bananas. And it brings to mind today’s Guardian story, Raising children as vegans ‘unethical’, says professor.
Prof Allen was especially critical of parents who imposed a vegan lifestyle on their children, denying them milk, cheese, eggs and butter, as well as meat. “There’s absolutely no question that it’s unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans,” she said.
I and I thinks de community should rise up.
The BBC reports much the same thing (about Prof Allen, not Benjamin Zephaniah).
“In terms of cognitive function, the group that received the meat supplement showed the biggest improvement in fluid intelligence over the two years, and those who had either milk or energy supplements were better than the controls. The group that received the meat supplements were more active in the playground, more talkative and playful, and showed more leadership skills,” she said.
So that’s why Pythagoras is dead! If he’d only had a cow, he’d be entertaining us today. Kafka’s hilarious farces would be packing the West End. The poet Shelley would have run off to the circus. And Nietzsche! Well, he’d have invaded Poland or something.
Chris Brooke kindly illustrates the effects of the "see food” diet, so here’s a typical vegetarian. Clearly lacking in intelligence.
I can’t find even an abstract of Prof Allen’s paper, so How Meat and Milk Can Improve Children’s Health in the Developing World will have to do.
Some field studies already have been done on the efficacy of adding meat in a systematic way to the diets of children in developing nations. In a two-year study in rural Kenya, completed in 2003, scientists supplemented the usual corn- and bean-based lunches of several hundred school children with meat, milk or an equivalent amount of energy from vegetable oils.
…
But the children who received the 68-gram meat supplement (2 ounces) also performed significantly better than all the groups on a test of problem-solving ability and fluid intelligence, said Lindsay H. Allen, director of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service’s Western Human Nutrition Research Center, Davis, California.
Um, I don’t eat the stuff, but I know that ‘meat’ is not a scientific term. Perhaps it was chopped liver, perhaps the “reconstituted splatter and gloop sprayed down from the walls of abattoirs.” I’m sure there are parents who’d like to know which.
The 68 grams of meat provided 106 percent of a child’s B-12 requirement, 68 percent of the zinc requirement, and 26 percent of the iron, Allen said.
I’ve never understood this. Most meat sold in this country is cow, pig, or sheep. We’ll come to pigs in a minute, but the others eat grass mostly.
I know Ted Hughes wrote:
Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens.
(View of a Pig.) Pigs may be hot to the touch, but if they manufactured zinc and iron the radiation would kill you from miles away: the only way to make elements is in the cores of stars. (I’ve never known what is meant by ‘iron’ or ‘zinc’ or ‘calcium’ in dietary terms, but it has to come out of the ground at some point in the food chain.)
But back to Jim White and Jamie Oliver. There was a splendid interview with Oliver in last Sunday’s Telegraph magazine. He was at that lucid point where anger is actually useful. He wanted more money for school meals (the budget is apparently 37p a head). He’d been told that councils couldn’t just spend more. He’s said something about speed bumps “Speed kills and all that.” But he’d heard of a council spending £11 million to put bumps down and a further £6 to remove them again, because they obstructed ambulances. He could have used that.
I didn’t mean to quote any more of Jim, but he ends so triumphantly that I have to.
But the most disturbing aspect of Oliver’s investigation is the way it has taken a celebrity chef to get shirty before anyone seems to have noticed what we are feeding our children. … In the wake of this fuss the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, has announced that, from September, school dinners will have to meet minimum nutritional standards (but there won’t be any more money to do it).
Which is typical of the way things are done these days. Apparently it takes the intervention of a face from the telly to move this Government to do something it could — and should — have done the day it took office seven years ago. …
These 455 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:10pm GMT Permanent link.
Let's Just Say That 'a Friend Of Mine' Was Buying Cocaine »
The first time I noticed George W Bush,” Hunter Thompson tells me, “was when he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a guy who had come to sell…” Thompson, sitting at his desk in a faded-green dressing-gown, stares down at a plate of untouched food: Danish pastries which were warm half an hour ago, smothered in red jam and melted ice-cream.
“Look, I’m not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let’s just say that ‘a friend of mine’ was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes.”
I’ve driven up to Owl Farm, the writer’s ranch at Woody Creek, just outside Aspen, Colorado, with the artist Ralph Steadman, his long-standing friend and collaborator. It’s 2pm — four hours before Dr Thompson usually rises — but we’ve woken him early, and laid out before him are his usual requirements for breakfast: orange juice, coffee, smouldering hash pipe, Dunhill cigarettes, a half-pint tumbler of Chivas Regal on ice, and a small black bowl filled with what — given certain lively exchanges I had with Thompson after the last time I wrote about him — I can only describe as a substance that some might assume to be cocaine.
“I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn’t handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn’t pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub,” Thompson adds, “then I noticed him. I’d been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away.”
Here’s the NY Times obit. (Found through Butterflies and Wheels who tastefully have it “Uncle Duke Does a Hemingway”. (Well now we know that the Gimp won’t take that way out: how do you shoot yourself in the ass?) His local paper has a piece too.
“On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. The family will provide more information about memorial service and media contacts shortly. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family,” Juan and Anita Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News. “He stomped terra.”
These 51 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:46pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 22 February 2005
Old Whores Don't Do Much Giggling »
The obits are out on the Doctor. The Telegraph.
Journalists who visited Thompson at his cabin discovered that it was fatal to try and drink with him. Thompson’s biographer E Jean Carroll described his routine: “3pm rise. 3.05 Chivas Regal with the morning papers, Dunhills. 3.45 cocaine. 3.50 another glass of Chivas, Dunhill. 4.15 cocaine. 4.54 cocaine. 5.05 cocaine… 9pm starts snorting cocaine seriously. 10pm drops acid. 11pm Chartreuse, cocaine, grass. 11.30 cocaine, etc, etc… 12.05 to 6am Chartreuse, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies.
He died aged 67. By suicide. With a gun. Pure style. He denied it all, too. The Telegraph story on his death:
He was notoriously private. “Obviously, my drug use is exaggerated or I would be long since dead,” he told a reporter in 1990.
They still printed the legend, as they should.
Chris Brooke is understandly doubtful about my attempts to claim HST for socialism. He was still a politician one can believe in.
In 1963, Thompson moved to the Rockies so that he would be free to live by his own anarchic rules — among his stunts were blowing up the pool table in his local bar and driving around drunk with a glass of bourbon in hand. Not surprisingly, he deplored Aspen’s subsequent fashionability, the influx of “Day-Glo fur and Manhattan chic”.
In a bid to “prevent the greedheads from moving in” he ran for sheriff in 1970 on a “freak politics” ticket, promising to turf the streets, rename Aspen Fat City and put dishonest marijuana dealers in the stocks. He lost by 1,533 votes to 1,068.
Thereafter he resorted to “direct action”, using what he called “firepower demonstrations”, such as firing 50 shots from his automatic rifle over the house of an arriviste property developer.
The Guardian’s leader A libertarian legacy has another story from his political days.
When he ran for local public office on a libertarian platform in the 70s he found himself up against a crew-cut Republican. Thompson duly shaved his own head and then referred to his Republican rival as “my long-haired opponent”.
Jon Ronson in the Guardian finds a quote to send a thousand bloggers to their graves:
“I suspect writing is a bit like fucking,” he wrote, “which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.”
These 90 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 8:48am GMT Permanent link.
Where Do I Sign Up? »
I haven’t really followed the Social Security debate. Hence I have no idea what AARP is. However, if their opponents see them like the image (from Fontana Labs), I should join.
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:36am GMT Permanent link.
Free Mojtaba And Arash! »
Via Mick Hartley (who usefully gives the contact details for the Iranian Embassy — email: info@iran_embassy.org.uk) and John Band who adds:
Update: and also to sympathise with the poor buggers who’ve been earthquaked to death, which is even worse than being jailed for blogging.
Free Mojtaba and Arash Day from Committee to Protect Bloggers whose banner cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Traitors! The only answer to “What would you do with the UN?” is “Abolish it, and build a temple to Mark Steyn instead!” So I can’t recommend these pinko bastards at all.
These 74 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 23 February 2005
You Turn Up If You Want To »
I was this close to not mentioning that wedding. Ignoring them away, if you like. But on the newspaper review bit of Today they mentioned that one of the tabloids had the headline “The lady’s not for turning up.” Give that sub a raise.
These 44 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 10:45am GMT Permanent link.
Better To Reign In Hell »
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n
Milton
I actually listened to Thought for the Day on Today yesterday. I don’t normally. I hit the off button or go into a daze or hide in the bathroom and turn the taps on as I if I were trying to deafen bugging microphones. But a recent broadcast upset Norm, not that I can see why; everything in that slot is one kind of fabrication or another.
I don’t know who the speaker was. I think because she referred to ‘Adam’ and angels and called the devil by a Klingon sounding name that she was either from some West Walian sect or a Muslim. Probably the latter. I’m not sure what the point was either. God is an addled old bastard, a bit like Lear without the comic relief, perhaps. Anyways, God made Adam, who was sort of perfect, unlike the angels (I didn’t understand this bit; maybe I overdid the Kierkegaard), and he orders all the angels to bow (or possibly prostrate themselves) before Adam. And they all do, but one who’s a bit like Cordelia but not as girly, who says that he loves God and can’t do the bowing thing. So God gives him the heave-ho.
There’s supposed to be some lesson here. It wasn’t that Satan was the interesting one, the likeable one, or that it’s better to be number one in some provincial town than number two in Rome, so I’m fucked if I know what it was.
Just a lot of crazy stories.
These 250 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:41am GMT Permanent link.
No More Worthy Of Our Consideration Than A Box Of Nails »
Via, ah, Jim (L) Henley, James W Henley.
[I]t is false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. Also false to assume that those who support war, support our troops.
You know who he speaks for.
These 41 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 4:45pm GMT Permanent link.
I Suspect Tony Blair »
Also found through Jim Henley. I don’t watch 24 because each series is, like, 24 hours long. I don’t know how many books I could read in 24 hours, but it’s quite a few. I have better things to do that watch television. No, really. Raznor, however, thinks those 72 hours now are 72 hours well spent.
1) If a terrorist looks in anyway middle eastern, or what one would stereotypically think a terrorist looks like, he is not the top dog. This means that when we see Osama Bin Laden’s tapes, there’s some white American, or charming British guy behind the camera, telling him what to say. I suspect Tony Blair. For no reason in particular.
2) No matter how good security is, there will always be a mole. I mean, come on. Nina and Jackie in season 1 were one thing, but how half-assed are CTU’s background checks anyway?
…
6) Jack Bauer is the baddest ass motherfucker on the fucking planet! I mean you saw when Arad hit him with that car? He just walked that off like it was nothing! I’m not sure how this applies to the real world, but it had to be said.
These 57 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 5:00pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 25 February 2005
Sure It's A Romantic Gesture, But ... »
New Scientist reports that Cultured bone offers novel wedding rings.
The tricky part is that the lucky couple will have to provide bone cell samples, for which the team will get ethical approval only if both people already need surgery. The most likely scenario is that both will need wisdom teeth pulling, Thompson says.
I had a wisdom tooth out a week ago, and my face has only just returned to its natural shape. You don’t want a wisdom tooth out just for the hell of it, believe me.
I’m not so sure that the ethical part is such a barrier: if the technology exists, people could keep pulled teeth, or milk teeth if their parents are inclined to keep the things. (Mine were in an old Sellotape tin, though I don’t know what happened to it.) If the cells are grown, they could come from filed teeth, surely. The debris of my tooth was suctioned out of my mouth, and a centrifuge could separate the bone.
If you want to know more, there’s a website: Biojewelry.
These 133 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:52am GMT Permanent link.
Not In His Name »
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
…
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.
William Cowper
OK, this one has weaved a circle round the blogs thrice, but no matter. Christian Voice National Director Stephen Green:
Green said that he would have protested outside the charity if they had taken the money. “Effectively, I think we saved this charity from a public relations disaster,” he concluded.
Others have compared Mr Green’s tactics to the mob. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the Good Book is explicit on very little, but it’s pretty clear that God is unreliable: the Book of Job for example. Perhaps in His weird, roundabout, unfathomable way, He was just exposing Stephen Green as a bigoted moral imbecile.
These 78 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:02am GMT Permanent link.
Online Poll Rocks »
Online polls are the voice of the people. The worthy winner of The Canadian Asshole Award is Mark Steyn. Congratulations to Mark. I always knew he had it in him.
These 30 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 2:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 26 February 2005
Five Composers »
This is the list I sent to Norm as my choices for the latest Normblog poll. Unlike Marcus, I’m not going to give reasons. I’ve tried and failed to get anything out of Britten at all; and the only constant of any list I’ve made is that if I went as far down as the top 100, Benjamin B still wouldn’t get a consideration.
- Beethoven
- Wagner
- Mozart
- Bach
- Philip Glass
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 11:19am GMT Permanent link.
Free The Ali Baba Three »
I’m indignant. I’ve calmed down now, listening to Today this morning, I was apoplectic.
I don’t think of John Nott as particularly admirable.
The first few days were very hectic. I flew down to Portsmouth to see the task force being prepared, but the famous occasion was the Saturday debate where the whole House of Commons was baying for the blood of the government for allowing this to happen and I was the fall guy really.
They all set about me with screams of ‘resign, resign’ and then we had a meeting of the Tory Party upstairs and that went badly for Peter Carrington, the foreign secretary.
When I heard that he was resigning I offered my resignation too because although I had had nothing to do with the negotiations with Argentina, it was after all British territory and it had been invaded by an enemy.
So to some extent I was seen to be responsible. I didn’t feel responsible, but I then offered my resignation, which Margaret Thatcher turned down.
I think that’s pretty miserable. But at least he said “So to some extent I was seen to be responsible. I didn’t feel responsible, but I then offered my resignation … ” Lord Carrington resigned with less fuss.
To backpedal a little, Tony Blair can apologise to the Conlon and Maguire families over incidents which happened when he was a student or a recent graduate and thinking of entering the church. General Sir Michael Jackson has apologised to the people of Iraq.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said he was “profoundly disturbed” by the case, which saw three men jailed by a military court martial in Germany.
Let’s try to be clear about this. We can assume that the three jailed soldiers were allowed to brutalise prisoners without supervision for fun. In that case, army discipline has broken down, and someone above them is responsible. These prisoners are suspected insurgents and their comrades pose very grave threats to the success of the Coalition’s mission. Are we to believe that if they were interrogated, no record was made of anything they said? You know, if suspect A says something, and suspect B corroborates it, that might be useful intelligence which might save some poor buggers lives. But records don’t seem to have been kept. The photographic evidence we have comes from the accused soldiers. If this is the case, the army has been negligent, and someone above them is responsible.
These people are in the army. Discipline and following orders are the sine qua non of any army. I don’t think that what Corporals Cooley, Kenyon, and Larkin did was excusable, but they didn’t do it in a vacuum.
This is typical New Labour.
The abuse came to light when photographs taken by a fourth soldier, Gary Bartlam, were left in a Staffordshire shop to be developed.
In their defence, the soldiers claimed abuse stemmed from an unlawful mission which took place at the aid camp to capture and deter looters.
The mission, codenamed Operation Ali Baba, was ordered by the camp’s commanding officer, Major Dan Taylor, who told his troops looters should be “worked hard”.
Prosecutors said the operation was in breach of the Geneva Convention.
General Sir Michael said that, although no criminal action had been taken against Maj Taylor, “administrative action” remained a possibility.
The lower ranks get discharged and jailed but a Major may face “administrative action.” Look after the middle classes (or the management) and sod the workers. Geoff Hoon is a disgrace to the Labour Party.
These 317 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 7:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 27 February 2005
Gordon Update »
Gordon it turns out, like Roy Cohn, doesn’t have liver cancer after all. Or probably not, anyway. I spent five minutes on the phone yesterday trying to get a vet to commit himself to a definite ‘No’ — and though he wouldn’t, he did seem to think that Gordie’s liver was uniformly swollen, which is consistent with a hepatitis-like infection and not with a tumour. He’s going to live, until the next medical emergency, anyway.
These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 4:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Site Update »
Although my name is in in the title bar of your browser, and several bloggers link to me as “Dave Weeden” I didn’t want to be left out of the trend of choosing a homoerotic/phalllicly suggestive nom de blog. I shall therefore be posting as “Ivor Biggun” for the rest of the month.
Hmmm. Would “The Trouser Snake” be classier? Or “The Humungous Trouser Snake and I’m not calling myself that because mine’s a tiddler, oh no! ask the ladeez, but not the men …” Perhaps that’s too long.
These 89 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 4:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Political Blogging »
Not content with my new nom de blog, I think I may have to break off part of the blogroll for the political wonk blogs. ReturningOfficer.com is a joint blog whose authors are Recess Monkey, Guido Fawkes, and the bloke “who was behind Guacomoleville and was the original Hon. Fiend when it was good” (Guido).
Speaking of Guido, he also has a scoop on Zack Exley.
Jamie and Nick link to Brian Sedgemore’s splendid speech.
As we move towards a system of justice that found favour with the South African Government at the time of apartheid and which parallels Burmese justice today, if hon. Members will pardon the oxymoron, I am reminded that our fathers fought and died for liberty—my own father literally—believing that these things should not happen here, and we would never allow them to happen here. But now we know better. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, is happening here.
…
It is a foul calumny that we do today. Not since the Act of Settlement 1701 has Parliament usurped the powers of the judiciary and allowed the Executive to lock up people without trial in times of peace. May the Government be damned for it.
Did he really say “a system of justice that found favour with the South African Government at the time of apartheid"? Yes he did, and Barbara Follett backs him up.
The Labour backbencher, who is now married to the novelist Ken Follett, said the control orders proposed by Charles Clarke bore an “extraordinary resemblance” to those used by the apartheid regime.
She told the House that Richard Turner, her first husband, was placed under house arrest in 1973 because he campaigned to give black people the right to vote and join trade unions.
He lived under the order for five years until he was assassinated in front of their daughters, Jann, 13, and Kim, aged nine.
“House arrest hampered but didn’t stop him,” she said. “That is probably why, just before his five-year order was due to expire, he was shot dead in front of our two young daughters in their bedroom.
“In the days that followed I tried to comfort them by telling them we were going to Britain where people were not detained without trial or put under house arrest.”
Chris Dillow found some old Hansard speeches from the days when Tony Blair said seemingly sensible things. Now he just makes pledges. Vote Labour.
These 129 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 5:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 28 February 2005
It's For Me? »
Damian has a category called N T bloody L. We share an internet provider. I would say phone line service, but my phone is dead. Our telecommunications company lives up to Damian’s description, so I let it ride over the last weekend. When my phone stayed inert into the week, I called them. This is something I put off as long as possible, as N T bloody L wind me up like a Swiss clock.
You call them, on your mobile say. You identify that you have a touch tone phone. Then you’re asked for your phone number. Naturally as you’re calling to complain that your phone doesn’t work, and you don’t often call yourself (or dial any numbers on a mobile), you can’t remember this. So you dial it wrong, and start again. Then when you do get through, you have a Mountain Language style conversation with a gum-chewing girl.
“What’s your phone number?”
“I’ve given my phone number.”
“What’s your phone number?”
“I’ve given my phone number.”
So you give your number. The girl gets it completely wrong. So you start again. Then she’s clearly looking for a manual for ways that your phone not working could be your fault. You tell her that you’ve thought of all those, that the thought of hanging on in a queue for half-an-hour was more than enough motivation to try all that. She reluctantly agrees to send an engineer out.
The engineer arrived. It wasn’t my fault or my phone. It was their line. Now the TV box doesn’t work either. He diagnosed the problem in about ten minutes. He spent a further 20 out in the snow trying to call out other engineers. He’s pacing up and down in the street, because he’s ready to go, as soon as this call is made, and I’m outside in solidarity, and it was so cold that we were both laughing at the stupidity of it.
Whatever, they can install a new line on Friday. And I’m asking myself, why am I with NTL? It was because my TV reception was crap, but I get Channel 5 as it is, and what I really want is BBCs 3 and 4, and a Freeview box is far more use. The thing is, do I want the hassle of changing providers? Probably yes.
These 389 words were hurriedly scribbled by Ivor Biggun @ 9:46am GMT Permanent link.