Saturday, March 17, 2007

[blogfocus saturday] some new faces this evening

No linked theme this evening - just some excellent blogging, including some new faces. Some have asked about my e-mailing policy now and I have to admit it's difficult with a list of over 100 but I hope to get back to it soon. Meanwhile, I'll inform those in the Focus and hope the others forgive me and still give it a look:

1 After my outburst over Blogger, it was clear I needed Dr. Michelle Tempest's services, so let me introduce her to those who've never seen 18 Doughty St. Here she stays awake long enough to give some good advice:

I am sure the BBC news came as no surprise to any parent, as they reported that "lack of sleep can impair many functions, including concentration and memory." It was reported in the latest edition of the US sleep journal that researchers found soldiers struggled to make snap decisions in emotionally charged situations after being deprived of sleep for two nights. The authors suggest this could be important for other professions, including doctors, who have broken sleep and need to make quick decisions in a crisis.

2 Forty seven years old and divorced - that's my kind of mate. Bag's at it again, scrutinizing the lucicrous carbon eco thingy:

There is even the obligatory carbon message. 'one-fifth of our carbon emissions are related to the production, processing, transport and storage of food.' Thus 15% of that is 3%. So they are saying 3% of our carbon emissions are wasted. Plus that makes some massive assumptions. The main one being that food waste is across the generators of the carbon equally. As before i find food waste is bread, veg, etc. all the inexpensive local stuff really. So as it's not been flown in from Swaziland or wherever it's carbon footprint is much less.

3 Not strictly a new blog but new to me and to many of my readers, the Lighthouse is crammed with intelligent and not so restrained comment, for example:

I'm a bit ambivalent about this postmodern usurpation of Western civilization. On the one hand it's thoroughly pernicious and all pervasive; it's undermining and destroying from within the type of society we hold dear. It acts as the 'new communism' in more ways than one. Droves of naive people only wish to see its benign, idealistic guise, unwilling to accept proof to the contrary: that multiculturalism is totalitarian in character, is against the individual, is anti-realism and collectivist.

Nine more bloggers here.

[teddy bear hospital] just create an illness first

Now here's a great idea:

The Medical Student Association in Iceland launched a project this week by opening a “Teddy Bear Hospital” in Reykjavík suburb Kópavogur with the aim of making children less frightened of doctors and hospital staff.

“Children can bring their teddies to us ... and we will use all the necessary equipment so the teddies can return to their home in good health,” Stefán Ágúst Hafsteinsson, one of the project’s organizers, told Fréttabladid. The Fruit Truck will offer children who visit the medical students with their teddies fresh fruit.

Wonder if it works with pollies? For example, new NHS junior doctors will be ready and waiting and all you have to do is 'create' an illness for Tony, Gordon or the Chipmunk, say anthrax or the bubonic plague, and the NHS will do the rest. After the funerals, the new PM and Deputy can have their turn.

Good game, yes? By the way, you have to be careful with those wild teddies. A teddy bear was implicated in 2,500 trout deaths not so long ago:

State officials [in New Hampshire] say a teddy bear that fell into a pool at a Fish and Game Department hatchery late last year clogged a drain. The clog blocked the flow of oxygen to the pool and suffocated the fish.

[the great live on] malcolm denzil marshall


Botham caught off Marshall

Born 18 April 1958, Pine, Bridgetown, Barbados;
Died 4 November 1999, Bridgetown, Barbados.

I was at the MCG one hot day in the summer of a year I can't recall. I saw Malcolm Denzel Marshall, ball in hand, stutter at the top of his run up then charge in at breakneck speed and at that characteristic angle then, at the last second, the arm whipped over and a blink of an eye later, two of the Aussie wickets were ricochetting across the turf.

Jaws dropped all round.

Later we found that behind this prodigious talent was one of the finest and most compassionate men this world is likely to see. He was short compared to Garner, Roberts and Holding but he truly was quick, and his most feared weapon, the sudden bouncer, had all batsman shuffling at the crease.

Able to create late swing due to his grip and strange action, he was gnawingly accurate as well. They couldn't get him away. His swing and cut with the ball and that subtle change of pace were further weapons in his armoury which lifted him to the realm of 'awesome'.

Ricie Richardson said of him: "He is a great thinker, he knows the game, he was able to analyse every single batsman and I would like to say that I think he's probably the greatest artiste that we would have produced."

Malcolm Marshall was reasonable as a batsman, with a nice style and he held up his end, particularly the day he batted with one hand against England after injury, allowing his partner his century. Clive Lloyd said that the key to Marshall was that he never gave less than 100% following in the footsteps of his own hero, Sir Garfield Sobers and the great man's New Zealand stint in 1972 was the knock which set him on the path upwards.

Marshall left the bravado on the sporting field and off-field was one of the most thoughtful, caring and laconic of men, stubborn, never panicking, greatly enjoying the cameraderie, the dispute, the banter, the fast bowler's union and he was wont to dish out the advice. Other bowlers learnt from him as he learnt from them, particularly the leg cutter from Dennis Lillee. He was no arrogant snob.

What many did not realize at the time was that he was one of the bravest too, suffering a debilitating disease which eventually took its toll.

Peter Short brought him to Hampshire and he didn't disappoint. Quite often a bit lackadaisical getting to the ground on time, this added to his mystique and there's the story of certain opposition tailenders meeting his car and offering to carry his bags if he'd go a bit easy on them that day.

Finally he slowed and runs began to be scored off him and that's when he increasingly resorted to subterfuge, as Lillee had done before him. In the end, of course, it all had to end but no one wishes to dwell on that. Enough to remember the awesome, jet black [and that's no insult] bowler from Barbados and supporter of charity in later years.

One of the few players the opposition loved just as much as his temamates, though not on-field of course, almost all would say: "Long live Malcolm Denzil Marshall."

Friday, March 16, 2007

[rising sea level] blogosphere says it knows better

This Antarctic iceberg is not melting - truly it's not. The blogosphere tells us it's all a myth and they're oceanographic experts, every one of them. Similarly, this report is rubbish:

Combined global land and ocean surface temperatures over the northern hemisphere's winter were the highest since records began in 1880, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That included the hottest January on record.

Just a little fluctuation, the climate sceptics will tell you, caused by the carbon trading advocates. Similarly, the Tuvaluan people have asked New Zealand to accept their 11 000 people after being forced to evacuate their island:

Sea level is rising because of the melting of glaciers and the thermal expansion of the ocean as a result of climate change. This in turn is due to rising atmospheric levels of CO2, largely from burning fossil fuels.

… but Samizdata tells us this is not so. Samizdata are, of course, experts on oceanography, as distinct from the Earth Policy Institute, who know nothing about the earth.

[stop press] sargasso sea very mysterious

Rushed to you from the the offices of the Daily Higham, this special report from the Bermuda Triangle on the latest situation in the Sargasso Sea:

The Sargasso Sea is part of the North Atlantic Ocean, lying roughly between the West Indies and the Azores. Here, the heart of the Bermuda Triangle is covered by the strangest sea on the planet named for a kind of seaweed called sargassum, which lazily floats over its entire expanse.

Catching sight of these huge mats of seaweed have always marked the perimeter of this peculiar sea. Columbus himself made note of it. Thinking land was nearby, he fathomed the sea, only to find no bottom. The bottom is, in fact, miles below on the Nares Abyssal Plain.

The Sargasso Sea occupies that part of the Atlantic between 20o to 35o North Latitude and 30o to 70o (the horse latitudes), West Longitude. It is in complete contrast to the ocean around it. Its currents are largely immobile yet surrounded by some of the strongest currents in the world: The Florida, Gulf Stream, Canary, North Equatorial, Antilles, and Caribbean currents.

These interlock to separate this sea from the rest of the tempestuous Atlantic, making its indigenous currents largely entropious. Therefore anything that drifts onto any of its surrounding currents eventually ends up in the Sargasso Sea amidst its expansive weed mats of sargassum.

Because of the entropious currents, it is unlikely anything would ever drift out. The Sargasso Sea rotates slightly itself and even changes position as its surrounding currents change with weather and temperature patterns during different seasons.

This rivetting story continues here.
For sargassfanats, click here.

[blogspot dot com] track them down and exterminate

I am angry, seriously angry, as in KILL angry.

Blogspot.com would have to be the worst programme/host/server, what ever you wish to call the cursed thing, which I have ever, ever, had the misfortune to have to deal with nad the idiots at the top the most incompetent set of prats ever to know nothing about programming whatsoever.

This morning I tried to post one post. Just one. It wouldn't let me even see the dashboard until I bombed it thirteen or fourteen times from different directions with clicks, closed it all, came back in, closed it, came back in, went out of the internet and back, did it all again and so on.

The bar graph thing which shows percentage loaded would shoot up to 50% and just stick there. Once I went to have a bath and a coffee, came back 20 minutes later and it was still stuck. After an hour and ten minutes, it finally let me post the Blogpower post but get this - it wiped out four of the links, including the Westminster Wisdom link, which made my stranded post nonsensical.

So just for that, Blogspot - Westminster Wisdom, Westminster Wisdom, Westminster Wisdom, Westminster Wisdom. There - let's see you try to wipe all those out, you bstds!!

Am I hot under the collar? Not at all - cool as a cucumber - not. Blogging is fun? Blogspot dot bloody com doesn't know the meaning of the word. I'm crazy, crazy to stay with these incompetents.

There, I feel much better now. Thank you. I'm off to see Dr. Michelle Tempest if she can find the time to fit me in.

[blogpower] still relevant for particular reasons


Some readers will have noticed I've ventured into MyBlogLog and the Praguetory community and I've noticed Westminster Wisdom has delicious and digg-it [neither which I understand] listed at the foot of each post. Tom Paine is also in Conservatives Abroad and the Witanagemot Club.

Is this treasonable to good old Blogpower?

This blogger says no, quite the opposite. Despite anything people say about stats not mattering, I think everyone would like to be read by a large and discerning community. Most Blogpowererers joined to expand their contacts and through a friendly but very loosely confederated community which is always outward looking, rather than inwards.

If I had to sum up how I saw Blogpower operating, I'd list the following:

# The 'big bloggers' all have some sort of national exposure which ensures them huge readerships, e.g. TV spots, Doughty and so on. The 'little bloggers', though linking to the biggies, usually don't get anything in return and so there is a case for a large collective of little bloggers who provide each other with larger readerships than would ordinarily be possible.

# The whole ethos of Blogpower is 'blogging for pleasure'.

# Members feed off other members' own expanding contacts, who in turn feed off those contacts and so on. A process of personal filtration then creates an ever-expanding community we'd like to be in.

# There is a definite sense of community here, which is Blogpower's main strength, given that it is open to all shades of opinion and strongly defends the right of those opinions to exist, even if we disagree, sometimes violently, with those opinions or affiliations. Members are free to use full or abridged versions of the blogroll, as they see fit.

# Compared to other web based communities, Blogpower is very human-based and low tech, without the snazzy little 'recent visitors' boxes, marauding marsupials and the like. It works on members of a slowly expanding community knowing one another and providing solid readerships which don't diminish on whim.

# We try to write testimonials, provide technical help and run various schemes to improve the blogs of fellow members. People are lways coming up with new ideas to improve our lot.

# Blogpower, being a completely free and voluntary collective, has no opinions of its own on any topic and endorses nothing but each other. If members wish to expand their blogs by joining other communities and schemes, Blogpower positively encourages that. It doesn't alter our blogfriendships.

# Blogpower Express will soon feature a blog of the week spot and be co-administered on a rota basis. It is our flagship homepage and Defending the Blog is our discussion page.

Anyone care to add anything to this?

Thursday, March 15, 2007

[ides of march] don't visit the theatre today

Everything all right over your way today? Nothing untoward happen? No stabbed bodies in togas or anything? Just checking like.

Caesar summoned the Senate to meet in Pompey's Theater on the Ides of March, 44 BC for the purpose of reading a petition, written by the senators, asking him to hand power back to the Senate. According to the Greek biographer Plutarch, a few days before, the soothsayer Titus Vestricius Spurinna apparently warned Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar disregarded the warning.

Will you?

[old poll down] new poll up


The question was: "Who'll be Prez - Segie or Sarko?" You said:

Segie 91%
Sarko 7%
Dark horse 2%

54 votes total [pollcode.com free polls]. Can't help thinking there was some wishful thinking here.

The new question is: The 2012 London Olympics are way over budget. Should Britain:

# Pull the plug now
# Run them anyway
# Run cheap games
# Fourth alternative

Non-Brits equally welcome to vote.

[border fences] the new rage around the world

Some beefing up still required here on the England/Scotland border

Lord Nazh, our American colleague, draws a distinction between being against immigration and being against illegal immigration:

Illegal Immigration is the problem. In a running argument with a friend of mine, I support the border fence, he detests it. He says it will not stop the flow of immigrants, is too expensive, etc. I say the point is not it 'stopping' the flow, but slowing it. Trying to divert the people that want to come into this country into the places where they are EXPECTED to cross legally and to try to halt some of the 'not known' crossings we have now.

Actually, they're all getting into it now:
Iran against Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia against Iraq and England against Scotland although clearly the English effort has some way to go before the rampaging Scots are finally fenced out [or in, depending on which side of the border you land].

[us election] lizard queen a fine politician

On the campaign trail

Sen. Hillary Clinton sidestepped a question about whether she thinks homosexuality is immoral Wednesday, less than two weeks after telling gay-rights activists she was "proud" to stand by their side.

"Well, I'm going to leave that to others to conclude," she said.

Sounds reasonable to me. She says one thing to the gay mafia when she's with them and another to the anti-gays when she's with them. Seems quite logical for an unprincipled wearer of the Phoenix brooch, which has now dislimmed into a Christian cross, to show her solidarity with both camps.

Incidentally, if you'd like to show some solidarity with the chameleon, you can get your Hillary Wear at I Love My Country [as one section of the greater American Union].

Yes indeed, girl, the door's over there ...

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

[guest blogging] some surprises in the pipeline

Great to see some guest blogging going on over at Ellee's and some common sense being written - read the comments section in particular.

I have two guest posts in the pipeline right now which could be unleashed at any time - quite frankly, I have no clue as to when these posts will appear but I'm mildly excited at the prospect, I can tell you.

[family gator] party pooper protectors purloin pet

State wildlife officials in Brattleboro, Vermont, have confiscated a two-metre alligator that had been living in a family's home for seven years. A bemused reptile expert warned: "They just don't warm to people. They don't ever become friendly. They don't make good pets."

Now is that fair? Just walking in without so much as a by-your-leave and nicking a child's pet gator. It hasn't snapped any one in two or deathrolled a child in all that time. Besides, two metres isn't so big. It'll get much bigger than that.

Curious, I thought I'd read up on the Gator from "How Stuff Works" and this is what they said about a pet gator:

An alligator's brain weighs only 8 or 9 grams and would take up only one-half of a tablespoon. This lack of brain power means there is no such thing as a "nice alligator". If it is hungry, an alligator will eat anything that moves. Pets and children who wander near an alligator pond are frequent victims of this instinctive behavior.

Wonder how the officers found out.

[massive whirlpool] scientists have it all pegged - not

Photo: CSIRO

A mysterious whirlpool 200 kilometres across and 1000 metres deep has developed off the coast of NSW, dragging down the sea surface by almost a metre, diverting the ocean current and chilling Sydney beachgoers. The centre is 100 kilometres from the coast and could stay there for several months.

CSIRO satellite oceanographer Dr David Griffin said that, while cold-water eddies regularly appeared off Sydney, scientists knew very little about what causes them or the influence they have in the Tasman Sea ecosystem.

Just thought you might like to know that the scientists have it all under control, as they have with climate change - not.

[as a dodo] what a fabulous site

I swiped their pic, holus-bolus

On the passing of childhood:

Parents - urged on by a society eager to turn anyone capable of holding a coin into a consumer, a media eager to push pictures of semi-naked women at tweenies and an internet leaping over itself to insert images of donkey-sex into the minds of anybody it could find - rushed to thrust adulthood upon their offspring just as soon as they could find an ear-piercing salon willing to carry out its work in utero.

Savage, accurate, topical and well written, with sympathy and humour. What more do you demand of a blog?

[climate change] blogosphere misinformed

The closer you get to snow areas such as I live in, the more visible is the climate change, which has been progressively getting worse for the last eight years or so. Consequences will flow.

At the same time, powerful lobbies have seized the phenomenon and are indulging in ludicrous and ultimately pointless debate, which the blogosphere also seizes on, as it fits in with the libertarian, anti-globalist stance so beloved of the average blogger [I shan't link to my colleagues here].

I think they've got the argument a-se end round here. The phenomenon most certainly is happening, humans are responsible and not just any humans. Then there's a factor almost no one talks about - check out the links near the end of this post.

Don't forget the old issue of the rainforests either, or the North American emissions. But why stop there? How about Europe, including Britain, one of the worst offenders?

Into all this comes money: “Now that money enters the picture with carbon trading, so does fraud. The incentive will be to under-report emissions”, which brings us back to the problem this post began with - misinformation.

It was always going to be so when powerful lobbies are pitted against one another, there are huge profits to be made and a blogosphere to dazzle.

UPDATE: Ellee Seymour has invited a guest blogger, William Connelly, who thoroughly debunks Channel 4's criminal inaccuracy:

"Channel 4 clearly have no interest in whether they broadcast truth or not; and the number of people prepared to fall for this tripe."

[rogue wave] car washed into the sea

A resident in Eyrarbakki, south Iceland, was washed into the ocean when a tidal wave hit his car at the pier in the neighboring town of Stokkseyri Friday. A firefighter rescued him ashore. Halldór Jónsson, an electrician, was helping a friend bringing a boat to land, which was tied to the pier, when the incident occurred, Fréttabladid reports.

Jónsson parked his car on the pier with a trailer attached to it and was about to drag the boat onto the trailer when a huge wave swept him out to sea. Jónsson managed to crawl out of the window on the roof of his car. “It felt like I was stranded on a desert island,” he said. A firefighter arrived at the scene and tossed a rope to Jónsson. He tied the rope to his trailer and managed to save himself and his equipment.

This would probably seem weird were it not a well known phenomenon with sailors, termed 'rogue waves'. They're every sailor's fear and many explanations have been proferred for them. Put simply, waves generally follow patterns, as you've seen from your own experience and even those breaking on the shore are only following the physics of a 'shallowing shelf', leading to the beach.

The problem is sometimes when waves come from different directions, backed by hundreds of kilometres of similar waves and the result can be like the inside of a washing machine, such as in Drake Passage. And yet this still doesn't explain the huge rogue wave. Currents and bad weather could certainly be factors but, as one expert put it, ""We know some of the reasons for the rogue waves, but we do not know them all."

For the sailor, it's often not the shocking weather - a well-found sailboat will weather almost anything, provided it has enough sea room to work in; it's designed to do so. No, it's the rogue wave that's the problem and these have been known to sink ships, sometimes even travelling against the prevailing current. Therein lies the problem.


Having said all that, for a rogue wave to actually come in to the shore and take a car away is still pretty weird.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

[blogfocus tuesday] beauty and the beast

It was going to be on Wednesday but it got itself ready by Tuesday after all. It's the return of the heavyweights this evening, interspersed with some really neat little blogs and that's real beauty and the beast stuff. Hope you enjoy it.

1 Iain Dale said about him: "Thoughtful rather than ranting" and Guido said of his blog: "I don't read it." Do you need any more reasons to make this one of your daily ports of call? Dizzy gives an annotated, point form list of the green government's suggestions for you to be personally less wasteful. Here's the final point:

Idling is wasting fuel - Stop wasting fuel in traffic jams. Turn the engine off. What do you mean you're stereo isn't rigged directly to your battery and requires the ignition to be on to listen too? The planet is more important than you're desire to listen to Kylie.

Do have a look at the rest of the
site. I imagine it cost a small fortune to set up and will receive very little traffic. I bet they don't think twice about the power consumption of their servers though.

2 Still on the environment, Bel writes of the 'envirofascist'. Of course no serious scientist argues today that it's not happening but the way the EFs have hijacked the agenda, they have created an enormous backlash. Though Bel and I would differ on the former, we're at one on the latter:

A commenter on my previous post took issue with my use of the term ‘envirofascist’. I have been thinking, and while unrepentant, I have decided that, in future, I will no longer use this term when discussing our hypocritical politicians. I will instead call them ‘pharisees’. Why? Because they prescribe how we should live our lives, while they merrily carry on doing whatever they please. Someone once condemned pharisees thus: “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”

3 And yet again on the environment, Mr Eugenides mentions the laudable objective of the Mayans in dispersing the bad energy of, say, a George Bush visit:

His arrival brings him to the fourth nation in a five-state tour of the Latin American region. But Maya leaders said they will have to perform a special cleansing ceremony to clear bad energy left by his visit. The Maya, you will recall, cut the hearts out of their human sacrifices [often children] before throwing them from the top of their temples. I wonder if our definitions of "bad energy" are quite the same.

Nine more bloggers here.

[blog regulation] backdoor way the vipers are trying

UKDP has a poll in his sidebar and I suggest you get over there and vote if you haven't already done so.

One of the sickest aspects of the issue - regulating the blogosphere - is the backdoor way the regulators operate. Offer up someone respected such as Iain Dale or Laban Tall and a certain loyalty to them can be used against the bloggers in turn. They'll never regulate me - they'll have to block me first.

Here is UKDP's poll so far [early days yet]: Which bloggers would you least like to see on the PCC regulatory panel for blogs?

Iain Dale 6 votes
Tim Ireland 7 votes
Stephen Tall 2 votes
Tim Montgomery 0 votes
Lynne Featherstone 2 votes
Daniel Finkelstein 3 votes
Alex Hilton 6 votes
I refuse to recognise the blog kitemark and oppose censorship of any sort. 25 votes

35 voters all up so far - pollcode.com free polls

[canada] do you want more of them

Here's an interesting poll in the Globe & Mail:

Do you think there are enough people in Canada now?

Yes [8%] 1216 votes
No [92%] 13299 votes

Total votes: 14515

Wonder what the thinking was behind that nifty poll idea? Could it be this?

[buddhism] vacuuming ants better than squashing them

They certainly do things differently over there in the modern temple:

Buddhist monks are grappling with how to rid a Malaysian temple of an infestation of ants whose sting is so bad one worshipper has been admitted to hospital. The monks have tried using a vacuum cleaner to gather up the ants before freeing them in a nearby forest, but to no avail.

Monday, March 12, 2007

[france] dishing the dirt on segie and sarko

It's been a long time since this blog got into muck-raking, gutter-press, sensationalist journalism so here goes. First, the dirt on Sarko:

Nicolas Sarkozy urged the colonialist Arno Klarsfeld to think of colonization.

Doesn't move you? All right, how about this:

The satirical French newspaper Canard Enchaine is running a story which claims that in 1997, Sarkozy was sold an apartment in Neuilly for 300,000 euros (nearly $400,000) below the market rate. The catch: the same company that sold him the apartment had been granted city contracts, which was then being governed by Sarkozy.

Trouble is, he got out of that one. OK, the gloves are off now:

Nicolas Sarkozy’s second marriage nearly went on the rocks after his wife left him for 6 months [no, not to live in seclusion in some kind of monastery…] While separated from his wife, Mr. Sarkozy took a mistress [the Minister and his wife are now living together again].

Not very interesting really, is it? Let's try Segie instead:

Segolene Royal has now been living unmarried with the father of her 4 children for over 20 years.

Wicked woman! And here's something even worse, from Atlas Shrugs:

Her little jackets! They get on my nerves. I can recite her entire wardrobe from memory. The jackets rotate like a school canteen menu.

I know, I know. All right, this one's really, really bad - she's still gaffe prone. Would you believe she still looks good in a bikini?

My final play:

I've interviewed Segolene in pyjamas.

Let's see you get out of that one, Segie!


[old poll down] new poll up

The "Maniac" poll is finished and results were quite decisive:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 86%

Hugo Chavez 4%

Kim Jong-il 8%

Another maniac 2%

50 votes total

The new poll in the sidebar is the Segie and Sarko question - who'll be Prez? Please vote if you can spare a few moments.

[keep-your-eye-on] firstly from the conservatives

This occasional series is designed to profile, in about 100 words, talent the major parties should be looking out for. Of course they have their own A and B lists but every little bit helps … perhaps.

Warning: in political profiles such as this, the blog author reserves the right, Praguetory style, to immediately delete comments deemed not in the spirit of the post.

Former leader of the Surrey Heath Conservative Future before he became a trifle old, Dominic de Mariveles can be found all over the British political sphere in one form or another. Not long ago he ran a policy initiative on Waste Management:

A new national policy framework in the form of an update of the 2000 Waste Management Act is needed to provide us all with a clear procedure for domestic recycling and waste disposal.

When he's not involved in such things or in his day job in finance, he is signing petitions such as this little gem, suggesting to Tony Blair that:

The proposed bridge in the Thames Gateway connecting Beckton in the north with Thamesmead in the south should be named the "Daniel Finkelstein Bridge" after the eminent political commentator and columnist.

Interesting that a top blogger, William Luckman, also involved himself in this matter. Dominic is as charitable, such as supporting a deaf boy, David Morgan, in the London marathon:

dominic de mariveles - 12/04/2006 - Donation - good luck fatso

… as he can be ascerbic with stupidity:

One reason people despise politicians is because secretly they are quite envious that it ain't them.

I suggest the Conservatives keep a weather eye out for this young man, with a view to pre-selection in a juicy constituency somewhere, preferably in the south-east. Maybe if he were to take up blogging, it might just get him over the line.

[opera] ten simple ones to start with

Fill in the blanks:

Opera Composer Year

A____ V____ 1871

B____ G____ Mussorgsky 18____

Carmen ____ 18____

Cav____ia Ru____na Mascagni 1____0

C____ fan ____ ____ 1790

Der R____alier Richard ____ 1911

Dido and ____ ____ 1689

Don ____ ____ 1787

____ O____ Tchaikovsky 1879

Fidelio B____ 18____

[quotes] first 10 from the world of politics

Some lines which made this blogger chuckle:

1] Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.
Samuel Johnson [1769]

2] A sheep in sheep's clothing.
Winston Churchill, of Clement Attlee [no date]

3] The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrik [1963]

4] This is a rotten argument, but it should be good enough for their lordships on a hot summer afternoon.
Anonymous, said to have been read out inadvertently in the House of Lords [no date]

5] It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.
Michael Foot, of Norman Tebbit [1978]

6] Like being savaged by a dead sheep.
Denis Healey, on being criticized by Geoffrey Howe [1978]

7] It is, I think, good evidence of life after death.
Lord Soper, on the quality of debate in the House of Lords [1978]

8] A triumph of the embalmer's art.
Gore Vidal,of Ronald Reagan [1981]

9] There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.
Alan Clark [1990]

10] Being an MP is the sort of job all working class parents want for their children - clean, indoors and no heavy lifting
Diane Abbot [1994]

Sunday, March 11, 2007

[bush and rove] a slight whiff of watergate

Just how much blame must Karl Rove shoulder and how much should George W. over the sackings of eight federal prosecutors?

Justice Department officials have acknowledged that former U.S. Attorney H.E. Cummins was booted from his post in Little Rock, Ark., to make room for a former Rove aide. Other fired prosecutors handled politically sensitive investigations that angered Republicans during the run-up to the November elections. Lawmakers in both political parties have expressed concern about evidence of political meddling in the weeks before the November elections, when it was becoming clear that Democrats might take control of Congress for the first time in 12 years.

Although the replacements have been robustly defended, still:

"Nobody who objectively looks at this is going to think, oh, what a coincidence," said former prosecutor Green, now a Fordham University law professor who's on leave at New York University.

This smacks very much of the White House using the Justice Department for its own party political ends. It also smacks of outgoing administrations misusing their authority in the final days. Trouble is, the U.S. already has a constitution to supposedly deal with this sort of thing.

[jacques chirac] the grey havens beckon

On Jacques Chirac's retirement:

The candidates, and France at large, credit Mr Chirac with three main achievements: standing up to the US by opposing the invasion of Iraq; recognising France's anti-Semitic crimes in World War II, and opposing racism and political extremism.

The low points were the loss of the outright control of parliament in 1997, the repeated abandonment of reforms in the face of strikes and protests, the 2002 election in which the extreme rightwinger Jean-Marie Le Pen came second, and the race riots and voters' rejection of the French-inspired European constitution in 2005.

His "crimes" during his time as the Mayor of Paris will most likely not be sheeted home to him. No doubt he'll soon pass into that twilight zone of the venerated elder statesman. As Le Figaro put it: "Pour Chirac, le temps des hommages a commencé."

[pluto] yes, venetia, it really is a planet


Venetia Burney gazing over Hydra, Pluto, Charon and Nix. Now the demented denizens of a dark demesne, the astronomo-technocratic mafia, have taken her planet away from her. But help is at hand.

Blognor Regis is really onto something here:

State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet." I fully support this move.

I do too, as is evident here, here, here and here. I call on all good people to give this little girl back the planet she named. Nix to them! That's the home of my sanity they're playing with. As a lady of course, her own thoughts on the matter, in 2007, are less vehement :

"At my age, I've been largely indifferent to [the debate]; though I suppose I would prefer it to remain a planet."

[chavez] which one looks most like him

[altruism] harnessing and unleashing power

Just been re-reading from Nietzsche's Zarathustra [1891] and other things - surprising, huh? Some of his observations were apt, e.g. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness [7: On Reading and Writing].

On the question of compassion, of kindness, his views are well known - that these things are to assuage the person who does them, rather than to help the receiver - the feelgood factor. And I ask, 'Why not?' All actions ultimately stem from self. If such actions also produce a collateral, cumulative effect, a snowball, why not?

My best friend added that it just takes one act, just one each day, from every single person within a sphere of influence towards someone not family or best friend and the mood enhancement then spills over and creates an atmosphere.

The shop girl who slaps the change on the counter as another irascible customer, deep in his own thoughts unsmilingly gives his order - what if someone had just complimented her on something a few moments earlier? Now she'll say something nice to the chap and he'll be momentarily brought out of himself, as someone from a trance.

There's another aspect to all this. At the point where you, quite justifiably of course, are about to unleash a cutting remark at someone who is being insufferable - stop! Go against your instinct in some sort of a bloodyminded way and actually compliment the person instead. The look of shock is worth it. And as Nietzsche wrote: When a small kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm.

There's no altruism in this - at least it starts out this way. It's simply behaviourism, surrounding yourself with a cushioning bubble of pleasantness in which to travel through the day. And then it slowly becomes altruism because the pleasure you produce in the other is worth its weight in gold. It's a buzz, in other words, a narcotic fix.

Just as the natural instinct is to harbour feelings of resentment, of revenge, of withdrawal, of coldness, which eventually reduce us to quiet bitterness, so a serial altruist gets into a groove and can't help himself - he needs that daily fix but not face to face. No, no. Not at all.

The greatest buzz is to do the act in such a way that you have no chance of being thanked. You simply set in motion a train of events which you know will be taking place long after you've gone and that's the greatest buzz of all, chuckling over what you just caused to happen.

Nice article on the whole thing here.