18Oct04 — 0

Doubles All Round

After last week’s frenzy, ‘Blogging is going to be thin this week because I have a lot on. Congratulations to PooterGeekers on their excellent work with Britney and to Oliver Kamm on making a better case for Bush (this time😉 and on re-making the best case for the second war on Saddam, namely that the first one was still just and still hadn’t finished. Of course, I’m still not convinced by Bush, but, whatever the Guardian thinks, it’s not my vote to make.

17Oct04 — 1

More Racism

Courtesy of The Motley Fool:

An Englishman, a Scotsman, and a Nigerian are sitting in the maternity ward of a hospital waiting for the births of their respective children.

They are all very nervous, pacing, fidgeting, and fretting. Suddenly a nurse bursts through the double doors saying, “Gentlemen you won’t believe this, but your wives have all had their babies within five minutes of each other—and they’re all healthy boys!”

The fathers are ecstatic and congratulate each other over and over.

“We do have one slight problem,” admits the nurse, “In all the confusion we might have mixed the babies up as we rushed them to the nursery. We’d be grateful if you could join us there so we can identify them.”

The Scotsman races past the nurse. Once inside the nursery he picks up a dark-skinned infant saying, “There’s no doubt about it, this boy is mine!”

The nurse looks bewildered, “Well sir of all the babies I would have thought that this child would be most likely to be of Nigerian descent.”

“True,” says the Scotsman, “but one of the other two is English and I’m not taking any chances.”

16Oct04 — 4

Why Set Out? Why Turn Back? Why Guinea Pigs?

Wonderful, wonderful BBC Radio 4. In how many countries can you come back from a run, stagger into the shower and turn on national radio at 10:30am to hear the scientific history of the year 1907? Almost inevitably the story started in Cambridge, at the British Antarctic Survey. Depending on what you believe, the explorer Ernest Shackleton was invalided from (Robert Falcon) Scott‘s 1901 expedition with scurvy or was sent home because he argued with his boss. He went back six years later because he wanted to impress upon a woman called Emily—or, rather, her father—that he was a man of achievement. Then, on this expedition, he turned back, only 97 (geographical) miles from the South Pole. When Emily, who he did indeed marry, asked him why he chose to return before reaching his destination, he is supposed to have replied “Because I thought you would prefer a live donkey to a dead lion.” What a dude.

No one got scurvy on Shackleton’s mission because the expedition doctor, who had observed deficiency diseases in his many poor slum patients, insisted that the explorers filled themselves up before their departure on a rich and varied diet. Spookily, it wasn’t until three months after their mission that two Norwegians, Holst and Froelich discovered how to prevent scurvy. They recreated the condition in guinea pigs. The guinea pig is one of the few mammalian species apart from humans and primates that don’t synthesize their own vitamin C. And that’s why we think of them as the archetypal experimental animals. (For those interested here’s some related bioinformatics/genomics).

15Oct04 — 6

How Old?

Nearly all teenagers lean to the Left of course, but, if their precocious vocabulary is anything to go by, the ones the Sun-Sentinel has gathered together to comment on the US Presidential debate seem to have been taken from various South Florida academies for the gifted:

“Although this debate proved to be the most entertaining, the candidates’ contentions have surpassed repetitive and reached mind-numbing. There is a significant difference between using colloquialisms to appeal to the nation and simply conveying sheer ignorance. The president crossed that line.”

–Anjali Sharma, 15, Pine Crest School

“Kerry seems to gradually appear more confident over the course of the debates. He is using `When I am president,’ which is the assurance the general public is going to respond to.”

–Tori Abernathy, 16, Pine Crest School

“Overall Sen. Kerry stressed that he is working for the benefit of the majority of the American people. He stated what his plans for the country are and more importantly how they would be accomplished, which was exactly what he needed to do to further strengthen his position on domestic policy, whereas President Bush [spent] his time either slamming Kerry’s plans or reiterating his plans that are already enacted and are proven not to work.”

–Austin Siegel, 15, Spanish River High School

15Oct04 — 0

Local Minimum

I’m not very good at parking. I have written here before about my driving my friend Auriol‘s car through a Genome Campus fence. Today I discovered why everyone avoids the cornermost parking space of the Campus’s underground car park when, moving into it, I managed to shuffle back and forth enough times to wedge my vehicle between a concrete pillar and a concrete wall. I couldn’t reverse without ripping off my passenger door mirror; I couldn’t advance without scraping the paint off the side of my car. One of my colleagues, Brian, and I had to lift the back end of my little hatchback and rotate it so I could drive out of the slot. Some people reading this might be reminded of the running joke in this book.

14Oct04 — 4

‘Blogger Completely Unable To Reach Instant Conclusion

I believe that, where it exists as a punishment for unlawful killing, the death penalty deters some potential murderers. I believe that, perversely, it can also make those who have already killed more likely to kill again. I believe that states should not execute their citizens. I believe that culpability for a crime should depend on an offender’s understanding of right and wrong and not on his or her age. I believe that the extent of an individual’s responsibility can be extremely difficult to determine. I believe that the USA’s federal system is, in many ways, a fine model for the government of a large nation. These are some of the reasons why thinking about this makes my head hurt.

14Oct04 — 1

Unintended Consequences

Many Americans see in Tony Blair the leader they cannot elect. Many also feel the same way about Arnold Schwarzenegger and are campaigning to make it possible for California’s “Governator” or any naturalized citizen meeting certain requirements to be permitted to become their president (subject to the other usual conditions). At least one commentator here is suggesting that Boris Johnson might be the man whose leadership could save the UK Conservative Party. Only PooterGeek can join the dots…

[SCENE: The White House Oval Office. The President sits at his desk peering through his reading glasses at a report on Syria. He jumps out of his chair as a cricket ball flies through an open doorway and bangs against the hardened glass behind him, setting off an alarm. Secret Service men bound into the room, shield him with their bulk, and point their sidearms in all directions.]

POTUS [wearily]: It’s alright, fellas. Well, it’s as alright as it can ever be around here these days.

[The Secret Service men remain in place and train their guns on the unkempt figure galumphing towards the office. The President rolls his eyes upward.]

VP: Bloody hell, Tones! You were lucky there. That was one of my best on drives.

Secret Service Man [into neck microphone]: All personnel, stand down. There is no threat. Repeat: there is no threat. Stand down.

POTUS: Boris! This really has got to stop. You are deputy to the most powerful office on the planet. It’s time you took your responsibilities with the seriousness they deserve. And, given that my heart’s not what it used to be, that “nuclear briefcase at the dinner party” stunt of yours is just not funny any more.

VP [under breath]: Bloody St John’s girly swot.

POTUS: Boris!

[A small boy bounds in, grinning from ear to ear.]

POTUS: Leo!

Leo: Didn’t you catch the ball, daddy? Uncle Boris would have caught it.

POTUS: Leo, I’ve told you not to encourage your Uncle Boris. Y’know, he has a very important job to do.

VP [stage whisper]: About as important as appearing on Have I Got News For You.

POTUS: Leo, go to your room—and stay there.

Leo: But, Daddy, Uncle Boris said I could hide in his hair and play “Scare The Head of State” at the reception tonight!

POTUS [doing his best to hide his irritation]: Go, Leo. I have to have a Serious Talk with your Uncle Boris.

Leo [stretching up to VP’s ear and whispering]: Will you do an impression of daddy’s Serious Talk for me later, Uncle Boris? Will you?

VP: Er, [looks nervously at The President], er. I’ll see you later Leo. You go and practise that throw I showed you.

VP [trying to look cuddly]: Tony. Mate. Geezer. Pal. We both know what you’re going to say, but we both jolly well know what the problem is: I’m just so bloody bored. Christ, Tony, have you ever had to visit Ohio?! They don’t call those bits in the middle the fly-over States for nothing… You won’t even let me edit The Spectator any more.

POTUS: You weren’t elected to edit The Spectator. You weren’t elected to be interested.

[The phone rings.]

POTUS: Oh, what is it now?

POTUS [answering phone]: President Blair!

[The VP sidles out of the room.]

Compressed Voice of Aide: Sir, I think you may be required to make an urgent statement.

POTUS: Don’t beat about the bush, Joan. What’s going on?

Compressed Voice: It’s Secretary of State Schwarzenegger. I’m sure he was joking, but unfortunately the microphone was open.

POTUS: Mother of Mary. Tell me the worst.

Compressed Voice: [whispers]

POTUS: He said we’re going to annexe where?!

[An Aide bursts into the Oval Office.]

Aide: Mr President! I have the Austrian Ambassador in the lobby. He wants to discuss surrender terms.

[The President glances up at the Aide and glances back at the receiver. His face brightens.]

POTUS: Boris!

VP [from the next room]: Wotcher, Anthony!

POTUS: Do you have any German?!

13Oct04 — 36

Hating Themselves

Very shortly after I started PooterGeek, I posted a link to an article in The Independent, in the days when that newspaper was still in possession of some of its marbles. It described the abuse an American couple received in a British supermarket queue from a British family, abuse based solely on that couple’s being American. It attracted one of the first emails this site ever received. It was from an American living in London—a neo-hippie, anti-war Californian as it happens—in which she described her own similar experiences since 11Sep01.

This sounds like a ‘Blog cliché, but I recently upset a number of people at a posh dinner when, openly and at length, I objected to a series of casually anti-American remarks made by my fellow British guests. Their tone and content was exactly—and I mean exactly—that of racist remarks about blacks made by white people to each other when they believe they are in the company of sympathetic whites. Given my family background I am very familiar with that tone. Interrupting its chorus with a note of righteousness is a serious social crime.

Yesterday, Claire wrote asking for some tales of such anti-American bigotry and I pointed her at that old, now subscription-only Independent article; today, Judith pointed us both at this. It’s disgusting, but it’s not surprising.

Please make a resolution never to let this kind of poison go unchallenged. There is a manifestation of British snobbery that morphs unbroken into racism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism. It rises up like a stink from the national detestation of “vulgarity”, of conspicuous consumption, of openly expressed brotherly feeling. Perhaps it is so intense and bitter because Britons hate themselves for enjoying the popular songs and movies that those white, black and Jewish Americans write, perform and produce; those calorific fried chicken and grilled burger bars they’ve dotted British high streets with; the “bling” and “flash” that have seduced them for decade after decade in one form or another.

There is a difference between coercion and seduction; it’s a difference that some of the seduced wish they could deny the morning after. They’re “overpaid, oversexed and over here”, they used to say of US GIs. Thank God Americans did come over here and that they keep coming, or this place would have become, at best, a cultural and economic morgue, at worst, a death camp.

13Oct04 — 0

Thank You, My People

Yesterday PooterGeek had the highest number of hits I have ever recorded—equivalent to about two minutes’ worth of traffic at Instapundit. Thanks to everyone who linked to my exhibit and said nice things. As I pointed out at Harry’s Place, I can’t post any on-site photos of my work lest I reveal the secret location of the Geek Cave. Perhaps you’ll get to see it if the council force me to de-install it.

12Oct04 — 25

But Is It Art?

SUE FROM BBC LOCAL RADIO: I’m standing in the grounds of an ordinary central Cambridge apartment block where local resident Damian Counsell has found himself at the centre of a controversy following his construction of a sculpture he has called, somewhat provocatively even he must admit, “You Bet Your Sweet Ass It Was In My Name.”

Before we go any further, Damian, I was wondering if you’d like to describe this piece to our listeners.

DAMIAN: Certainly, Sue. And may I just say that you’re looking particularly gorgeous, even though it’s a Monday.

SUE: Er, thank you.

DAMIAN: Well, my work is a life-sized depiction of an Afghan woman casting her vote. She places her voting slip in the ballot box with one hand, and at the same time, uses her other hand to make a “V for victory” gesture.

SUE: It’s definitely striking, and the material it’s sculpted from is also quite unusual, isn’t it?

DAMIAN: Yes, Sue, it is. I have for some time been collecting paper from my neighbours’ recycling boxes, focusing in particular on the many old copies of The Guardian and The Independent to be found outside the houses close by; these two newspapers are particularly popular with the young, Left-leaning families who live near my flat. Many of the residents’ discarded political posters are in the mix too. I tore them all up by hand and stirred them into a vat of a plastic resin that I synthesized myself in my own lab. I then applied gobbets of the mixture to an underlying wire mesh framework, building up the figure by small stages. I think you have to agree that the result is as colourful as it’s weatherproof.

SUE: It certainly looks colourful to me, but it seems that the same neighbours who unwittingly supplied material for your statue are not entirely happy with the fruit of your efforts. Many of them have complained to the council. In particular, they say that the “victory” gesture you refer to is actually a rather less positive salute, and one aimed at them specifically.

DAMIAN: The “V” sign is, I believe, used in many sovereign states around the World to symbolize victory, though, obviously, people of different countries make the same shape in different ways. I think those complaining about this sign would benefit from opening their minds to the diverse interpretations that can be made of it. They should understand the real cultural differences between British and, for example, Afghan ways of representing the “V” form before they rush to war—I mean rush to judgement.

SUE: In fact some of your neighbours’ complaints go further and accuse you not only of being a notorious eccentric, but of actively anti-social behaviour. For example, a colleague of mine from BBC Radio Cambridge was told that, one evening shortly after you came 57 votes behind a candidate standing for the “Exhume The Queen Mother” party in the Cambridge Market election, you were heard in this very street singing a selection of songs by Jerome Kern, punctuated by cries of “Why didn’t you just vote for Ba’athists, you prissy, selfish Lib Dem bastards?!”

DAMIAN: I have no recollection of that incident.

SUE: And in the face of local protests are you determined to keep this figure on show?

DAMIAN: Definitely Sue. I think it would be terrible if my artistic voice—which some consider to be a dissenting one—were crushed by narrow-mindedness and suspicion.

SUE: There are rumours that your defiance extends to a claim that this is part one of a two-part work?

DAMIAN: Yes, Sue. The other piece will be rendered in the same medium, very similar in overall form, but feature an Iraqi man simultaneously casting his vote and using a single finger of his other hand to make an “I for Iraq” symbol. It’s tentatively entitled “Saddam Is Their Bitch”.

SUE: Er, thank you, Damian. I think we’ll leave it there.

DAMIAN: Thank you, Sue.

SUE: This is Sue Mason in the city, for BBC Radio Cambridge, standing next to the statue everyone’s talking about.

Okay? Did you get all that on tape, Steve?

STEVE: It’s in the can, Sue.

SUE: Great.

DAMIAN: So, Sue, have you anything special planned this evening? I do etchings as well, you know.

12Oct04 — 1

A Killer Title

I saw this poster yesterday on the noticeboard at work. The Cambridge Philosophical Society lectures are public. To quote the society, they are “open to all who are interested”. Sadly, even the touts had run out of tickets for this one:

Professor Peter Littlewood
Department of Physics

‘Quantum phase coherence: from coupled pendula to Bose-Einstein condensation’

Monday, 11 October 2004 8.30 p.m.
Cockcroft Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site

11Oct04 — 0

Cry For England and St George

This morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Dipesh Shah, Chief Executive of the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority responded to the questions asked of him in his interview in almost unbroken corporate English. Listen to him use the phrase “the legacy of the past” twice and put the AEA’s recent success down to their “not reinventing the learning curve”. For fifteen minutes after his interview I wept.

11Oct04 — 3

Electioneering

Bob Geldof defends Blair and Brown against accusations that their campaign of assistance for the developing world is just an election stunt. It’s understandable that a populist stance like theirs should inspire cynicism. Everyone knows there are too many easy votes in helping out the fuzzy-wuzzies in Africa.

10Oct04 — 3

David Beckham: Evil Genius

A poster going by the name of “YellowFeather” over at The Motley Fool has a theory why David Beckham thought it was okay to have the last “word” in his on-the-pitch feud with Thatcher [that’s the footballer, not the former UK Prime Minister or any of her relatives] during the England vs Wales World Cup qualifying match yesterday:

“After hearing the BBC commentators getting so worked up about Beckham’s yellow card I can’t help thinking that he is a bit more intelligent than he is given credit for.

“As Motty himself pointed out earlier in the match – two yellow cards in WC qualifying games means a one match ban and Beckham already has one booking to his name. So Beckham gets fouled by the clod Thatcher, feels his rib go and knows that he won’t be fit by Wednesday. He realises that if he gets a booking before he gets subbed off then he will be suspended from the game against Azerbaijan, which he would miss through injury anyway. His slate is then wiped clean as regards his bookings for England.

“Beckham jumps on Thatcher.”

[“Motty” is the nickname given to famous BBC football commentator John Motson.]

10Oct04 — 1

Mucho Macho

I saw Collateral some time ago, but haven’t got round to writing about it, have nothing original to say, and feel slightly let down by Michael Mann (who is a god). It’s not that it’s a bad film; it is, in many ways, superb, but, like others who’ve seen it, I think that Mann or the scriptwriter lacked that sliver of nerve that could have made it a truly outstanding piece of work. The action in it is, however, beautifully choreographed and rendered and the acting is excellent. I’m not giving anything away by saying that Tom Cruise persuades as a ruthless killer.

When it comes to the latest Blade movie, the pattern will, I’m sure, be the usual one. I’ll attend against my better judgement, and, even though I’ll be prepared for disappointment, I’ll still be disappointed. Afterwards, I’ll bang my head to the soundtrack by way of consolation and lie to myself that the actual spectacle was better than I remember it. (Blade II at least shocked me by proving that one of the former members of British boy band Bros could act—so well, in fact, that I had no idea that it was him until later.) However, as well as showing you what will probably turn out to be all of the good bits, one of the film’s trailers is worth checking out because it contains a neat summary of a moral debate of our day. A small girl asks our vampire-hunting hero—the only black man in America who still has a flat-top haircut and baggy trousers—why he can’t “just be nice”. “Because,” he growls, “the World isn’t nice.”

Frederick Forsyth was in Nigeria just as I was entering that un-nice World. What he saw there changed him. Perhaps most trivially, it changed him from being a reporter to a writer. He does do opinion pieces for magazines and newspapers, though, and sometimes speaks his thoughts to the microphone. Sadly, these are usually bonkers Tory grumps of the sort found in The Daily Telegraph‘s letters page. When he writes about writing, however, he can be frighteningly good. Once he shredded The English Patient for The Spectator, slicing through the work’s errors of fact and logic until you wondered why anyone would waste his or her time reading its tattered pages. As for his own books: Forsyth’s characters are made of chewy cardboard, every page contains at least two overused figures-of-speech, and he likes his boys’ toys a little too much. He does, however, have a filing cabinet mind for geopolitics, often knows who the bad guys really are, and has (as he would write) “an iron grip” on his plot.

I’d go further. When it comes to plotting, Frederick Forsyth is in the top five percent of thriller writers. His latest, Avenger, is so neatly constructed and exploits our own knowledge of the real world going on around his invented one so elegantly and to such powerful effect that it probably deserves a prize for architecture. You don’t care much about the players, but you can understand why they are doing what they are doing and you certainly care about what’ s going to happen to them next. And, as you rapidly approach the end of the story, you keep asking yourself, “How can he resolve all these questions in this short space without resorting to some clunky device?” The answer is that he is a great storyteller, so the only device whose clunkiness he relies on is your brain.

10Oct04 — 4

The Unfreeing Of The American Press

The Anonymous Economist has emailed me this New York Times article which says something important about the state of the USA’s institutions:

“Last Thursday, a federal district judge ordered a New York Times reporter, Judy Miller, sent to prison. Her crime was doing her job as the founders of this nation intended. Here’s what happened and why it should concern you.”

UPDATE: Tom provides a registration-free link to a PDF of the article. Thanks, Tom.

09Oct04 — 4

Blood On His Hands

“From the crowds that hailed New Labour in 1997 to the despair of Kenneth Bigley is a vast emotional distance.”

—editorial in The Independent, 09Oct04

This week, the same Tony Blair who had promised “Decapitation, decapitation, decapitation” at the 2000 Labour Party conference finally made good on his chilling promise. Standing before an endlessly looping video of the demise of engineer Ken Bigley, Blair, cried out, “God is great! God is great!”. He was flanked by two of his most senior and trusted followers—thought to be feared former student extremist Jack Straw and the blind cleric David Blunkett—who took up the chant.

Despite the widely held belief that differences between rival Toni and Brownite communities could not be reconciled and that Blair’s menacingly named “Project” would fall apart before it was implemented, the latest videos of the militant leader show him determined to press on for years to come from his base in the urban areas of Britain. He told his followers that they would all be made “stakeholders” in a “forward-looking, modern, enterprising, knowledge-based economy” and warned that they would strike blow after blow against “the forces of conservatism.”

Later, in recordings shown on al-Jazeera, members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s network of People Of Anger confessed tearfully on camera that extreme poverty brought on by the opening of halal branches of McDonald’s in their home countries, pollution caused by George Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto accord on climate change, and their hounding by armies of British and American terrorists had combined to force them to flee to Iraq and, acting in conflict with their devout religious beliefs, commit horrible acts of violence. “I wake up from nightmares about the faces of Tony Blair’s victims as they struggle to escape our blades,” lamented one of the Angry, “How that man can deliver these innocents into the hands of people like us, driven by his atrocities to executing them, and look himself in the mirror every morning I don’t know.”

Robert Fisk is 84.

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