Saturday, June 13, 2009

[kate middleton] time to transcend euro prep

What's the problem here? That shirt of course and the fact that it is not Kate. Now if she could relax with a stripier shirt, be more Middleton in bearing and not flash those gloves, she'd pass muster.

Of course, girls, if you really want to look like Kate Middleton, you need to find:

“... cable-knit cashmere in pastel colours, velvet scrunchies, riding boots worn over jeans” and “traditional labels like Barbour, Hackett, [and] Thomas Pink.” Dress in a “stripy shirt under a fitted tweed jacket, and lots of rings,” and you’ll have the Euro prep style down pat just like Kate.

Now, in the photo lower right, that's how it should be done. Also note the hair.

Marilyn puts us on to this article about how the hair should be done. From Philip Kingsley preen cream to Frizz Control, this is the right stuff.

The main thing is, Kate is moving into the matrimonial phase in a month so she really should metamorphose her Euro prep look into a more neo-Sloane.

Above all, my advice to her is not to get too pregnant until after July 2009 when it's possible we'll hear wedding bells according to a little bird who told me.

So, back to Kate watching. By the way, Kate has now drawn level in the Brit Poll.

Here's a Kate poll you just have to check out before you die!

[not half bad] wonder what year it was

All right - no doubt you all know about this concert at the Royal Albert when I was still over in Russia. I was looking up the Small Faces on youtube, then the Faces, which then led to the video below.

Don't know about you but as a rule, I can't stand dinosaur reunions or charity concerts where everyone tries to outdo one another and massacre good songs. Also, there really does come a time when dinosaurs should quietly fade away - IMHO, for example, the Stones are now a sad parody.

So, with trepidation, the play button was clicked.

Hey, do you agree old Rod wasn't altogether bad? Be fair - his voice didn't crack but better than that, surely, was the mandolin player in the background - she needed instant researching. Maybe she's famous but I'd never seen her before ... J'Anna Jacoby ... hmmmm ... very nice indeed.




This is of interest too.
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[bbc reduces services] in your best interests

Yet another attempt by a department to reduce services to the public:

Across the BBC website we are making a change to the way we present content for audiences inside and outside the UK.

Up to now, people outside the UK who visited the website could select a UK version and those within the UK could select an international version of the site.

A radio button in the "set location" section at the top of the BBC homepage and on the left hand side of News and Sport pages allowed you to switch between versions.

From now on this won't be the case. The button is going, so if you are inside the UK you will simply see the UK version, outside the UK you'll see the international version.


Isn't that nice? Some comments:

# 29 comments so far, and 100% against the new scheme. As an IT professional, I have to agree that customization of the site based on source IP address is a bad idea. As a reader of the site, I have to agree that I prefer the ability to choose International or UK versions.

# ... "The change also means that the advertising which you can see on our pages if you are outside the UK can be integrated around our pages without the need to change page formats for the UK version of the site" ....

Which we can see on your pages eh? What makes you think we want to see advertising in the first place? Do we have a choice? I complained bitterly when it first started to appear in small doses and was fobbed off with meaningless drivel. I fear the worst for the BBC when hype stories like this emerge.

#
Typical BBC Arrogance towards many faithful expats who want to keep in touch with home and what is happening there. Personally I don't care about being able to watch TV shows or some other content. I can use the BBC iPlayer to listen to Radio 4 or 5live. However, I do like to see the UK Content upfront when I sign in and be able to go to the UK Sites that I like.

Speaking personally, when I was in Russia, I wanted the UK version. Now I'm here, I want the international version.

[climate change] still blinkered in britain


While you could be forgiven for thinking, on your blog rounds, that there's absolutely no change going on, no siree, meanwhile the climate is actually ...

... er ... changing.

In countries like Russia where it's as obvious as the lack of snow until the new year and the severely contracted winter, in Australia, they're also feeling the heat:

Thousands of demonstrators have rallied across Australia to demand greater government action to protect the environment from climate change. Scientists have warned that Australia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a shifting climate.

In countries like Australia, where it is more accelerated, naturally the clamour will come more quickly than say, in Britain, where Brit bloggers still churn out stats to 'prove' that what is happening elsewhere isn't happening and anyway, even if it is, human agency is in no way involved. When pressed, they say well, let's wait and see. Yeah, really good. Let the house of cards come down and then watch them falling. Great policy.

And these are otherwise intelligent men and women. Fortunately, there are actual experts who are trying to get people to wake up:

New data was presented in Copenhagen on sea level rise, which indicated that the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made two years ago were woefully out of date.Dr Katherine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee that organised the conference and issued the six "key messages", said the research presented added new certainty to the IPCC reports.

"We've seen lots more data, we can see where we are, no new surprises, we have a problem."

More than 2,500 researchers and economists attended this meeting designed to update the world on the state of climate research ahead of key political negotiations set for December this year.

What about the actual science? New Scientist says:

Rising CO2 was not the trigger that caused the initial warming at the end of these ice ages - but no climate scientist has ever made this claim. It certainly does not challenge the idea that more CO2 heats the planet. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas because it absorbs and emits certain frequencies of infrared radiation. Basic physics tells us that gases with this property trap heat radiating from the Earth, that the planet would be a lot colder if this effect was not real and that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will trap even more heat.

The issue is with the political process before any sort of carbon footprinting of the ordinary citizen takes place. So far, global policy has been to make you and me feel guilty and allow governments themselves to continue along the same path they had been before, with the situation steadily getting worse and worse.

Just on sheer population growth alone, let alone all its associated evils and leaving climate change out of it, governments have shown no inclination to offer more than lip service to radically address the question.

When global warming re-enters the discussion, the first fingers need to point at China. Next, the U.S. dependence on the internal combustion engine and the chemical pollutant releases need to be seen to. On the other hand, plant emissions themselves are perhaps causing cooling in some parts, along with added pollution. Bio-fuels seem hardly likely to help either in attempting to alleviate the uneven temperature increases.

Friday, June 12, 2009

[weekend poll] sexiest current era aircraft

1. F18 hornet [lost link, sorry]








9. Eurofighter Typhoon

10. AH 64 Apache

You might like to look at this at Theo's too.

Thanks to my mate for the assistance.

If you think two or three other distinct craft have been left off, feel free to say.

How to vote

Choose any three you think the sexiest and click on them in descending order of merit in the poll in the right sidebar at the top. It's best to open this post first in a new page.
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[evil ways] revisited

Everyone has it somewhere in a collection but it never dies, this track and this particular performance has a nice intensity to it.





Sound quality could have been better but .. hey.

[whistleblowers] and the art of not ratting


You know, the staff reaction to the ban on biscuits at the FCO is not as spurious as it seems. It's a very good indicator. Two little anecdotes:

1. My mate relates a story of when he was doing a commando course. One of the men was known as a snitch and had turned in a fellow soldier to an officer. On this occasion, the alleged snitch was struggling to keep his handhold on a rope over a river, another came along, said, 'This is for Jones,' and observers say he tried to help the snitch but it was no use and the snitch lost his grip and fell into the river.

2. In Russia, no one likes anyone being above themselves and there's a tradition of the drivers being just as good as the Minister. One driver had this bad and did a number on me, delaying my return to a client and creating various other minor problems. I was angry and was going to deal with him but one of the ministry staff asked me to step aside and let him deal with it - keep it in the ranks, so to speak. I'm not a wise person but on that day I'm so glad I took his advice. Not only did they deal with that driver in their own way, but my stocks went up within the ministry which had seen me, until then, as an interloper quite above himself, which of course, I had been.

I plead guilty to 'doing a Jones' myself recently and at the time, I hadn't seen it in that light. When it was pointed out to me, I was horrified because I seriously hadn't seen myself that way. These sorts of sensitivities are important of course, often far more important than the big issues at stake and if you alienate your peer group and support base, you're only making a rod for your own back. Accidents start to happen, little incidents, one's protective envelope somehow tears and problems ensue.

Against that is the Burkean 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.' Such as a crooked cop and the whistleblower. So when does the whistleblower become a snitch and what differentiates them?

That's tough.

Ellsberg was a case in point. His legacy was that he alerted the American people to what their government was up to with their expendable lives. That earned Kissinger's 'the most dangerous man in America who has to be stopped at all costs' and for good measure, he was called a pervert.

If you accept Ellsberg, in hindsight, of having done right, what about Vanunu? What about Vlasov? The latter, in my Russian friend's book, was a total traitor.

All I'm asking is - where does one draw the line? At what point does a whistleblower become a snitch?

Some explanations

I didn't want to lengthen this post but some feedback suggests that not all know some of these characters above.

Basically, Vanunu spilt the beans on Israel having nuclear capability and Israel took great exception to that. So the question is - was he a whistleblower or a traitor?

Vlasov was the Soviet general in WW2 whose army was surrounded by the Germans. Knowing they'd be slaughtered, he surrendered but did more - he joined the Germans with his army to march on Moscow. The reason he gave was that he knew that Stalin didn't give a toss about the people and was prepared to sacrifice millions and millions of his countrymen for his own ambitions in Europe. To this day, the average Russian still sees him as a traitor.

Ellsberg - more people are familiar with. He gave the Pentagon Papers to the NYT, which basically showed that the stated reason for being in Vietnam - the domino theory, was bollocks and it was just a power game. Kissinger and Co. took this wedge between the people and its government as evidence of aid and succour to the enemy.

There's an excellent article here on the subject.

[evolution] how to delude the masses

I like the man's style:

Pro-Darwinian propagandists like Richard Dawkins are so astoundingly incompetent and their arguments are so obviously full of logical holes that it won't be terribly long before it becomes obvious to most people that few genuinely intelligent individuals subscribe to a theory primarily held by maleducated dimwits who are either too indoctrinated or too dense to be capable of critically examining it.

It's seldom a question of attempting to avoid religious doubts - indeed, the very charge tends to imply a guilty plea to the metaphysical angle mentioned - it's simply a question of shedding the mindless indoctrination that most of us acquired in school. It seems as if most of these pro-evolutionary bozos who are not professional biologists fail to realize that those of us who doubt ND-TENS had very much the same textbooks and schooling that they did.

Vox quotes Orwell's Picnic:

I have passed over in silence some other sophistical arguments proposed by Darwinists, namely Darwin's own discussion of variations within domesticated species, Haeckel’s embryoes, and Dawkins’ computer-generated insects, as too obviously irrelevant to need any comment beyond dismissal. Perhaps worthy of refutation, however, is the Darwinist “Just-So” story of “sexual selection.” This is an attempt to account for obviously unadaptive biological structures like the beautiful but cumbersome tail of the peacock.

According to this theory, peahens like big beautiful tails, so the disadvantages of the tail in terms of the competition for survival is outweighed by its advantages for reproductive success. The whole notion is an exercise in begging the question. It assumes that peahens have already evolved unadaptive tastes. These unadaptive tastes cannot be explained by Darwinist mechanisms.

I have not included these various bad Darwinist arguments in my accusations of fraud because they seem to me to be illogical rather than dishonest.

Darwinism does not have this respect for the evidence. Why not? I believe it does not because it is not a scientific theory. Its proponents frequently claim that their account must be accepted -- regardless of any weaknesses in evidence or argument -- because it is the only existing account which abides by materialist naturalism.

This is the key to understanding the motivation for their bad faith and fraud. Darwinists are attempting to use the prestige of science to advance a metaphysical position, their commitment to materialist naturalism.

Vox concludes:

Like Keynesianism, evolution was successful due to factors far outside its scientific credibility. And like Keynesianism, evolution will eventually fade away as growing scientific knowledge renders that credibility increasingly implausible.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

[deportation] when one partner dies


The NYT reports:

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, gave a two-year reprieve on Tuesday to immigrants whose applications for permanent residency have been denied because their American spouses died during the application process.

Under United States law, a foreign spouse of an American citizen is eligible for residency, but the couple is required to be married for at least two years first, in part as a safeguard against fraudulent marriages.

The government has argued that if the American spouse dies before the two-year mark, the foreign spouse becomes a widow or widower, effectively annulling the right to be considered for residency, and thereby opening the door to deportation.

Given that America is a country of immigrants and that the marriage route in is virtually the same in most countries, is it rough on widow[er]s if the native spouse dies and the applicant is now set for deportation or is it tough luck - the reason for the approval in the first place has now gone?

The government has now given a two year reprieve for such people but for what? What's a reprieve in this context? Does the government mean that they need a chance to find another husband/wife?

[the intensity] of simplicity


A year or two ago, a very kind gentleman and I were discussing New Order's Temptation. I don't know why I didn't mention another of their songs, in the Youtube below.

It had always seemed to me that I was alone in thinking this a very moving song. Simple and simplistic? Yes. Singer unsure of himself after the death of the band's driving force? Yes. A couple of dicey chords here and there? Yes. But none of that is the real point. As one youtube viewer wrote:

A drum beat. A few strings plucked on guitars lead and bass. A finger on a couple of synth keys, and a bloke singing. Basic stuff. So why does it reach into my guts, pull them out and unravel them slowly. It always has though, ever since I first put it on my deck.

... to which someone else replied:

Best comment I've seen on Youtube about any video. Well said, and I feel the same way.

... to which the guy replied:

Well thanks kindly. Very nice of you to say so. My comments came from the heart and I didn't know if I was being a bit naff to say them. But this song, and particularly the release of breath at 4 mins...... just does stuff for me that I can't explain easily.





That was the whole thing with Joy Division/early New Order. I fear quoting Artur Schnabel who said, in 1961:

Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes; grown-ups avoid Mozart because of the great quality of the notes.

I fear putting in that quote because some will deliberately misunderstand that there is no comparison being drawn in any way. One is classic and the other popular music.

And yet, Joy Division/early New Order most certainly had that indefinable something about them. You could play their songs but you could never capture that strange intensity, the intensity of youth, hope, despair, alienation, all those things. Unrequited love, lost love - it all came together in those mournful tones.

I never quite understood why this band had the capacity to move the soul but one afternoon, something happened which compounded the feeling.



I was driving south over the North York Moors, fulfilling a silly idea I had to take a French girl I knew back to France. I don't remember a lot of it but do remember the end of a misty-grey, overcast, threatening afternoon, just before the downpour, the Esk Valley awesome. I also remember the incongruity of the French girl beside me in the car, superb in her unaffectedness and when the song began on the player, just the moors, the vehicle and her in the vicinity, she was moved by the atmosphere, the intensity of the scene and I felt privileged to be part of it.

I wish I had the photo to show you but it's probably lost somewhere in Russia or Sicily now. No matter, the one below is close enough to what she looked like so I think you'd understand why the idea of driving to France did not seem OTT at the time.


[airbus a320 et a330] série d'incidents


Le plus tard:

Mercredi également, c'est un Airbus A330-200 parti du Japon à destination de l'Australie qui a connu un départ de feu dans le cockpit. La vitre droite a commencé à fumer puis s'est enflammée après environ quatre heures de vol, contraignant l'appareil à effectuer un atterrissage d'urgence sur l'île de Guam, dans l'océan Pacifique. Aucun des 203 passagers et membres d'équipage n'a été blessé.

Most recent disaster.

Anyone ... er ... actually ... er ... planning to travel airbus in the next month or so?

[wordless wednesday] captions please

[easy peasy] quiz for thursday

1. Which was Beecham’s 1946 orchestra?

2. Who in the film Casablanca said "Play it again Sam"?

3. What is a rope called on a boat which pulls in the sails?

4. If seven months have 31 days, how many months have 28 days?

5. Rearrange the letters in the words "new door" to make one word.

Answers

Royal Philharmonic, no one, sheet, twelve, one word

[sidelights on mullins] origins of educational decline

Mullins has been over-quoted and yet this was an interesting aside about the origins of the current educational malaise, sort of a Genesis of the Daleks in a way:

One of the most far-reaching consequences of the General Education Board's political philosophy was achieved with a mere six million dollar grant to Columbia University in 1917, to set up the ''progressive'' Lincoln School.

From this school descended the national network of progressive educators and social scientists, whose pernicious influence closely paralleled the goals of the Communist Party, another favorite recipient of the Rockefeller millions.

From its outset, the Lincoln School was described frankly as a revolutionary school for the primary and secondary schools of the entire United States. It immediately discarded all theories of education which were based on formal and well-established disciplines, that is, the McGuffey Reader type of education which worked by teaching such subjects as Latin and algebra, thus teaching children to think logically about problems.

Rockefeller biographer Jules Abel hails the Lincoln School as ''a beacon light in progressive education ''.

[lies] it's not easy telling the truth

Just as it's impossible to go out on the road without breaching some law, even going ten kilometres an hour over the limit in passing another car, so it's impossible not to lie. There are always going to be circumstances where it will happen.

Even generally honest men or women will be forced into lies at some point, for example, when their child is accused of a crime - who would throw his child to the wolves? On the other hand, to let him get away with it might be setting him on the road to sociopathy. The parents here would surely punish 'internally', within the family, placing family loyalty above truth.

It's a question of degree though, isn't it? What does the priest do about the confession of an intended murder? What does the mother do who knows her son is a rapist and will do it over and over, secure in the protection of his mother's silence?

This is not the sort of situation which Vox Day was referring to. He was referring instead to the sociopathic liar, the unmitigated, serial, career liar:

I don't know why, but over the years I have seen how it is extremely hard for normal people to understand how blatantly some individuals can lie to your face. I suspect that only those who have had the benefit of long-term proximity to one of these shameless and habitual liars can understand how completely meaningless words can be in the mouths of some individuals.

I'm not afraid to rely upon verbal assurances, but once it's become clear that there is a reliable gap between what an individual says and what he does, I simply apply that gap to future pronouncements. But, in the rare case of the sociopaths, whose statements bear no recognizable similarity to their actions, I pay no attention whatsoever to their words.

Here are some ways to detect a liar. Here is a good article on pathological and compulsive liars, excellent liars, practised and able to deliver with aplomb. Clinton, over Lewinsky, was and is such a person. Obama is another over his antecedents but he does it by getting others to lie for him. Here is the story of one of those liars. He lied blatantly, straight into the face of his questioner and would justify it as being in 'the national interest'.

Some types

1. The honest person usually only lies under duress and/or when a third party would suffer from the truth. He'll strategize and structure situations to avoid ever being in a situation where he might have to lie. If he is forced into a lie, it plays on his conscience and he might come back long after the urgency has passed and say, 'Look, I lied …' He has to either find closure on it or address the issue in general, non-accusatory terms with the person he's lied to.

2. The most common way people play down their lying is to make the distinction between White Lies, for a worthy cause and other lies. When told that they are still liars, nonetheless, they don't like that.

3. Another rationalization is the blatant, 'Look, I have a comfortable life with someone I love. I lie to protect our relationship because the truth would kill him and cause endless heartache.' Something like that.

4. Another is the, 'Look, everyone lies and I'm no different. Why pick on me?'

5. Then there is the CIA technique, commented on by Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor:

Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?

6. The eyes too. Also from Condor, the character Kathy says:

You have good eyes. Not kind, but… they don't lie, and they don't look away much, and they don't miss anything. I could use eyes like that.

7. Also, is deception lying? I had a friend who had a situation [and I'm thankful it wasn't mine] which he related to me. He'd agreed to meet this girl just after lunch. I understand they'd just become an item by this stage and so they were both, seemingly, naively trusting of one another. The only thing which wrecked it this day was her stupidity in not covering her tracks. He arrived, she went to get the coffee, he saw the used condom in the bin. End of relationship.

8. Is calling a woman's hair magnificent a lie? It can be when she is seeking the compliment about her beauty, he can't give it so he seizes on her best feature and compliments that.

9. Someone I know has an interesting approach to lying. He takes what the other person says and turns it back on the person who said it, expunging the guilt from his own mind and projecting it onto the other. If you were to say he blew up buildings, he'd turn round and accuse you of blowing up buildings, whilst not actually refuting the accusation.

10. Living a lie. Well we all do that to a greater or lesser extent, would you agree?

Why you should try not to lie

There was a girl I knew in Russia, genuinely called Natasha and we were just friends. She calmly told me she cheated on her boyfriend and felt nothing about it. I asked her how she could do that to someone and she replied that men do that to women all the time so why shouldn't she get some of her own back?

Confession time. Long ago, in days of yore, I was sure my partner had been seeing an old flame, I tried a hunch, found she had been and asked her point blank about it. She didn't rationalize it by saying he was just an old friend, she didn't say it was none of my business or not to be so jealous or any of the other tactics people employ on their partners. She just lied and said no, no she hadn't.

I was just as bad then as I walked out, called a lady whom I'd always had an understanding with and one thing led to another. In hindsight, I'm not sure my partner had got anywhere with her old flame although she could have done, maybe she poured her heart out knowing she was safe with him and could keep on the moral high ground. Who knows? Maybe they had it away. All I know is I definitely cheated and I still remember the phone ringing in the middle of it, which brought the congress to an end.

That was the end of it all. All the using, lying, cheating, short-changing of the other and it was the one I was cheating with who said, after that call, 'We're both using each other.'

The alternative

That's why I really think we should do anything not to lie. We can twist, turn, squirm, avoid, obfuscate, do anything but don't use, lie and cheat. There's no percentage in it and it really does degrade character after a time. It's not easy to tell the truth but for our own survival, so we don't become pathological liars, we need to practise opting for the truth. I found this article of interest:

When we face the situation of reporting an occurrence, we can tell the truth or we can lie. We can build up the habit of meeting such situations by telling the truth on all occasions. We can learn to follow the maxim "Tell the truth at all times, at all hazards." We can come to do this automatically, certainly, and without thought of doing anything else.

I don't mean we should be saints. We can't be, we're all flawed. Cohen put it well:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

So did His Girl Friday.

Just as a serial murderer follows his first murder with another and it gets easier, soon becoming a habit, just as a first time liar tries it again then again, until it becomes a habit, so the opposite must also be true.

If you can develop a taste for the truth and your ego is large enough to survive the consequences of telling it, you can develop into a serial truth teller and even get a buzz from automatically slipping into the truth, rather than slipping into a lie.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

[roy buchanan] unassuming artist

[bike parking] dog in a manger


DK wrote:

Fuck them: car owners have to pay for parking—why should motorcyclists not do the same? I'm sorry, but can anyone tell me why motorcyclists should not pay for parking—is it the case that motorcycles magically disappear, not taking up any space, when they are parked?

Longrider replied:

Free parking for bikes goes back as long as I can remember - certainly in the thirty odd years I've been riding, I've only had to pay for parking my bike on the odd occasion (usually privately owned facilities such as NCP).

You've hit the wrong target here. As a council tax payer, a motorcyclist is paying for council services - and that should include parking facilities. Why are cars exempt? Are drivers not council tax payers, too?

I'm afraid I'm on the side of Longrider here but not perhaps for the reason he'd imagine. Leaving the real reason until further down in the post, an argument can firstly be made:
1. A motorcycle is so much smaller than a car - what, three in the same space as a fuel guzzling car?

2. They're not taking up a car's space so wtf is a car owner whinging about? They're in a space, often just part of a wide path or the end of a carpark, arranged laterally in a line, taking up at most two parking spaces.

3. Bike riders pay council tax just as much as a car owner does so the idea of a car owner subsidizing the cyclist is specious.

4. There's a question of degree and perspective here. How much is it an hour? £1? Before you say that's not the point, it is the point - it's such a miniscule amount.

Against that, I've heard the argument that the council has to create that space with 'our' money but see point 3 again above. So now to my real reason and it's in the heading to this post.

I'm really surprised at DK taking the socialist line that because I've got something and he hasn't, he wants to take away what I have. Sure - let's have NO parking fee whatsoever - not a problem. But don't turn envious eyes on the bike rider just because you have to pay for a car. They're two different animals.

Please don't read anything into this because on 99.9% of issues, I agree with DK. But on this he's wrong and it looks mightily, to me, like the politics of envy which infests our society today.

The pushbike

Where do I stand in this? I ride a pushbike. Should I be charged for parking too? The council in the nearest town to me has an area on a broad footpath for bikes to park in a row. It doesn't inconvenience passers-by, it's nowhere near the road.

My friend says that when I reverse from the rack for ten seconds, I'm impinging on public space and therefore can be charged a fee.

What do you want?

OK, what do you want to charge for parking? If a car owner pays £1 an hour, will you charge the motorcyclist 30p and the pushbike owner 10p? Is that a fair amount?

10p! For goodness sake! All for a principle, eh?

[thine enemy] no reason not to sup with him


If you're trying to work out what makes someone tick, one way is to look at the things he [she] is interested in and the choices he [she] makes, e.g. which football team. In most cases, this latter might not be indicative at all but in the case of more 'on the edge' clubs, it can be.

For example, my club was Wimbledon and that was not for any geographic reason but for their physical play, for Kinnear's defying of the odds, for Fash, Vinny and the opportunistic style of play. For the way they placed 6th in the top league without having any actual right to be there in many people's eyes. Next season they did it well again, confounding people's expectations.

In Australia, my team was/is Geelong and pundits joke that some people are born to be disappointed; for such people, G-d created the Geelong Football Club. On a roll, they were unbeatable, with sheer poetry in their style of play - everyone conceded that - but when they were bad [maybe 20% of the time] they were woeful and could be beaten by a junior grade side, for example, losing last year's flag after trouncing everyone all season.

That's very much me. When serious - not bad at all. When an arrogant smarta-s- ... woeful.

Another very strong trait running through Hob is Rugby Union - the principle that on the pitch, you aim to knock the other man's head off and give no quarter whatsoever, to stretch the rules to the limit and still keep within the spirit of the game. However, you shake hands after it and then, the moment you're off the pitch, you socialize with your enemy, have a few drinks and do the post-mortem.

The idea of holding a grudge, even if he took you out of the game, doesn't compute in the Rugby man's mind. Mind you, the bstd'll get his next time.

This came through when I used to don the colours and help out at the general elections. At one particular election, the woman on the other side and I hit it off immediately on so many issues but not over the key issues which divided us. We each put our assistants in for an hour and went off to have afternoon tea together.

Then we came back and resumed hostilities. Somehow, I quite like that idea but I don't expect everyone to agree with me on it.

[wonko's missal] reply would be interesting

I wonder if Wonko would object to me printing this letter?

Dear Mr Burnham,

I just listened to you talk about the English NHS for 5 minutes yet you didn't mention the word England or English once. You talked about "the NHS", "the health service" and "the country" but all the time you were talking about the English NHS, the English health service and England.

You are an English Secretary of State for an English government department talking on national TV, broadcast to the whole of the UK and didn't once point out that you were only talking about England.

I wonder how many Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people you worried that they might be losing their free prescriptions, free hospital parking and expensive life-saving cancer drugs that your department says we can't afford in England and how many English people you misled into believing that the rest of the UK would be helping to plug the gaping hole in the British budget when that's not the case.

Is there any chance of you using the word England at any point during your job as Secretary of State for the English NHS?

Wonkotsane

This might be of interest to the English, from Wyrdtimes.

[doing the hack] and sinking the boot

The other face of Eve

Grauniad [H/T Chris Dillow]:

Former MP Oona King ... accused Flint of exploiting her sexuality: "She shocked a lot of women in the party by often posing in a fashion that implies she's more interested in the way she looks than the policies she presents."

Mail:

‘There was a spontaneous reaction in the FCO Press office when the news broke that she was off,’ said one official. ‘There was a loud cheer and applause. You could say Caroline was not the most popular of Ministers. They didn’t really respect her.’

Officials say fiery Ms Flint fell out of favour at the Foreign Office only weeks after arriving because of her ban on biscuits.

‘Serving some biscuits with coffee is the default setting at the FCO for meetings and gatherings,’ said the official. ‘But with Caroline, instead of tea or coffee and biscuits, it was just tea or coffee.

‘The staff were just bemused by it. She would fly off the handle if it was ignored and someone smuggled a few biscuits in. I don’t think she had anything against any particular biscuits such as ginger snaps or Bourbons. It was all biscuits, full stop.

‘To be honest, people thought she was vain and assumed she was just watching her figure and didn’t want to be tempted. That is no reason to stop the rest of us having a harmless treat. After all, there are precious few treats in the Civil Service.’

A spokesman for Ms Flint confirmed that she had ordered officials to stop serving biscuits at her meetings – but denied it was anything to do with weight-watching.

‘They used to bring up all these biscuits every time you had a cup of tea and nobody used to eat them. So Caroline said, “Can we cut the biscuits?”

‘She also thought they were being charged internally for them so she was saving the taxpayers’ money, but she wasn’t being tight-fisted.’


[political quadrant] rather than lines or circles

Google seems to run these little 'spotlight' things every so often because posts of yore make a reappearance and over a few days, they get lots of visits. Such is the current fate of The Political Quadrant, currently outstripping any other post.

In the quadrant below, statism is seen as control oriented and includes religions. Something like satanism purports to be libertarian but actually it aims for complete control by the dark side. So this is centred horizontally. It would have been nice to put in the "politics of envy" that's close to our current situation in Britain.

Miller 2.0 says :

This is an original contribution to the debate, and one well worth considering. However, as a social democrat myself, I'd ask that people consider the proposition that the state is not always counterposed to freedom, and that sometimes state action can be freedom's most powerful guarantee.

Looking back over the old quadrant below, it needs to be revised in some respects, e.g. Tory and it doesn't take into account that one can be extreme on some things and moderate [corrected] on others.



My political compass:

.

[pawlenty] what chance

Dave Cole drew our attention to this:

Tim Pawlenty, the GOP governor of Minnesota, announced at a press conference today that he will not seek a third term. Plenty of people (including myself) have been talking about Pawlenty as a GOP challenger to Obama in 2012. Finishing his job in 2010 would give him time enough to run ‘unencumbered’.

I'm not so sure:

Pawlenty is once again considered a potential candidate in the 2012 presidential election. In a poll taken only a day after the 2008 election, Pawlenty garnered only 1% support among five other political heavyweights (which included Sarah Palin, who captured 64%, Mike Huckabee with 12%, and Mitt Romney close behind with 11%).

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

[thought for the day] tuesday evening


I was such a foolish girl - girls are foolish, Mr. Satterthwaite.  They are so sure of themselves, so convinced they know best.  People write and talk a lot about women's instinct.  I don't believe, Mr. Satterthwaite, that there is any such thing.  There doesn't seem to be anything that warns girls against a certain type of man.  Nothing in themselves, I mean.  Their parents warn them but that's no good - one doesn't believe.  It seems dreadful to say so but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man.  She thinks at once her love will reform him.

[Agatha Christie, 1934]

Any comment, people?

[three cats] copulating on a tin roof



Question - what's the irony in the heading? I don't mean that two has become three or even that he said it.

One possible answer

Beecham was not noted for doing Bach.

[hmmm] anyone old enough to remember?

[gunpowder plot] what would follow


Let's imagine that parliament was blown up with Gordo and all the others taking an important vote at the time.

What would be the ramifications for the average person in whatever town he or she lives? Would his employment cease? Would the banks collapse? Would a foreign power now attack because the launch codes have now gone?

How do you see the scenario?

[middle-east update] sitting on a powder keg

There are some disquietening things happening in the Middle-East. I'm aware that this is one of the least interesting topics for a largely Brit/U.S. readership but the ramifications will impinge soon enough.

For example, the Hezbollah hegemony:

Should the Hezbollah-led coalition win as anticipated, the result will be even closer military-to-military relations between Iran and Lebanon, reflected in Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrollah's recent statement that he would look to Tehran to modernize Lebanon's army.

… is going to result in the Israeli countermove:

The Israeli government, which is on the defensive internationally over its stance on the Palestinian issue, has gone on the offensive. It is upping the ante against Iran by focusing on covert activities inside Iran, according to a recent report in the Washington Post, to "disrupt Iran's nuclear program" - so far without much success.

The finger of suspicion points to the activities of Israel and its secret service, Mossad, instigating instability among Iran's ethnic populations, particularly the vulnerable and economically deprived Balochis in the province of Sistan and Balochistan bordering Pakistan, where many of the country's minority Sunnis live.

Here, there has been a spate of Sunni-Shi'ite violence. In the most recent incident, a Shi'ite mosque was bombed on May 28 in the city of Zahedan, with 25 people killed and 125 injured.

It's certainly Israel's best chance:

However, despite evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement with Jundallah and its Sunni crusade against the Shi'ite Iranian regime, the US has dragged its feet, something Iranian analysts attribute to the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists, not to mention pro-Jundallah spin by aspects of the US media.

Though there's been very little major news coming out of the region, that doesn't mean the powder keg will not go up in the not too distant future.

[clamour for change] who benefits most


Exhibit 1an article by Amir Taheri

Is England on the verge of revolution?

What has shocked the Brits above all is the extent of the corruption and its long duration. It seems that almost two-thirds of the 650 members of the house were involved in one way or another.

Rather than publishing the whole of its scoop at one go, the newspaper decided to offer it as a serial on a daily basis. This has had the effect of Chinese torture, with the nation holding its breath to see who would be in the next batch of villains to be exposed, and dispatched to the guillotine.

The amounts involved in these scandals are not high.

Exhibit 2an article by Martin Kelly

British Exceptionalism

Yet the expenses scandal is proof that the people do not consent to the development of a Latin American-style political elite. This is a very hopeful thing.

From now on, our politicians will just have to learn that their careers are time-limited; and that the best things in life are sometimes not as free as they'd like.

Exhibit 3 – a post by Sackerson

We are in one of those “generational revolutions” that Jefferson said were as important as anything else to the proper functioning of our democracy. We can no longer pretend that our collective behavior as a nation for the past 25 years has been worthy of us as a people.

Exhibit 4 – an article by Andrew Allison

What is needed in all elections in the UK is preferential voting. It was used successfully in the European Election in Northern Ireland. It is the fairest voting system in the world.

Exhibit 5 – the capitalized screed at the top of the right sidebar here plus this post, which nobody commented on.

Asharq also wrote:

England may not experience a classical revolution with barricades and gallows in public places.

… but that’s not the word I’m hearing on the street.

Going back to the original article, it’s the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ method, the ‘salami tactics’ and the media’s progressive revelations which characterize this whole matter.

The sheer incompetence of the ruling body and its utilities has got people speaking in terms of CHANGE and to me, is not an accidental matter and the rhetoric is time-tested. That was Obama’s rhetoric too, remember. Like Blair, sentences with no grammatical direct or indirect object. Like Stalin.

‘Yes we can.”

Can what?

‘Change.’

Change what?

‘Well, our situation.’

How?

‘Well, I don’t know, we’re without focus but we want change! Obama wil give it to us.’

1917

... failed to meet the aspirations of the people of the former Russian Empire. ... fed directly into the growing clamor for a radical change of government

1930s

... he used his so-called 'ideologies' to win over the support of the German people. ... the Monarchy of Germany collapsed amid clamour for change and an …

The motif is the fomenting of unrest and rage among the people. In a latin country, little is required to do that but in Britain, it is more difficult – it takes a long, slow build before people break out and kill anyone.

Greed and incompetence is the catalyst and the motive? How would Poirot go about it, to annoy Dearieme a little? Surely he’d ask the question: ‘Who stands to gain most from this unrest?’

Ancillary questions include: ‘What realistic chance would a change in the structure have, who would bring it in and in which form? How much further along the road to direct government would the people be? Would these pollies willingly instigate the abrogation of their powers, even to meet the national clamour? Have they done so as yet, despite Daniel Hannan’s eloquence? Just how can the people, with no right of recall, no means of calling for impeachment, effect such a change?’

The answer to the latter question is that they can’t. The only change to the political process is going to come from Westminster, when it's ready and if the people force a melting pot, then there are powers ready to exploit the mood.

How?

By the EU insinuating itself and quietly taking the reins post-Irish Lisbon II. I’m sorry to be such a cynic. After all, cynics are usually given short shrift, aren’t they?

May I continue?

Who, in Europe, gains by seeing the formal institution of an EU bloc and the regionalization of England? In other words, the breaking of the strong independent English tradition, weakened by successive waves of immigration, [which I’m not arguing against, merely noting it in terms of English power in the world arena], benefits who specifically?

Could there be any moneyed, loose grouping of people in Europe who might benefit by the dismantling of this country?

EU member states are "intensively" monitoring the risk of spreading civil unrest in Europe, as riots over the economic crisis erupt ...

Yes, Europe wide unrest. Mutterings, clamour, all over again. Will it lead to long-lasting democratic change? Will it hell.  One last thing - remember Sarkozy's comment that the EU is not a matter for the people through referenda - it is a matter for the parliamentarians to decide.

There it is.


H/T Lord T for the Taheri article.

Monday, June 08, 2009

[sandy denny] the voice

This lady, over at Jams, is a fine singer.  In a different genre but still with a fine voice, I miss this lady:



From Wiki:

Over a ten year career Sandy Denny left an extensive legacy and remains influential. She is remembered for the crystal-clear purity but also the strength of her voice as well as her pivotal involvement with the British folk rock movement, where, as a member of Fairport Convention, she moved the band away from west coast American cover versions and into performing traditional material and original compositions.

[thought for the day] monday evening


I follow the scent and get excited and once on the scent, I cannot be called off it.  It is ... how shall I call it ... a passion for getting at the truth.  In all the world, there is nothing so curious and so interesting and so beautiful as truth.

[Hercule Poirot, 1934]

[blogrolls] sorted for now

Probably errors all over the place - dud links, people left off etc. but I'll sort it out in the next few days.

Blogrolls

Just added Mutley.

[guest posts] interesting reading

The problem with the rpc code referred to in the earlier version of this post [now wiped] has been SORTED, thanks very much to those who offered advice.

So, may I present the GUEST POSTERS.

These are the fine folk who from time to time have posted on this blog and produced an interesting 141 guest posts between them, with main honours for prolific blogging going to Jailhouse Lawyer and Buckeye Thoughts.

Click either here or in the Nav Bar above to go to the site. If you'd like to post on this site, in most cases, I'm sure we could arrange something.

[monday poll] hottest conservative women


Seems I'm not the only one at it:

Congratulations to the fifteen women who comprise the Right Wing News's list of "The 15 Hottest Conservative Women In The New Media."

[bigotry] insult a belgian today


This is bigotry:

Some useful terms of abuse to help you get the worst out of the countries you visit:

ITALIANS etc: Greaseballs. Dagos. Wops. Candles. Spaghetti-eaters. Ice-cream salesmen. Eye-ties.

EGYPTIANS: Gippos. Yellowbellies. Anti-yids. Sphinctas.

FRENCH: Froggies. Bloody French. (N.B. The French are very easily insulted by the British. Almost anything will do.)

GERMANS: Krauts. Boche. Sausage-eaters. Square-heads. (N.B. The Germans are an appallingly insensitive nation and therefore extremely hard to insult. Try setting fire to them or calling their Mercedes Volkswagens.)

COLOURED PEOPLE: Best not to even talk to them.

This is not bigotry:

In reality I don’t have a problem with gays, muslims, lower classes, coloureds or females at all. In fact females are my favourite humans and many of them are coloured and/or social class and/or muslims and/or gay and I don’t have an issue with any of.

It’s only lately that my clear bigotry has been made plain because I don’t support their choices and agree with them. It’s the outspoken ones or the radicals. The radical gays, the muslim extremists and the feminists (All feminists appear to be radicals). I dislike them all them.

I do support their right to do as they want but my personal views are mine.

Gays. I’ve known gays for a while now and all have been open about it but didn’t push it in my face. It’s not a lifestyle that I am interested in. Sorry. I don’t think they should be allowed to marry because that is defined as between a man or a woman but I do think that gay relationships should be recognised in law outside of marriage.

Muslims. To be honest I’ve only known a few muslims in my life. They have kept themselves to themselves. Been good people and friendly enough. Their kids are better behaved than ours in general and their family society tends to be solid and I think that is what makes their kids more stable. There are a few radicals but, like christians, they are not all like that.

Social classes and coloureds. The many born and educated here who seem to make up the bottom of our society. I’ve known a few coloured people and, if you ignored the colour of their skin, you couldn’t tell the difference between us. Same hopes, fears and lifestyles.

Females. I’m talking about the hardest feminists here. Not to be confused with strong and independent women. Feminists believe that man should be subjugated and inferior because women bear the children and don’t think with their fists. They can quote all the ways men mistreat women and their favourite feminist authors but get stuck when actually looking outside their chosen subject.

In my view nobody should get special treatment or special protection. We are all equal and the law should decide guilt or innocence based on facts that exclude race, colour or special circumstances and punishment should also be consistent.

Women pick dogs as pets because the dogs love them unconditionally and listen intently to what they say, men don’t. Men pick dogs as pets because the dogs do what they're told and shut up when they want them to. Two different requirements for, it seems, two different species.

On his son:

As part of his training he pulls the wings off flies to toughen him up.

My view of women is less practical and it's certainly idealized. I see women in some sort of mutual symbiosis with men, both bringing our particular skills and perspectives to the table, not forgetting that chemistry which transcends all rationalization, which is such a saccharine sweet view that it even makes me wince to see it in print here. Women want men to be strong, we want women to be feminine - not subjugation of one gender by the other but just being sensible about it.

It seems, if the loud radicals are to be believed, that there are very few women today with similar views to this so sadly, we must agree to disagree and stay apart.

What I object to strongly are the unsustainable subjective post-modernist constructs forced on society which prevent any rational, kind and intelligent interaction. We are in a society where tolerance and harmony today are all by Decree. It's like a 'paint-by-numbers' panorama. Whatever happened to self-actualization? Thinking for oneself? Whatever happened to aiming above mediocrity? Whatever happened to diversity of opinion? What the hell is wrong with being a man? Why shouldn't a woman be feminine if she wants to? Why shouldn't she marry and have her family?

Isn't it interesting that those who bang on the most about equality and trust and honesty and tolerance are the first ones to force deviant constructs on society and accuse someone who holds a different view. And they want to use Legislation to beat that person down and shut him up. How many times have you heard things to the effect of: 'We should all just love one another and conform with my vision of society and those who differ from me on this should be locked in a steel cage with spikes on the inside and punished until they agree with me?'

I don't give a damn if you disagree with me, as long as you can support it logically, without resort to ad hominem and circular arguments with false first premises. Even then, I'll still buy you a beer if I see you and we'll still chat about this or that. No grudges.

So, good luck to Lord T - I see nothing overtly bigoted in those views at all.