29Nov03 — 1

By the Power of Wiqqi!

A couple of weeks back—prompted by workmates Gayle, Martin and Adam—I sent an email to everyone I knew on Campus, drawing their attention to the interesting motivations of the people sponsoring Operation Christmas Child, a charitable effort to distribute gift parcels to disadvantaged kids around the World being promoted to the staff of our vast, sinister genetic research complex. Others have been much stronger critics of the organisation.

Wiqqi took an interest too and pointed out to me that the normally too-politically-correct-for-words Co-op supermarkets were also supporting the appeal. He (and his friends) wrote to them expressing similar concerns, though Wiqqi obviously wasn’t prompted by the same anti-religious cyncism that drove me.

In today’s Guardian—I actually paid for it this morning—I noticed this article. Nice work.

28Nov03 — 0

Still In One Piece

So, for the first time in two years of “working at Cambridge” I’m in town today, teaching in the Genetics Department and Al-Qa-bloody-e-da (or perhaps two bored students) threaten the town and the University with a couple of bombs for lunchtime.

It was one of my students who alerted me to the threat first, but Maoi (bless her cotton socks) forwarded a warning to me from the Philippines. Ain’t the Internet strange? I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens in Manila occasionally and I know it happens in Tel Aviv all the time, but it’s quite something to walk home through sleepy old residential Cambridge and see a military helicopter fly overhead.

The class went brilliantly, though. (If you want to see how your little ones starred in the show, Clare, Hind and Judith, you’ll be able to download the slides that accompanied my talk via my academic page next week.)

26Nov03 — 5

Speechification

It goes a bit like this:

Americans are fat people with hunting rifles in enormous cars. They are led by a rich idiot cowboy who would rather drive his gas-guzzling cavalcade over the supine bodies of his country’s underclass than sign binding agreements with other peace-loving nations. They make vulgar films, which they force upon us like their greasy fast food and corporate rock. They send billions looted in their Third-World imperialist adventures to support the apartheid regime in Israel that cages the Palestinian people who only wish to be left alone to tend the fields they have cultivated since the dawn of time. They had 9/11 coming to them, the bastards.

Most people who express sympathy for “militants” have never bothered to read their public pronouncements. Most people who express antipathy for George Bush have never even skim-read one of his speeches.

I hate going back to primary sources. They are always a fag to track down, sometimes they have to be photocopied expensively by the British Library, and when you find them they can be verbose and painful to read. (Step forward, Charles Darwin.) Because it is difficult to read primary sources, often scholars don’t read them. Because they don’t read them, they use secondary or tertiary sources to inform their judgements. Because the secondary or tertiary sources are frequently wrong or biased, those scholars’ judgements are frequently wrong or biased.

In these important times you can inform your own judgements about World affairs by reading cartoons like this (easy) or by reading speeches like this (difficult). (At least you didn’t have to order it from the British Library.)

In the latter, an address made by George Bush in Whitehall, there is self-deprecating humour, an acute awareness of the state of the nations, and of their people’s perceptions of the speaker. Of course there is also a nice Bushism:

The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when the last resort arrives, to retain [sic] aggression and evil by force.

Most importantly the text contains a profoundly radical admission that U.S. foreign policy must change. Bush implies that there will be no more sons-of-bitches representing Anglo interests in the un-free world, well, not American ones, anyway. Read the words of the idiot cowboy (though I’m not naïve enough to believe he wrote them with his own soft hand), then go back to the cartoon and ask yourself who lives in a bubble.

22Nov03 — 0

You All Live In A Convict Colony

I know as much about rugby union football as I do about crochet, so it was wise of me to listen to the World Cup final on the radio today and have the play described and explained to me.

If I’m so ignorant of the game, why did I care enough to tune in? For the same reason that the English people ignored barriers of class and region (union is largely played by southerners, especially ones from private schools), overcame differences between the sexes (there are many female rugby fans, but a significant proportion of them watch men playing rugby for the same reason male “tennis fans” watch Anna Kournikova do whatever it is she does), and disregarded official preference (our national sport is really the one with the spherical ball) to gather around their TVs early on a Saturday: that is, because they wanted to to witness the Aussies lose.

I caught the nearly unbearable climax of the game in the same pub I watched England’s association footballers fumble defeat from victory against those other serial winners/whingers Brazil. This time I got to dance around the place at full-time, though. Was it evil of me to take pleasure in the looks on the Wallabies faces at the end?

(Close observers of the English class system can marvel that the team didn’t just include unmistakeably non-white Token—I mean Jason—Robinson, but there was a guy called “Ben Cohen” in the squad, too! Next thing you know the Tory party will be led by a Jew.)

21Nov03 — 0

His Art Goes On

Ye gods: another late night in the lab. Now I am finally home I should share with you my one Web catch of the day. Alan Gilbert is a professional photographer in Baltimore who takes excellent photographs of very boring things. One of the oddest in his portfolio is an image of a model train looping around a kitschy diorama of the sinking of The Titanic. Huh?

UPDATE: When amateurs ask if it’s worth becoming a pro, the pros say something like: “Only if you want to take photos of things no one else wants to.” When they are asked how can they make money as a professional photographer the pros reply: “Specialize and market yourself.”

By way of illustration, the PhotoDude will take care of all your toy soldier photographic needs and Garcia Studio will ensure no chicken drumstick suffers poor lighting.

(If you are interested in turning pro, you could do worse than read a good article at photo.net. If you would like to feel inadequate, here’s their photo of the week.)

20Nov03 — 0

Up For It

Whizzed down to Imperial yesterday evening to see the author of this book lecture on The Evolution of Female Promiscuity. The talk was clear, thoroughly prepared and elegantly constructed, if a little over-performed. While she insisted on drawing attention to some of her clunkier jokes, some of the funniest remarks Dr Judson made were those she made least fuss of. It was also fun for all the family. An audience of nuns would have stayed blush-free for the evening—she even made a point of not showing us her pictures of fancy penises.

The best bit for me probably sounds a bit esoteric, but if you are interested in female comb jelly pro-nuclei sampling multiple male pro-nuclei, here‘s where to go for photos of hot organelle-on-organelle action.

20Nov03 — 1

Stiff Upper Lips

Maoi wrote looking for insights into the English lack of ease with affection. It’s unfortunate that she has (like many of my international friends) mainly been exposed to the spawn of the English upper-middle classes. To get a better handle on these types I recommend that she watches this film and this film back to back. I’m not so sure about this one yet. Despite not having seen it, last night I actually dreamed that I was one of the cast. Not fun.

18Nov03 — 0

Cheese And The Eating Thereof

One of the topics of conversation at dinner with Bill and Judy was the provenance of the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. I made two claims about it that were wrong.

First, it came to prominence during the “diplomatic” row about Iraq not because it was used by a member of the US administration (as I misremembered), but because it was used in a humorous piece about the French by a writer at the National Review.

Second, it didn’t appear in this episode of The Simpsons, nor this episode (which I conflated with a third), but this episode.

The point I want to make now is that there is an excellent piece in the current London Review of Books which (unusually for the LRB) picks enormous holes in popular French anti-globalization, anti-American, anti-McDonalds attitudes by pointing out that France’s national cheese is in fact:

…industrialised, homogenised, delocalised and, finally, pasteurised—and all without the assistance of American multinational corporations. It’s almost wholly an indigenous French story: the Camembert producers made it into the national cheese—the most popular and best-selling of any cheese in France—and then into an internationally recognised and traded commodity.

For the full dirt you can read this book which the article reviews.

You can’t, unfortunately, read the LRB article. Despite being subsidised by the Arts Council of England out of your taxes (well, the taxes paid by the two PooterGeek readers who are English anyway), the LRB doesn’t make its content available to subjects of this isle unless they are rich enough to be able to afford a subscription. Ah, state-sponsored culture. Which brings me back to dinner with Bill and Judy 😉 …

17Nov03 — 0

Thanks For All The Fish

Over to Bill and Judy’s yesterday evening for an excellent dinner and debate with the sabbaticalling professor and his wife, whom the immigration authorities would have chained in the kitchen rather than let her steal paid work from the British.

Amongst other working activities, Bill has been known to wrestle with a program called Lutefisk. I thought one of his graduate students back in the States might find this Scandinavian-cod-related merchandise appropriate lab-wear.

(The meal wasn’t fish, but meat. That doesn’t make such a good heading, however.)

14Nov03 — 0

German Intelligence vs. The Irish

There was an excellent spoof play on the strange comedy show Radio Nine, earlier this week. In it, a bunch of actors put on period Irish accents to do an historical drama “glorifying organized crime”—a tiny, sharp pin in the romantic bubble of Republican myth (and I’m supposed to be a Catholic).

Ignore the misleading title of this BBC news story and read on to the end where the grim and funny reality hits.

10Nov03 — 0

A Good Politician

Yesterday I joined Sonya at the home of Mr R, the father of one of Sonya’s life-long friends, for morning coffee. He used to work as a barrister in the House of Lords. I had to leave after about an hour (an hour enlivened by his excellent stories) to run down the road and take some photos of our local Labour MP, Anne Campbell.

Mr R had remarked that he had once had Anne Campbell call in for a cup of tea. I don’t agree with all of Ms Campbell’s views, but, like me, Mr R. expressed his respect and admiration. As Anne got on her bicycle to leave the photo-opportunity I mentioned that I had just been having tea with one of her other constituents. Not only did she recognize Mr R’s name (from her one encounter), but as I was trying to remember in which street I had just left his house, she told me its name—without any hints or prompting.

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