[sherlock holmes] the best story in my opinion

Mycroft Holmes, by Sidney Paget, although the illustrations for this story were by Arthur Twidle

There’ve been many surveys of the top Sherlock Holmes stories over the years and I’ve a complicated comparative chart of surveys in a file, decades apart, which it would take too long to post. The one below is a fairly recent reader survey:

1. "The Speckled Band"
2. "The Red-Headed League"
3. "A Scandal in Bohemia"
4. "Silver Blaze"
5. "The Blue Carbuncle"
6. "The Musgrave Ritual"
7. "The Final Problem"
8. "The Empty House"
9. "The Dancing Men"
10. "The Six Napoleons"
11. "The Bruce-Partington Plans"
12. "The Man with the Twisted Lip"

Personally, I put the Bruce-Partington Plans at the top, not because it fulfils all these criteria necessarily:

1. 3 dimensional, memorable characters – real living, breathing people
2. clever, inventive situations
3. the thrill of the chase, the passion, the seriousness of the hunt
4. mystery – the Agatha Christie ‘whodunit’ method
5. watching a professional at work - seeing Holmes’s deductive method in action
6. reader’s feeling of immediacy, particularly at the beginning of stories
7. sense of ‘fullness’ and ‘richness’ in the text, particularly in the dialogue

… but because Holmes and Co’s dialogue is almost as I imagine myself reacting, e.g.

He paced restlessly about our sitting-room in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture, and chafing against inaction. "Nothing of interest in the paper, Watson?" he said.

I was aware that by anything of interest, Holmes meant anything of criminal interest.

Then comes the telegram that his brother is to visit so they brush up on the case:

"There has been an inquest," said I, "and a good many fresh facts have come out. Looked at more closely, I should certainly say that it was a curious case."

"Judging by its effect upon my brother, I should think it must be a most extraordinary one." He snuggled down in his armchair. "Now, Watson, let us have the facts."

Later, when Mycroft refuses to accept Sherlock’s puzzlement over the case:

What is there for us to do?"

"To act, Sherlock - to act!" cried Mycroft, springing to his feet. "All my instincts are against this explanation. Use your powers! Go to the scene of the crime! See the people concerned! Leave no stone unturned! In all your career you have never had so great a chance of serving your country."

"Well, well!" said Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. "Come, Watson! And you, Lestrade, could you favour us with your company for an hour or two?"

You can access the whole story here.

[blogfocus tuesday] the boys cut loose

The moment you try to make a distinction between the best men’s and women’s writing, you’re on a sticky wicket and people can equally point to a hundred pieces which would disprove your hypothesis.

Still, I do persist that there is a subtle difference in style, in approach. Dare I say it’s maybe the difference between ‘power and range’ and ‘unerring accuracy and roundness’? Perhaps not. Well, you be the judge, as the boys flex their muscles this evening:

1 Dead as a Dodo was always going to be a great concept – to write up events and pass them off as if they were obituaries - but great concepts are as dead as dodos if they’re not accompanied by some nifty writing, as in the death of Free Will, peace be upon it:

Free Will was an unpopular child – frequently getting into fights with philosophers who felt their decision to gang up on Free Will and attempt to beat it to a pulp were all preordained by bearded men on Mount Olympus given to chucking thunderbolts about and changing into swans and bulls to ravish young maidens. Later on it would grow up be an unpopular adult, frequently getting into fights with Logical, Biological and Theological determinists who thought their decision to gang up on Free Will was preordained by past events, the contents of their genes or a bearded man in the sky with a strange resemblance to Dr Rowan Williams.

2 The rant is a form of writing many ladies do well but for sheer effortless style, the Periodic Englishman takes some beating. Here he explodes at the escalation of atrocities and dispiriting cr-p which is going on in the world just now, peace not be upon the perpetrators:

What is wrong with people? Where in the name of God are the good guys? How is it possible to twiddle one’s thumbs as these babies cry out in despair? A club to the head and a knife through young hearts and a mother slumped dead in her chair. A blood soaked mountain stinking of death. Too much to take in, too much to deal with, and all so very far away that it should just feel fine. It really doesn't though. I’ve got to quit this Rwanda habit immediately, because it simply does my head in. This shattering confirmation that the world has gone to hell destroys the will to live.

Does it not, sweet Romeo?

3 One of my very favourites, if you can see past the c—ts and f---s, is the Reactionary Snob and I enjoy him more in cruise mode than in overdrive but each to his or her own:

I am an anachronistic, mud-soaked old thing who likes things the way they are. I like, when I get in to my house, to be met by a rather stiff gin & tonic. I like my son to eat at the table in the fashion that the Booby and I have instructed him, rather than doing his 'pig eating slops' impression and I am not too keen on the new fashion of footballers kissing each other when celebrating a goal - not that I'm a homophobe, I just don't think it's the done thing. I am, as you may have guessed, inherently conservative.

Nine more boy bloggers here.

[bee world] colony collapse disorder

This blog doesn’t usually cut and paste vast tracts of an MSM story but this is an exception:

Colony Collapse Disorder is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the United States. Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some commercial beekeepers have reported losing more than 50 per cent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.

The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations. Among the clues being assembled by researchers:

- Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive, sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.

- From the outside, a stricken colony may appear normal, with bees leaving and entering. But when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find few mature bees taking care of the younger, developing bees.

- Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees from other colonies or by pests going after the hive's honey. That's not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem.

[harvard] the enormity of the error

Harvard Business School in winter

You could be forgiven for thinking that Harvard had made a marvellous decision and is at the dawn of a new era of prosperity:

Despite the 50-50 leadership split at the Ivies, only 20 percent of US colleges and universities are run by women. Dr. Faust's appointment could have a lasting impact on the gender imbalance among faculty at Harvard, and in the leadership ranks across academia, experts say.

Note the little bit tacked on the end – ‘experts say’? Really and what’s the criterion for expertise in determining ‘gender imbalance’? That’s right – the feministi, at the ready with the free-of-charge-quote. Well let’s hear, for a change from real experts – women involved in the Ivy League.

First off, Sissy Willis has yet another quote from the woman who’s looking worse and worse as she goes along:

"The fascination with war can be 'almost pornographic in its combination of thrill and terror,'" wrote the ivory-tower-bound woman who would be President of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, in a 2004 article in the journal Civil War History.

Dr. Fausta's own violent, shapeless and meaningless verbal assault on the honorable men and women who make this world safe for her to pursue her muse took our breath away. She is William Arkin with a PhD. It gets worse:

Thus we are the ones who give meaning to war - so it's up to us to come to terms with the power of war stories. "In acknowledging its attraction," she concludes, "we diminish its power" - we move from being part of the problem to part of the solution.

The arrogance is stunning.

Lest you feel that this is one biased lady with a chip on her shoulder, try this, from a Dymphna e-mail she’s kindly allowed me to quote from:

It's viscerally sickening. This stuff makes me feel impotent. These women are not going to just age out and retire – they have recruits who will follow in their footsteps.

Ever since that woman had to flee Larry Summers' speech because she was "so upset" I have been amazed at how the events flowed from that. She should have been laughed out of Harvard for being so emotional re a philosophical *inquiry* but instead Larry Summers let them nail his family jewels to a chair.

*He* should have left as soon as he started being mau-maued. Maybe he was too close to the situation to see that he was being stripped and the fems had their spike and hammer ready. I will never, ever understand why he stayed till the bitter end and kissed gluteus maximus for months. He sure didn't do real feminism any favors because now we're stuck with these nasty specimens.

Women like this don't get it ... it's a law of human culture that when women begin to dominate a field, men slowly drift away. Female undergraduates are in the majority now (but not in the sciences, of course). Makes you wonder where all the men are.

Also makes you wonder about the rising phenomenon of "mean girls." They're really increasing. The B and I had no idea or we'd have tried to arm the future Baron for those encounters. Girls sure have changed, and not for the better. I think it's a culture-wide happening. On both sides of the divide.

If I knew Larry Summers' address I'd send him a deeply-felt sympathy card.

Let’s look at the bona fides of the two women making these allegations. This is Sisu. A glance at her post titles says all that’s necessary about her capacity to reason. As for Dymphna, Gates of Vienna needs no comment from me. Plus these two are close to the action over there on an almost daily basis.

It's time we all woke up, from whichever country we blog from, as to what's going down here.

[breast cancer] hope for the hormone sensitive

One for Jeremy Jacobs, who now must be counting the hours until his trek:

A new drug is giving women with breast cancer fresh hope by lowering oestrogen levels in women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer. Research has shown that switching from tamoxifen, the standard breast cancer treatment, to the new drug exemestane after two or three years resulted in death rates falling by 17 per cent.

The chances of dying were now 50 per cent lower than they would have been with no chemotherapy, and 17 per cent lower than they were without the switch from tamoxifen. The charity Cancer Research UK, whose scientists were involved in the study, said the treatment protocol would prevent an estimated 1,300 deaths each year if it was rolled out across the UK.

Let’s hope and pray that is so.

[fashionisti] various proposals to clean it up

Should the fashion world follow the lead of Spain's top runway show, the Pasarela Cibeles, and stop using thin models?

Yes (89%) 3259 votes
No (11%) 413 votes

Personally, I think that:

# unprovoked scowling should be banned [see photo];
# they should all undergo a course of interpersonal relations and kindness training before they’re let loose on the catwalk;
# the gay mafia should be excised from the fashion industry altogether;
# ‘real women’ in real sizes should be encouraged to join the industry.

[qantas hostesses] should they be toilet trained

Qantas Girl's Choir

First, a Qantas flight attendant was telling off another woman for taking too long in a toilet when the toilet door was slammed shut on her, cutting off her fingertip.

Now, a Qantas flight attendant, accused of having sex with British actor Ralph Fiennes in an aircraft toilet, has been stood down. She says Fiennes followed her into the toilet and "became amorous", but she denies having sex with him.

A glance at Qantas requirements for hosties:

· Lifting a 28kg aircraft window exit;
· Dealing with emergencies in a smoke-filled simulator;
· Swimming and assisting people in the water;
· Descending an escape slide, 9 metres above the ground;
· Fighting fires while wearing a full face mask;
· Controlling people in panic situations;
· Moving disabled people in evacuations.

… does not appear to include toilet training. One also wonders about N3 on the list.

[relationship survey] some canadian results

1,500 adults were surveyed across Canada:

# 70% Canadians are in a relationship.
# 55 % of women said being faithful was the most important criteria;
# 49 % of men said being faithful was the most important criteria;
# 35 % of those polled said intelligence was a major factor in lasting love;
# 34 per cent of respondents said respecting the other's independence was important;
# 31 per cent said knowing how to listen was vital;
# 30 per cent of men said physical attraction rated high;
# 26 per cent said being nice was vital;
# 14 per cent of women rated physical attraction important;
# 12 per cent of males said being good in bed was a priority;
# 5 per cent of respondents rated money as very important;
# 4 per cent of females said being good in bed was a priority;
# respect and listening were significantly more important to the women than the men.

1] Do you believe these results?
2] Are they your priorities as well?

[u.s.a] open letter to my american friends

My US blogfriends are most important to me and keeping your interest in this blog is one of my main tasks. Visiting you over there is part of that and I enjoy reading and discussing your issues with you, e.g. the Harvard matter.

I have but one gripe – unilateralism.

There really is this tendency, at times, to feel you’re going it alone, that it’s only the US out there and then the rest of the world. This attitude ignores your allies Britain, Canada and Australia. These countries have fought alongside you and are happy to be full allies, not so much to implement US policy but to implement a Free-World policy, or so the theory goes. You’re the largest and most powerful of these and so enjoy premier place.

When John Howard said that he was defending Australia’s interests in his comments on the US presidential race, that’s what he meant. The US alliance means that these countries are inextricably interwoven and the leadership of the US very much affects the prospects of its other allies. If you didn’t need those allies, you wouldn’t have kept them on. Therefore there is not only keen interest in your presidential race but a stake in it as well.

To turn round and tell us to ‘butt-out’, as I’ve read today, is illogical because our interests are also involved. To say Britain, Canada and Australia contribute nothing in Iraq, as I’ve read today, is not only blind to the reality but smacks of the unilateralism I was referring to.

It’s also not very friendly.

[welfare] money on language learning, not translators

More than four million pounds is spent on translators at job centres to help those who cannot speak English claim benefits. Welfare Minister Jim Murphy has proposed that from April, this money should instead be spent on improving the language skills of the unemployed to help them find work.

At first sight, this seems reasonable but I’ll watch with interest the comments of other Britbloggers. Perhaps there’s something we’ve missed here.