Thursday roundabout

Dave Rich at Harry's Place on the allegation that Israel is in some way analogous to Nazi Germany.

Black Triangle covers the latest vaccine scare story.

Watts Up With That has a short primer on the greenhouse effect.

Baroque in Hackney on the news that researchers have discovered the oldest English words.

And finally,

Science Punk challenges readers to redesign the cover of Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science".

Madness unconfined

Has Brian Micklethwait completely lost his mind?

One of the most important memes that the internet has circulated during the last decade has been the extermination option, when it comes to Islam. Extermination of all muslims. Not now, you understand. Just if there continue to be serious muslim-perpetrated terrorist incidents

WTF?

Images of the Depression

Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

From the Library of Congress Digital Collections.

Health and safety

I grew up in a high threat environment where street violence was a regular occurrence and you could get beaten up (or worse) for simply looking the wrong way at people or, indeed, for nothing at all - except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Growing up like that you learn a number of survival techniques - street smarts, if you will. You don't make eye-contact with strangers, you go out of your way to avoid groups of young men on street corners, eschew a range of behaviours that might mark you out as a victim and, most importantly, you don't hang around with dickheads. In this context, "dickhead" is a technical term for someone whose behavior is likely to result in them (and anyone who's with them) getting the crap beaten out of them.

Example: It's just past closing time outside a fish and chip shop in a rough area of Liverpool. One of the guys I've been out drinking with starts staring down a group of seven or eight lads who are waiting in line to buy chips. The inevitable challenge: "What the fuck are you looking at?" is met by my companion with: "I don't know. They don't label shit round here." At which point, the fighting kicks off. My companion was a dickhead.

Christopher Hitchens on the other hand...

One of the greatest

Seeing as how the State Tour arrived in Oregon last week, I would normally be wandering around the local blogs catching up with some of the things the tour didn't cover - like beer and environmentalism. But first I need to make a virtual visit to Willamette National Cemetery and pay my respects to my dad.


George Senior: Sergeant First Class, US Army Rangers - 06/21/1921 to 04/11/1992.

Wednesday roundabout

David Adesnik at Oxblog: From Gitmo to suicide bomber.

At Normblog: the FKATWOT count hits 13.

Mark Liberman at Language Log on "Miss Thistlebottom’s hobgoblins”.

Collision debris: Zoe Brain on space junk.

And finally,

At Faith in Honest Doubt: Bigots or Pepsi?

Modern times

Simon Heffer in the Telegraph provides the context.

The worst possible hour

Didn't get to bed til four in the morning. What was I doing up? I was listening to Rives.

Friday roundabout

Edmund Standing at Harry's Place on Muslim schools and social cohesion.

Michael Totten looks at the possibility of a third Lebanon war.

Eric Rall at Dean's World: Whence and Whither the Depression?

Dale at Faith in Honest Doubt features CBS's Adam Carolla on atheism.

And finally,

Via PooterGeek, there's Яolcats.

My morning

Wake early in some discomfort, discomfort becomes severe abdominal pain, pain turns to agony: ambulance, hospital, morphine.

Home now but still feeling a little woozy from the drugs. Boy, my guts are screwed!

And I'm back on the dihydrocodeine, again.

Thursday roundabout

The new taboo: Ophelia Benson on criticism of Islam.

Dan Jones defends evolutionary psychology at The Proper Study of Mankind.

Savage Minds: Learning an Endangered Language (Part 3).

At Sense of Events: It's the end of the world as we know it (again).

And finally,

At Language Log: The worst pun of all time?

Undecided

I'm in two minds about a number of things at the moment:

1. The wisdom of the stimulus package

2. The purported charms of the "lovly Olga" (via unsolicited e-mail)

3. The Bat Segundo Show

Blogging Buddhists

I came across a blogger recently who described himself as "mostly Buddhist". I struggle to think what that might mean. Does he imagine there are fewer than four noble truths? Which of the five precepts doesn't he hold with? Maybe he follows a twofold path. Who knows?

In any case, I got to wondering what it would mean to be a Buddhist blogger. Or, more specifically, what if anything Gautama had to say that might be relevant to blogs.

Right Speech (the third element of the Eightfold Path) seems apt:-

The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

Hmm. Do you know many bloggers like that?

(I do. But they're all dreadfully earnest.)

Domestic de-cluttering

We're in the middle of some early spring cleaning - we have way too much stuff.


[Thanks to Norm for the video link]

Well well well

I'm reminded that I haven't posted about my health since I mentioned I was being treated for post-operative ulcers.

Well, I've finished the course of tablets and the consultant reckons I've made a full recovery. I'm not going to argue with that - I've been sick so long I'm ready to believe anything. And besides, I really admired his jaunty optimism.

So, all I need to do now is get fit again. Of course, that could take some time. Before I got ill I used to be fairly active: kept goal for a local football team, played tennis two or three times a week and even managed (occasionally) to do some serious training.

Since then, I've lost a lot of muscle mass and stamina: it's going to be a long road back. What I need is a program of rigorous goal-oriented self-empowerment.

Ach, maybe tomorrow...

Or "soon, maybe", as my grandmother used to say. "Soon" being the Irish equivalent of "mañana" - though, as the old joke has it, there is no word in Irish that conveys quite the same level of urgency.

Child's play

Spud's latest enthusiasm: the Pivot Stickfigure Animator which, according to the blurb, "allows you to create stick figure animations easily and without any artistic skills".

Here's an illustration of just some of the possibilities from J13 Productions:-

Current reading

Rereading "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" by Michael Oren.

"1914: The Days of Hope" by Lyn Macdonald. An account of the first year of the Great War from Mons to the First Battle of Ypres.

"International Relations in Political Theory" by Howard Williams. From Plato to Marx (via Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant and others): an introduction to political thinking on war and international relations.

Blogging USA

The Beaver State

End of the Trail: the Pacific coast and the Cascade Mountains. Mount Hood, Crater Lake and the Willamette Valley. Intel and the Douglas Fir. Blackberry pie, Oregon truffles and trout.

Milk is the official state beverage.

Checking out

After an extended sojourn in Nebraska, the State Tour will be back on the road later today. Expect me in Oregon.

Only 46 states to go!

Checking in

Too busy to blog yesterday and way too tired to blog much now.

So instead I'll just point you towards Nick Cohen's article from the Jewish Chronicle republished at Harry's Place: Jesus! I'm turning into a Jew!

Bad business

Remember I said I was buying a business? Well, that's now looking highly unlikely. The due diligence exercise turned up more than a few snags including an outstanding lawsuit, a highly restrictive lease on the business premises and a number of previously undeclared liabilities.

I've got a meeting with the current owners tomorrow evening. Boy, is that going to be fun! I get to tell them their company isn't worth a tenth of what they're asking for it and, with their current management in place, I don't expect they'll survive the recession.

As things stand, the only way I'd get involved now is if they gave me a controlling interest in the company (for an entirely nominal sum). Unfortunately, I don't think they'll want to proceed on that basis, even though it's most likely their best chance of realizing some money on their shares in the longer term.

Ah well, I probably didn't need the hassle anyway.

Unfreedom of speech

Following reports of the arrest in London of a British diplomat for "inciting religious hatred", Geoffrey Pullum at Language Log has something to say about the constitutional and cultural differences between the US and the UK:-

The thing is that Britain has absolutely no analog of the American guarantee of freedom of speech in its legal system. There is no Bill of Rights saying that one can speak one's opinions freely, even in political matters. The government can directly control what appears in the newspapers if it wants to, and has often done so. The courts can also, quite separately, block news reports of various sorts and do so all the time ("who for legal reasons cannot be named", say the newspapers when mentioning someone who a judge doesn't want identified in news reports). And speech about other racial, ethnic, or religious groups can have serious consequences here. It's not all just golliwogs and white wine. You shout out your opinions of the "fucking Jews" here, and you can face years in prison.

Norm also has some thoughts on the arrest.

Wednesday roundabout

Zoe Brain comments on developments in brain modelling.

Dale at Faith in Honest Doubt: What Blogs Can and Can't Do.

Ophelia Benson on fundamentalism, tolerance and respect.

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change: On The End Of Privacy And Transparency.

And finally,

Britblog Roundup #208 is up at The Wardman Wire.

They love me

Or they love me not.

I just received 30 copies of the same e-mail (titled: Poetry Valentines) from the Academy of American Poets:-

Be Mine: Poems for Sweethearts

Woo your sweetie by pairing the perfect poem with desserts, drinks, and flowers. The irresistible combination is sure to result in wobbly knees, a melting heart, and a thoroughly smitten valentine. From lustful to sacred verse, and classic to contemporary authors, pick up a few ideas from this selection of ten poetic pairings to lure your adored one straight into your arms.

On the web at: www.poets.org/pairings

Tsk! A whole academy of poets and they can't find someone to write better copy than that?

Très chic

Le renouveau de la chanson française est arrivé.



Mac pointed out this video to me. She's been listening to a lot of Nouvelle Vague recently. The song is from their second album "Bande à part"; the video is a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film of the same name.

No sympathy

My life would be much easier if I'd learn to keep my mouth shut.

Mac and I were taken out for dinner recently - a rare occurrence and usually a pleasurable one. Not this time.

Half way though the food, the conversation turns to Gaza (I didn't bring up the subject) and our host says: "After Gaza, I have lost all sympathy for the Jews". She meant the Israelis. Of course she meant the Israelis. I quickly corrected her, she accepted it and the conversation moved on. To casualty figures, the number of children killed, the scenes of destruction...

I was in the middle of my dinner. I would have liked to have finished it. But no - we had to have this conversation. Which is a pity, because I had hoped that the tone I'd adopted when correcting our host's initial remark might have been taken as an invitation to change the subject. Unfortunately not.

So I weighed in. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. But, like I said, it's not something I've ever learnt to do.

The thing is, I've come across this formulation before: Because of X [insert action of Israeli government] I have lost all sympathy for the Jews. And, when I hear it I always find myself wondering the same thing: What kind of special sympathy did they have for the Jews anyway?

White DNA

Theo Hobson in the Spectator:-

For whites in post-colonial cultures, racism is a post-religious form of original sin, something we know to be in our DNA and ought to repent of.

Post-colonial genetic repentance?!

Right, and in the meantime, if racism is in white people's DNA maybe we should think about getting it recognized as a sexually transmitted disease. (Though, obviously, I'm not suggesting it could be treated with antibiotics - that would be stupid.)

Isabella

Isabella and the Pot of Basil

Whitehall and the Jews

From a review of Louise London's Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust at History in Focus:

[B]etween 1933 and 1948 Britain held a consistent line on limiting Jewish immigration. Refugees would be assisted only if it was in the interests of Britain, a concept that holds true today if the attitude taken by many towards the current issue of asylum is considered. Thus, while Britain would 'tolerate' a certain amount of immigration for humanitarian reason, this 'toleration' was limited by several interlinked factors.

The first, was the perceived effect that this process could have on the fabric of British society. The charge that antisemitism would increase if too many Jewish refugees were granted entry was stated throughout the inter-war period, by both by government officials and the already-established Anglo-Jewish community. The second factor that was cited was employment, or more precisely unemployment. For this reason, refugees were landed on condition that they did not seek to enter the labour market without permission from the Ministry of Labour. This stipulation, however, was waived in two cases, firstly for refugees able to leave Europe with their business intact and willing to establish new firms in Britain and secondly for those who were able to enter Britain as domestic servants. Thus, on the one hand, refugees had to be able to either create jobs in Britain or had to demean themselves by working in low-paid, low skilled employment, whatever their former circumstances. A third factor was that of assimilation. Foreign Jews were expected both by the government and by the Anglo-Jewish establishment to conform to the British way of life and to minimise their 'foreignness'. They were inundated with advice to avoid showing their alien nature, such as not speaking German in public. Fourthly, the refugees were landed on a temporary basis, on the understanding that they would in the future leave Britain. Whilst in reality some 40,000 remained in Britain, this had not been the government's intention. Refuge was to be for a limited time, in the hope that most would seek other countries in which to settle permanently. Lastly and of greatest importance, was the issue of finance. From the very beginnings of this movement, the Anglo-Jewish community was expected to find the funds that would be required to support the refugees whilst they were in Britain. Foreign Jews were not to become chargeable to state finance in any shape. Again this situation would change, as by 1939 the Anglo-Jewish community had exhausted its funds and came to rely upon government grants.

Monday roundabout

At Normblog: the FKATWOT count reaches 9.

Michael White hosts Humanist Symposium #32 [via FIHD]

Harry's Place notes the arrest of a British diplomat for "inciting religious hatred" against Jews.

Alert Shado: Lileks spots a UFO.

And finally,

At xkcd: the base metaphor explained.

οἱ πολλοί

Weekend reading

The Edge Annual Question 2009: WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?

Charles Eisenstein at Reality Sandwich: Money and the Crisis of Civilization.

The Economist on the British Army's "lack of soldiers, lack of money and lack of conviction".

Psyche Volume 14 2008 (online journal of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness) on attention and consciousness.