Three things

Three things you didn't know about me and would probably never have guessed:

1. I was a vegetarian for twenty years.
2. I played for the Pernod team in the first British pétanque championship.
3. I have never voted.

No kidding.

Banksy in Palestine

"Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place."

Banksy, from his new book "Wall and Piece".

Cartoon characters

Three snippets from this BBC report on today's rally in Trafalgar Square:

A mass rally by mainstream Muslims demonstrating against controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist is to be staged.
Organiser Anas Altikriti, of the Muslim Association of Britain said he was confident the demonstration would not be taken over by extremists.

Doctor Azam Tamimi, who is the director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought, is due to speak at the demonstration and said it would be peaceful.

And this, from Labour MP Louise Ellman, House of Commons, December 2003:

It is time that the spotlight fell on the Muslim Association of Britain, particularly the key figures, such as Azzam Tamimi, Kamal el Helbawy, Anas Al-Tikriti and Mohammed Sawalha. All of them are connected to the terrorist organisation Hamas. The Muslim Association of Britain itself is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—an extremist fundamentalist organisation founded in Egypt in 1928, and the spiritual ideologue of all Islamic terror organisations.

Thankfully, the Muslim Association of Britain doesn't speak for the majority of Muslims in this country, but it is troubling that the BBC describes the organization as representing "mainstream Muslims".

Talking democracy

I get fed up of hearing people talk about democracy as if it’s the be-all and end-all of everything, it isn’t. Democracy is worthless without pluralism, and pluralism is not possible without respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual.

Other people, I know, have different ideas about democracy which don’t involve respect for individual liberty. In fact, some people’s idea of democracy seems to depend on abrogating the very freedoms on which I think it depends.

Take the distinguished American historian John Hope Franklin, for example. Interviewed in today’s Guardian, he tells us the US is not a democratic country: “We have undertaken to spread democracy when we ourselves are not democratic."

His reasons (at least those given in the interview):

"Our presidents are elected by electoral colleges, not directly. And our military is not democratic. There's no draft. Bush's children and my children do not serve." He points out that those who do serve are mostly from America's poorer classes, including many blacks, driven into the professional army by economic necessity.

It seems, as far as Franklin is concerned, no country can be regarded as being democratic unless the head of state is directly elected. If a country uses some other method to decide upon its head of state, whether it’s an electoral college or hereditary privilege (as in the UK) then Franklin's view would be that country is not a democracy.

This seems to me a very narrow view of democracy, and one that is a long way from our everyday usage of the term. It is also too absolutist for my taste - Franklin views the electoral college system as undemocratic, rather than simply less democratic than other possible electoral systems.

His second point is that the American military is not democratic because there is no draft. I am not sure if this is meant as a separate issue or as support for his contention that the US is not a democratic nation. Is any nation that lacks a conscript army undemocratic, regardless of its electoral arrangements?

In any case, Franklin is using the word democratic here, not in the narrower sense introduced earlier, but in a way completely at odds with common usage. I fail to see how a military in which people are forced to serve against their will can somehow be regarded as more democratic than one made up entirely of volunteers.

I am unsure as to whether or not Franklin regards the military as a special case here - could other areas of government not also benefit from such democratization? The Department of State, for example, which (just like the military) recruits its employees from those who choose to apply. Does this make the State Department undemocratic in the same way that Franklin says the miltary is undemocratic? If all government workers were forcibly conscripted rather than freely recruited would this be somehow more democratic?

Who knows? Maybe we could mix and match Franklin’s ideas of democracy: draft someone to be president but take votes on who gets to join the military.

I’d have more respect for Franklin if I thought his words were anything other than highly politicized rhetoric, in which meaning and logic are switched and twisted to suit the occasion.

As he himself remarks:

“I'm not attached to objectivity as such. If you say my writing is politicised with the purpose of achieving a certain goal, then I have no problem with that."

Well at least we agree on something.

Published and damned

At the end of January, I wrote that the publication of the cartoons of Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten was more a matter of poor editorial judgement than an issue of free speech. Well, things have certainly moved on since then.

I still think JP's cultural editor, Flemming Rose, was wrong to publish the cartoons, not because they would likely cause offence, but because publishing them might put the cartoonists' personal safety at risk. I've heard a lot recently about freedom of speech coming with responsibility, it doesn't. But the job of editing a newspaper comes with a lot of responsibilities, and one of them is protecting the people who work for you.

The twelve cartoonists at the centre of the row have reportedly gone into hiding. They may never again be able to go about their normal business without fear of attack. That seems a high price to pay for the sake of a few cartoons.

Vigorously asserting the right to free speech by publishing provocative material whatever the consequences is not a responsible editorial policy. There are a whole host of issues an editor needs to consider before publishing controversial material. Peter Preston covered some of them in Sunday's Observer. (Emphasis added):

There are plenty of good reasons for not publishing those 12 Danish cartoons in Britain. Some are principled, like not giving gratuitous offence to fellow citizens, keeping inter-faith relations on an even keel and not getting tangled up in that BNP judgment.

Some are pragmatic: not putting your Middle East reporters in jeopardy, not putting sales at risk of boycotts, like the Sun did over Hillsborough, not offending thousands of newsagents who have ways of making you squeak. And some are mistily emotional: European papers are over there, aren't they - so why should papers over here get caught up in their debate, especially when we're 36 hours late joining the party?

Commentators may lament the fact that the British press has not reprinted the cartoons, but it is hardly surprising: who wants the life of a Danish cartoonist?

Mohammed in Court

Mark Liberman at Language Log reminds us there is a depiction of Mohammed in the Supreme Court Building and notes that a number of American Muslims once tried to have it removed.

From the Council on American Islamic Relations Tenth Anniversary Report (pdf):

In 1997, CAIR continued to rely on the strength of its numbers to challenge inappropriate portrayals of Islam. In March, many American Muslims asked the U.S. Supreme Court to remove a carved stone depiction of a sword-wielding Muhammad (p.b.u.h.), Islam's revered prophet, from its courtroom wall. While appreciating the fact that Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) was included in the court's pantheon of 18 prominent lawgivers of history, CAIR noted that Islam discouraged its followers from portraying any prophet in paintings, sculptures or other artistic representations. Moreover, the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) was shown with the Quran, Islam’s Holy Book, in one hand and a sword in the other, reinforcing long-held stereotypes of Muslims as intolerant conquerors, a CAIR official said.

As Liberman reports, Chief Justice Rehnquist rightly gave the request short shrift.

Tuesday roundabout

Tim Worstall has the latest Britblog Roundup showcasing the best of the British blogosphere. It's packed full of linky goodness, including the Religious Policeman's priceless Memo to the House of Saud.

Peaktalk's Pieter Dorsman is the subject of this week's Normblog profile.

At Slate, Christopher Hitchen's makes the case for mocking religion: Ophelia Benson has commentary.

Natalie Solent is discussing what ended slavery. Suggestions so far include: the horse-collar, the Industrial Revolution and the Little Ice Age. Where I come from, it was none of the above: it was my great grandfather, his brother and a million others like them, all dressed in blue and carrying Springfield muskets. Or so we like to believe.

And Oliver Kamm has thoughts on the cartoons and the offence.

The Old Country

Old Man Simpson: "The story of the Simpson family began in the Old Country. I forget which one exactly."

Luckily, in my family, we remember.

Here's a frame showing pictures of Alsatian national costume (from "The History of Costume" by Braun & Schneider). The dapper looking guy on the right is from Oberseebach - the same village as my great great great grandfather.



Funny, I always thought we fled Europe to escape religious persecution but maybe we just went looking for better clothes.

Fisking Fisk

When I visited the Independent online and read the introduction to Robert Fisk's (pay to view) article "Don't be fooled, this isn't an issue of Islam versus secularism", I instinctively clicked over to the Daily Ablution to see if Scott had picked up on it, even though I know he doesn't normally blog on a Saturday.

I wasn't disappointed: "Fisk's Independent piece is so inferior, so reeks of desperate frustration, that to answer it seems required."

And answer it he does.

Incidentally, I notice via Instapundit that Fisk's been called on a number of factual inaccuracies in his book The Great War for Civilization.

Sense and sensibilities

From Normblog (emphasis in the original):

Respect for the right of free speech and respect for the sensibilities of others are not symmetrical and no one should pretend, in the present situation, that they can be neatly balanced. If the right to free speech is under attack it has to be defended. It is not possible fully to respect it except by recognizing that it leaves in place the freedom to be disrespectful to the beliefs and sensibilities of others.

Indeed.

Today in London

Jeremy Bowen reports for the BBC from outside Regents Park Mosque (video link):

"For many at Regents Park Mosque in London today this is just a new chapter in an old story of Western hypocrisy and hatred in which Muslim rights come second to everyone else's freedoms."

Some of those demonstrating against "Western hypocrisy and hatred" are chanting:

UK YOU WILL PAY
BIN LADEN ON HIS WAY

A few hundred of them then set off for the Danish Embassy fronted by placards proclaiming:

KILL THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM
EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO SLANDER ISLAM
ANNIHILATE THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM
MASSACRE THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM
EUROPE YOU WILL PAY FANTASTIC 4 ARE ON THE WAY

Free speech indeed.

UPDATE
Saturday's Guardian puts the number of demonstrators at more than 500 and notes they were led by al-Ghuraba (formerly al-Mujahiroun).

Passersby stopped police officers to ask why the marchers were being allowed to carry banners threatening further suicide attacks in the city. One police officer replied: "Don't worry. We are photographing them."

How reassuring.

Cartoon roundup

I've been too busy to blog the last couple of days, and when I haven't been busy, Ive been dead dog tired - the boys has been home from school with a virus that's been doing the rounds and I've been struggling with the domestics.

But I have managed to follow the increasing frenzy over Jyllands-Posten and the Mohammed cartoons (there’s already a detailed Wikipedia entry). I'm hoping I'll get time to post on it later today but who knows?

In the meantime:

There’s a lot of comment in the Guardian including Sarah Joseph’s pitiful bid for victim status - Tim Worstall has the perfect antidote.

Condition Orange: The Religious Policeman warns us that the Muslim "Offense Level" has been raised.

Our Lady of Cultural Differences: The Brussels Journal digs up an artwork that subverts Christian iconography.

And Cox and Forkum add a cartoon of their own featuring some guy called Mohammed.

Jyllands-Posten

The row over the publication of images of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper is threatening to get a little out of hand.

Perry de Havilland (who returns to the subject today) noted back in November that the row got started when:

Flemming Rose, an editor from Denmark's largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, reacted to news that Danish cartoonists were too afraid of Muslim militants to illustrate a new children's biography of the Prophet Mohammed, by doing exactly that, putting Denmark's policies of tolerance to the test by commissioning a series of illustrations of Mohammed.

Two things occur to me which (even without the benefit of hindsight) should, I think, have been obvious to the editor of Denmark's largest newspaper:

(1) Few of the pictures seem suitable for inclusion in a children's biography of the Prophet Mohammed.

(2) If Danish cartoonists are going to draw offensive images of Mohammed then they are right to be afraid of a backlash - not just from Muslim militants but from millions of ordinary Muslims around the world who take great offense at such things.

This doesn’t look like an issue of free speech to me, it looks like a lack of editorial judgement.

Tuesday Roundabout

Tim Worstall notches up his half-century with Britblog Roundup #50.

One of my personal favorites makes it into Normblog’s Momma 'n' Daddy Collection at number 48.

Quiz yourself and find your perfect Major via Zoe Brain – it seems mine should have been Psychology and not Accounting. I won't argue with that.

Dean Esmay suggests a couple of alternatives to Google. I think I might give Gigablast a try.

And finally,

Call the Scooby Gang! Things are getting spooky at Scribbles’ place.

Pasanda Badam Curry

We eat a lot of Indian food at home and one of my favorite dishes is this rich lamb curry from northern India which I originally got from one of Mridula Baljekar's highly recommended recipe books.

Ingredients
2lb lamb leg steaks
1 inch cube of root ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 fresh green chillies, seeded and coarsely chopped
4 tbsps natural yoghurt
2 oz unsalted butter
3 medium sized onions finely sliced
½ tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsps ground coriander
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼-½ tsp chilli powder
8fl oz warm water
1/2 tsp salt
5fl oz single cream
1oz ground almonds
1sp garam masala
2 tbsps warm water (or rose water if it's available)
½ tsp paprika

Trim the fat off the meat and cut into cubes.

Blend the ginger, garlic, green chillies and yoghurt in a liquidizer until smooth.

Lightly brown the onions in the butter over a medium heat. Add the turmeric, cumin, coriander, nutmeg and chilli powder, and cook over a low heat for 2-3 minutes stirring frequently. Increase the heat to high, add the meat and fry for 3-4 minutes or until it changes color.

Start stirring in the yoghurt mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time, cook for 1-2 minutes and repeat until all the yoghurt mixture is used up. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 4-5 minutes - keep stirring. Add the water, bring to the boil, cover the pan and simmer until the meat is tender (about 1 hour).

Add the salt, cream and ground almonds and simmer uncovered for 5-6 minutes. Stir in the garam masala and a couple of tablespoons of warm water, transfer to a serving dish, sprinkle with paprika and serve with pilau rice.

Language difficulties

Tomorrow, we're taking the boys up to Liverpool for the weekend. They're looking forward to it in much the same way as they look forward to going abroad. For them, Liverpool is a foreign country. Everything there seems very different and, more importantly, they don't understand the language.

Last time we were there, the Big Fella (10 at the time) met up with a local boy of about the same age who asked him, in a strong Scouse accent: "Oo joo sport?" The Big Fella was puzzled, he recognized it was a question but couldn't make out what he was being asked. So he said "What?" and took a few steps closer. "Oo joo sport?". My boy still can't make it out. "What?" and a few steps closer.

This happens a couple more times before I step in - the two of them are practically nose to nose by now, the oo-joo-sports are becoming louder and more deliberate and I'm starting to worry that a continued lack of communication might result in some kind of incident

Me: He's asking you who you support.
BF: What do you mean?
Me: He wants to know which team you support.
BF: What kind of team?
Me: Football! He wants to know which football team you support!
BF: Oh, I don't really.

At which, his young questioner looked quite askance, momentarily unable to believe that anyone in this soccer-mad city (let alone a boy of about his own age) would not support some football team or other. Still, it didn't phase him for long, friendly and eager for a playmate, he asked: "Worra ye do in the savy?" My boy said "What?" and took a few steps closer....

Later, I told him: "Next time we go up to Liverpool I'm going to buy you a book on how to speak Scouse." Sometimes, it really does sound like a foreign language.

Beautiful proof

Norm Geras links to an article on the beauty of Pythagoras's theorem, or rather the beauty of Euclid's proof.

I could spend days lost in Euclid's "Elements" but my favorite proof of Pythagoras's theorem is a classical Indian proof: a simple diagram accompanied by just one word.

Look!

Oxblog on Hamas

Oxblog's Patrick Belton has been blogging from Ramallah on the Palestinian elections.

Here's his initial take on Hamas's surprise victory:

It's not clear anyone wanted this, least of all Hamas, who in assuming the administration of the Palestinian national authority's creaking and often corrupt bureaucracy single-handed in a moment when its sole lifeline of European and other international support appears threatened, may just have stumbled into the biggest molasses patch the Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah has ever faced. Unlike the Lib Dems of 1985, Hamas did not go to its constituencies to prepare for government. It had prepared for a coalition, or possibly pristine opposition, but not this.

Racist soup

French food fascists.

Meet the candidates

From the Guardian's coverage of the Palestinian elections:

Among the more contentious candidates in Gaza was the Mother of Martyrs, who sent three of her sons to be suicide bombers. Mariam Farhat's campaign video includes footage of her helping her son, Mohammed, 17, to prepare his bomb belt and advising him on techniques that killed five Israelis.

In the West Bank, a candidate appeared on the ballot as Hitler, a nickname he picked up because of his virulent hatred of Jews.

Man bags whale

The BBC reports that rescuers are becoming increasingly concerned over the safety of a whale stranded in the River Thames.

But one of them has a cunning plan.

Religious reading

Being ill and largely housebound does have its consolations - I've recently been able to catch up on a lot of reading. One book I hadn't read in some time, and which I've just finished rereading, is Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas.

We moderns like to think that superstition was vanquished by the rise of scientific rationalism. In fact, as Thomas shows, the relationship between the rise of science and the decline of magic is not nearly so clear cut.

It is […] possible to connect the decline of the old magical beliefs with the growth of urban living, the rise of science, and the spread of an ideology of self help. But the connection is only approximate and a more precise sociological genealogy cannot at present be constructed.
[…]

The only identifiable social group which was consistently in the van of the campaign against certain types of magic is the clergy, but their attitude to supernatural claims in general was highly ambivalent. It does not seem possible to say whether the growing ‘rationalism’ of natural theology was a spontaneous theological development or a mere response to the pressures of natural science. It would make sense, no doubt, if one could prove that it was the urban middle classes, the shopkeepers and artisans, who took the lead in abandoning the old beliefs, but at present there seems no way of doing so.

It would indeed make sense. And furthermore, it would offer comfort to rationalists like myself who sometimes worry that by undermining the authority of established religion we run the risk of people coming to believe all kinds of dangerous nonsense.

VROOM VROOM

I'm a Ferrari 360 Modena!



You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Via Normblog.

Late night linkage

Two new additions to the blogroll: Ophelia Benson's Notes and Comments and Small Town Scribbles.

I've been reading Notes and Comments for some time. I've even been showing some of Ophelia's posts to the boys. As a result, she's fast becoming one of the Big Fella's intellectual heroes; he rehearses her arguments and then deploys them against his religious peers. They don't know what's hit them!

I started visiting Small Town Scribbles after reading her Normblog profile (that man should get an award for services to the blogosphere. He did? Oh, good). As for Scribbles, well, in her own words:

Left-wing, atheist, insomniac, female. Earnest working-class outlook. Poncy middle-class sensibilities. Big City pretensions, Small Town reality. Likes cats.

Likes cats? Aw hell, read her anyway.

Worrying about Iran

When I talk to people over here about the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran they seem quite sanguine about it. I think they’ve all pretty much absorbed the BBC line, most succinctly put by John Simpson in his Global Predictions for 2006:

Iran will take its nuclear ambitions further, and its negotiations with the European countries will seem more and more pointless. President Ahmadinejad will, however, start to lose favour in Iran, and the political opposition to him will grow.

To my mind, that’s wishful thinking.

My fear is that Iran’s nuclear ambitions will remain unchecked and that Israel, threatened by the imminent prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons, will want to act to destroy or significantly disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Israel is not capable of doing so using conventional weapons; the only country with the necessary conventional capability is the US.

Will we act, and if not, what are the risks of inaction?

Winds of Change addresses the issue head on with an essay by Thomas Holsinger (The Case for Invading Iran) and posts from Joe Katzman and Marc Danziger.

Casabianca

The boy stood on the burning deck/Whence all but he had fled;

What boy? Which deck?

The good old days

Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata is getting nostalgic for earlier times:

"Insofar as it was then acknowledged that the Welfare State would undermine the social pressures on people to be upright citizens, this was mostly regarded as a good thing. The Welfare State would enable people to escape from narrow-minded social prejudices and live freer and happier lives.
I consider the Prime Minister's somewhat implausible attempts to civilise our current crop of barbarians to be evidence, if you need any more, that those diehard free-marketeers had a point.

Ah yes, "the social pressures on people to be upright citizens". I remember them well. I’m not as old as Brian, but I remember those pressures vividly. They were the pressures that led to me being called a “bastard” at an English primary school in the sixties because I didn’t have a visible father. These were the same pressures that later led me to describe my father as being dead because, at a English Catholic school, it was preferable to have a “dead” father rather than being the son of a divorcee, the product of a “broken home”.

They were the same pressures that required me to spend one of my school years referred to simply as “The Jew” because I was the only circumcised boy at my school. And the same instincts led to ceaseless jibes about my German surname and my American heritage – in those times, my background was just too different to warrant any kind of acceptance.

By all means Brian, talk to me about the old days, but unless you were on the receiving end of those “social pressures on people to be upright citizens”, don’t try and tell me they were days of milk and honey. Because, for a lot of us (though, obviously, not the majority) they were the hardest days of our lives.

Alcohol and altitude

Not good.

The Gaga Hypothesis

James Lovelock, writing in today's Independent, says climate change is out of control and the end of civilization is nigh.

I don't know where Lovelock is getting his information (maybe he's channelling Gaia) - but he's certainly in an apocalyptic mood. Here are a couple of his more outlandish predictions:

"[A]s the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics."

And

"[B]efore this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

This isn't climate science, it's New Age Millenarianism.

The Kennedy cover-up

I would have thought the fact that the leader of one of Britain’s main political parties had a major drink problem would be eminently newsworthy. Evidently, the BBC didn’t think so.

Here’s a transcript from last Sunday’s Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4 in which veteran radio reporter Nick Jones explains why the BBC and other broadcasters covered up for Charles Kennedy’s drinking (the relevant segment starts at 35:20):

Yes, dear listener, I have to admit it, I was part of that benign cover-up by broadcasters. We did collude, we didn't level with you, we didn't explain that Charles Kennedy really did have a serious drink problem. Perhaps we should, perhaps we shouldn't. I'd known for years (and so did most of my colleagues) that Kennedy was more than partial to a wee dram and, yes, another dram too.
Unlike newspaper journalists, we radio reporters get pretty close to the action, we know when our interviewee has had one too many. But there you go, we needed Charles and he needed us. If he was late or hung-over, we'd make an excuse. If we thought the tape couldn't be broadcast, we'd ditch it.

So you can understand why, in our frustration and wishing to give you a hint of what was really afoot, we always made so much of that coded criticism which came tumbling out when the party hierarchy were firing their warning shots.

[...]

[I]f they [Liberal Democrat MPs] didn’t mention the dreaded word “drink” then we, the broadcasters, were ready to hold back. Journos are sometimes nicer than you think. Occasionally, we will skate over the truth, especially if someone in the public eye is nice to us and, yes, understands our foibles.

So there you have it: the BBC and others took part in a "benign" cover-up because Charles Kennedy was “nice to us”, “understands our foibles” and because “we needed him”. That’s not about reporters being “nicer than you think”, it’s simply unprincipled journalism.

And it makes you wonder what else they're not telling us.

Cutest thing on the block

Spud versus the store front snowman



He's three years old in that picture. Today, he's eight.

Happy Birthday, son.

Who knows

Is this really the funniest blonde joke, ever?

Linguistics 101

Geoffrey Pullum at Language Log tells it like it is:

they not only can have a morphosyntactically (and semantically) singular antecedent, but it can do so even if the gender of the referent is known, and syntactically overt

And

This use of they isn't ungrammatical, it isn't a mistake, it's a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators, and we don't buy what they're selling.

Heh.

Ancient wisdom

The wise man travels all day but never loses sight of his baggage.

Lao Tzu

Cancer and terrorism

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes another look at cancer as a metaphor for terrorism:

It struck me that, to make this metaphor exact we’d need:

• attacks on cancer researchers for seeking to ‘understand’ cancer

• even more attacks on anyone trying to find ‘root causes’ for cancer in the environment, such as exposure to tobacco smoke

• lengthy pieces pointing out that the only thing we need to know about cancer cells is that they are malignant

• more lengthy pieces pointing out that criticism of any kind of quack remedy marks the critic as “objectively pro-cancer”

Perhaps. Though, I’d add a couple more:

• lengthy articles from moral philosophers pointing out that cancer cells can't be held responsible for their malignancy

• numerous highly speculative papers from researchers suggesting that if cancer is left untreated it won’t spread

Justifiable abuse

The BBC reports on allegations that inmates on hunger strike at Guantanamo are being "force fed in a cruel manner".

[Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture,] told the BBC that he had received reports that some hunger strikers had had thick pipes inserted through the nose and forced down into the stomach.

This was allegedly done roughly, sometimes by prison guards rather than doctors. As a result, some prisoners had reported bleeding and vomiting he said.

I'm not surprised: force feeding someone is never easy or pleasant. Twenty-five years ago, when I worked in a UK hospital, I was involved in force feeding a teenage anorexic. It's a rough business and there's no gentle way of doing it. And, I have to say, it was the most distressing thing I've ever had to do.

Is it cruel? I don't think so, but it's clear that force feeding someone (whether they are a Guantanamo detainee or a patient in a UK hospital) involves a considerable level of physical abuse, which is only warranted by the intent to sustain life.

Happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one.

Watching the skies

We just got back from a trip to Frome in Somerset. It would have been nice to wander around the town for a bit, but we started out late and had to get back to get dinner on.

Still, we got what we went for:



It's the Celestron Firstscope 114 - a 4.5 inch reflector - and it's Spud's first telescope.

He read my mind

You know what? I was thinking that Norm's series "The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection" was beginning to run the risk of getting mired in "family circle nostalgia". Mac (who is also a big fan of country music) suggested an antidote in the form of some lyrics from the Mary Gauthier album she bought earlier this year.

So, imagine my surprise when I checked out the latest post in the series to find that Norm has quoted the very lyric that Mac suggested.

Must be something in the air.

$100 bird

Like a lot of people, we’ll be eating turkey today. And what a bird we got!

This not just turkey: this is a free range, dry plucked, hand finished Bronze, reared on a balanced cereal diet, rich in oats and allowed to roam in cherry orchards and meadows.

Yep, once again, we went for a Copas turkey – they’re expensive but really good eating.

Yuletide Greetings

For non-religious families like us Christmas means a tree, presents and a family feast - it's not about cribs, carols and Christian rituals. Our festive traditions - the tree, the holly, the mistletoe - have pagan not Christian roots. Christmas is a flag of convenience for our mid-winter celebration.

I mention this because some people think there's something a little odd about non-believers celebrating Christmas. Or they think we've lost sight of the true meaning of it all. I don't think so. Like Scribbles says, the shoe's on the other foot.

Have a cool Yule.

Religious obsession

Fellow expat Scott Callahan notes the BBC's seeming obsession with overstating the role of religion in American society.

Though, to my mind, the BBC is not the worst offender, the Guardian has long pushed the same line. A while back, Mark Lawson was telling us that "The US is a theocracy suffering from galloping spiritual inflation." And, on Saturday, Harold Bloom chimed in with his observation that the Bush administration "daily fuses more tightly together elements of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy."

OMG! With all that "daily" fusion going on, pretty soon we're going to end up with an oli-pluto-theo thingy. (I'm guessing that would be a Bad Thing.)

My blogson

No 1 Son has started his own blog. His first post is a condemnation of the evils of dog breeding and, by implication, pet breeding in general.

Do I have any advice for him as a novice blogger? Yes, keep those kind of views to yourself around cat bloggers - they'll tear you to pieces.

Bias and distortion

Scott Burgess at the Daily Ablution takes a well-aimed swipe at his favorite target:

[D]espite its all-too-frequently displayed anti-American, anti-Bush agenda, BBC News remains in large part a news organisation. And however flagrant its unabashed editorial slant, the Guardian is still, for the time being at least, a newspaper - if only barely.

The Independent, however, is neither.

Read it all.

Musical accompaniment

Mac just texted me to let me know it's Motown Night on RTE's Mystery Train. You can listen to the show here.

What you waiting for?

Angry headlines

Has anyone else noticed how "angry" the headlines at BBC News are getting, these days?

If you read their site on a regular basis, you might be forgiven for thinking that practically everyone in this country is angry about something or other. Even the clergy, it seems, can scarcely contain their rage.

Don't they know it's one of the seven deadly sins?

Oy vey and little fishes

It's a phrase my grandmother used to use in extremis. I haven't thought about it for years (and I've never heard anyone else say it) but it came back to me this morning when I read the latest pronouncement from the President of Iran.

The BBC reports:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth". "They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets," he said.
On live TV, he called for Europe or North America - even Alaska - to host a Jewish state, not the Middle East.

I expect a number of European commentators will rush to "contextualize" Ahmadinejad's remarks, explaining to us simple folk why we shouldn't be alarmed - though, somewhat surprisingly, Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian says he's not going to play that game anymore.

[E]veryone has their limits and last week I reached mine. On Thursday the president of Iran chose to stand with the cranks, neo-fascists and racists who deny the factual truth of the Holocaust.
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Although we don't accept this claim..."

Suddenly, the usual apologetics won't work. No one can say Iran's president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west's colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish only harm.

Intolerable cruelties

An editorial in today's Times of India addresses the case of an Indian in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to be blinded in one eye:

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that the degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. The observation can be extended to crime and punishment as well.
That being the case, the punishment meted out to P V Naushad, a working-class Indian expatriate, by a shariat court in Saudi Arabia is a blot on the system of justice in that country.

The court has ordered that one of Naushad's eyes be gouged out as punishment for injuring the eye of an Arab in a scuffle. An eye for an eye is not just barbaric, but a perversion of justice.

[...]

The quest for a more humane definition of justice should not be debated as a clash of civilisations. It is just another, but an important and necessary, step towards the creation of a world that values mercy more than revenge.

Indeed.

Little Atoms redux

The Little Atoms radio show (broadcast fortnightly on Resonance 104.4 FM) features live discussions from a "Rationalist, Pro-science, Atheist, Humanist" perspective.

If you miss a broadcast, you can listen to it here. Previous shows have featured discussions with Norman Geras, David Aaronovitch and Harry from Harry's Place.

Well worth a listen.

Thought for the day

Recovery is not an event, it's a process.

The Best of British

Tim Worstall has the latest Britblog Roundup.

He's also has a thorough fisking of Madeleine Bunting's latest opinion: "Consumer capitalism is making us ill - we need a therapy state".

She may.

Snowclones

There's a rising tide of them, or something.

The Three Rs

Reading, writing, reproducing.

Religious strife

It's a couple of weeks old now, but this headline from the Times caught my attention:

"Church of England evil, say archbishops"

What, really, really evil? Who'd have thunk it!

It's all about "unrepented sexual immorality", seemingly.

Blogging the burka

Scribbles on the burka:

The burka isn't about modesty or religious expression, it's about obliteration of the self; a complete eradication of individuality. It is about making yourself a non-being. I will say it now, I still feel sick when I see a woman in a burka, not because I am racist, not because I have anything against Islam, but because any abuse of the self shocks and upsets me.

Me too.

Link via the inestimable Norm.

Go get 'em Mo

Maureen Lipman meets a Holocaust denier at a North London garden party.

Simply delicious!

Blogroll changes

OUT

A Small Victory: Michele has stopped blogging (never thought I'd see the day) but, as she said, she's been blogging a long time and "eventually long becomes long enough."

Cut on the Bias: Is on indefinite hiatus as Susanna struggles to get her doctorate back on track. Good luck with that.

The Daily Bread: Hasn't been daily for a while, and rarely features bread. Go figure!

Suburban Blight: Appears to have been blighted. A lot of folks are hoping Kelley's ok - me too.

IN

Tim Worstall: Compiler of the BritBlog Roundup and, of course, THE BOOK.

Four OUT and only one IN. Help! My blogroll is shrinking.

Harrumph

Excuse me, just clearing my throat.

It's been so long since I posted on even a semi-regular basis that I'm beginning to fear that I might have forgotten how to blog.

At least I'm not alone.

Festival food

Fed up with turkey? Looking for something a little bit different to put on the table this Thanksgiving?

You might want to try Stuffed Aussie. Angie Shultz has the recipe.

Though personally, if you're going to eat an Antipodean, I'd recommend the New Zealand variety - they're not so tough.

Slavery days

Listen:

"My name is Fountain Hughes. I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. My grandfather belong to Thomas Jefferson."

Fountain's story and others are available in an online anthology of American slave narratives at the University of Virginia.

In Remembrance

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen 1893-1918

Man's work

Jon Absalom writes in today's Guardian on the joys of being a househusband:

It is difficult, being a househusband; certainly more difficult than I had imagined. The practical aspects of parenting - naps, meals, baths, bedtimes - are well established. So are the basics of keeping house. None of it is the least bit difficult, once you know how. But a lot of it is boring. And the hours ... they start when it's dark and cold, and they last for an unreasonable amount of time. There is little time to yourself; no time for mulling over your emails, or surfing the web, or popping out for some pleasure shopping. There's no breakfast and a shower before work. You live and sleep on the shop floor.

I tend to refer to myself as a full-time father rather than a househusband, but the work's the same. And it leaves very little time for anything else.

Autumn break

We just got back from our first trip to Center Parcs.

I was hoping to blog while I was away, and maybe catch up on some e-mail, but I couldn't find a wi-fi connection and access to the resort's computers was limited and expensive.

Anyway, it was great to get away and the boys really enjoyed it - they went swimming every day. It was a nice, relaxing break.

But, here's something that struck me when we arrived: the Gideon's Bible on the bedside table seemed strangely out of place. I hadn't expected to find one there and it jarred a little. I had thought we were still in merry old, multi-cultural England but Gideon seemed to be saying:"Welcome to Christendom".

What's going on? Is Center Parcs a specifically Christian organization, or are the Bible Boys paying for the privilege of leaving their trash in my room?

Really, I'd like to know.

Something different

Every now and again, I like to try something new, something I've never done before - and then go at it with a will.

This year's "something new" is acting: I've started a drama course one evening a week. Yes, I'm learning to be an actor!

Last night in class, I acted out a scene from one of Shakespeare's plays and was so surprised by the teacher's response that I have to say, at first, I doubted his sincerity.

T: Ah! You've played this role before.
Me: No.
T: But you've seen the play?
Me: No.
T: You've done a lot of acting though.
Me: Er, no.

Quite embarassing, really - especially having to reveal that I trained originally as an accountant and have spent my working life in business. Maybe I missed my vocation!

Somehow, I doubt it. But you never know!

The Politics Test

Yep, I took it. Turns out, I'm a democrat. Who'd have guessed?

The daily round

Well, Mac left around 8 to go to work - it's the first day of her new job - and I'm back to being full-time father, househusband, head cook and bottle washer.

Hopefully, I'll be able to find time in the day to do some blogging. But before that, there's menu-planning, shopping, cleaning and tidying to be done.

Back later.

Toady's typo

Mac starts a new job on Monday. All this week, she's been getting e-mails from her current co-workers wishing her goodbye and good luck. This one left her somewhat bemused:

"Good luck. I was great working with you."

Heh.

Poker for bloggers

Pokerstars are running a free online poker tournament for bloggers. So, of course, I signed up.

I don't know how many of the bloggers on my blogroll play poker, but I've heard rumours that one or two of them do.

Anti pig control

They can have my stress pig when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

The Daily Ablution

Scott Burgess is back at the keyboard, fully refreshed and in fine form.

Family time

Did I ever tell you how proud I am of these guys?



From left to right: The Big Fella, No 1 Son and Spud behaving for the camera - it's not a pose they can hold for long.

Bad blogging day

My apologies to any bloggers who received spurious trackbacks from me, yesterday. I was deleting some half-written draft posts and accidentally published a few of them by mistake.

Sorry, guys.

Thought for the day

"Depression is caused not by submitting to our circumstances but by our anger with ourselves for doing so."

Lewis Wolpert.

BBC bias

Via BBBC: Bias at the BBC? Shome mistake shurely?

In the ghetto

Via PooterGeek's web wandering: Shreena's Live Journal provides an insight into life in a close-knit Indian community in North London.

Most of my extended family live in what could be called a "ghetto" in North London - i.e. almost everyone in their area is Indian (with some Jewish streets) and everyone they socialise with. I'm somewhat at a loss as to what to think about it. On the one hand, I do find it genuinely shocking that my cousins went to schools where there was no mixing between different races and, even more shocking, that this continued at their universities. But, on the other hand, I don't get any sense from my extended family that they wanted, at any point, to "mix" more with whites and it's very clear that they actively avoid blacks and muslims.

It's worth reading the whole thing, though I'd take issue with the idea that the community where Shreena's extended family live "could be called a 'ghetto'." It sounds like an insular community, for sure, but it doesn't come across like a ghetto.

This is a ghetto.

Adventures in Wonderland

Supposedly, when Captain Ed uses a word it means just what Oliver Willis chooses it to mean - neither more or less.

Well, Jeff Goldstein's got something to say about that in a couple of posts on "moribund intentionalism and the death of the author".

Read 'em both.

Atlantic blowhards

Philip Stott has an illuminating post on Hurricane cycles and human hatred over at Envirospin Watch, including a review of the last two hundred years of Atlantic hurricanes, which emphasizes the cyclical nature of hurricane activity over the longer term.

He rightly concludes:

The idea that recent hurricane patterns may be readily attributable to single-variable human-induced 'global warming' is just not tenable.

He also has a thing or two to say about some of the newspaper articles that followed Katrina's aftermath.

Essential reading for the mitigated sceptic.

The Daily Doom

Talking of shrill polemicists, I’ve just seen the front page of today’s Independent. Here’s their lead story:

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

In support of Lawton’s remarks, the article refers extensively to a paper published in last week’s Science. If they’re referring to the recent paper by Webster, Holland, Curry and Chang: Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment then I think they must have got their wires crossed somewhere, as the authors themselves conclude:

[A]ttribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.

Does that sound like the "smoking gun" of global warming to you?

Mixed marriages

Alice Bachini discovers that marrying an American is a social sin in some quarters:

Among certain Old World circles, marrying an American and moving to Texas are about the most outrageous, personally-insulting actions a person can possibly undertake without breaking the law. When you tell people, and mention that they would be welcome to visit anytime during the next half-century they will probably be alive throughout, they act like you invited them to a new colony on Mars, only more so. “Oh no… I don’t think I’ll ever go there.”

Merchants of doom

Jeremy Rifkin (author of "The Hydrogen Economy"), writing in today's Guardian, blames his fellow Americans for the devastation caused by hurricanes:

Katrina and Rita are the entropy bill for increasing CO2 emissions and global warming. The scientists have been warning us about this for years. They said to keep our eyes on the Caribbean, where the dramatic effects of climate change are first likely to show up in the form of more severe and even catastrophic hurricanes.

[...]

Katrina and Rita, then, are not just bad luck, nature's occasional surprises thrust on unsuspecting humanity. Make no mistake about it. We Americans created these monster storms. We've known about the potentially devastating impact of global warming for nearly a generation. Yet we turned up the throttle, as if to say: "We just don't give a damn."

The problem for doom merchants like Rifkin is that there's little evidence that hurricanes are becoming either more frequent or more severe. Take a look at this table of hurricane strikes to hit the US mainland over the last 150 years, showing the number of hurricanes by decade and the number of major events (Category 3 or greater).

1851-1860.....19.... 6
1861-1870.....15.....1
1871-1880.....20.....7
1881-1890.....22.....5
1891-1900.....21.....8
1901-1910.....18.....4
1911-1920.....21.....7
1921-1930.....13.....5
1931-1940.....19.....8
1941-1950.....24....10
1951-1960.....17.....8
1961-1970.....14.....6
1971-1980.....12.....4
1981-1990.....15.....5
1991-2000.....14.....5
2001-2004.......9.....3


[Source: National Hurricane Center]

If anything, the data indicates a reduction in the number and severity of hurricane strikes since the 1940s. Here's what the AOML's Hurricane Research Division has to say on the issue:

[It] is highly unlikely that global warming has (or will) contribute to a drastic change in the number or intensity of hurricanes. We have not observed a long-term increase in the intensity or frequency of Atlantic hurricanes. Actually, 1991-1994 marked the four quietest years on record (back to the mid-1940s) with just less than 4 hurricanes per year. Instead of seeing a long-term trend up or down, we do see a quasi-cyclic multi-decade regime that alternates between active and quiet phases for major Atlantic hurricanes on the scale of 25-40 years each.

Regardless of the data and contrary to the opinions of experts in the field, a lot of people are blaming Katrina on global warming. We'd do well to remember that many of the people peddling this line, like Jeremy Rifkin, are not members of the evidence-based community but shrill polemicists pursuing their own agenda.

UPDATE
And, talking of shrill polemicists...

Britblog showcase

Tim Worstall has the lastest Britblog Roundup, which is where I found Natalie Bennett's review of "War Reporting for Cowards" by Chris Ayres.

I've been looking for a good read: I've just finished "The World Within War", by Gerald F Linderman and I'm struggling through Michael Oren's "Six Days of War" - comprehensive but hard going.

And yes, I read a lot of books on war - you could say it used to be the family business.

Desparate measures

I sometimes find myself wondering what the phrase "racial equality" actually means, and how we'll know if we ever achieve it. I imagine Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, has the answers to both those questions - he certainly has plenty of suggestions for practical action. The problem is they all have an air of desperation about them.

For example, back in March, Phillips proposed that British schools should consider separate classes for black school boys - that would be 'separate but equal', I suppose. He also suggested that black fathers should be denied access to their children if they refused to attend parent teacher meetings - non-black fathers who exhibit the same behaviour would suffer no such sanctions.

Today, as the BBC reports, Phillips will give a speech warning that Britain is in danger of 'sleepwalking' its way into racial segregation. And he suggests new measures are needed to address the problem, including forcing "white" schools to take larger numbers of pupils from ethnic minorities - sounds like busing to me.

Presumably, in line with Phillips' earlier proposals, once these kids have been enrolled in the "white" schools, the black boys amongst them will be segregated and educated in separate classes. Or am I missing something?

I'm thinking the CRE may be looking for a new director sometime in the new year.

Simon Wiesenthal 1908-2005

From a short biography at the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

Wiesenthal once spent the Sabbath at the home of a former Mauthausen inmate, now a well-to-do jewelry manufacturer. After dinner his host said, "Simon, if you had gone back to building houses, you'd be a millionaire. Why didn't you?" "You're a religious man," replied Wiesenthal. "You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?', there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler', Another will say, I have smuggled coffee and American cigarettes', Another will say, 'I built houses', But I will say, 'I didn't forget you'."

Theater time

Mac and I are off to the Tobacco Factory this evening to see "The Fall of the House of Usherettes".

Loosely based on a gothic horror story by master of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe, [...] It's the tale of a crumbling old cinema and the Usherettes, three ghoulish sisters who are guardians of the ancient picture palace and its secrets.

Mac saw some rave reviews of the show last time it was in town (which is about ten years ago now) and has always regretted missing it. Me, I don't know what to expect - these guys look capable of anything!

Anthropostology

Sounds like Norm got snowed with mail after his recent post asking for help with the Anthropic Principle.

On a related note: a recent correspondence published in Nature magazine proposed the Misanthropic Principle as a resolution to the Fermi paradox. It suggests the reason we haven't been visited by aliens is because we're really not very nice.

And there's me thinking we were mostly harmless.

On recovery

Recovering from long-term illness is a strange and surprising experience. Sure, recovery is what you hope for, but when you're really sick, you can't imagine ever getting better. Then, one day, you wake up and you don't feel so bad, and the next day is better and, before long, you realize you're well again.

And that's great, but it takes a bit of getting used to - long-term illness is psychologically as well as physically debilitating. When I was sick, I couldn't do anything, so I got used to doing nothing. Now I'm well, I've got to get back into the habit of doing things again - like blogging. And I don't mind saying, it's proving tougher than I thought.

Of course, I could always go back to pointless, incessant barking. It has its attractions.

World music

Unmissable: Mongolian throat-singer Yat-Kha with a cover of 'Black Magic Woman' on last night's Mystery Train with John Kelly. The track is 40 minutes in - catch it while you can.

He's also been featuring a spot of New Orleans music every night, last night he kicked-off with Archibald singing Stack-A-Lee. Sweet.

Here's the playlist. Enjoy.

Helping and hindering

A few days after Katrina struck, I noted that I hadn’t seen any offers of aid from the international community. Frankly, I was concerned that anti-American sentiment would inhibit foreign donors from offering emergency relief.

I’m pleased to see that hasn’t happened and more than 50 countries have now offered help and support.

Not everyone has been so generous - Nick Cater’s comment piece in today’s Guardian opens with the contention that “Withholding aid from the United States is the only way to remove its domestic and foreign policy blinkers”. And Cater (who incidentally is the international editor of Giving Magazine) maintains a singular lack of compassion throughout. Here are his closing paragraphs:

If America learned anything from being the recipient of others' charity, it would be worth every penny. But on aid, disasters, climate, poverty, race, religion and more, its failure to listen does great damage to its own vulnerable people and those around the world gripped by poverty, hunger or disease.

After 9/11, the world sent millions of dollars to benefit mainly better-off Americans. Our charity was not necessary then; it is not necessary now.

As Cater himself asked in another context, whatever happened to the humanitarian imperative to aid those in need?

Pure serene

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Yet did I never breathe such pure serene
Till I heard PooterGeek speak out loud and bold.

Okay, so I'm paraphrasing Keats, but really, you gotta read the whole thing. Laugh? I almost choked!

Warning: Not suitable for people drinking hot beverages near their keyboards.

I have mail

So, not having checked my e-mail for some time, my laptop is telling me I have 283 unread e-mail messages. And all I can think is: "I wonder if that's a prime number?"

Turns out, it is. It's also a backlog. I'm getting round to it, though I was initially tempted to adopt the Solent solution.

Blaming Wal-Mart

I've heard Wal-Mart blamed for a lot of things, but John Harris (writing in yesterday's Guardian) comes up with a new one on me.

In the States, a recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts revealed that the percentage of people aged 18 to 24 with experience of reading novels, poetry or plays had fallen by a third over the last 20 years. Given that the same period has seen the rise to retail omnipotence of Wal-Mart, it isn't hard to join the dots.

Join the dots!? Is he kidding? The idea that Wal-Mart's rise is responsible for literature's decline is like saying that global warming is caused by too few pirates: correlation does not imply causation.

Unless, of course, you hate supermarkets and like blaming Wal-Mart. Then, it seems, anything goes.

Bomb scare

BBC Wales reports that army bomb disposal experts were deployed in Swansea today after a suspicious package was discovered on a local bus.

Judging from the image accompanying the story, I don't think the army were taking the incident too seriously. Either that or someone needs to explain the whole concept of Remote Control to this soldier.

A drowned city

I stayed up late last night watching ABC’s coverage of Katrina’s aftermath. The devastation is mind-boggling and the logistical problems facing the emergency services are daunting. A correspondent at VodkaPundit highlights the difficulties:

Imagine trying to resolve the 9-11 mess if NYC was under six feet of water, all comms were out, the interstates were flooded and the majority of the infrastructure more or less completely out of commission.

And then there are “the 2%'ers”.

Biggest behavior problems are among those who are going cold turkey and there are quite a few. Cops figure that is going to get worse and with it the associated problems.

Those problems are already legion. Reuters reports that Loiusiana Congressman Charlie Melancon says as many as 100 people have died in his district as a result of the violent disorder that has broken out in the city. And Louisiana Govenor Kathleen Blanco has warned that National Guard troops deployed in the area are under orders to "shoot and kill" to restore order.

Meanwhile, in contrast to large-scale natural disasters in other countries, I haven't yet come across any reports of offers of aid or disaster relief from the international community or NGOs.

It looks like America is going to have to deal with this thing on its own.

Us and them

The BBC reports that researchers have completed the sequencing and analysis of the chimpanzee genome. It's long been held that chimps are humanity's closest living relatives, having diverged from a common ancestor only about 7 million years ago, but now we can see just how close that relationship is.

The study shows that our genomes are startlingly similar. We differ by only 1.2% in terms of the genes that code for the proteins which build and maintain our bodies. This rises to about 4%, when non-coding or "junk" DNA is taken into account.

The long-term goal of the project is to pinpoint the genetic changes that led to human characteristics such as complex language, walking upright on two feet, a large brain and tool use.

As the study’s lead author, Tarjei Mikkelsen of the Broad Institute at MIT, says:

We still do not have in our hands the answer to a most fundamental question: What makes us human? But this genomic comparison dramatically narrows the search for the key biological differences between the two species.

Nature magazine is commemorating the project’s completion with a special web feature on Pan troglodytes, including some previously-unseen footage of chimpanzee behaviour.

Random quote

It has been established beyond doubt that the placebo-controlled, randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy.

Society of Homeopaths

Random picture

Games Day

The Big Fella's hosting a War Hammer/LOTR games day, today. Half a dozen ten-year-old boys are about to descend on us accompanied by armies of plastic orcs and homemade scenery.

They'll keep themselves amused for hours, and all we have to do is feed them. They won't stop for a meal in the midst of battle, so feeding them means providing snacks and sodas throughout the day.

I'm not sure I'll get much blogging done today.

Three weeks in bed

Bedrest: it's a cure-all, I tell you!

A month ago, my seasonal asthma kicked in. In previous years, I've required hospitalization and been close to death on more than one occasion.

In the past, even on good days, I'd be incapable of all forms of exertion - walking any distance or climbing stairs, for example. And on bad days, acute hypoxia would leave me incapable of recognizing when I needed emergency medical attention. Mac has, quite literally, saved my life on more than one occasion.

This year, as my symptoms worsened, I took to my bed expecting at some point to end up back in hospital,. It didn't happen: it seems I've gotten away lightly this year. I've had symptoms - sometimes they've been debilitating, mostly they've been irritating - but nothing like in previous years.

So what's changed? The only difference I can see is that , in the past, I've tried to work through my asthma season, ignoring the symptoms and carrying on like I'm not ill. It doesn't work, of course - I used to quickly become exhausted and eventually I'd be forced to lie down. This year, I did things differently. I didn't try to soldier on. When I got sick, I went to bed and stayed there until I got better. It worked!

Mac regards this as the right way to respond to illness but, for me, it's revolutionary. I was brought up to soldier on, and not to let things get the better of you. My family's attitude to illness held that symptoms, unless obviously and immediately life threatening, were to be ignored. In practice, this meant that, whatever the complaint, if your head wasn't falling off you would likely be told to "get on with it". To even acknowledge a symptom was tantamount to giving in to it. And "giving in" was the worst crime in the book.

Mmm. You know, maybe Mac's right, perhaps I do have a characteristically male attitude to illness.

Anyway, I’m up and about again.

Catching up

Having been off-line for nearly a month, I'm busy dealing with a backlog of e-mails. As a result, posting here will be light to non-existent for the next few days (no change there, then).

I'll be back.

Remember me?

I’ve spent the last few weeks with my head in my hands: computer problems have prevented me posting, my e-mail is totally screwed and my regular tech support has moved to Oxford.

Nobody told me there’d be days like these.