[heraldry] make your own coat of arms

The purists will no doubt have me on the short list for euthanasia but:

Dymphna, one of the partners in Gates of Vienna, posed the question some time ago: "What would appear on your coat of arms?"

I did have one but lost it. Now if you are entitled to one already, well and good and the World is not Enough. But for the rest of us – time to get working on our heraldry. Mine appears below:

Symbolism of the Higham coat-of-arms

The anchor means hope, religious steadfastness and symbolizes sailing.

The four quadrants separated by the dancette line:

1] Paschal lamb with cross is evident;
2] Stag means one who will not fight unless provoked;
3] Dolphin represents grace and style;
4] Catherine wheel means one who is prepared to undergo trials for his faith
5] Spilt blood means just that.

The dancette line crossing the shields means water.
The wombat represents obstinate determination and directness.
The badger represents hidden talent, integrity and determination.

Amo ut invenio means ‘I love as I find’.


Good sites to help you with your tasteful design

Fleur de lis
Painting about

My notated list of expressions in traditional heraldry

Bordure - polite way of saying "Cr-p"
Couchant - avec moi
Counter-passant - nothing you wish to buy there
Dormant - intimate organs
Fesse - con
Gardant - anti-perspirant
Mullet - Tony Blair
Passant regardant - check out the chicks
Pile - ordure [b]
Rampant regardant - on hind legs, tongue hanging out
Trippant - on substances

[thought for the day] sunday evening

Time for that old Chesterton snippet:

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.

[rationalism] perpetuating blinkered half truths

No fool like an old fool

Definition of political correctness:

No matter what guise the particular variety takes, the end result is always the same: repression, followed by carnage and tragedy, born out of good intentions towards the common good.

It's a quick step from here to Statism, compulsion and denial of free will:

If men hadn't free will, how can we possibly come to any moral decisions? This lays the basis for the idea, that the only natural environment for man, is liberty. This being the reason why mentally and emotionally mature people prefer freedom over Statism and Collectivism.

Cassandra explains the lie:

The central philosophical con trick of all Collectivist thought ... is perpetrated in order to accommodate the lie, so that the ideology may survive yet another generation: it is the denial of Reality and with it, the rejection of right and wrong, good and bad.

This rejection or denial creates amorality, a sort of childlike unawareness that some things are just plain wrong, such as indiscriminate sex:

This amorality has become a problem of Biblical proportions as adherents because of it, do not recognize Evil, even if it bit them in the behind.

Plus:

Another, moral consequence of the rejection of reality is, that good and bad, right and wrong, truth and lie, are denied in the same way; or to put it in another way: everybody is 'right' from his or her own particular point of view, and anything 'bad' is called 'bad', only because it doesn't fit into our present, defective idea of society.

Thus we come to moral relativism and into this fuzzy logic steps genuine evil, albeit surreptitiously in its early stages, masquerading under the do-gooder tag of "tolerance":

The denial of evil as a reality leads to wishful thinking, further blindness, and the denial of the self; it decreases rather than increases awareness. A false picture of reality is created -- the reality of the present state of humankind.

Like an alcoholic failing to concede the true nature of what faces him, deniers of the existence of evil leave themselves wide open. Elias Staub, The roots of evil: the origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.) offers another characterization:

“Evil is not a scientific concept with an agreed meaning, but the idea of evil is part of a broadly shared human cultural heritage. The essence of evil is the destruction of human beings…

That's the bottom line, both in observed experience and in metaphysics. It has always been and still is about enslavement, the denial of "humanness" and the reduction of humans to primal instincts. This is the basis of Associative Disorder and mind control. It's why Jack Nicholson had a lobotomy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. People are simply blinded to it, hamstrung by a denial of the metaphysical:

Prefiguring Peck, Rollo May long held that here in America--with its youthful optimism and naivete--we comprehend little of evil's true nature, and are thus naively ill-prepared to contend with it.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn showed how it inevitably leads to violence:

"Violence cannot exist in and of itself. It is invariably interlinked with the Lie."

The primary battleground is indeed the destruction of liberty via the unsustainable constructs of society peddled as the Lie but where the Libertarians now jump ship is that they ascribe this to the non-metaphysical entirely. However, even philosophy recognizes the place of the epistemological and epistemology seeks to explain:

"The daimonic," wrote May, "is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both. When this power goes awry, and one element usurps control over the total personality, we have "daimon possession," the traditional name through history for psychosis.

Problem is though that it strays into the realm of the metaphysical:

Nowadays however, the epistemological problem, by a fatal mistake of method, is assigned to metaphysics, and the result is a confusion between the two branches of philosophy, viz. metaphysics and epistemology.

Metaphysics joins the dots:

The metaphysical sciences reach the highest point of abstraction. They prescind, or abstract, not only from those qualities physics and mathematics abstract from, but also leave out of consideration the determination of quantity. They consider only Being and its highest determinations, such as substance, cause, quality, action etc.

It leads the scientist to a dilemma:

When therefore, the scientist rejects metaphysics, he suppresses a natural and ineradicable tendency of the individual mind towards unification and, at the same time, he tries to put up in every highway and byway of his own science a barrier against further progress in the direction of rational explanation.

Besides, the cultivation of the metaphysical habit of mind is productive of excellent results in the sphere of general culture. The faculty of appreciating principles as well as facts is a quality which cannot be absent from the mind without detriment to that symmetry of development wherein true culture consists.

Similarly, to try to reason as a philosophe, whilst excluding or rationalizing the metaphysical has always been quite erroneously fashionable; to ascribe verbose esoteric labels as the post-modernists are wont to do creates an aura of academic competence but is, in fact, incompetent by definition.

It's a stubborn mindset more concerned with perpetuating a loosely strung together set of half-truths and rejecting as beyond the pale the notion of concepts of good and evil.

Meanwhile, one side in this eternal struggle sits back and chuckles.

[baby photo parade] for your delectation

Photo 1

Hmmm, here's how it works, people - the clues are written in the post but they do not correspond to the photo in the vicinity.

Photo 2

The trick, of course, is to mix and match the photos [no more than two of any baby] to the blurbs.

Photo 3

Then some nice words in the comments section about someone else's baby photo here would be much appreciated.

Photo 4

Answers themselves are in white, as usual, below and can be seen by highlighting the line.

Photo 5

I'd take it as a personal favour if you clicked on the name in red, if you haven't already visited today and drop in on these folk to say hello and maybe have a snoop around.

Photo 6

Right, so away we go.

Photo 7

Cherie

One of me aged about 6 months old. I don’t think I have changed all that much ;-) Well maybe I have a bit more to say for myself these days!

Photo 8

Kate

These pictures are of my two youngest in the buggy, and how they are now holding my baby niece Freya who is only 10 weeks old. All very cute and very hard work......but very much loved.

Photo 9

Ginro

Some pics my Dad took when I must have been about three years old. They're black and white unfortunately so for the record I had blue eyes and dark brown hair.

The first photo I seem to look a bit dazed so was probably contemplating Einsteins Theory of Relativity, or had just done a surprise in my trousers, lol.

The second photo someone had probably put something on their head to try and make me laugh. Hmmm, now I know where my daughters serious look comes from.

Photo 10

JMB

Attached is the not so great but earliest photo I have of me. I'm lucky to have any since I have moved country twice.

Here you have the chubby legs and the chubby freckled face of JMB at the ripe old age of six. I was in 1A, it was 1942 (yes we had air raid drills regularly) and the school was Mortdale, a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

Only dresses allowed but you could bring your doll to school in those days as you can see behind me and there were quite a few in the original photo of 33 students. Imagine teaching 33 children to read at one time!

Photo 11

Sean

Sean01_a1: Where's my Teddy?

Sean02_a2: Ah ...

Photo 12

Juliet

Here I am aged three - my (paternal) gran had this photo taken during one of my visits with her.

Photo 13

Bob G

Not everyone can be a hero; somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

Photo 14

Welshcakes

I expect it's too late but here I am at 3 [I think] at my auntie's house in Devon. To think that one was ever so carefree!!

Nunyaa did not submit a blurb so her two photos in the post are the wildcards. Thanks so much for submitting those - it was a bit of yourself you were sending so I tried to do you justice.



Answers


1 Sean...2 Welshcakes...3 Bob G...4 Kate...5 Ginro...

6 Cherie...7 Julie...8 Nunyaa...9 JMB...10 Kate...

11 JMB...12 Ginro...13 Nunyaa...14 Sean.

[national stereotypes] n2 - the glaswegian

Glasgow, European City of Culture, 1990

The city itself is a mishmash, described in this article on its reign as European Capital of Culture:

The City fathers still bend over backwards to accommodate commercial interests; new buildings--commercial and residential--of abysmal quality are allowed, and the old are still allowed to decay and tumble. Glasgow has always had a strong American character, reflected in particular in its early-twentieth-century architecture, but today much of the city looks like parts of Detroit.

hingie

A traditional activity in tenement buildings, to have a hingie is to lean out of an open window in a flat and pass the time of day by watching the comings and goings in the street, occasionally conversing with passers-by or occupants of other open windows.

The stone-built tenement is a major feature of Glasgow's urban landscape, [b]uilt in large numbers from the mid-1800s to the early years of the twentieth century to accommodate the city's growing population.

The local humour's a good guide to a city's reputation:

Glaswegians consider Edinburgh to be in the east - the Far East. Edinburghers consider Glasgow to be in the west - the Wild West. How do you know when you're staying in Glasgow? When you call the hotel desk and say "I've gotta leak in my sink" and the response is "go ahead".

Glasgow teachers are known to use the following translations for the remarks they make on pupils' report cards:

"A born leader" - Runs a protection racket
"Easy-going" - Bone idle
"Helpful" - A creep
"Reliable" - Informs on his friends
"A rather solitary child" - He smells
"Popular in the playground" - Sells pornography

Rab C. Nesbitt [pictured] gives an insight into Glasgow and in particular, Govan:

Ian Pattison's scripts mercilessly poke fun at the more sanctimonious tendencies of nationalism, such as tartan wearing exiles, folk songs from the Hebrides, and the worst aspects of the 'remember Culloden' victim mentality. However the failings of the proletariat are satirised too - working-class culture and its limitations are hardly romanticised through Rab and his drinking pals, who often proudly refer to themselves as 'scum'.

Rab: "Mary, we huv knain each other tae long to let a pound ae dead meat tae come between us".

Mary: "Let's leave oor sex life oota this."





If you'd like to see the whole episode, Part 2 is here and Part 3 here. The language - a bit of background:

Northeast English, spoken throughout the traditional counties of Northumberland and County Durham , shares other features with Scots which have not been described above.As well as the main dialects, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow (see Glasgow patter) have local variations on an anglicised form of Central Scots.

Glaswegian is a bit more specific, described thus:

Glasgow patter has evolved over the centuries amongst the working classes, Irish immigrants and passing seamen in the dockyards. The dialect is anglicised west central lowland Scots or Scottish English depending on viewpoint, and features a varied mix of typical Scots expressions and vocabulary, as well as some examples of rhyming slang, local cultural references and street slang.

Some examples:

Buckie/Bucky — Buckfast Tonic Wine - cheap, strong, fortified wine popular with many teenagers.

Cleek — To refer to picking up a partner of the opposite sex, cleek being the Scots word for a hook or crook referring to the linking of arms. A more colourful theory is that it originates from late night kissing couples on tenement doorsteps and knocking milk bottles to make a clinking sound.

Dreepie - hanging from the edge of a roof so that your feet are as close as possible to the ground.

Electric soup — see buckie, also a Scottish comic book. Anything more alcoholic than tasty. To 'be on the electric soup' has an implication of loss of faculty.

Hauners — A helping hand in a playground fight.

Jeg — Any carbonated soft drink.

Mad wi it — Drunk or intoxicated.

Mintit - Cool/amazing.

Particks — A term for breasts which came about through a number of slang words, an area of the city and a pub (The Partick Smiddy).

So that's the Glaswegian and his life and as Rab explains to his wain:

"You'll be skint, battered, exploited, lied to, cheated and despised. But at least you'll no' be bored."

[the enlightenment] time honoured tradition of missing the point

I've never much bothered to raise the intellectual tone of this blog, preferring that type of poor man's intellectualism which obscures itself behind a sea of diverse comments of all shapes and sizes.

But this post by Deogolwulf, in which I largely agree with his thrust and yet feel he is missing the main underpinning, demanded reply. Deogolwulf wrote, in his comments section:

There is no necessity from liberty of thought to pluralism, for pluralism is an idea about the desirability of plurality, and if there really is liberty of thought, then I am free to come up with other ideas, even ones that might seek to reduce the liberty of thought in my rivals, ideas that are explicitly anti-pluralistic, Indeed, given the urge to dominate that we find amongst humans, that wouldn't be a surprise to find -- indeed as we do find.

As I put in footnote [5]: "As a mere matter of consequences, let us also acknowledge that from the fact of a plurality of views, derived from the call for the equal right of every man to express his own, it does not follow that any one of those views itself will have as its object, let alone its effect, a plurality of views, that is to say, that any view will itself be in favour of pluralism."

But this is rather by-the-by as far as the post is concerned; for, as said therein, right from the beginning of the radical current of the Enlightenment, liberty was conceived, in a very odd way, as being based on equality and tied to the general will.

Pluralism wasn't on their minds - nor on the minds of all those universal systemisers which you seem to have overlooked. My argument isn't that the Enlightenment had no good ideas conducive to liberty of thought; only that it had some very bad ones -- which is just as one would expect when you have liberality of thought.

That's as maybe, Deogolwulf and yet it misses the main purpose of the Enlightenment, as espoused by an as yet non-existent school of ersatz philosophical thought for which it might well be time to find a coffee house therein to promote it. I humbly reply:

"It is therefore neither an exaggeration nor a weary old canard to say that some projects of the Enlightenment were themselves totalitarian in character or that they were an inspiration to subsequent regimes."

In temporal terms, a truism indeed but the ultimate black joke is the metaphysical underpinning of the essential purpose of the wonderfully misnamed Enlightenment [I refer to it as the Darkening] which led man down hopeful country lanes only to be caught in the quagmire beyond.

This is the sum total of philosophic thinking which takes not into account the metaphysical aspects of life. In short, it was a superb con, appealing to the Babel-like egotistical presumption of the capacity of man to out-G-d G-d but without the perceptive capacity to achieve this end.

Like a dog chasing its tail.

So paying its dues to its powerful antecedents in such movements as the French Revolution and long before e'en to 1688 and earlier, which in turn paid its dues to the inevitably inept godless morality and subsequently spawning delusion in the form of otherwise sentient thinkers such as François-Marie Arouet, who under the guise of "freedom of religion" actually set up the mechanism for its suppression, religion being merely the moniker applied by those who would have spiritual connection of humans deflected, then the Darkening was on a hiding to nothing.

And even today with the Grayling delusion couched in professional philosopher approved intellectual tones, the myth is perpetuated that the explanation for humankind can exclude consideration of the spiritual aspects which make possible the eventual understanding, given the initial spirit of enquiry and intellectual equipment to be able to discern and differentiate the wheat from the chaff and posturing from imposture.

In short, it's the most natural and logical thing in the world that totalitarianism should sprout from the fertile bed of Enlightenment manure, itself patiently laid by the most perniciously cynical demagogue of all.

Callest ye this claptrap? So be it.

[thought for the day] baby photo evening

There's a Russian term which is as well known here as the Spanish "mañana" is in Spain.

This word is "бывает" [biva'yet] and it means, roughly, "it happens" but can be broadened into "it just is" or even "it's just logical". So when something doesn't go as planned, this expression keeps one's head clear and one's feet on the ground.

The baby photo parade will now be tomorrow morning for two reasons:

1. I have 5 entries but shall wait for 8;
2. The eyes are now closing and I'd like to do that post some justice.

So, with apologies, dear reader - бывает!

[troubles] question of relativity

I don't know if there's something in the air but every which way I turn this evening, bad luck and dire situations appear before my eyes.

1. The sudden quadriplegic

A promising career as a policeman, a vigorous life spent in karate classes and fishing the lakes of his beloved North Carolina, future plans conjured when things were perfect -- plans that seemed irrelevant and impossible now.

It had been eight months since John shattered his C-5 vertebra diving over a wave during a family vacation. Eight months spent in either a hospital bed or that detestable chair.Eight months, also, for Marci to hunt for the miracle that just might bring him and their family back from despair.

And now, staring at her laptop, she prayed she had found it.

2. The heartless medical jobsworths

"OK, well this is the situation. I have these recurrent eye problems that I have been told to report to the hospital every time they occur as it needs immediate attention."

"No you don't. No one can see one of the doctors here without a referral."

"You don't understand. The doctors themselves have told me to ring and book an appointment every time it happens, and I have been going in to the hospital a number of times now over the past eighteen months."

"No, you haven't. No one can see a doctor without a referral."

"Check the records."

"No one can see a doctor here without a referral."

"Look I...Oh for God's sake, forget it!" And I slammed the phone down.

3. The voice in the wilderness

I am very grateful for the support of fellow bloggers. I have spoken on many occasions to her GP and various consultants; I have written to her GP and consultants; our MSP wrote to NHS Lothian all without a glimmer of success.

I have spoken to experts outwith the NHS and one from within: all have said that Mrs Carr is the type of patient they should be seeing but yet access is denied.

Mrs Carr needs help NOW!

Others need help now!!

You can help.

Let's spread this story across the web until it so big that it cannot be ignored. If you can please post about Mrs Carr's plight; please link to my posts and ask your readers to do likewise. Even if you are not in the UK please help.

As I wrote at Ginro's:

I feel this situation of yours is far worse than mine. Mine is so laughably dire that it is going to mean a total life change. That can be handled. But to endure the sort of run around you were getting, particularly with your condition, this was beyond the pale.

Allow me to explain.

There are problems which are ongoing, soul-sapping, day after day when it seems no one cares, no one will help. These are the ones described above and they're ultimately debilitating.

Then there is mine where, through one stroke of a pen in another city, the whole bottom has dropped out and I'm now living on borrowed time but even more. I must leave country X but I technically can't because country Y will not accept entry without a return entry to country X. My problem, says country X. So I can't actually move and get incarcerated for it.

Strangely, this sort of thing is not as stressful as the other type. All representations which can be made will be - it's out of my hands and is pointless now dwelling on it until there is some result. All is in the pipeline. It will be resolved. Or else it will not - no halfway house.

My health is good, the brain is operating, the only sad part is to see friends starting to shy away - people always do if they know you have an ongoing problem. They fear you're actually going to rain on their parade and so they start to schedule a dutiful time when they feel strong enough to face you.

People are human and this is natural. Cityunslicker had something vaguely close to this in this post:

Equally quite a senior manager was effectively made redundant the other day too; true to form, everyone kept their own counsel and proceeded to ignore the poor chap and carry on as normal whilst he sat there contemplating what to do. No one must mention the unmentionable, even to someone they have worked with for years and years.

This reaction, assuming the chap was reasonably well liked, is worrying. Each of the other people in that office has his own family, mortgage, commitments and his household budget is already stretched. This reaction is not exactly dog eat dog but it is sitting back and watching colleagues picked off at random and praying it will not be him. Heads down and carry on, quite understandably, of course.

That chap has now moved, in the space of ten minutes, from trusted and respected senior colleague to an embarrassing blip on the radar whom we'd like to shift out of sight as soon as poss, thank you very much, if it's all the same to you.

JMB sounds a timely cautionary note, at this point, about this negative drift in thinking and I think she's right. Plus it's always well to sign off on an optimistic note:

Try not to judge your friends too harshly, they probably feel helpless and don't know what to say so it's easier to avoid than deal with it.

In the light of that comment, my penultimate sentence: "I'll amuse myself this third last Saturday evening by packing some boxes, bumbling around and ignoring the deafening and embarrassed silence," appears less than gracious.

For me, there are better prospects than for some of the other poor blighters I could mention.

[national stereotypes] n1 - the brummie

David Harrison, tutor in political science at Warwick University, who illustrates that Brummies occupy the upper echelons of the intelligentsia

There are some appalling things said of the Brummie and this post is intended as a service to non-British readers to help dispel those stereotypes. Wiki begins with a typical fallacy:

A study was conducted in 2008 where people were asked to grade the intelligence of a person based on their accent and the Brummie accent was ranked as the least intelligent accent. It even scored lower than being silent ...

According to Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study (Steve Thorne, 2003), among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike".

At the same time, by the way:

[P]sychologists found that the Yorkshire accent has overtaken the Queen's English, also known as received pronunciation, as the dialect most commonly associated with wisdom and intellect.

Indeed yes - reassuring to find oneself wise. The previous study also notes:

overseas visitors in contrast find [the Brummie accent] "lilting and melodious"

Hmmmm:

The BBC has alleged that intonation and rhythm is unvaried and that most sentences end with downward intonation. This can give a false impression of despondency and lack of imagination.

... but what would the BBC know? In an excellent commentary on Brummyism, Sackerson gets down to brass tacks:

First, I think the affected contempt for Brummies is a displaced scorn for industrial labour perhaps impermissible to express so baldly in relation to Yorkshiremen and Lancastrians.

Decades of regarding going into industry as the wooden spoon in life's competition, has brought Britain to our current sorry pass.

There may be a London-centric jealousy because Birmingham is not Britain's Second City, but, technically speaking, its first in geographical area and population.

On the accent, Sackers adds:

My personal preference is Sedgley, an exceptionally musical tone. Their pronunciation of the word "flowers" makes me think there must indeed have been a Golden Age in which men sang rather than spoke.

Some Brummie expressions include:

• "Rock" ... a children's hard sweet (as in "give us a rock").

• "Snap" ... food, a meal, allegedly derived from the act of eating itself (example usage "I'm off to get my snap" equates to "I'm leaving to get my dinner").

• "Trap" ... to leave suddenly, or flee.

• "Up the cut" ... Up the canal (not uniquely Birmingham).

For some homespun Brummie philosophy, try here. Well that's the accent but what about the behaviour of Brummies? This Alan Partridge analysis throws some light on this:





A fine initiative breaking down prejudice was National Talk like a Brummie Day in 2007 but I'm not sure if Britain is being prepared for a repeat dose in 2008.

[it's boris] now the hard work begins

Well that's a relief. Now comes the sober reflection. I'm sure many others are issuing words of warning so why should I be any different?

But historically, poor results for the ruling party in local British elections are not necessarily harbingers of poor results in subsequent general elections.

“We’ve been here before,” said Patrick Dunleavy, a professor of political science and public policy at the London School of Economics.

“It’s a bad time for the government, but not nearly so bad that the government couldn’t recover, even as early as spring 2009.”

And as for the Boris result being applicable to Brown:

In London, Mr. Livingstone was seen as an authoritarian figure who had become increasingly isolated and prickly. His efforts to write off Mr. Johnson as a lightweight buffoon failed to pay off, and by the time he began attacking his opponent on the substance of issues like the cost of the Tories’ transportation program, it was too late.

FIRST PREFERENCE VOTES

Boris Johnson (Tory): 1,043,761

Ken Livingstone (Lab): 893,877

Brian Paddick (Lib Dem): 236,685

Sian Berry, (Green): 77,374

Richard Barnbrook (BNP): 69,710

Alan Craig, (Christian Choice): 39,249

Lindsey German (Left List): 16,796

Matt O'Connor, (Eng Democrats): 10,695

Winston McKenzie (Ind): 5,389

I thought the acceptance and concession speeches were gracious.

[thought for the day] friday evening

[Image courtesy of Luc Viatour]


Never consume an entire packet of frozen strawberries at one sitting.

[Higham, 2008]

[food quiz] odd one out

1. Which of these is not a rich source of folate - spinach, lettuces, yoghurt, fortified cereal, sunflower seeds?

2. Vitamin B12 is not found in - meat, seaweed, milk, eggs, citrus juice?

3. Beta carotene is an inactive form of - Vitamin A, B12, C, D or E?

4. A poor source of calcium is - molasses, beef, hazelnuts, brown sugar, flour?

5. Which is pasta usually not formed from - dried orange pith, semolina flour, farina, buckwheat flour, eggs?


Answers [need to highlight below]

yoghurt, citrus juice, A, beef, dried orange pith

[boris] don't forget the name now folks

Still too early of course but would rather be in his position than Ken's.

[hammersmith] and 16th century benedictine music

You'd perhaps need to know something of Brian Sewell and his writing to more fully appreciate the clip which follows:

He writes for the Evening Standard and is noted for his artistic conservatism and acerbic reviews of the Turner Prize and conceptual art; these, and his upper class demeanour, have also made him into a figure of fun.

He has become a popular subject for impersonation and is sometimes described as having "the poshest voice in Britain", or, as Paul Merton once told him: "You make the Queen sound rough."

Similarly John Humphrys, in his book Lost for Words, writes "They (people who deliberately speak 'poshly') try to speak like the Queen or even Brian Sewell, the only man I have ever met who makes the Queen sound common."

So presenting a talk on 16th century Benedictine music, with a camp lithp, to the worthy patrons of the Hammersmith Club was always going to be interesting:

"But there are a number of sadly forgotten great composers." :)

"... for which the archdeacon was ... you might like to view this as well. :)

[thought for the day] thursday evening

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.

[Agatha Christie, The Tuesday Club Murders, 1932]

[banksy] fun but is it art

Alleged pic of Banksy, possibly not of him


It's fair to say, I think, that most Brits would be aware of Banksy's little stunts and the shroud of secrecy he surrounds himself with. The police would like to interview him and critics are divided on the artistic merit of his work.

Some critics scorn Banksy as a passing fad for lightweight art fashionistas. "This man is nothing but a clown .. he has absolutely nothing to do with art," British critic Brian Sewell has haughtily proclaimed.

Partly for quicker getaways with his graffiti, he's become known for his stencil work and is noted for forays into places like the British Museum, where he'd hung a work of his own, replete with plaque, informing visitors:

"This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the Post-Catatonic era. The artist responsible is known to have created a substantial body of work across South East of England under the moniker Banksymus Maximus but little else is known about him. Most art of this type has unfortunately not survived. The majority is destroyed by zealous municipal officials who fail to recognise the artistic merit and historical value of daubing on walls."

Apart from art critics, the police and museum officials, he gets up other people's noses as well. In a visit to Jamaica, Peter Richards, a local photographer said of him:

To me he seems a phoney. He pretends to be a revolutionary artist yet does work for a major corporation like Puma and sells his canvasses for thousands. It's fake activism.

Richards allegedly took photos of him and sent them to the Evening Standard. Banksy's exhibitions have been closed down when as he admits in his site, painting live animals caused them distress.

So is he an artist or a sham? For me it's as much art as Warhol ever was and shows a not inconsiderable talent. One Mail reader decried him as a criminal vandal but another, Bob from Worcester put a view closer to my own:

Well actually, Ian, if I woke up and found he'd written this across the front of MY house, I should be delighted. I'd be able to deny all knowledge of how it got there when the blackshirts came to complain and I would "find it extremely difficult to clean off" for at least a couple of years.

You may differ.

[demographic stats] or maybe just some salsa

I think you can do the mathematics:

Hispanics, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, now account for about one in four children younger than 5 in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today.

"Hispanics have both a larger proportion of people in their child-bearing years and tend to have slightly more children," said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center and co-author of a recent study predicting that the Latino population will double from 15 percent today to 30 percent by 2050.

OK - those are the stats. Cut to Northern Ireland:

White: 1,670,988 (99.15%)

Religious Affiliations in Northern Ireland 1961–2001

Religions	1961	1991	2001
Roman Catholic	34.9%	38.4%	40.3%
Presbyterian (Protestant)	29.0%	21.4%	20.7%
Church of Ireland (Protestant)	24.2%	17.7%	15.3%
Other Religions (including other Protestant)	9.3%	11.5%	9.9%
Not Stated	2.0%	7.3%	9.0%
None	0.0%	3.8%	5.0%

I'd like to nip in the bud any speculation that this post is trying to prove anything. Just throwing random stats about. The first thing which strikes me about NI is that though the plantations started in 1610, nevertheless the Catholics still haven't overtaken the others in population, possibly due to migration and the modern lack of religious affiliation.

That's one thing and the second is wondering what the difference is between the two peoples anyway. Both are white, both look similar and yet the Catholic seems to me more from "the wrong side of the tracks" but if you look at the Protestant, he doesn't seem greatly different. Oversimplification, yes and it ignores the Boyne and so on but what's the problem unless one side was forced to worship as the other does?

Coming back to the Hispanics - well that's another issue and 24% is substantial. The only question remaining is if it's bad or not. I'm in no position to say but I've read much of the feeling about ghettos and underclass and so on. Here are some random stats:

Deborah Duran established correlation between acculturation and depression (Duran, 1995) Women and Latinos are more likely to experience a major depressive episode. Prevalence of depression is higher in Latino women (46%) than Latino men (19.6%).

Among female high-school students in 1997, the rate of attempted suicide among Latino girls (14.9%) was one-and-a-half times that of African American (9.0%) and non-Hispanic white (10.3%) girls.

Still don't know what to conclude but in the meantime, here's some salsa:

[tribulation] optimism, wal-mart and other goodies

An Albert Durex pic, coming to your part of the world or not

There's a notion in many people's minds that there is a coming Tribulation and better not to debate that in this post. Rather, I'd like to look at the mental set of different people in reaction to it because it says a lot about character.

Basically, those who believe in the idea fall into three camps - that the Lord will come before the great persecution/torture, pluck the believers up our of harm's way and that this is the reward for faith.

There are those who believe that a certain amount of discomfort will take place first and then there are the others who feel that they will go through a living hell first, persecuted and tortured for their faith and only then will they be plucked out of the final conflagration.

This latter idea is difficult for anyone to wrap his mind round who is also of the opinion that one can take a tablet and fat will miraculously leave the body or that when you go to the forest for a picnic, you take your comfort zone along with you in the form of a mobile home on wheels.

I'm afraid I don't believe in the comfort zone and just as with Jesus the Carpenter's Son, there is no timely airlift from unpleasantness. I believe the unpleasantness indeed comes and what your faith has bought you is the means to cope. It seems more in line with history and the story of the Cross to accept this latter idea.

It seems more like a Walmart employment contract to me. We'll take you on as long as you offer up your soul and believe in the company ethos and its ability to prevail. In return we guarantee you protection, benefits, childcare and so on. We'll get you out of tight fixes and provide a social network for you to enjoy, linked with fellow Walmarters worldwide.

Sometimes, as part of your training, the protective umbrella is pulled back because Walmart would like to see how you perform under stress, how strong your belief in the brand truly is. So as long as you follow the Walmart way, they'll do their bit and look after you - you could almost call that the comfort zone, where things seem to fall into place, except that sooner or later another training session has to come along, in order for your to advance to the next level.

So what if you don't believe any of the above and feel we're on our little own-some and that no one's coming to the rescue? That there is no fairy godmother? Well, for you, the issue now becomes where you place yourself along the optimism/realism continuum. I'll only get your backs up if I try to intimate that it's an illusion that humans can cope as islands - so I shan't say that.

Rather, I'll say that mental set becomes a huge factor. As a Brit who basically believes in forming an orderly queue of one at a bus stop and paying his taxes, my current woes can be daunting and it's easy to resign oneself to one's fate, trusting in the process to see one through and abiding by the law.

There is an entirely other point of view which thrives on chaos, sees everything as negotiable and seeks lateral solutions, which either gets you nicely out of trouble for the nonce or else lands you in heaps more. I call this the Alan Bond or Nick Leeson mentality. This latter requires nerve, a certain ability to see the overview and it takes a certain arrogance in one's ability to pull it off.

Society admires such people but does that make them right?

Plus there is one other factor which I call the Thomas Wilson syndrome. What seems a lively course of action in one's early 30s does not take into account what happens in later years and which Somerset Maugham alluded to - the lack of resolve which the years bring, the lessening ability to cope with both change and its consequences, the lessening ability to live on one's wits.

There must come a point where one can no longer show steely resolve and attempt outrageous solutions and yet such is what might be the only way to survive. It's a nice dilemma for the ageing cavalier.

[thought for the day] walpurgis night

Just been out on our Walpurgis revels but instead of sacrificing an innocent and concerning ourselves with fertility rituals, we ate pizza. They always speak of the nun Walpurga "dying" on Feb 25th and being sainted for being a martyr on May 1st.

Usual motif on this day is "passing through the fire" and I'd like to know how exactly Walpurga died. They don't tell you. Also, on the Hotel Safari was a giant picture of a naked woman and an exchortation to join their Walpurgis Revels - surprised how open they were about it.

It's also Mayday tomorrow, actually today and "nash prazdnik" or our holiday when all sorts of marches and festivities take place in Russia but for me it's a working day.

Thought for the day?

"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”

Anyone care to explain that one? And finally, some delightful people enjoying their festival.