Original Nourishing Obscurity

About this site

2012-01-23T19:29:00.088Z

By "this site" is meant two sites which form a continuum:

1. The original blog which ran from 2006 to 2009;
2. The current blog which has run from 2009 until now.

Both are active - the original blog still gets quite a deal of traffic but posts are generally on the current one.

It began as a political outlet concerned with a third force in politics - the oligarchical "them", which in 2006 most people hadn't researched and didn't fully understand the extent of. Quickly the blog became a sort of magazine because there were just too many other interesting things to write about as well in many fields, from technology to cuisine.

The name came from an article on China, written in 2006, which refers to Deng Ziaoping:

According to Deng Xiaoping, in order to eventually overcome, China should adopt the ancient maxim of "hiding brightness and nourishing obscurity," and Beijing adds: "to bide our time and build up our capabilities" and again: "to yield on small issues with the long term in mind."

I quite liked the idea of obscurity and thought that if people knew everything there was to know about me, nothing concealed, whilst at the same time not knowing who I was - that might be the way to go. Anyway, that's how it began.

There've been quite a few guestposters over the years and thanks go to those kind souls but now it's become a more co-authored site - you can find details in the current site's sidebar about the authors - not all share my own political stance although we're all fairly old school in terms of how we see society. We're all pretty much down on PCism and inanity and don't feel the PTB are our friends.

The sites had and still have a large number of posts a day, occasionally up to ten, which has been criticized by some who say they can't keep up ... but understood by others such as Tom Paine who wrote:

James’ posts are so frequent, his interests so varied and his contacts so extensive that his blog is rather like the Scottish weather. If you don’t like it now, just wait a few minutes.

I'd suggest it might be better taking it in RSS and deciding those you'd prefer to read. The new site contracts posts to excerpt size to more easily navigate.

Future? No intentions of stopping although we might be at the sharp end of the agenda by "them" and who knows how long we'll all be blogging for?

What sort of mind does these things?

2011-12-18T08:49:00.004Z

AK Haart wrote, on the topic of electric cars:

We run into difficulties when people say things of such mind-boggling stupidity that we almost wonder at their sanity. Why does he/she say such things? It's nonsense. I’m not speaking of specific slogans here, but conceptual frameworks which may just about make sense internally, but which are obviously in wild conflict with other, more rational frameworks. Examples are not difficult to find.

Let's open with this one from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via This is True, via email:

"She grabbed a bag of apricots, dried apricots, opened them, ate a couple, put it back and the security guard watched her doing
it," says Alissa Jones, about the incident at a Safeway grocery store in Everett, Wash.

The guard nabbed the culprit, Savannah Harp, and took her and her shopping companion, who didn't see the incident, to the back of the store for interrogation for shoplifting. "She's banned from the store, and we're pressing charges," the guard told them. "She needs to sign this form saying she understands she can't come into any Safeways."

The problem: Savannah is four years old. The guard made her scribble her name on the document anyway. Her companion at the store was her father.

When corporate officials heard about it, the security guard was fired, and they apologized to Savannah's parents."Our policies on shoplifting are intended to protect our customers, but built on common sense," said Safeway spokeswoman Cherie Myers. "And everyone understands what common sense is."

Well no, I'm quite sure common sense never entered into store policy, just as it never enters into any other jobsworth policy in society at large today - there are just too many incidents going on out there - ask Julia M or Longrider.

What was going on with that man's brain? Whatever led him to think that such an action was remotely acceptable or de rigeur? From what perverse brainwashing centre did he get this and all the other strange ideas he most likely had? How did he lose the sense of proportion, a sense of ... well ... common sense?

Then we might look at the role the father played in all this, sitting passively, allowing the store clerk to do this. And what of the daughter's sense of right and wrong, instilled by the parents?

And while we're still on the topic of children:

Children must learn their times tables by age of nine

Here is a range of comments from my place:

# Instead of targets set to the lowest competency, why are schools not charged with maximising everybody’s potential? Yes, that may mean segregating pupils by ability but so what, providing that all have the opportunity to work hard and move up to a more challenging class.

# As a parent and in my professional capacity, I have spent far too much time revising and teaching times tables to children whose primary schools have left them utterly confused on the subject.

# I was never taught my times tables in the traditional way. There was an experimental method which didn’t work. My parents were forbidden from teaching me times tables in a way that I would have learnt them. There was an immense injustice meted out by the school, blaming their failings on others. Home Schooling is perhaps the best way to go …

# Ultimately, it still falls on parents’ shoulders to do something about it.

# 16 times table is essential, for the lbs and ozs, although a case can be made for 20 and the shillings.

# The purpose of learning multiplication tables is to develop a feel for numbers and agility in mental arithmetic. But any teacher who has to be told that shouldn’t be in a classroom. And they should all learn to play darts. There’s nothing like it for practising mental arithmetic (I’m not joking, btw).

I know you're not joking. That and any number of practical applications and learning experiences of numeracy and literacy are great, especially when what is taught in school is reinforced at home and what is brought as a question to school is taken up by the teacher - this is how the two should be working together, along with an endless series of visitors to the school from the "real world", giving some of their skills or by visits out to the real world. All of that supplements the rote-learned drills, the rationale behind them already explained.

Who is responsible for outlawing legitimate techniques of learning? Who got teachers to say, of times tables, "We don't do that any more - it's from the 1950s?"

Moving on:

Nick Clegg is to attack Tory plans to introduce tax breaks for married couples, claiming ministers must not try to preserve a “1950s model” of family life in “aspic”

Let's not get into the political issue of tax breaks at this moment but just zero in on Clegg's mind. Once I can calm down enough and control this desire to hit the fool with a brick, the same question comes up - whatever is wrong with this man's brain? Is he evil or just misguided? Here's a reply from the comments thread and it's sad that it needs to be spelt out:

At the start of the 20th century ALL major cultures and almost every minor culture was a marriage centered culture. In the cultural battles of history, marriage centered cultures had won out. Why? Because if a non-marriage culture came about, it would weaken very fast, and collapse.

Why do things go so wrong so quickly? It's primarily because we are born with a deep desire to know that we are loved and valued by the two people who brought us into the world. When we don't get that feeling of being worthy of love and respect from our two biological parents, some of us react badly - either internally beating ourselves up (depression, drug abuse, etc), or we externalize our anger by inflicting pain on others.

As humans, all we can do is to do our best to make sure that when we bring children into the world we are there for them. This is most likely to happen when parents have committed to each other - for better, for worse. The state can play a key role in helping to support the inbuilt desires of all children through supporting the marital dreams of its taxpayers and - and this also helps society become healthier in the process. You cannot build a healthy society without marriages - it's just the way it is.

Not 1950s in aspic, something a certain section of the political world loves to trot out whenever anyone utters common sense but the way things are meant to be. Not unlike the Judaean Peoples Front:

STAN: Don't you oppress me! ...

JUDITH: Here, I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

Occupiers urinate inside St Paul's, via Churchmouse:

Senior Anglican clerics are quiet on the matter. After all, only last week the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion -- the Archbishop of Canterbury -- expressed his empathy for England's youth who rioted in August of this year. Perhaps he would like to invite them -- and Occupy -- to share the comfort of Lambeth Palace.

However, laity are less complacent. Rex Murphy, a columnist for Canada's National Post picked up on the increasing sacreligious activity in Western nations. One of the examples he mentions is the defecation in St Paul's:

"Meantime, overseas, their [O]ccupy brethren in London were found to be defecating (I could use the vulgar term here as it so matches the act, but let us retain some respect) within — not on the steps or in the precincts, but within — St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Paul’s — in ancient times the cathedral where John Donne preached, where Lancelot Andrew[e]s, one of the fathers of the King James Bible, was dean, a cathedral arguably second in importance in Christianity only to the Vatican — treated as a sewer ...

In short, they turned St. Paul’s Cathedral into a public toilet and used its sacred walls as a crude bulletin board. However, there was no vast outcry at the appalling disrespect, the deep contumely such acts represent."

I'm trying to look at it from the point of view of the defecator. He's living in a first world standard tent until the evening, when he goes home and watches tele, eating first world food, quite financially cushy but he's living a life of self-imposed squalour. He's caught short and perhaps doesn't want anyone to see him doing it outside - so he goes inside to do it.

At best, he has no knowledge or concept of the history of the place, of his heritage. At worst, he is defecating on Christianity because that is what we're all exhorted to do these days - in every magazine, every news programme, in all public discussions, urged on by the same nasties who have aided and abetted these occupations whilst at the same time, severely punishing working class people for turning up at marches protesting what these nasties are doing.

One left-liberal at my place tried to make out that this was just one person, that occupiers are generally fine, upstanding pillars of the community. Then with that illusion addressed, she tried to say that the American version was better. No - this thing is systemic, it's part of the current infrastructure, part of the current ideology by which people are living.

No common sense, no proportion, no discretion, living like beasts, anything sacred or concerning heritage to be mocked, honourable words parodied and given the opposite meaning to what they had conveyed:

Respect agenda, a prominent policy of Tony Blair
Respect Party, a British political party.

An underclass of yahoos, just as the globalists wish to create and to which all people in the land not members of the dog-eat-dog elite must eventually succumb to and become part of.

Just a thought

2009-09-29T07:52:00.009+01:00

While the new site is now the main one, this ongoing post will continue to have youtubes added from time to time or other matters of current interest. These below are from December 2011:

[think big] but don't hold your breath

2009-09-28T22:53:00.005+01:00

A man who doesn't do things by halves:

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service - really, really unhappy. Chiscolm in August sued the largest US bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $US200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," US District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released in Manhattan federal court. "He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish woman,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Would you be able to write that amount in numeral form?

[late evening listening] dearieme presents tiny and truck parham

2009-09-28T20:00:00.002+01:00

Thank you once again, sir.

[devices] with one function only

2009-09-28T16:32:00.001+01:00

Mark Fu has an amusing post. Do you know what those devices are in the photo above? They are sleeves for the bar to hold the weights in and I'd guess 'd one kilo each. They used to in Russia. Mark asks:

Some things have just one function that justifies their existence; an umbrella for instance. Scuba gear is another that comes to mind. Since most of us are weight lifters in one manner or another, we have all run into barbell collars.

They have no other apparent use. Sure, you could use the ones pictured above at the dinner table to hold nice linen napkins, but I doubt any of us would actually do that.

So are we in agreement that barbell collars have only one function?

He then points us to an article here. Now my two observations are:

1. Was the guy so small that he could do that?

2. Did the guy have a brain in the first place?

All lifters have run into the newbie who wanders around like a lost sheep or the guy who spends half his time in front of the mirror, seeing if his biceps have grown any since he did a set of exercises. I've never run into anyone like this though. :)

[shapes] and their logic

2009-09-28T14:44:00.005+01:00

Which of the shapes below completes the lower line?

triangle: pentagon square
square: hexagon hexagon square
pentagon: hexagon hexagon hexagon square triangle
hexagon: octagon octagon octagon octagon ______ ?

The choice of the shape which goes before the question mark depends on the value each shape caries and how it relates to the others in a mathematical relationship.

The will be up late this evening.

[airbus] here we go yet again

2009-09-28T09:56:00.007+01:00

This blog has many articles on Airbus safety - that it is inherently and for quite valid reasons, unsafe. The last post is here and if you enter "Airbus" in the Blogger site search, you can see the other posts too.

Anonymous [appropriate, yes, for one throwing in the ad hominem] commented on the last post, on 25 September 2009:

Following your childish trend:

Maybe, the US corp. Goodrich has yet to learn how to make proper pitot tubes? "The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued a safety warning for air speed sensors that are made by Goodrich Corp. and fitted on many Airbus jets — just two weeks after advising airlines to use them instead of instruments made by Thales SA".

The problems of the Airbus had already been mentioned:

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

... and also here.

So just how childish have I been on Airbus? My reply is in this report today:

A Singapore Airlines A380 was forced to turn round mid-flight and head back to Paris on Sunday after one of its four engines failed, the head of the airline's French operations said.

Quite childish, yes.

[the quality of intellectual debate] emotions v facts

2009-09-28T09:34:00.005+01:00

The quality of debate, of research and analysis drives one to despair. Sonus [or was it Anon?] made the point that he was frantic that no one seemed to be listening. Simon & Garfunkel said it, years ago:

People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening

Now, from Charles Crawford:

Are we replacing the intellect with 'emotions'? Thus:
... we are essentially being invited to empathise, not intellectualise, and that is something I find astonishing. Not only does this kind of emotional discourse have an infantilising effect on the public - the assumption being that we are incapable of grasping complex strategic arguments - the failure to develop the argument beyond these basic moral categories is hopelessly counterproductive.

This blog is forever banging on about it.

[samantha geimer] why is no one listening to her

2009-09-28T08:02:00.009+01:00

To blog on the Polanski thing is fraught because the vultures are waiting to construe any sort of interest in it in a certain way. Nevertheless, strategically, it is of real interest and it seems to be for others too who've been looking at what the tactics were in his move:

But it could also elevate his case into an international ordeal -- involving the governments of Switzerland, France, Poland and the United States -- and potentially complicate his possible extradition.

"The big issue is whether it would have been better for him to negotiate a surrender when he had the chance," Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson said. "Now it has become an international incident and the district attorney may be under pressure not to negotiate a sweetheart deal. They've gone to all this trouble of getting Switzerland involved. It could make it harder on him."

Nevertheless, some believe the arrest of the 76-year-old Academy Award winner could lead to a resolution that will allow him to once again travel freely.

There seem, to me, two things involved here. One is the feeling that the man is a sleaze who needs to be brought to justice, no matter what it takes and whatever laws are bent to achieve it. France doesn't have an extradition treaty and the Americans were frustrated but even so, the tone the woman official adopts leaves one a bit suspicious and concerned about the motives for pursuing Polanski. This smacks awfully of another feminist vendetta:

Previous attempts to nab Polanski when he left France were thwarted because authorities didn't learn of his travel soon enough -- or Polanski didn't make the trip, said William Sorukas, chief of the U.S. Marshals Service's domestic investigations branch.

"This is not the first time we have done this over the years," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. She said warrants had been sent out whenever rumors circulated that he would be traveling to a country outside France.

In this case, the honor for Polanski's work proved to be his downfall, Gibbons said. "It was publicized on the Internet that he was going to be at the Zurich Film Festival," Gibbons said. "They were selling tickets online."

"This is not the first time we have done this over the years ..." No doubt, no doubt. You see, there are other issues involved, even the gender issue, very keenly felt by many males and obviously by females. One of the women bloggers in the Britblog Roundup even states on her site that she wants no anti-feminists there and "any anti-feminist thoughts will be deleted".

WTF? Does she want any discussion at all or just to push her agenda? If she wishes to push her agenda, who's going to read it? Other feminists? How is she going to convince the men to relinquish their oppressive power and make them feel more kindly towards her, with statements like that on her blog?

You see the problem here with this Polanski thing?

The second issue is the resentment among European nations of the Americans trying to push their agendas onto the rest of the world and this is a very great resentment, sorry to my American friends. There is a tendency for European nations to try to bloc anything the American's want, irrespective of how worthy it is and the very fact that this matter might become international shows the depth of the political feeling:

Meanwhile, Polanski’s arrest looked set to spark a diplomatic row. Frederic Mitterand, the French culture minister, said he was “deeply shocked” by the sudden arrest and had already discussed the matter with President Sarkozy.

The snubbing of Gordon Brown by Obama is a case in point. If you read my blog and any other centrist Britblog on the net, all are scathing of Brown and some want to see him hung at Tyburn Hill but ... but ... but ... there is also the contrary tendency to support Brown in this matter against the Americans.

This is why America is finding it so difficult abroad, why they can't understand why no one gets behind the Yoo Ess of Ay and backs them. Look, there's a lot of jealousy, a lot of protecting one's own patch, a lot of equal ego. Britain is a once mighty nation which is struggling to come to terms with its place and its place is not, in most Brits' minds, kowtowing to Obama.

Myself, I don't feel this. This blog is read half by Brits, half by Americans by and large and sometimes I feel quite American in my mindset. American, yes but not American government, a point made by people like Xlbrl. In this Polanski matter, there's a can of worms to be opened, far more extensive than just the incident itself, which is severely weakened by Samantha Geimer's own exhortations to leave him alone.

Sleazes shouldn't get away with it. Full stop. Period. Sleazes with moneyed connections should especially not get away with it. However, this issue has other overtones and all players in it need to recognize that.

Now, finally, let's get down to the other issue which heads up this blog. Why is no one listening to Samantha Geimer? Feminists make a big noise about the woman being heard, being listened to, her opinions being considered. OK, I'm considering Samantha Geimer's opinion, the so-called victim. I say "so-called" because she clearly doesn't see herself this way.

Geimer's opinion:

1. In a 2003 interview, Samantha Geimer said, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us." Furthermore, "I'm sure if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again. He made a terrible mistake but he's paid for it".

2. In 2008, Geimer stated in an interview that she wishes Polanski would be forgiven, "I think he's sorry, I think he knows it was wrong. I don't think he's a danger to society. I don't think he needs to be locked up forever and no one has ever come out ever - besides me - and accused him of anything. It was 30 years ago now. It's an unpleasant memory ... (but) I can live with it."

3. That same month, [January, 2009], Samantha Geimer filed to have the charges against Polanski dismissed from court, saying that decades of publicity as well as the prosecutor's focus on lurid details continues to traumatize her and her family."

Now, the U.S. authorities, the feminists, Polansky's side and just about everyone else I've read, don't give a toss about that. They have their agenda, their slant on how things should be, that is that and to hell with any trauma for the victim, the very thing they're trying to avenge.

My stance is that a woman of 45 is competent to decide for herself and my resentment is that others seem to want to impose their own will on her.

In my opinion, the victim's wishes are paramount.

[weight training] government even interferes with that

2009-09-27T23:08:00.004+01:00

Back to the day on, day off

Talk about opportunistic. We bloggers would sell our soul for a post sometimes.

I went for a wander this afternoon to a gym down by the canal.

Now I'm signed up to start Tuesday and today we went over the equipment and as we spoke about the different exercises, I realized I didn't know the names for them in English. Is that ridiculous or what? I could tell him in Russian.

One utterly bloody ridiculous thing was the situation over the weights. I asked why he only had up to 17kg when I'd need 25kg to start with for the side/back muscles [one knee on the bench.] He told me it was UK Law - that Health and Safety decreed that only weights of a certain ... er ... weight were allowed.

What the !!$%^&*(&^%£!!?

It's a bloody gym, for crying out loud. There is this strange tendency, in a gym, for people to push weights. For that, if they incrementally improve, they need larger weights.

Nope, says the government. When you reach 17kg, you have to go to machines. But that's useless - the machine covers a different set of muscles. Tough, says the government. In our knowledge of all things involved in body building, this is what we say you can do.

I was flabbergasted just how far the Law has entered our personal lives, even to the point of making them more dangerous. I mean, does a grown adult, with trainer help, need nannying about what weights he can be allowed to lift?

I asked about free weights and the barbell. 40kg tops. That's girls' stuff. I'd have to use the Smith machine. But the machine doesn't train all the muscles. Tough. The government has said ......

Yeah, yeah, don't tell me any more. So, not only will I be overcoming my near death condition and trying to avoid heart attacks, I have to overcome the government as well.

"I'll help you," said the trainer.

Right.

Anyway, I'm going to have to start eating properly and bulking up again and that's not cheap. So which is it to be: 80kg of lard, living cheaply ... or 80kg of muscle, living on the breadline? Have to reflect on this one.

One interesting thing I learnt is why I can do more on my tris [narrow grip] than I can on my chest - incorrect technique. This should be interesting. I'll report back if I'm still alive.

Update: Harry Hook has the solution right here.

Incline press - can't do flat and ignore this

[famous structures] answer if you can

2009-09-27T21:30:00.003+01:00

Name the:

Top left: Gorge;
Top right: Neighbourhood [not the city name];
Lower right: Park at the southern end [this side of English Bay];
Lower left: Now diverted river.

Answers

Avon Gorge, Foggy Bottom, Stanley Park, River Turia

Bristol was the place, the Watergate building, Vancouver and Valencia.

[late evening listening] dearieme and the crooners

2009-09-27T20:00:00.002+01:00

Dearieme's:

My two:

One more:

Britblog Roundup N241 - Best of Britain

2009-09-27T15:00:00.020+01:00

It seemed better to include a bit of text with each link in this week's Britblog Roundup but of course, this lengthened the whole thing. Never mind - think of it as an afternoon's read. :)

Let's cut straight to the chase:

Political issues of the week

Andrew Allison has had a shock - a council which actually did the right thing, which is a sad statement in itself:

In my work for the Taxpayers' Alliance, I am regularly quoted criticising councils and councillors. Some would say I never have a good word to say about any of them, although I hope the councillors I do work with think differently. Today though I am writing this post to commend Hull City Council. Yesterday all our recycling bins were emptied and taken away.

Speaking of bureaucrats and jobsworths, Tim Worstall, quite unusually, addresses something else Polly has now said – that we're a social democratic nation. He gives three reasons to disagree:

The second is that we’re actually appallingly bad at running the encoutrements of a socially democratic state. The jobsworth, the form filling, clipboard wielding bureaucrat is a national figure of fun and has been for generations. In a way that a bureaucrat in Sweden say, or Germany, simply is not.

Mick Fealty, in the Telegraph, returns to the MPs expenses issue, noting:

...if we accepted the pay-it-back-without-further-punishment priniciple we might solve the prison overcrowding problem...

Mark Thompson revisits the spending cuts horror facing us all after the election and points out that swageing cuts of staff and services aren't going to help anyone:

Making people redundant is expensive and time-consuming. Companies that go down this path may live to regret it in a year or two when they suddenly find they have a shortage of staff and then have to start recruiting again (also not cheap) when they have only recently made staff redundant.

Mark Wadsworth says, "And another thing about Land Value Tax":

In other words, the NIMBY & Greenie Lobbies will prevent you from doing the obvious thing and building a nice little wind-surfing resort or nature retreat or whatever it is that people are prepared to pay for, instead, the owner has to tippy-toe gently through his own forest doing somebody else's bidding (at unknown cost).

... which led to this reply from The Economic Voice:

So I say, let's just wind the clock back at least fifty years and do what we used to do.

... followed by his own proposals.

The inscrutable North Northwester tackles the Home Office crime stats:

Now if anyone; anyone at all, wants to explain why police recorded crime figures are held to be less reliable than those produced by the noble Home Office statisticians, then feel free to use this blog’s comments facility.

We're told by new blog Nothing British:

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, take note! A great scientific mind has emerged from the depths of the BNP.

It's put me in a difficult position that I'm supporting Nigel in Buckingham, because the Witanagemot mainstay, Little Man in a Toque, reports on the Bercow move, which might help England, if Bercow can be believed:

John Bercow has indicated that he would be prepared to preside over a debate on an English Parliament. Mr Bercow also indicated he would be prepared to preside over a debate on the establishment of an English Parliament, but added it was not the Speaker’s role to call for such a discussion.

That could set the cat among the pigeons.

Mr Eugenides considers the efficacy of a university debating background in leading to a later parliamentary career:

More to the point, perhaps, we played the game in the right spirit, dammit. Not for us the rituals of debating geeks up and down the land, burying their heads in back issues of the Economist and memorising statistics about world trade.

No, GUU men (and girls) stood up and took the fight to the opposition with rhetoric, confidence and (on a good day) razor-sharp wit; bristling with aggression, chutzpah and balls (particularly the girls), we were the first into the bar at the end of the day and the last out every night, without fail.

Trixy [voted Witanagemot's Most Shaggable Blogger 2008] enlists Flanders and Swann to answer the organized Irish who gave the No vote UKIP spokespeople a hard time and whilst she does that, offends just about everyone else who's not English:

[I]t's a sad state of affairs when these useless little jobsworths with no chance of getting even an internship in a private company have to drag everything back to William the Third, as the song goes. Or even Henry VIII.

The Devil's Kitchen comments on Charlotte Gore who wrote a rather good post on why statism is like having to make tea for the entire office:

"Yes, yes," I hear you cry. "But haven't you done that subject to death?"

Well, I have made my feelings fairly clear on a number of occasions, yes.

Last but not least, Janine, the Stroppybird is annoyed:

Firstly, the repeated mantra that "Everyone now accepts that there must be cuts in public spending." Secondly, the constant reference to "Britain's nuclear deterrent" in reports about Gordon Brown announcing a reduction in nuclear-armed submarines from four to three.

Hansard Society

Old politics, same issues today

Still political but hardly current, The Croydonian has been trawling old Hansard and came up with the question of the dilapidated condition of the resting places of National Heroes, to which the reply was given:

The UNDER-SECRETARY for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Masterman) The Secretary of State finds on inquiry that the vault which contains General Wolfe's remains is not in a dilapidated condition, but in common with all the vaults under the church it was closed and bricked up many years ago ...

Political doublespeak has never altered, it seems and nor has the economic situation, which Tiberius Gracchus traces to its roots, historian that he is:

The first thing that strikes me as an amateur in medieval history is that by the twelfth century, the review and hence the study probably suggest that monasteries evolved a more specialised structure in the period.

Monks specialised in hospitality for guests- abbots moved out of the general refectory, out of the general monastery into their own quarters. The structure of the society is both specialising and complicating.

By the way, Gracchi is the only blogger in the Britsphere who is actually two people.

The conferences

The estimable Tom Paine opines on the state of play as we go into the conferences:

No-one can guarantee us the government we hope for, but our expectations set a cap on the quality of our governance. As those expectations spiral downward, so do our chances of ever being well-governed.

Ross Fountain live blogs from the Lib Dem Conference and as it's a very long post, you'll need to go there to read the eulogy.

Nich Starling [indirectly] hits back:

The truth is this country needs more than a rearranging of the deckchairs. We do need policy that will dramatically alter the directing we take if not we risk returning back to where we are now in 10 years time because nobody genuinely believes the Tories will properly regulate the City (after all, their fundraising efforts are co-ordinated by hedge fund managers) whilst genuine policy breakthroughs like those outlined by IDS the other day on welfare do not seem to have been welcomed with open arms.

Jonathan Calder bemoans the changes at the Lib Dem conferences:

Whatever the truth of that, viewing this week’s Liberal Democrat from Market Harborough rather than Bournemouth has shown me how much things have changed since those days. And not only because it is now the Lib Dem leaders who provide the outlandish policies.

… while Max Atkinson notes:

So it was bad luck for Nick Clegg that he was wrapping up the LibDem conference at the same time as President Obama was speaking to the United Nations in New York, one result of which was that Sky News opted for live coverage from across the Atlantic rather than from Bournemouth.

Don't forget to head over to Helen Duffett’s Liberal Democrat Voice for the winners of the Blogger of the Year Awards – I won’t spoil it now by giving the game away ...

... and there is frightful news in the Lib Dem camp - Costigan Quist, at Himmelgarten Café, having swept all the awards but not wishing to get tied up in any shenanigans, has decided there’s no point going on. He’s called it a day and wishes the Lib Dems well.

Bill Quango, after commenting on the "church fete atmosphere" of the Lib Dem conference, looks towards the Labour Conference:

"Where are your troubles now.
Forgotten!....... I told you so.
We have no troubles here.
Here life is beautiful - the girls are beautiful - even the orchestra is beautiful.
Leave your troubles outside! Life is disappointing? Forget it! "

... which requires Dave Cole to come in to defend Labour, particularly against that malcontent, Charles Clark:

Brown is going to be the Prime Minister into the next election. By continually pushing this point, Clarke is becoming more of a single-personality politician and all he is doing is damaging the party.

Mac the Knife weighs in [invective #*&^$% removed] on Cameron:

According to The Times, no fewer than 28 of his PPCs are either lobbyists or PR weasels.

Well, of course they are. That's exactly what parliament needs. Who's going to notice a few more whoring scumbags at the trough? Who in their right #*&^$%ing mind would consider selecting individuals of proven worth and achievement?

God forbid!

Old St Pancras churchyard, London, courtesy Phillip Wilkinson

Religion corner

The sort of social madness besetting our land today, this time bureaucratic PC madness, leads The Quiet Man to say, about the latest attempts at Christian-bashing:

[N]ormally I avoid health and safety gone mad issues (it's for the good of my health) but this crossed my path and I wondered if this was a deliberate attempt to alienate the population of England or merely another case of officious bureaucracy having a go at a weak seeming target (Christians).

In other religious news, Andrew Ian Dodge looks at Israel, nuclear weapons and Craig Murray:

Craig Murray is the same guy who once raised a quite commendable hell about a fat Uzbek oligarch Alisher (Jabba) Usmanov.

... and the Britblogosphere's own Archbish, Cranmer, writes, in answer to Dr. Suhaib Hassan, one of the UK's Sharia judges, concerning women under Sharia:

Quite so, Dr Hasan. But what of Muslim women who are not content with your ability to ‘enforce’ rulings in which women are manifestly not treated as equal to me? A very brave Muslim woman, Kavita Ramdya, has written in response.

Feminism corner

Jess McCabe says women are still under-represented in climate talks [we men are such beasts]:

Out of 146 national delegations at the UN climate talks on Tuesday, only seven were headed by women. Oxfam says this is an example of how women’s voices are still absent from the debate on climate change and what to do about it, even though - particularly the poorest, most marginalised - women will be worst affected, IPS reports.

The Daily [Maybe] takes the MSM to task for eulogizing Bardot:

The most outrageous element of the piece though is just that Bardot is held up to be some sort of feminist. AC Grayling that well known feminist philosopher (ummm) says, "I think Bardot represents one trend of feminism," Oh, do tell us which trend AC! "

She represents the power of women. What's iconic about her is her shape, the way she occupies space." What? She's a feminist because she's got T and A? This would be new feminism would it?

Laura Woodhouse's feminist hackles are raised by the University of Buckingham prof:

Female students do not attend lessons so pervy lecturers can take mental images of our curves and project them onto their no doubt long-suffering wives to improve their sex lives. Liberal Conspiracy's Laurie Penny reports the same story.

Cath Elliott, as she states in her "About", is an "unapologetic feminist". Interesting then then that I, a mere male, can agree with her on this completely:

We understand that prostitution is a form of violence against women. International and national studies show that for the vast majority of prostituted women, men and children the experience is one that involves physical, mental and sexual violence which traumatises and de-humanises.

Philobiblon says we can learn from a feminist utopia:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, published in 1915, created a new sub-genre, the feminist utopia.

There’s something delightfully ironic about the creation, for there’s no doubt her world, an all-female one getting along very nicely thank you, would have horrified the original creator of the form, Sir Thomas More.

Jackart, on the other hand, defends the equality of the sexes in their traditional mode:

I don't know why women get offended by people choosing to watch pretty tennis players. The motivation for women to watch rugby always seems to involve the word "thighs". Do I feel objectified?

I like pretty tennis players because I am biologically programmed to seek out healthy, youthful-looking women as mates. Girls like muscular Rugby players because they are programmed to seek out dominant, physically fit men to give their offspring the best genetic inheritance.

... and Feminazery quotes the Mail article on feminism, in an attempt to put it all in perspective:

“Thirty years later, when feminism exploded onto the scene, I was often mistaken for a supporter of the movement. But I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men.”

Motorcycle News reports that bikers are getting ASBOs served on them

Other UK social issues

Andrew Scott touches on the difficult one of someone suiciding and the inevitable recriminations:

"Mary's just done it for real. The hill... Eh? Hawkins... Mary Hawkins. She's just gone over the edge. Nuts eh? Bloody nuts."

An hour or so later Dr. Ben sat down beside Matt in the day room at the hospital and asked "Why didn't you try to stop her?"

Deogowulf takes a well known Britblogger to task on the mystery of life:

“The aim of life is to pass on one’s genes”, says Mr Worstall, adding that “we are told by the scientists” that it is so."

Well, randy scientists might tell him such things, but science — as knowledge only of the empirical-mechanical aspects of the world — does not.

Tim had put this point:

"Would I be being exploited if someone was crazed enough to want to carry and raise a child from my sperm? Absolutely not: I would think that I was exploiting them and rightly so."

A controversial nomination and inclusion this week is a non-blogging reader whom the Britsphere know very well from his meanderings and pithy observations and it's on account of his relevance and ubiquitousness that he's hereby included. Dearieme castigates your humble Britblog guest-host for this week on his defence of windfarms:

Your picture should be captioned "Two Sources of Shite". Wind farms are just subsidy farms - they are an utterly dud idea; you should be ashamed of yourself for entertaining the preposterous notion that they have any merit at all.

Jonathan Calder quotes Jenni Russell in the Guardian, to his surprise, on the adult/child issue:

This removal of general authority from adults, and its gradual replacement by state-sanctioned interventions, is utterly corrosive. It infantilises grown-ups, who lose one of the roles that societies have always expected them to fulfil.

Julia M also has something on Jenni Russell's article on the matter:

Stealthily, and without open political debate, we have moved from the assumption that all adults have a role in socialising children, towards a new and uncertain world in which contact with children is increasingly regulated by officials and the state. It is a kind of collective madness, in which the boundaries of what we are allowed to do shift too fast and too secretly for us to keep up.

Letters from a Tory comments:

Vetting scheme for adults gets even worse! Geeesh. And I thought the adults-giving-lifts-to-children vetting scheme was bad.

On the issue of child "counselling", following the horrendous accident in Suffolk, Pavlov's Cat says, in a post entitled "Vultures" [invective #*&^$% removed]:

For #*&^$%'s sake, were they on speed dial? Although I bet they were already on their touchy-feely way, once they'd pulled on their Orkney sweaters and Batik skirts and donned their Crocs. Did anybody ask the parents if they wanted their children 'counselled'* or would refusal be seen as akin to child abuse these days.

Reynolds brings us another human crisis involving a child:

My crewmate got the child out to the ambulance (where most of our equipment is) while I listened to the GP as he gave me a history of the child. Small for her age she had been vomiting for a few days, now she was severely dehydrated.

This is why she looked like one of the babies they show on the news when there is a drought or famine in another part of the world.

William Gruff has strong opinions on murder and decries the state of society today in England:

There are murderous scum walking our streets who should have been broken and disposed of long ago and a fear of condemning the innocent should not prevent us from dealing effectively with the guilty, no matter how 'redeemed' they may say they are.

Barkingside 21 blog has a problem with aircraft noise:

Last week I was waiting at the bus stop in Clayhall Avenue when a medium sized jet propelled aircraft of the type used at London City banked overhead and disappeared off towards the north. It was very noisy.

So, I was thinking about that during my bus journey. Part of the reason for the increased noise pollution is that the flight paths have been lowered by NATS. Why?

The Daily [Maybe] comes out strongly for the Tongan [which many might actually agree with]:

We push people to the margins of society, forbid them from working then harangue them for claiming benefits. We force people to live like animals then despise them for the conditions we have put them in. It's inhuman.

Concluding this section, Lord T, he who pulls no punches,wades straight in on the appalling state of our education system and what it's going to take to try to mend it:

Now to be honest it has been apparent this has been going on for several decades but has been accelerated and hidden well under a mountain of paperwork and statistics.

There have been a few holdouts, schools which are not controlled by the government, home schooling etc., but these areas are all now under attack, even when it is recognised that the general education system is not fit for purpose.

The socialist mantra seems to be we cannot have some people being better than others and so we need to make sure everyone is at the same level. Barely literate.

It is time we brought this under control and returned UK education back to being one of the best in the world.

The nature of being British - English, Scots, Irish or Welsh too

The Britblog Roundup need not be all about politics. Well yes, it needs to, to an extent but many other aspects of Brit life need to come in for comment as well:

Jams O'Donnell brings cheerier news, reporting on the increasing numbers of Sea Eagles in Scotland, a welcome sign:

“This is the result of a huge effort by many people over the past 30 years, he said. It shows what can be done to reinstate a key part of our natural heritage.

It remains important however for the population, especially the newly released birds in the east of the country, to be allowed to fully settle in and establish territories.”

Angus Dei, in his Saturday Snippets for example, writes of the matchstick Dalek being created by Brian Croucher:

This full scale matchstick model of one of television's scariest aliens is the work of Brian Croucher, 66, who spent more than two years on the task in the sitting room of his end of terrace house in Bognor Regis, West Sussex.

I'm not sure if the cultured Chameleon, whom you'll find at performances like Berg's Wojzek at the Flemish opera, is linking Glasgow and juvenile behaviour but she waxes lyrical here, tongue in cheek [if such a thing is possible]:

Not that we really bear any deeply ingrained grudge against the inhabitants of our largest city, some of my best friends come from Glasgow.

The inevitable pang of guilt that accompanies such recklessly juvenile behaviour (in my case at least) assuaged by the fact that the replies bawled in unison are normally so garbled that the likelihood of them deciphering our abuse is negligible.

Susanne Lamido has had an achievement in being elected a Chair. Now I'd love to be a chair too, so well done to her:

Being the Chair for two years is a real commitment but everybody including officialdom seems to feel I'm up to the task.

Cherry Pie takes a sympathetic look at the Black Country:

In addition to the old industries and working life displayed at the Black Country Museum there is also a traditional funfair. The swingboats brought back fond memories of Sunday afternoon walks up the Wrekin.

Phillip Wilkinson, author of The English Buildings Book does the sort of post many out there in the Britsphere appreciate – politics-lite, heritage-rich:

Round the back of the refurbished and extended St Pancras station lies a secluded garden made up of the Old St Giles' burial ground and the churchyard of St Pancras, a quiet spot shaded by plane trees.

Apart from two men sweeping leaves I had the place to myself, and I was certainly the only person there interested in making a pilgrimage to this small but oddly influential English building, the mausoleum of the great architect Sir John Soane and his family.

In a similar vein, Diamond Geezer thought he’d visit Haringey:

Just for a change, I thought I'd spend my Open House weekend scouring two individual London boroughs. And the (unlikely) borough I picked for Saturday was Haringey (think Highgate, Tottenham, and all points inbetween).

Haringey merits but a single page in the Open House guide, and few of its attractions will ever draw large crowds from further away.

… and muses about a Green Olympics.

Speaking of Green, Philobiblon brings us the essential guide to Green Thought, with snippets like this for your delectation:

Bruno Latour’s theory of “hybridity” – spreading the capacity to “speak” across the human and non-human realms. Sounds odd – but then his claim that some parts of nature “speak” very loudly – charismatic megafauna such as polar bears and orangutans (through influential organizations) – much louder than of what many humans are capable.

Rivetting, eh?

Peter McGrath, at Swordplay, couldn't get more British than this:

"She sat up, broke wind and died." Ena Sharples in the first edition of Coronation Street, replayed on BBC Radio 4's always excellent Pick of the week.

Still on the topic of age, Missy Martin addresses the vicissitudes of getting old in Britain and she decries granny taxes:

I also seem to be going to a lot of funerals recently for another thing. An old family friend I’ve known since we were both kids said to me at one recently, “Weddings and funerals, that’s it for us now, Misssy. Weddings and funerals. Next time I see you will be when someone’s died.”

Taxes aside, Sackerson compares life in China and the UK:

In Britain, the 27.5% of the "people of working age" that might be employed but are not, number approximately 10.96 million. In China, estimates Eric Janszen of iTulip, there are 20 million officially unemployed and the real tally should be 40 - 50 million.

The technological Brit is a phenomenon of these isles and Neil Craig's A Place to Stand, following comments last Britblogroundup [240], publishes a submission on taking the money currently put into ESA & intead using it for space X-prizes. He quotes an expert that 2 years of our funding would be enough to give Britain a commercial orbital shuttle.

The Jailhouse Lawyer shows that Britblogging need not always be about politics.

Britbloggers casting eyes elsewhere

Harry Hook, always ascerbic and right on the money, turns his attention to this appalling situation in the U.S., which is becoming more and more militarized as that unhappy nation goes on:

Pittsburgh University students get a taste of the New World Order.

... rivetting, horrifying and also commented on by Trooper Thompson.

Charles Crawford runs a piece on the Russian mindset, something I know of quite well, having lived there for 12 years until last year, when I returned to Blighty:

Russians of course are entitled to be proud and tough people. They have good reason to fear that their unfeasibly large country has to go through further spasms of de-imperialisation, and must eventually disintegrate into many smaller units. Russia does not have the people to deal with the Chinese/Asian 'colonisation' of its eastern reaches which is slowly happening.

For a good take on foreign affairs from a Brit perspective, Alex Goodall and Scott Green are your boys.

Finally

Britblog stalwart Matt Wardman has himself run his mini-roundup and there are some fine sites to visit at the end of Matt's link.

A further reminder, readers, that Cabalamat will be hosting the Britblog Roundup next week, so get all your nominations in to:

britblog@gmail.com

... and while you're there, you might like to check out the other Britblog Roundups listed in the sidebar. For those who visit my blog, please now change your urls to http://nourishingobscurity.com .

Apologies to those who put their entries in after this went up, expecting that they were early enough for a Monday roundup. Mea culpa. I forgot to mention that I tend to be early, the type who arrives at his funeral the day before he dies.

Not to worry - those nominations will be picked up by Cabalamat, for N242.

[Late note - not strictly eligible but interesting nonetheless.]

[wind farms] what's all the fuss

2009-09-27T12:46:00.004+01:00

Unlike in posts involving such issues as Common Purpose and Them, which I'll vehemently debate with anyone, your humble blogger comes to this issue as a WindFarm virgin.

We're told that they are awful for the environment, that they are an eyesore, that they do not produce anywhere near the power that is claimed for them. I really can't say. They're certainly not beautiful, spread out like Brown's cows over the countryside but if they're contained within a narrow area, in rows, then why not?

There was a bank of these on the road from Catania to Modica, in Sicily, high on the hill in the distance and they didn't seem too bad. The blades were all turning in unison, in some sort of futuristic ballet in plasticized nature .

When one considers the alternatives - the Tar Sands of Alberta or the nuclear waste dumping off the Ivory Coast, then windfarms seem, to me, to be the least worst alternative, apart from solar panels, of course. Solar panels are great for countries such as Australia and there are many on roofs, especially the further north you go.

For Britain, with its scant sunlight and for the Netherlands, open to the elements, windfarms would seem a sensible idea. Perhaps you can correct me on this.

[endless beer] at no extra cost

2009-09-27T12:08:00.002+01:00

Let's say that at one time, the Canadian and US dollars were discounted by 10 cents on each side of the border (i.e., a Canadian dollar was worth 90 US cents in the US, and a US dollar was worth 90 Canadian cents in Canada).

A man walks into a bar on the US side of the border, [long ago when beer cost 10 cents], orders 10 US cents worth of beer, pays with a US dollar and receives a Canadian dollar in change. He then walks across the border to Canada, orders 10 Canadian cents worth of beer, pays with a Canadian dollar and receives a US dollar in change.

He continues this throughout the day, and ends up drunk with the original dollar in his pocket.

Who pays for the drinks?

Here's what the official answer was.

[dare to design] six to consider

2009-09-27T01:59:00.000+01:00

[the next day] some photos

2009-09-27T01:53:00.003+01:00

Sorry, sorry, I know it doesn't interest you but I just had to run these pics from the Herald Sun because they summed it all up and paint a picture. It's the last time, I promise:

Just a word about this one above. That's a man regarded as one of, if not the best player ever and the young baldy in the photo above is his son who played a champ's game yesterday.

OK - all done. You're safe again.

[round the world] another youngster trying it

2009-09-26T23:00:00.000+01:00

What's going on here? Is there something in the atmosphere?

Remember 13 year old Laura Dekker and how she attempted to sail around the world solo but was stopped by a Dutch court?

Well now another one is at it:

Adventurer Don McIntyre is standing by teenage sailor Jessica Watson in the wake of an official report that calls into question her ability to survive her journey.

Mr McIntyre says he won't strip the 16-year-old of the $150,000 yacht, Ella's Pink Lady, he provided for her solo trip around the world.

That may be so but even though I'd prefer his judgement to that of a court, still:

A Maritime Safety Queensland report into the teenager's collision with 63,000-tonne cargo ship Silver Yang found she had probably been dozing at the time. She had not turned on an alarm, could not produce a clear plotted plan for her journey and had not developed a fatigue management plan, according to the report.

She was less than 24-hours into a 10-day test run from Mooloolaba to Sydney when the accident occurred in the early hours of September 9.

That is more damning and now I really think out what is involved in a voyage, the idea of a kid being able to remain up to it for the whole time and in all conditions is a bit much.

I can understand how Mr. McIntyre would have faith in her. A girl that age can be pretty confident and give the impression of competence. She's probably a good girl with her head screwed on right.

That crash was not good though.

[karma] and the need to remain circumspect

2009-09-26T21:30:00.001+01:00

Further to that business of all the cars arriving at once when I reach a certain spot on the pavement with my bike, I did a little research and it seems that coincidences or maybe conjunctions of circumstances have been going on for a long time:

In 1893, Henry Ziegland ended a relationship with his girlfriend. Tragically, his girlfriend took the news very badly, became distraught and took her own life. Her distressed brother blamed his sister’s death upon Henry, he went round to Henry’s house, saw him out in the garden and tried to shoot him.

Luckily, the bullet only grazed Henry’s face and embedded itself in a nearby tree. In 1913, twenty years after this incident, Henry decided to use dynamite to uproot a tree in his garden. The explosion propelled the embedded bullet from the tree straight into Henry Ziegland’s head – killing him immediately.

What about this one from February this year?

The chance of winning the lottery is often said to be a tad bit smaller than the chance of being hit by lightning. Lightning is said never to strike twice at the same place. So consider the odds of someone winning the lotter. Twice. On the same day. From the same lottery.

That’s what happened to James McAllister (62) from Acworth, USA, when he bought two scratch off tickets on Valentine’s day. James brought his wife for a Valentine’s breakfast. Along Highway 92 he bought a Georgia Lottery Millionaire Jumbo Bucks scratch off ticket — and won $5,000.

Apparently not completely satisfied, or maybe feeling this was his lucky day, later on in the day he bought another ticket as he was shopping for a Valentine’s card for his wife. Scratching that one off was worth $250,000.

Agatha Christie played with the idea by putting these words into Mr. Satterthwaite's mouth, the woman he was addressing considering suicide:

“You say your life is your own,” went on Mr Satterthwaite to her, “But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a Divine Producer? You, as you, may not matter to anyone in the world but you as a person in a particular place and a particular context may matter unimaginably.”

Broadening this

Today I had a commenter on one post [now deleted] and instantly, the moment came to mind when Poirot said this to Jacqueline de Bellefort who was contemplating murder:

‘Don’t open your heart to evil, Mademoiselle because if you do, it will surely come and make its home in there.’

You can call that melodramatic but I really do believe that if you pursue MAD, you really do become mad in the deepest and most permanent sense and you can't get it off your back or out of your system. You get locked in until something is destroyed but the black joke is that it is never destroyed - it comes back at you and destroys you from inside.

I don't think "turn the other cheek" was an exhortation to weakness, quite the opposite - it was something which requires great willpower. Today I paused and I was going to make the mistake of responding. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Positive karma

Don't start getting the idea I'm a tree-hugger but I do believe that if something occurs, it may well have a bearing on something else or have a reason for it. Douglas Adams made fun of that with his "fundamental interconnectedness of all things", the Australian aborigines are right into this stuff and I think there's something in it. Not sure what but there is.

Enough mysticism for one evening.

[late evening listening] harmony

2009-09-26T20:00:00.001+01:00

[missionaries and cannibals] get them to the other side

2009-09-26T17:52:00.007+01:00

Three missionaries and three cannibals want to get to the other side of a river. There is a small boat, which can fit only two. To prevent a tragedy, there can never be more cannibals than missionaries together.

Work out the combinations necessary to get them all safely to the other side. The solution is going to be something like:

1 missionary and 1 cannibal there, 1 missionary back;
1 missionary and 1 cannibal there .....

And so on. Solution will be given tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning: Answer is here.

[police tactics] watch and decide for yourself

2009-09-26T16:47:00.007+01:00

Harry Hook has posted a series of vids but this one in particular got under the guard:

The reason it did is because it is so different from anything I've seen before. In my young days I wasn't above attending demonstrations and I observed out and out provocation by professional demonstrators who worried the police horses into bolting - these are the same people who screamed about animal rights.

On the other hand, I also saw inexperienced officers goaded by experienced officers into overreacting, out of all proportion to the provocation.

I have not seen police all dressed in black, with POLICE written across their chests in big letters, advancing on university students and beating on their shields in unison, like something out of Zulu. Say what you like but that is intimidation, psy-ops, pure and simple.

In the natural state for most of us, we'd prefer a comfortable life of full employment and looking after our families. Left of centre, right of centre, whatever - what we are not prepared for is actual police state tactics like this. Watch the Pittsburgh video and decide for yourself.

The bottom line

Those men behind that armour have wives and kids. Some of those kids are at that university. The kids on the balconies were not bad kids, ASBOs, as you could see. They were uni students. Those humans behind the armour were firing on kids. Who told them to do that and why did they follow that order?

This is America?

2009 AFL Grand Final - Geelong v St Kilda

2009-09-26T12:58:00.014+01:00

All photos are courtesy of The Herald Sun Online and The Age Online.

Luke Ball neatly summarised the grief that washed over the St Kilda rooms after their loss of a desperately close 2009 AFL grand final to Geelong on Saturday.

Tears were plentiful - not least from inconsolable captain Nick Riewoldt - as the Saints came to terms with the fact that this was a year in which they carried all before them except the premiership cup.

"Half an hour ago was the worst feeling I've had in my life, to be honest. It was shocking," Ball said. "Just looking around at a few of the older guys as well, it was as bad as I've felt.

St Kilda's efforts in 2009 were inspired by how the Cats had raised the standard of the game over the previous two seasons, and Ball said the league owed much to the Geelong club for their combination of class and unstinting application.

"Full credit to them, they're a fantastic team," he said. "The competition as a whole has a lot to thank Geelong for over the past three years, the way they've gone about it. We certainly chased them pretty hard and tried to model ourselves on them a bit, but they were just a bit too good when it mattered."

A word of explanation about this. The AFL instituted, in the early 90s, a new policy which evened up the competition. Until then, the moneyed clubs [the Man Us of the world] usually won or were thereabouts and consequently had the largest number of fans. The also-rans, like St Kilda, were the perpetual whipping boys and some of these clubs broke up in the reorganization.

St Kilda, one of the original teams, did not break up and slowly, over 5-7 years, built itself up until this season, when they swept all before them, including Geelong. In Australia, there is great affection for St Kilda and many rate them as their "second club", along with the old Fitzroy. No one dilikes them.

So, in 2009 unfortunately, Geelong were cast as the party-poopers and yet theirs too, many forget, was a rags-to-riches story, some years earlier.

Geelong was one of the two original teams, with Melbourne, in 1859 and is from a coastal town [now a city], often referred to as "sleepy hollow". Let's face it, they can be a bit provincial down that way and the city slickers make a lot of fun of the town's reputation as "hicksville" though this was far from the truth.

For all that, over the decades, they've produced some stunning teams, country boys, farmers' sons and while discipline was never their catchcry, exciting, free-flowing football was their motif, not unlike the southern hemisphere clubs and the Barbarians in rugby.

As the outsiders in the competition but never one of "the city clubs", not unlike me in the Britblogosphere, they rebuilt and had some hearbreaking losses in the past five years, despite co-opting a coach [manager] from one of the city teams, a proven champion and a hard taskmaster.

He taught them self-discipline and dedication and two years ago, the result came - they took the flag after a 44 year layoff, that previous flag itself after an 11 year layoff. You get the idea - always up there but never getting the cream.

In 2007 though, they were the champs.

In the modern system, teams tend to be up for three, maybe four years and any flags have to be won during that time, before players age too much and the machine shows signs of cracking. That's why, last year, having won almost everything during the 2008 season, often grinding other sides into the dirt, they were pipped on the one day which counted - the last day in September.

As you can gather from the opening remarks in this post, that hurt. That really kicked them in the guts. Would they recover in 2009?

Well, they did and they didn't. The new golden boys, St Kilda, all praise to their coach and to them, were now sweeping all before them. After Geelong lost to them mid-season, they fell apart a bit and it was touch and go if they'd even see the grand final.

As you know by now, they did manage to get there but as the underdogs to St Kilda and throughout the game, that's how it was panning out - St Kilda having far more scoring shots but Geelong pressure and their nerves not helping them in their cause.

Geelong, now an ageing team, would surely succumb to the fresh youngbloods but in the end, it was sheer grit and experience which saw them over the line in a very close battle all day.

Relief, more than elation was the prevailing emotion, some sort of redemption after 2008 and the coach, Bomber Thomson, made that point in the after-match press conference. The other coach, Ross Lyon, stoical, put it down to those small percentage things on the day.

What next?

Can St Kilda show real character and bounce back next year to "avenge" their loss?

Can Geelong do it one more time, after their sell-by date? Will they still have the hunger?

There are 14 other teams who'll have a say in that matter as well.

... for now.

[britblog roundup 241] and other matters

2009-09-26T11:13:00.000+01:00

First up, get your entries in to the Britblog for this weekend - that review of all things British over the past seven days and for those still not aware, the way to go is to send the url of a post which has struck you as being particularly fine this past week to:

britblog@gmail.com

I'll go in there and check it out, write a little screed around it and you'll see it in the next roundup late this Sunday. I notice that many are submitting entries at the last moment so why should you be any different? If you'd like to see the site itself, click here.

Update at 11:10

Right, the Britblog is now written and in draft form. Any final entries I receive between now and midday tomorrow will be slotted into the various themes, as appropriate. I'm hoping you're going to enjoy this edition.

So sorry for the slow blogging this morning [Geelong victory et al]. I'll have a little kip then get back into the posts.

Stop Press - Geelong Win AFL Grand Final

2009-09-26T08:20:00.002+01:00

Result only just in from Australia - Geelong have overcome the odds to snatch a victory in the dying minutes, haivng trailed all day. My maddening, infuriating team whom I'm also so proud of, have done it!!!!!

I don't expect anyone of you out there in the UK or American spheres to feel that in the same way I do but it's as if Wimbledon won the FA Cup or the LA Angels won the title.

I'm still stunned and how it affects my blogging today, I don't know. Might even go out and have a beer or three.

[photo feature] the illusion of beauty

2009-09-26T03:08:00.002+01:00

Detractors would call it contrived and yet Francophiles would call it designed. The Anglo-Saxon and Russian would say the Frenchwoman is not "naturally beautiful" with that dark-haired, chisel-jawed slight masculinity which they try to overcome by heavy emphasis on deportment, the tricks of the trade, grooming, dress and cosmetics.

Some of those tricks can be seen in the photo on this post, where the girl is actually wearing a dress and a modest one at that [I know this from the other photos] and yet, photoshot in that way ... well, you see what I mean. The bare lower legs and the cheeky smile do it for her.

That's why most women admire the French and the Italians, the way they do it, with that panache, that style. Interesting that in the current retrospective on Bardot, le Figaro mentioned:

C'est vrais - la France créa Bardot. Celle qui fut vingt ans durant une star internationale et un symbole de la France des années 50-60 fêtera ses 75 ans lundi prochain.

N'oublions pas, par exemple, Edwige Feuillère dans Lucrèce Borgia - elle est aussi une rétive, une insolente, une fille qui a beaucoup d'esprit, le sens de la repartie.

Audrey Tautou - too twee for French tastes?

For those who don't read this language, it roughly means that she was both a creation and a symbol of France, of what she stood for but we shouldn't forget that there were others and Bardot wasn't the first.

Interesting, to me, was "une rétive, une insolente, une fille qui a beaucoup d'esprit", much admired in France, just as the Italians admire "furbo" and "bella figura" or looking and playing the part with panache.

The cosmetic and fashion industries would maintain that beauty can be manufactured or at the very least, greatly enhanced but I would argue that lack of cosmetics and well cut clothes, along with deportment and that indefinable character can carry all before her.

A woman I saw the other day would have been described by the English as "without artifice" and by the French as "without style". She was quite gauche but at the same time, seemed a fun loving person. As I live in the land of my ethnic group, then its take on what constitute good and bad qualities must rule. Solid values and sensible shoes also tug at my heart strings, along with the tweed and the Barbours and so on.

Zeroing in on the French concept of beauty

The French fixation with Bardot seems strange to me. For a start, she looks more nordic, more Britt Eklundish than French but it was the sensuousness really, with her - Carla Bruni also practices the studied look into the eyes, the deep, sensual voice and so on.

Far more seductive, IMHO and far more Gallic, was Françoise Hardy, [don't forget to sound the s, drop the h and sound the last syllable] who perfectly embodied the sultry, melancholy and reserved femme fatale. An example of one who was almost completely Frenchified was the English Jane Birkin. No beauty in a classical sense, she adopted the whole culture as far as she was able and so produced this with Serge Gainsborough:

While real Frenchwomen like Sophie Marceau, Eva Green and Clémence Poésy could never be taken for Anglo-Saxons, they've diluted their Frenchness to appeal to a wider public and in In Bruges, Poésy, in the restaurant scene, sounds "American youth".

Less so in France and more in Russia in my experience, there've been women who've filled the space the eyes take in and later, I've always wondered what it was that that particular woman had which overpowered the senses. I could only conclude that it was the little gesture here, the disconcerting but flattering way she studied you and the attention to detail - everything had to be perfect in order to make demands herself.

So now I'm back here with an eye out for the English Rose but I suspect the English Rose has finer fish to fry than your humble correspondent.

Beauty - what is it?

[honda u3-x] silent white

2009-09-26T00:39:00.000+01:00

[the eleventh hour] things which have happened

2009-09-25T23:02:00.000+01:00

Seriously, I don't know what you'd call it - bad karma, gremlins, spooks - but we've all had this. A fellow blogger [I'll put the name and link after I've been round the blogs tonight] wrote about teaspoons always being found in the wrong places; at the tennis court, the balls go missing - you know the type of thing.

There's an intersection not far from my place, on the way to the station and it involves cycling under a flyover [see diagram] and reaching a point marked by the red fuzz. Now, obviously that's the wrong side of the road so perhaps I get off the bike and walk it, all docile like, to that spot, where it involves stepping on the road and crossing to the roundabout.

Right, this is no exaggeration - even at peak hour, this part of the world is out of the way and you'd be lucky to get two cars at any one time, more usually none. That is, until reaching that red fuzzy part. Suddenly, traffic comes from nowhere and blocks the road.

I mentioned to my mate that on every single occasion I'd travelled to his place over the previous two weeks, I'd reached that point, [never before the point and not after I've stepped onto the road], when the traffic would suddenly appear.

Yesterday took the prize.

The narrow road, lower right, is a sliproad off the flyover but all the others are minor. I reached the dreaded spot once again, having checked over my shoulder that there were no cars, I listened intently to what might appear from around to the right and so on. One car did appear and went by.

Fine.

As my foot went to step onto the roadway, two cars came off the sliproad, at pace, into the roundabout, just as a little blue car came from my right, a white van came from ahead and a beige Volvo came from behind. I just stood there with my bike, staring at it all unfolding and then the car horns began - b-l-a-r-e-e-e-e-e-!!!!!

Thirty seconds later, it was all over, I hopped on my bike and had the road entirely to myself for the next half mile. That is not an exaggeration.

Always at that same point on the footpath. I should write a story based on that.

Why would such things happen? It's uncanny.

[nursery rhymes] and their possible origins

2009-09-25T21:25:00.000+01:00

1. There are references to a certain children's game from the sixteenth century, including one in Shakespeare's King Lear (Act I Scene iv), but little evidence that the rhyme existed. Which rhyme?

2. There was a square-four-eight-dance, published in Playford's Dancing Master in 1665, but it is not clear if this relates to this rhyme. Which rhyme?

3. Pawning your coat when times got hard might have given rise to which rhyme?

4. Which rhyme might have been referring to the necessity for Catholic priests to hide out in a priest hole or in a chamber?

5. The border between the two lands and the accommodation the English and Scots found with each other for some time might have given rise to which rhyme?

Answers

Little Bo Peep, Oranges and Lemons, Pop goes the Weasel, Goosey Goosey Gander, There was a Crooked Man

[late evening listening] bad boy, great group

2009-09-25T20:00:00.003+01:00

What is it about some artists? Not particularly nice people or rather - angry young men with harsh voices - and yet their backing groups were superb musos.

Cockney Rebel [with Steve Harley]:

Can't get over the Top of the Pops kids - Steve Harley was definitely not a kid's artist: Sebastian is an example of that.

The Rumour [with Graham Parker]:

Hotel Chambermaid - my favourite of theirs.

The Blockheads [with Ian Dury]:

[odd one out] can you pick him

2009-09-25T17:55:00.001+01:00

[self defence] citizens doing it for themselves

2009-09-25T16:10:00.006+01:00

M1911

Angus reports on the ammunition shortages in the U.S.:

The shortages are so bad that retail globocorp Wal-Mart has been forced to introduce rationing at the ammo counter in many of its stores. Depending on calibre, customers may be limited to purchases of just 50 rounds at a time.

Apparently, classic .45 ACP pistol ammunition is especially scarce - a fairly good indication that it is in fact conservative Middle America rather than, say, inner-city criminals buying up all the ammo.

Joe Huffman does the mathematics on the issue:

Nine billion rounds in one year with about 80 million gun owners in the U.S. works out to about only about 112 rounds per gun owner. I went through that many rounds both last night and the night before.

I'll go through probably another 200 rounds tonight and then another 150 on Sunday. What the heck is going on here? I'm figure I'm just doing my civic duty here and it turns out I'm doing the job of about 100 other people as well.

If every gun owner were going through just 100 rounds a month that would be nearly 100 billion rounds a year. That is a way to stimulate the economy and have something to show for it afterward--an armed and well practiced citizenry and respectful politicians.

To say that we, in the UK, are not doing the same thing is partly so but there are still a lot of people on the ground that are quietly preparing. To not allow a citizen in his own home to defend his family, on pain of criminal charges being brought and the intruder getting off scot-free is the UK way these days but it can't last forever.

The pics top and bottom are my weapons of choice.

UMP SMG

[israel ministerial crime] good precedent for the u.k. and u.s.

2009-09-25T15:12:00.008+01:00

Lots of fun in Israel:

A former finance minister and Olmert associate, Avraham Hirshson, recently began a five-year prison sentence for embezzling funds. A former health minister, Shlomo Benizri, is serving a four-year term after being convicted of bribery, fraud and obstruction of justice in the spring.

The former president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, is on trial, accused of rape and indecent assault against women who worked for him when he was the tourism minister and president. Mr. Katsav resigned the presidency in mid-2007. Benjamin Netanyahu was suspected of fraud during his previous term in office in the late 1990s but was never charged.

Into this steps Mr. Olmert, of Kadima, looking as if he could be in some trouble. Of all of them, Netanyahu is the one who seems the greatest worry:

On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: “It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel).”

What's in a name?

He held dual citizenship, which enabled him to travel freely between both countries, study in the U.S., receive federal loans to cover his education costs at MIT and work legally. Like every U.S. citizen, Netanyahu has a social security number, a credit account, and numerous other files in a variety of government offices.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s files differ from those of most U.S. citizens. The Israeli weekly Ha’ir reports that four requests for credit approval appear in U.S. social security file number 020-36-4537. Under each request one finds a different name: Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin Nitai, John Jay Sullivan and John Jay Sullivan Jr.—one man, four names.

Biranit Goren and Einat Berkovitch from Ha’ir tried to find out about him.

Netanyahu’s security file [in the U.S.] has a different classification than most ... a “confidential” classification. Goren and Berkovitch have explained that such a classification only applies to five categories of people: those who work for one of three federal agencies—FBI, CIA, IRS—or those who are considered to be terrorists or criminals. Since it is unlikely that Netanyahu fits the latter two categories, or that he worked for the IRS, it appears that he was on the payroll of a security agency—the CIA or FBI.

July 7th, 2005

Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7 ... The Israeli Embassy ... ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7.

Amy Teibel, of Associated Press, wrote on the day:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

His criminal charges themselves are no different to those which would be brought against our crooked pollies, if the law in the U.K. and U.S. were to be enforced as it should be and as it seems to be in other countries. Just bribes, corruption, dodgy appointments to office - that sort of thing.

Finally, what's the difference between the Israeli politicians and the Arab politicians? The Israeli politicians are subject to due process and can serve time. The Arab criminal leaders are lauded as heroes.

[reverse osmosis] the words on everyone's lips today

2009-09-25T10:09:00.003+01:00

The weekend's coming and that means it's time to explain Reverse Osmosis to those who still don't quite get it. Of course, this just draws on the excellent How Stuff Works article on the topic:

On the left is a beaker filled with water, and a tube has been half-submerged in the water. As you would expect, the water level in the tube is the same as the water level in the beaker.

In the middle figure, the end of the tube has been sealed with a "semipermeable membrane" and the tube has been half-filled with a salty solution and submerged.

Initially, the level of the salt solution and the water are equal, but over time, something unexpected happens -- the water in the tube actually rises. The rise is attributed to "osmotic pressure."

A semipermeable membrane is a membrane that will pass some atoms or molecules but not others. Saran wrap is a membrane, but it is impermeable to almost everything we commonly throw at it. The best common example of a semipermeable membrane would be the lining of your intestines, or a cell wall.

Gore-tex is another common semipermeable membrane. Gore-tex fabric contains an extremely thin plastic film into which billions of small pores have been cut. The pores are big enough to let water vapor through, but small enough to prevent liquid water from passing.

In the figure above, the membrane allows passage of water molecules but not salt molecules. One way to understand osmotic pressure would be to think of the water molecules on both sides of the membrane. They are in constant Brownian motion.

On the salty side, some of the pores get plugged with salt atoms, but on the pure-water side that does not happen. Therefore, more water passes from the pure-water side to the salty side, as there are more pores on the pure-water side for the water molecules to pass through. The water on the salty side rises until one of two things occurs:

* The salt concentration becomes the same on both sides of the membrane (which isn't going to happen in this case since there is pure water on one side and salty water on the other).

* The water pressure rises as the height of the column of salty water rises, until it is equal to the osmotic pressure. At that point, osmosis will stop.

Osmosis, by the way, is why drinking salty water (like ocean water) will kill you. When you put salty water in your stomach, osmotic pressure begins drawing water out of your body to try to dilute the salt in your stomach.

Eventually, you dehydrate and die. Isn't that nice?

In reverse osmosis, the idea is to use the membrane to act like an extremely fine filter to create drinkable water from salty (or otherwise contaminated) water. The salty water is put on one side of the membrane and pressure is applied to stop, and then reverse, the osmotic process. It generally takes a lot of pressure and is fairly slow, but it works.

[war games] the players are jockeying for position

2009-09-25T08:18:00.007+01:00

The Madalene [whose link leads to a photo of Madame Lash and therefore undercuts his position] points to this, from Bloomberg:

Iran and Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding to build a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Syria, the Regional Press Network reported in a story published on the Web site of Lebanon’s The Daily Star.

Venezuela would hold a 33 percent stake in the project, Iran would have 26 percent, Syria 26 percent and Malaysia 15 percent, the report said, citing Mohammed Ali Talebi, an official at Iran’s Petropars Ltd. The plant would have the capacity to process 140,000 barrels of oil a day.

Neither Iran nor Venezuela said when construction would start, according to the report.

It seems to me that the forces in the known world are aligning themselves, whether or not this refinery ever gets built. On one side are the communist leaders of China and North Korea, along with the Saudi princes, Gaddafi, the Iran nutter, Malaysia [which also has a dicey record] and so on - the pariahs of the sane world.

On the other are Obama, Brown and Sarkozy, Mandelson, the Bilderbergers et al. Russia is playing its own game but the top is aligned with the club.

Nothing whatever to do with us, the ordinary people. I'm no socialist and yet there is this niggling point that the battle is between two sectors of this ruling club who decide when it's time to stir up a war. The economic crisis is one thing, people out of work, people on benefits, loss of homes, pressure on available homes for rental and so on.

That's bad but much worse is the inevitable result of these things - war. This is the mentality which has come down through the past few centuries, the same dialectic, the same militaristic motif - finding the issue on which to wax rhetorical so that the MIC can be set into full swing.

They want war. That's all there is to it. I keep coming back to John Buchan MP who was kicked upstairs or put out to pasture, whichever term you care to employ, for speaking truths and even putting them in books. In The 39 Steps, he has his little agent say:

The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as Christmas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February 1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion.

He was booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning. I gathered from Scudder's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of Epirote guards that would skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.

The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides' death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum.

That book was published in 1915 and was therefore written earlier, by a British MP who later wnet on to become Governor-General of Canada, as Lord Tweedsmuir. The work is fiction and yet the man had a closer knowledge than most of the goings on at the time.

These days, the doings are better concealed but around the turn of the century, in Buchan's day, things were far easier to glean. The Jeckyll Island meeting was observed, Colonel House's and Warburg's machinations seen for what they were and it wasn't such a big deal understanding how these things work.

Today, with the power of the net and with Google at hand, you'd think we would all be au fait but it seems we're still light years away from understanding, simply because we're accepting the pap we're fed by the MSM, we wish to have it that way in fact and it's an uphill battle getting people to join the dots.

Those who do join the dots see something we can't deal with - too organized, too interlocked. How did I get here from a Venezuelan/Iranian oil deal? Chavez, Mugabe and Hitler have shown how one man with a rampant ego and a desire to straddle the world like a Colossus can cause such enormous damage because everyone kowtows and similar megalomaniacs in the world recognize him and can play him at his own game.

It only takes one man, one forceful and yet insane person to achieve this mayhem. Have you ever wondered why this happens - this constant churning out of and pushing up of this type of person into positions of genuine power in their land and therefore on the world stage? He couldn't do it on his own. Clearly he is piggybacked by others seeing his potential for them.

The essential thing that anyone representing the interests of the majority of people desiring a comfortable life, free from the ravages of war and pestilence, must try to do is to find a way to break this stranglehold on world events. As for your humble correspondent, I don't particularly care to be swept along by the tide of events these nutters set in motion.

Web bots predict collapse

Good article in the Telegraph today. Of course the sceptics are right here - there are cogent reasons for these results. You don't need web bots to do simple research and equally, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[britblog roundup] hosted here this sunday, september 29th

2009-09-24T21:22:00.002+01:00

Some of you may already know that Nourishing Obscurity will be hosting the:

Britblog Roundup

... this Sunday, September 27th and your humble blogger has every intention of having it posted by mid-afternoon. I shall be relieving Mr. Eugenides who is on holiday.

So, get your nominations in to:

britblog@gmail.com

... tout suite.

I say "every intention of having it posted" but the question is - where? This blog passes into history on Tuesday, September 29th and the new blog:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

... will carry on from where this one leaves off. The solution is clear - the Britblog Roundup will be posted both here and at the new site.

[yesterday's news is old news] see how you do

2009-09-24T20:45:00.005+01:00

1. July 2008 - last month, the news broke that Gordon Brown was making phonecalls to unsuspecting members of the British public. Now, the News of The World has reported that The Queen had been thinking about setting up premium rate phone lines to allow the British public to call and get a message from the Royals - for what purpose?

2. September, 2008 - a "lady' burst on to the scene, calling Paris Hilton "a piece of sh-- who looks like a tramp". Then she impersonated a presidential hopeful. Who is she?

3. October, 2008 - there was a real stink when a prank resulted in one man having to depart but the other golden boy only got 12 weeks. A lady called Lesley also had to resign over the affair. Who was the prat who got 12 weeks?

4. November, 2008 - one which has died away of late but at the time, this sort of thing was said - it is better for Saudi Arabia and the company to pay out a few million in ransom and save the 995 million left over. What was the issue?

5. December, 2008 - someone significant connected with Watergate died. Who?

Answers

To help pay for the double glazing at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, Tina Fey, Jonathan Ross, piracy, Mark Felt

[late evening listening] songs we love to hate

2009-09-24T20:00:00.002+01:00

[clearstream] a pandora's box for the ump

2009-09-24T13:03:00.000+01:00

It's flowing strongly, the Clearstream biz, churning up mud along the way:

Les avocats de Dominique de Villepin ont jugé mercredi soir «scandaleux» les propos du président de la République au sujet des prévenus du procès Clearstream, propos qui selon eux violent les règles relatives à la présomption d'innocence.

To put the issue in perspective, the Grauniard called it:

A case of paranoia, slander and vengeance involving:

a) Dominique de Villepin, an ex-prime minister who dazzled the world on 14 February 2003 with a historic speech at the UN against the war in Iraq, a Gaullist with a taste for history and poetry and a penchant for Bonaparte;

b) Nicolas Sarkozy, former Chirac minister, today president of France, whose permanent agitation has transfixed his compatriots, and amused, irritated and awed the world in equal measure since his election on 5 May 2007;

c) the French intelligence services.

Naturally, the socialists are lapping it up, hardly abel to believe their good fortune, after their own infighting:

Le Monde concludes: “The involvement of the head of state unmistakably emerges from the testimony. Contrary to official statements it is very probable that Jacques Chirac issued ‘instructions’ in this affair... Irrespective of what the prime minister has said so far, the almost obsessive search for elements which could compromise the UMP president is unmistakably clear.”

The French love a good scandal but not of this sort, at this time and indications are that most French, for either reasons of boredom or reasons of fear for what it might do to UMP, vis-a-vis the next election, ushering in the truly loopy and perpetually infighting French Left, do not think it should have gone this far.

If UMP have plans to remain in power, they'd best get Sarkozy to close this thing off out of court. But that's not in the nature of Them, is it?

Let me wax religious for one moment. What the Clearstream affair revolves around is someone's knowledge that something was false and his willingness [however true or not is it of Villepin in this case] to remain silent on it and to allow things to come out which would damage the other.

That is no different to the exhortation, in Christianity that "blasphemy against the spirit can't be forgiven". Translated into Secular, it means exactly as stated - knowing something to be based on a false premise, namely the way the Pharisees and Saducees were going about things, they chose instead to bring down the accuser and rival with false testimony.

[thoughtful thursday] sign of the times

2009-09-24T10:34:00.000+01:00

Those made up signs are not so funny but this seems genuine. The huts in the background seem Russian to me but the vehicles and language sure ain't.

[airbus] here we go again

2009-09-24T08:48:00.003+01:00

There are references to Airbus problems:

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

... and now here:

The EASA airworthiness directive concerns carriers that fly Airbus A330/A340 jetliners equipped with Goodrich pitot probes stamped with the part number 0851HL.

"Several reports have recently been received of loose pneumatic quick-disconnect unions" on the probes in question, the agency said, adding that the problem might lie at the "equipment manufacturing level."

The fault could result in an air leak that could in turn provide false airspeed indications, the statement said.

Ah yes - good luck with your Airbus flight if you have once scheduled.

[war games] meanwhile the empty rhetoric continues

2009-09-24T07:54:00.003+01:00

Hezbollah

The parallels with Kennedy are eyebrow raising:

US President Barack Obama has said the world must tackle stark challenges, and the US cannot face them alone. In his first speech to the UN General Assembly, he said global problems included nuclear proliferation, war, climate change and economic crisis.

There's something of the murky way to power [JFK's daddy bought him Illinois, according to some, Obama concealed his Kenyan birth], something of the rhetoric which is based on nothing but catch phrases used by politicians since the Year Dot and now the critical question - is he starting to believe in the rhetoric the national "Tammany" Machine has written for him?

If he does see himself as the messiah, as Kennedy began to, doing this Great Work of Ages which was starting to be something quite different to that envisaged by the Machine, is he heading for a fall? He's playing with an impacable set of forces in the Washington lobby, in Israel and in the pathetic excuse for political life which Hamas and Saudi et al are pursuing with such quiet vigour.

Depends how aggressively he pursues the policy. Asia Times observes:

When President Barack Obama spiked plans for a missile shield in Europe, the international community was taken aback. Yet, Washington is leaving nothing to chance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke of a "defense umbrella" in the Persian Gulf if Iran refuses to agree to nuclear inspections. Most likely, this "umbrella" will be a quick-striking military force overseen from US bases in Afghanistan.

Contrast that with his speech to the UN:

All nations bore responsibility for addressing these problems, he said. Mr Obama said "no world order which elevates one nation above others" could succeed in tackling the world's problems. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he said.

Really pushing this one, isn't he? And that talk of world order. Fashionable to seize on any talk of new world order as OTT and yet they keep mouthing about it, all globalists like Obama. And the Washington Club with members like Maurice Strong and Gore keep mouthing about shamballa and climate change as a religious phenomenon.

If you still feel that Obama supports the U.S.A. as a separate entity, then, with respect, you haven't been reading the material brought to this site by various students of the international situation or anywhere else on the web where think-tanks like American Thinker write:

Meanwhile our own president is proclaiming the end of Pax Americana, the most successful peace-keeping policy in human history. He publicly denies the plain and obvious lessons of history. The fascist regime in Tehran would not even exist were it not for the abject failures of another president in exactly the same mold, the blighted Jimmy Carter.

Carter had this "let's all love each other and just peanut farm" mindset, he had the leftist notion that if we all pull together [no comments], we can achieve miracles, which is true but not if we all pull together in the direction they mean. Brown mouthed this off in his own U.S. speech. It takes no account of realities - bloodythirsty guttersnipes, Churchill called them.

The left then says well that's the type of confontationalist rhetoric which got us into the mess.

No it isn't - what got us into the mess is:

1. the Machine which has determined American foreign policy for the past century, with its stranglehold on the three arms of government in the U.S. and international in complexion and the ripple effect on British polic;

2. using the natural patriotism of the American people, distorted and fuelled by the bought media, to support something quite un-American in nature but masquerading under the American flag, to the point that anyone who questions it, as many of the General Staff in the U.S. and in the UK have, is a dirty traitor and not supporting "our boys" over there and for tacitly supporting terrorism.

Look, the bottom line is that these globalists, by the very definition of their stance [how many quotes do you need from your hmble correspondent], are playing the same game, only with a newer generation which can't remember the last time on account of not having been born.

The end result is war.

Where does the natural need, which many heartily agree with, to defend the cause of freedom and free enterprise in the world, cross over into furthering the agenda of the globalists? Look at the pic of Hezbollah above and see if we're not playing the same crazed militarization of the peoples of the world, organized into rank and final and directed to destroying one another.

If this post seems to give out mixed messages - first defend the nation, then don't go to war, that's because the truth is in the middle. Yes we need to be strong but no we don't need to march off on a global financiers' war game which will make a killing of us and a killing for them.

[ladies and gentlemen] adjust your urls 2

2009-09-23T23:11:00.004+01:00

Remember that the new url is:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

... and the date it goes active is September 29th. If you change your link to this site [that's if you ever did link and plan to continue, I mean], then the new link will also bring you here until the changeover date and then will automatically switch to the new site.

For those interested, I'm on Wordpress.org and am [almost] self-hosting. The themes have been the main problem - I must have been through about 1500 of them and the two left at the end [which I can't decide between] are:

1. a three column not unlike this site's [but I've made the sidebar's much wider so that the whole is now a three column magazine, featuring certain posts];

2. a true magazine/news layout which has layout problems with the blockquotes and images, the latter having been solved.

Both are quite configurable [a major factor for me] and now it's down to the cosmetics and widgets. I'll get both themes ready and decide which one later. I've even been thinking of running one of them for two days and then the other and seeing what you think of each.

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

2009-09-23T22:00:00.000+01:00

First, a journo:

The body managing the government's stakes in bailed-out banks has fired headhunters charged with finding its new boss after they recruited a disgraced top banker from RBS.

Eh? Anyone care to explain that one to me? How does it rate against a politician getting down to specifics?

But sometimes the reality is that defining moments of history come suddenly and without warning. And the task of leadership then is to define them, shape them and move forward into the new world they demand.

Or political foot shooting?

“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Any idea who wrote or said these?

[wordless wednesday] life

2009-09-23T21:56:00.001+01:00

[politicians] the unpopularity quiz

2009-09-23T21:03:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you can name all of them but who are the most unpopular, 1 for most unpopular of the four and 4 the least unpopular?

[late evening listening] dearieme presents the two seasons

2009-09-23T20:00:00.001+01:00

Entirely out of season, of course - echoes of spring:

and just for good measure, summertime:

Is Dearieme trying to tell us something?

[this saturday] three hours of ritual masochism

2009-09-23T17:15:00.004+01:00

This is not really the post to return with but there are a number of things weighing on my mind. Some might think it is getting hassled by phone [I don't answer it] or the Blogger thing or the way someone close backstabbed me recently - nope, it's none of those. Nor is it the economic situation or the way my particular situation could go pearshaped pretty soon.

No, it's mainly someone I realize I still haven't got over, getting married and while officially I'm happy, inside it seems that part of my life is now over and that's not a pleasant thing. That's the main downer but there is one other too and that's nervousness.

Whoever said football's just a game obviously never supported Geelong Football Club, the team of whom it was said:

Some people are destined never to find happiness in life. For such people, G-d provided the Geelong Football Club.

If ever there was a bunch of frustrating, impossible yet brilliant players who, on their day, can't be beaten, then this is them.

It's a mark of the Australian football scene that the grand final rated the greatest was that of Collingwood in 1937, not to mention Richmond in 1967 and Hawthorn in 1989. All of these involved Geelong as the other team - they seem to have a way of lifting a game into a spectacle, even if they don't win.

Last year they were odds on favourite ... and lost.

Now they're back again this coming Saturday and this time their opponents are the perennial whipping boys, St Kilda, only this season they've taken all before them, including Geelong. So, not only is this a lip-licking festa of two very attacking teams with great defences, the two who have dominated all season but there are no losers.

If St Kilda win [and almost the whole football world will be behind them], then it will be like the England World Cup victory. Hell, I don't even mind if they win. Well, actually I do. If Geelong win, having thrown it away last year, then a few of us will be very happy. This Saturday though, for three frustrating hours, the heart-attacking playing style of my team will be trying to keep out the current champs.

Why do I have to support teams like this or Wimbledon in England? Masochism?

Go, Pussies!

[housekeeping] two day hiatus

2009-09-23T13:05:00.001+01:00

Back soon. Moderation on, sorry.

[ladies and gentlemen] adjust your urls

2009-09-23T00:30:00.003+01:00

The state of play is this, ladies and gentlemen - it's been a learning curve and widgets are doing strange things, pics are not appearing where they should and so on at the new site. The url of the new site is:

http://nourishingobscurity.com

However, for the present, until September 29th, things have been so configured that the dotcom url, as well as the usual blogspot url, will both lead you straight back here.

On the 29th, the dotcom automatically switches itself over to the new site - you needn't do anything. If you change the url in the next week, it just means that you needn't change it again. Don't know if that was as clear as mud.

This site will still be active, in the sense that comments on previous posts will still be answered and the site will be maintained but the new site will be for all new posts. More closer to the time.

[late evening listening] tanita tikaram

2009-09-22T20:00:00.002+01:00

Time for some of the songs I like, even if the lyrics are meaningless:

[the host] a cut above your average horror

2009-09-22T18:16:00.002+01:00

The Korean film, The Host, suffers from the wooden English dubbing and very Asian style of acting in places but it has some excellent parts - the monster himself and how the little girl who is taken by it and kept in a narrow pit under a bridge and how she manages to outwit it. It's all about how authority reacts in an emergency by denial and by turning on its own people.

This part in the clip is not the very best - later scenes of despair are quite moving, how the grandfather re3acts to the loss and so on. Definitely a cut above the average, this one. You can read up on it here.

[beyonce] uncultured idiot

2009-09-22T14:05:00.000+01:00

Why has no one ever told her that it's not what you reveal but what you conceal which makes you more alluring. However, that's not even the issue here:

Beyonce Knowles says she will perform in Malaysia in October, two years after canceling a show in this Muslim-majority country after protesters threatened to disrupt the concert because of her sexy image and clothing. The R&B superstar's upcoming show is already drawing the ire of conservatives in this country, where female performers are required to cover up from the shoulders to knees with no cleavage showing.

"We are not against entertainment as long as it is within the framework of our culture and our religion," Sabki said. "We are against Western sexy performances. We don't think our people need that."

There are different issues here, all being mish-mashed into one. The issue if decency is one thing and the issue of killing off fun is another. The story of Inul in Indonesia is a case in point. Vilified by the Imams for lascivious conduct, nevertheless follow that clip and see the attire she's wearing. She does not let it all hang out, as the western woman does.

It doesn't have to be a Muslim society either. When we were in Cypress, my gf had to change into something which revealed less before going into a Makarios church. She was up in arms about that but I pointed out that that was their rules, they were well within their rights to ask that and so it should be. I went into a mosque without footwear and I went into a synagogue wearing kippar on the head.

So what?

That she should wish to bowl in, promoting her slatternliness in a culture which does not appreciate it is beyond that sort of person.

And another thing - if we are to fight back against the imposition of Muslim life on us by means of spreading our own culture to Muslim nations, then let it be our higher culture that gets exported, not something which reveals our cultural ignorance.

Let it be something which edifies them and let's them see something higher to aspire for.

[cayman islands] hedging one's bets

2009-09-22T12:27:00.000+01:00

Hedging over the Cayman Islands

Karl Denninger today:

Senior officials of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, are facing claims that they pocketed millions of dollars by dishing out loans that were impossible to repay.

Impossible to repay? What's the judge say about this?

Credit Suisse has now been accused of loaning the money in an unorthodox and lucrative deal for the bank that federal bankruptcy judge Ralph B. Kirscher described in May this year as a case of “naked greed” that “shocks the conscience of this court.”

This was a bunch of low-level employees, or even middling staff, right? Uh, wrong:

Brady Dougan, the Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse First Boston, and Hans-Ulrich Doerig, Chairman of the Board of Directors, received the subpoenas along with past and current Executive Board officials and Credit Suisse’s Board.

“Bank officials have testified that Credit Suisse created a Cayman Islands ‘branch’ in 2005 to sell these loans. “In reality, there was no phone and no staff in the bank’s phony branch. “They used the Caymans to circumvent US banking laws and to issue inflated loans that Credit Suisse executives called a ‘gravy train’ in internal memos.“

What's it all about? Yes, of course it's about a naughty bank which did what comes naturally to them and adds fuel to the fire of opinion quite willing to accept restructuring of the financial system of the world [and why does everything always have to be global?] in the image of Them.

Why all the media attention? The MSM is controlled, it's not even an issue, so why no D notices on this? Why are Credit Suisse left unprotected? To hit back at the Swiss releasing personal details on clients? It would be nice to know what's going on here.

[writers] and the near impossibility of becoming one

2009-09-22T10:12:00.001+01:00

Vox on writers:

John Scalzi attempts to explain, again, why established writers are seldom interested in reading the work of those hoping to break through the publishing barrier:

Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers who spend their time bitching about how published/established writers are mean because they won’t read your work/introduce you to their agent/give your manuscript to their editor/get you a job on their television show/whatever other thing it is you want them to do for you: A few things you should know....

It's ironic that Scalzi has to point this out so often, considering that he does more for beginning writers with his Big Idea posts than any writer not named The Original Cyberpunk.

My reasons for not reading unpublished fiction are a little different, however.

First, I simply don't have the time. I don't even read much good published fiction these days; I prefer to spend my reading time on history and economics. For example, yesterday afternoon I was reading Bernanke's The Great Depression, about which more will be said anon, and finished with Demosthenes's Orations as the nightcap.

I'm not saying I don't plow through my share of mind candy, having just read Conn Iggledon's four Emperor books last week, but unless a novel is particularly good or original, I find that I'm less interested than I used to be.

Second, after two spells on the Nebula novel jury, a year participating in the Critters Workshop, and six months working as the de facto gatekeeper for a fantasy publisher, I never, ever, want to read any new writer's unpublished fiction ever again. Still less do I feel like arguing with a writer over why my opinion of his writing, which he sought out in the first place, is wrong.

If you think much of the fiction that is published today is pretty awful, you're correct. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the stuff that is being rejected. I don't care if you think your first scribblings are brilliant or not, the probabilities dictate otherwise and I'm quite willing to swap the chance to be the first to recognize an unpublished masterpiece for the privilege of not having to read three dozen attempted crimes against the reading public.

There are some talented writers out there who are just beginning their literary careers. I occasionally read them over at the Friday Challenge and wouldn't mind publishing two or three of them someday if I ever find myself in a position to do so. If you want advice and constructive criticism, I strongly recommend participating in the activities there.

However, since I don't use an agent and at least half the publishers in the States and UK would rather chew off their fingers than sign a publishing contract with my name on it, you'd probably be much better off not doing things my way anyhow.

Now, I have certainly had the benefit of help from established writers such as Bruce Bethke, Joel Rosenberg, Lois Bujold, and Pat Wrede. But keep this in mind. At the time the OC was kind enough to look over my work and tell me to throw away my second novel attempt - which a few of you may be interested to know was set in the world of Summa Elvetica, albeit a version sans religion - I was already a nationally syndicated columnist.

The lesson is: if you have the talent or the ambition, or preferably, both, and you are willing to be persistent, you'll eventually find a way.

My comments

I find Scalzi a prat and have made a mental note never to read him - those comments of his were nasty. However, he does have a point, as Vox mentioned. The grim reality of the writing scene is that:

1. The majority of it is dire and yet the new hopeful only wants someone to read him/her, just wants someone to give him a break.

2. Every writer a bit further up the ladder is wanting him/herself read instead and is not, no matter how altruistic in nature, vitally concerned with a newbie of unproven and maybe unskilled writing talent - there are how many million of them out there.

Thus we have a, "Will you just look at this piece I've written?" which gets, in reply, "Well OK, if you just look at my piece on intergalactic travel first. Now, funnily enough, I thought of the theme in the bathtub some years ago and some people have been kind enough to suggest ..."

The first budding writer left five minutes ago.

3. Quite frankly, in the writing game, no one is going to give you a break.

4. Some put their scribblings on their blogs, as I do and a few others on my blogrolls do - one blogger's whole site is given over to his writing.

Vox's idea of writers' workshops and sites where you can run the gamut of criticism is a good one but it flies in the face of the artistic temperament of the would-be writer - his is a masterpiece, misunderstood by the critics, consummate and whole as it stands. It's humble pie to go through a process of "wasting" time on other budding writers when all you want is to have yourself published.

The writer who does initially get published knows how hard the road is and goes through a lot of s--- before getting to anywhere near "known" and during that time, he is honing his technique, learning the ropes and finding out which genres will be read and which won't. He sends pieces to magazines and news services, hawks himself to agents or else finds one and builds on that and so on.

That's the reality.

[blogger lockdown] day 3

2009-09-22T08:02:00.002+01:00

There's a blog here which let's you cut through the c--p with contacting Blogger/Google but they don't make it easy. As the guy says:

Having some issue and want to contact Blogger Support directly? Wait a minute pal, it’s not that easy. Many important reporting forms are hidden somewhere inside a maze called Blogger Help. If you lucky, you might find some, after going here and there, turn left and right, back and forth, up and down, etc.

To those people kind enough to suggest they'd contact Blogger on my behalf, about this lockdown, I really don't know what to suggest. The link above might work. Either way, Blogger are less than impressive in the way they deal with clients.

Meanwhile

Still in the experimental stages, the new blog is being constructed but as it is more than a blog this time, it is taking a fair bit of work. It is a different url and even that is being changed from day to day, things added, things subtracted, new themes found, new databases.

The transfer of Blogger files continues - there are many - and all that remains is to thank you for your help and offers of help, turning bewilderment into a clear idea where this thing is headed. This will be the last of these lockdown posts until it's actually resolved now.

Update Tuesday, 0912, our time

Right, they've lifted the lockdown without a word of apology and turned what were reasonably kindly feelings towards Blogger into a resentment of the way they organize themselves and pursue these policies. They need to look long and hard at their bots and what can be done to someone's site and piece of mind.

Do they seriously want sustainable blogs on their hosting service, do they want people who use the blog to write or do they want the Myspace Kid? If Blogger aspires to anything higher, and they seem to be doing so with their innovations, compared to three years ago, then the whole systemic mentality has to change.

That's all I have to say on that matter.

[thought for the day] monday evening

2009-09-21T22:45:00.001+01:00

It's the end of the world; there's nothing more to live for:

[most influential films of all time] my top four

2009-09-21T21:30:00.002+01:00

Breathless, The Seventh Seal, Casablanca, Die Hard, Battleship Potemkin and so on and so on - how can any of these be left off a list of influential films? To choose the four most influential is a near impossibility but mine are below.

Which ones have been left out? Remember - not best film - most influential on English speaking audiences.

[late evening listening] strumming guitar

2009-09-21T20:00:00.003+01:00

The Economic Voice's Titanic Captain presents Chris King in Cardiff:

Dearieme pours fire on troubled oil with his own pithy observation of the Blogger lockdown saga. Laugh? I reach for my Browning :)

Yes

Finally, I present Chris Isaac [yes I know I've posted this before but I like it]. The camerawork is amateurish but the sound is nice:

[blogger lockdown] day 2

2009-09-21T18:07:00.001+01:00

Update 18:00

Busy building the new site - you know how long that takes - and so I can't get round much until tomorrow morning. I'll be over to you as soon as I can. There are scheduled posts coming this evening.

This morning's post

From the fact that this post is up, it appears that I can post, with verification, verification being something I detest at the best of times so let's not dwell on that.

More to the point is how this situation could have happened in the first place.

There seems to be a mechanism where anyone at all can come in to anyone's site - I could come to yours, if you're on Blogger - and simply click Flag in the navbar. Your blog then is immediately locked down by Blogger and you can't post. Worse than that, I can click Delete this Blog on YOUR blog at any time - Blogger let you do that.

Guilty until proven innocent.

Pardon me but isn't there a principle in U.S. and British law that a person is innocent until proven guilty? I know the West-Midlands springs to mind immediately to a Brit, in terms of justice but even in our democracy-lite days of this era the principle still technically applies.

And whatever happened to previous form on a blog? Whatever has been built up over the years?

If this is, in fact, the Blogger/Google policy, then it stinks.

Go to Wordpress you say and I'm very much inclined to but I've been looking at the Wordpress terms and conditions and even if I purchase the top upgrade, I still can't do something as simple as alter my site's appearance. I can write new CSS style sheets, at a cost to me, renewable yearly and my old changes are lost if I don't renew.

The only way to achieve a comparable level of site control to what I currently enjoy, vis-a-vis editing, is to be a VIP blogger and for that you must be invited and have 500 000 hits a month. I don't like this. For most people, editing of blog appearance is not an issue but for me it is.

For example, I want 994px width to my theme. OK, currently, I just go to my template and type it in, making the other necessary changes along the way. Simple. But on Wordpress, that's not possible - one can only choose between custom themes someone else is offering and can make only cosmetic changes to it, playing at being an editor.

Even if you were to recommend a good-self hosting and server set-up, that's money, whereas Blogger lets you do that for free. Apart from Blogger's recent insistence on trying to organize Compose with this stupid "p", which I then have to go through and change back or else compose entirely in html, the only criticism is this bloody lockdown nonsense they seem to pursue, on the whim of someone who doesn't like you.

In my situation, the nature of my subject matter means there are plenty of people who don't so I could be in for a more or less continuous lockdown, each time with a 20 day waiting period for someone to come along and unlock it.

Blogging - who needs it?

[best five bond films] few will agree

2009-09-21T17:35:00.003+01:00

Who was it who said that if it hadn't been a James Bond film, it would have been acclaimed? On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with soundtracks like this, was very strong as an action romance, it didn't enter the realms of the improbable [not a lot anyway] and it had all the required elements of a top film.

I'll go out on a limb and rate these my five contenders for best Bond films of all time:

1. Casino Royale [2006]

Craig was fantastic the way he exploded onto the screen and later rolled the Aston Martin a record number of times, his leading lady was excellent with real interaction the like which hadn't been seen since OHMSS, Mads Mikkelson and the terrorist were quite creepy and frightening respectively and just as important as a leading lady, in my book, is the quality of the offsider - in this case Giancarlo Giannini, a great choice for the role.

M - Dame Judy, who's done to that role what David Suchet and Joan Hickson did to theirs, is the only conceivable choice.

The locations were superb and that train journey "I'm the money" exotic. From the free-running at the start to the sad ending, this was a film and a half. And don't forget the muscle bound Bond in the blue trunks, rising from the water.

2. OHMSS [1969]

Barry's lush score, the plot, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas and a very strong supporting cast, including the great Ilse Steppart, made for a superb piece of escapism. These were real actors in there. The offsider [as far as Bond has offsiders] was Gabriele Ferzetti - an Italian smoothy, just as in Casino Royale. Don't forget Moneypenny either.

On the down side was George Lazenby, of course, for his woodenness but I contend that he was excellent in the fight scenes and I couldn't see Sean Connery doing romance as well as Lazenby. Remember Entrapment - great film but Sean's writers wisely kept off the romance. The scene in the car with father and daughter in OHMSS was as good as acting gets. "Love? That might come too."

This film had exotic written all over it, from the atmosphere at the glass door of the UE office to the bobsled chase, not to mention suspense in Gumbolt's office. Great film.

3. Goldeneye [1995]

Great return for Bond, bungee-jumping down that dam wall and Sean Bean lifts anything he's in - he was a mean muvver of a baddy [one reviewer said "At last we have a villain who is more than just a megalomaniac."] He always disquietens me, Sean Bean and as for Famke Janssen and Dame Judy, they were right out of the top drawer. Joe Don Baker was much better here, Robby Coltrane was Robby Coltrane and clearly enjoying the part, not to mention Izabella Scorupco's feisty Natalya and don't forget Q.

Very strong and like the previous two, in the hands of a very good director on a mission from the franchise. Downside? Not a lot really and that might be it's main strength, Goldeneye - it's evenness. It's a real Bond vehicle.

4. For Your Eyes Only [1981]

Moore is not my favourite Bond but he sure is smooth. I should think a lady would be more satisfied with a night out with the assiduous Moore than with Wham Bam Sean, however dangerous he looks. Put Carole Bouquet in there with her brooding manner and add Topol, a great rogue if ever there was one and there are the makings of a great film.

The graveyard scene showed Moore back to his best - he can act - and the clifftop finale was very strong, as was the nice touch of the sleigh ride. Less acceptable was the killing off of a baldy meant to be Blofeld and the egregious Bibi plus the Margaret Thatcher at the end was barely OK. That was the Bondishness that the series doesn't really need and where was the Aston Martin, even though the 2CV was fun?

The professional marksman was more frightening than any of the main baddies and it's a pity that couldn't have been developed. However, all in all, it was an excellent film.

5. I'm going to cheat here and say I can't make up my mind between:

a. From Russia with Love - Grant, Tatiana Romanova, the wonderful Kerim Bey and the train motif, often a winner. But more than this - it was a film where all the elements came together, against the odds, of a great director. Don't forget Sean at his menacing best either.

b. Die Another Day - for Halle Berry and Rick Yuen.

c. Goldfinger - because it's great.

d. You Only Live Twice - exotic locales and score but a boring space-plot and tedious destruction of the techno-cavern again.

e. TWINE - for Sophie and Denise.

f. For me, the two best villains ever - Richard Kiel [Jaws] and Goetz Otto [Stamper]

"Villains" is a good theme for another post but for me, Otto and Die Hard's Alan Rickman [Hans] and Alexander Godunov [Karl] take some beating for sheer terror and creepiness.

Anyway - that's my list. And yours?

Master debaters and the art of conviction

2009-09-21T15:02:00.000+01:00

Mr. Eugenides asks whether the art of debate is what we require of our politicians today or if it is more that we require integrity and a belief in that which they're arguing.

So glad the Galloping Greek could return for another bout, his previous two pieces being on Scotland, Greece and Russia and then ... yes, believe it ... on Heaven!

I spent my student days at Glasgow University, and quite a lot of that time was spent in the Union Debating society, which was then reputed as among the very best in the world. Noted for producing formidable debating talents (leave aside their politics) such as John Smith, Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy among others, Union debaters had a history of success unparalleled by any other university; fifteen times British champions - three times more wins than any other institution, at that time - and five times World champions, a record which still stands and to which I am proud to have contributed.

More to the point, perhaps, we played the game in the right spirit, dammit. Not for us the rituals of debating geeks up and down the land, burying their heads in back issues of the Economist and memorising statistics about world trade. No, GUU men (and girls) stood up and took the fight to the opposition with rhetoric, confidence and (on a good day) razor-sharp wit; bristling with aggression, chutzpah and balls (particularly the girls), we were the first into the bar at the end of the day and the last out every night, without fail.

Generously funded by our Union – the only good kind of union – some of us were lucky enough to travel the world at taxpayers’ expense before John Prescott made it popular, and we were damned if we were going to spend our precious week in New York, Manila or Sydney getting an early night tucked up in bed when there was nightlife to be explored and local brews to be sampled. Love us or hate us, few people were unaware of the presence of the Glasgow contingent at a post-debate party; kilted, beers in hand and never shy to start a singsong, they were (and are) a fixture thankfully more permanent than the Tartan Army at international football tournaments.

Glasgow was and is peculiar in so far as internal debates are conducted on a “Parliamentary” system. A number of quasi-political clubs, such as SNP, Tories or Whigs, argue for broadly left- or right-wing points of view throughout the year, and while membership of clubs is not tied to real-world political parties, the system makes it possible for those of a certain world-view to attend debates during the year in the knowledge that they will usually be arguing for policies and positions with which they have some sympathy.

But competitive intervarsity debating is different. When you get to a competition, teams are drawn randomly on proposition or opposition, and only then is a motion for debate announced. You have 15 minutes to prepare a detailed and preferably water-tight argument for or against regime change in Burma, say, or renewal of Trident, or the legalisation of drugs. Your own political beliefs and sympathies are neither here nor there. And, unlike Question Time or the House of Commons, assertions and half-truths are punished by opponents, and by adjudicators.

Those who succeed are those who become skilled at making up cases on the fly, who are flexible enough to quickly adapt to either side of literally any subject, who can be instantly persuasive for or against any proposition at the drop of a hat, and then stand up in the next debate and, if need be, argue for precisely the opposite with apparent sincerity and conviction.

My generation of ex-debaters are now, for the most part, in their thirties, and many of the most successful, from places like Oxbridge, the Inns of Court, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Trinity College, are in politics, either as party hacks, advisers or, in many cases, as elected, or soon-to-be-elected, councillors, MSPs and MPs.( I won’t name them to spare their blushes, but they span all parties from all across the spectrum.)

I can’t claim to know all these people well, but I can predict with a fair degree of confidence that in another ten years or so there will be a liberal smattering of familiar [to me] faces on the green benches – and, by extension, in legislatures around the world.

If you’re still reading, you may by now have divined the point I’m building up to. We have a whole generation of budding politicians who have basically been groomed to construct and deliver arguments based not on their own convictions but on the vagaries of a computerised draw. We’re speaking in favour of higher spending to see the country through recession? Great, I’ve jotted down some compelling arguments from the pro side. Oh, sorry, I wrote the draw down wrong; we’re actually opposing higher spending? No problem; we can do that too. What do I personally think about this? What’s that got to do with anything?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that my time as a debater really did equip me with critical thinking skills and techniques which have stood me in good stead in my life; I’m confident in front of a crowd, still reasonably quick on my feet in an argument, and I can see both sides of every story. And the aforementioned debaters, who are now making their way into politics and may in time become senior figures in their respective parties, are for the most part people of conviction whom I would be happy to have as representatives, even when their politics differ widely from my own.

But I worry about a political system in which whole cohorts of new MPs have essentially been trained to lie as smoothly and professionally as possible, and boast about it on their CVs (as, indeed, do I). We’ve got enough liars in that place as it is.

[french news] romance more exciting than corruption

2009-09-21T13:07:00.002+01:00

The story of Villepin and Sarkozy:

Nicolas Sarkozy accuse Dominique de Villepin d'avoir monté un complot destiné à l'abattre dans sa course vers la présidentielle de 2007.

... is seemingly of less importance to the French, if le Figaro's order of articles is to be believed, than the story of:

"Les amours romanesques de la princesse et du président"

Amusing that she is written of as Lady Di in the French press. The French seem to have their priorities straight.

[rocket to russia] turned on iran

2009-09-21T10:10:00.002+01:00

Click pic to zoom

The implications of Obama's turnaround on the European missiles is interesting in that all the strategic analysis in the world will not avail if one is not up with the shadow play. I don't purport to be up with it but little snippets pop up from time to time to indicate the real agenda.

It's all a question of layers. The smart thinkers will say:

Still, some analysts point to the possibility the US shelved planned anti-missile interceptors in Poland and a huge radar in the Czech Republic in exchange for the Kremlin abandoning its reluctance to exert pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

The White House is good at strategic misdirection and it's possible, just possible, that the official explanation might be close to the truth:

The White House gave two official reasons for scrapping plans for the missile shield. First, it claims to not foresee an immediate or near-term threat from any Iranian inter-continental ballistic missiles. Second, the US is now convinced that Iran is "hastening" its short- and medium-range missiles that can be better intercepted by American ships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea.

Pretty clear though, isn't it, that the effect will be to put pressure on Russia's relationship with Iran, a key obstacle to the U.S. plans for isolating Iran. There's most likely been some cash sweeteners to Russia in this too. Which is why Iran should be just a little concerned.

[thought for the day] sunday evening

2009-09-20T22:05:00.000+01:00

If people want a sense of purpose, they should get it from their archbishops. They should not hope to receive it from their politicians.

[Harold Macmillan - 1968]

Unfortunately, while it still might be the case with politicians, it's now also the case with archbishops. A lady named Catherine, on a forum just now, said, "Too many unbelievers preaching."

Presumably she meant that people were in charge who are more into how they are placed with the community and not with what their prime directive is.

Same with the pollies. Can we please have someone who has a clear policy, explains it well and has no intention of deviating from its basic principles without looking over his shoulder to see how it's been received?

[know your cows] which ungulate is which

2009-09-20T21:30:00.002+01:00

As usual - name them, say which is the odd one out and why.
Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4

[late evening listening] dearieme asks the lady to be good

2009-09-20T20:00:00.001+01:00

In this special Spam-threat Edition, Dearieme brings us forward to the swing era which wasn't actually one of my own favourites though the musicianship here is impeccable:

In trying to think what to add to that, I looked at other swing but thought to go with the John Barry number instead:

[housekeeping] blog under attack

2009-09-20T18:00:00.003+01:00

Well, all I can say is that the only surprise is that it did not happen before.

Basically, this blog has been reported as spam and I'd put money on who it was who did it. All right, I'm not going to worry about that now but for the moment, this is the state of play:

1. My blog will apparently be reviewed by a human within 20 days, if I appeal, which I have now done and during that time, I may not put up a new post;

2. Update - they have now told me it doesn't look like spam, the bots have apologized but a human will still review it and restrictions still apply. If they decide that the blog is spam, then it and with it the 5236 posts, will be lost.

3. This is a very real possibility because for their spam bots to pick up on something in the first place, then something has been put onto my site and it's possibly still going to be there when they check.

4. This check of theirs, now I've appealed, could be any time from now until 20 days hence. Therefore, N.O. might suddenly disappear during that time.

5. If you come here and the site has gone, my other Nourishing Obscurity is here and this blog will continue over there until I set up my own domain. So, to reiterate, if this blog disappears, then the Wordpress version of this site will be where you'd go if you wished to read my posts.

6. My own domain has been in the pipeline for some time - there is a host and I'd be using Wordpress - it would also be called Nourishing Obscurity and the url would contain that name in some form. The reason I haven't done this until now is that Blogger/Google has been pretty good and the blog's been going nicely.

7. Therefore, it depends on the actions of Blogger/Google in the next three weeks.

8. Meanwhile, the pesky business of transporting my old posts to Wordpress will go ahead.

As I wrote at the start, it surprises me that it's not happened before now. Stay tuned, people.

Update

9. The transfers have begun. I plan to blog as normal at either of the two sites.

[dinner with sarah] americans support troops

2009-09-20T13:11:00.005+01:00

Meanwhile, the Americans are also at it with a celebrity auction.

The idea is that you bid for something like a dinner with Sarah Palin and the money goes to the soldiers.

And what do the soldiers say? Well, this one, avatar Blackhawk, writes:

Just back from second tour in Afghanistan. It is good to hear high profile politicians supporting the troops. Governor Palin has always been a big support of our military. She flew to Kosovo to meet with the Alaskan troops there and I know they loved that. It makes us feel better about putting our lives on the line when people like Governor Palin put themselves forward for us.

That got me thinking, a bit off topic here but if you could have a dinner [and dancing?] with anyone you liked, say for a donation to the troops, who would you choose to have that dinner with?

[slice of history] caught forever on vinyl

2009-09-20T12:02:00.004+01:00

Sorry - on a roll and can't help it. I've never seen a guy so scared his woman was going to soar above him. Trouble was, she did:

This was with the Crystals original singer Barbara Alston:

I don't know. I never thought I'd get nostalgic but there's a passion and power to this simple, harmonic music which is just not around now. This was from before my time so I can't say I grew up with it but it definitely has something I can't define and missed at the time.

Was it that they weren't into themselves as great celebrities and that they just loved singing for the sound of it?