Mothers Day

Mac with the Big Fella and Spud from a couple of years back - we were too busy for pictures today.

No 1 Son bought her a card with a badge that he'd altered to read "SUPER MAGIC STEP MUM". He got that right.

Meet the ancestors

Having difficulty with your hominids? Can't tell an afarensis from an africanus? Not sure where anamensis fits in?

Then you need the Hominidae: species overview from Archaeology.Info.

Great graphics, tons of information on more hominid species than you can shake a stick at and some interesting essays on early human evolution.

Recommended reading for all you sapiens out there.

Three gifts

Today was my birthday: I'm forty-eight. To take my mind of it, my family bought me gifts:

A movie: 3:10 to Yuma - the 2007 remake with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. We watched it this evening - highly entertaining.

A book: Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland, author of Rubicon which I read last year.

A picture: A large framed print of one of my own photos - I know I'm notoriously difficult to buy for but this smacks of desperation.

Meetings with remarkable men

Via Dean's World: Time Magazine has Bob Geldof's account of his recent meeting with George Bush:

I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. "Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?" he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. "Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?" I replied.

Terry Taliban

Norm Geras takes issue with today's Leader in the Guardian which criticized Prince Harry for his role in Afghanistan and his use of the phrase "Terry Taliban" to describe the enemy:

Here speaks a sensibility that, thrown back 60-odd years, must have blenched - yes, blenched - at the usage 'Jerry', as being inconsiderately de-individuating, lumping-together, forgetful of the circumstance that even soldiers of the armies of the Third Reich, spreading barbarism across a continent, are particular persons, why, they too have mothers and fathers, wives, girlfriends and pets, they're not just faceless 'Jerry'. Yes, and the poor old Taliban, each reactionary one of them, each bigoted theocrat and seeker after the sole obligatory truth, the compulsory non-dancing, non-singing, non-kite-flying subservience, the eternal subordination of women, each Talibloke is a man with a face and a childhood, with dreams and hopes and attachments - like to a life-cramping, life-denying movement that would confiscate from those under its tutelage just about every important freedom the Guardian of liberal virtue is supposed to stand for. Terry Taliban, what a heaped, what a steaming insult. How vulgar. How thoughtless.

Read the whole thing.

Family news

No 1 Son achieves 15 seconds of fame: he's got a video clip up on the BBC's Be on TV site.

His mother reckons he'll be on TV soon: the first continuity announcer in the family!

A spot of color

I've been out and about with the camera.

Vox populi

Beige Van Man.

Black and white

Stuff white people like.

Stuff black people like.

Bargain of the week

My latest purchase from Tenovus, the local charity shop:



One of the best collections I've seen in a long time and, at £2.50, it was a bargain I couldn't resist - it's £16.25 on Amazon.

The Kosovo question

Is Europe ready to go to war in order to guarantee Kosovo's independence?

I'm just asking.

Ethnically challenged

It just occurred to me that some people reading this post might imagine that my claim to Irish ethnicity was frivolous and unfounded. After all, I'm a German-American living in England - where does the Irish come in?

Well, my mother's parents were of Irish descent: my grandfather was educated in Tipperary (his family farmed the land around Roscrea for generations - until the potato famine came along) and my maternal grandmother's family were from County Mayo.

So I don't think my purported ethnicity is at issue. Hey, I'm even wondering if I could get an Irish passport - it's safer for international travel.

At least it used to be.

Castro on the other hand

Over at the Glasperlenspiel that is Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram adds his 2 cents worth to the coverage of Castro's retirement:

So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Hmm.

I'm with Armed Liberal on this one: "If the price of universal literacy is prison camps for writers, count me out."

Duty Calls

From xkcd: "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."

The Mathamatical Universe

I'm not blogging much: posting and high doses of codeine are not compatible. I'm doing three days on and two days off - both to prevent tolerance developing and to avoid the worst of the withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, that means I'm either too morphed out to blog or I'm so distracted by the pain and discomfort that I really can't be bothered.

Also, when I do have lucid time, I've been using it to work through Max Tegmark's paper The Mathamatical Universe(pdf).

Here's the abstract:

I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and Gödel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Gödel’s sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems.

Fascinating.

Beatbox chef

The boys' current favorite on YouTube.

Beware the bearded weirdy

From the BBC: The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".

Really?

The folks at Harry's Place have got something to say about that.

Afghanistan or bust

David Aaronovitch spells out the consequences of a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan:

The Afghan Government would collapse, to be replaced by an overt civil war fought between the Taleban and local governors in the various provinces. A million or more Afghan refugees would again flee their country, many of them ending up in the West. Deprived of support from the US, as recommended by our commentators, President Musharraf or a successor would effectively withdraw from the border regions, leaving a vast lawless area from central Afghanistan to north central Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and other jihadists would operate from these areas as they did before 9/11. This time these forces - already capable of assassinating a popular democratic politician - would seriously impact upon the stability of Pakistan, which is a nuclear state.

Jihadists everywhere, from Indonesia to Palestine, would see this as a huge victory, democrats and moderates as a catastrophic defeat. There would hardly be a country, from Morocco to Malaysia, that wouldn't feel the impact of the reverse. That's before we calculate the cost to women and girls of no longer being educated or allowed medical treatment. And would there be less terror as a result?

Good news and bad

IRIN, the UN's humanitarian news service, reports that a group of women in Guinea are choosing health over tradition:

About 150 communities in Guinea on Sunday collectively abandoned the practice of female genital cutting - a landmark declaration in a country where more than 97 percent of women undergo the ritual, the event’s organisers said on Monday.

Delegations led by women from each village converged on the central Guinean town of Lalya to speak about genital excision and participate in the declaration. All of Guinea’s ethnic groups practice genital cutting, despite a law that forbids it.

Unfortunately, the Telegraph reports that a number of female medical students in England seem willing to put cultural traditions before health.

Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion.

Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.

Living with pain

My life has turned into a codeine fugue – wake up, take the tablets, doze for four hours then more painkillers. Do that a couple more times and then off to bed.

In truth, the dozing is becoming more fitful – I’m building up a tolerance for the codeine so it’s not really dealing with the pain. Meanwhile I have a dull thud where my consciousness used to be.

Right now, I am a perfectly useless human being – I can’t cook, clean, shop, blog, read, write or play poker.

Still, I reckon I’m lucky – all that pain I was ignoring for so long turned out to be a gall stone. Tim Blair’s pain, on the other hand, turned out to be cancer.

It isn't unusual, after you hit 40, to have the occasional unexplained ache, or muscle cramp, or sleepless night, or other types of non-dramatic complaint - though it might be unusual for those things to start happening all at once.

That is where I was three months ago. Things got worse, in tiny increments. Within two months - by degrees so small I didn't notice them - sleepless nights sometimes became nights roiled in sweat so drenching I was woken by drops falling across my eyelids.

Previously generalised aches took root in specific areas, and once in a while turned from ache to agony.

At which point any sensible person should have seen a doctor.

But a lot of men don’t. Me included. I’d have still been suffering in silence if I hadn’t been rushed to hospital one night with severe abdominal pains.

Thankfully, Tim's doing fine. Post-op, he's out of hospital and blogging again.

Me, I'm still waiting for a surgical assessment. And once I'm sorted, any pain I get I'm going straight to the doc.

Look and learn

We try and watch over the kids when they're on the internet. You know, just to make sure they're not coming across inappropriate images and such. I must say, it doesn't help that they're mother emails them stuff like this:

Government Health Warning

Do NOT swallow chewing gum!



Still, it's educational, I suppose.

Health race

So, I go to the hospital for more tests but, before they can see me, they want me to fill in a Racial Monitoring form. OK. So, I'm looking down the list and there's Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, African, Afro-Caribbean etc and, right at the bottom, White. Not French, Greek, Polish, Russian - just White. And my first thought is: "Do we all look the same, then?"

Anyway, there's no way I'm filling in that box. And "White, Other" won't do either. So, it's back to the top of the list and I start to work my way down again - there's got to be some ethnicity I can lay claim to. And there was.

Turns out, I'm Irish.

Top of the morning to you.

Flag day

After a Labour Member of Parliament calls for the inclusion of the Welsh Dragon in the British flag, the Telegraph unveils a range of possible designs including one that I feel sure many English people would find acceptable.

Blasphemous bear

What's yours called?

Americans abroad

From "The Victors" by Stephen Ambrose:

The standard story of how the American GI reacted to the foreign people he met during the course of World War II runs like this: He felt the Arabs were despicable lying, stealing, dirty, awful, without a redeeming feature. The Italians were lying, stealing, dirty, wonderful, with many redeeming features, but never to be trusted. The rural French were sullen, slow and ungrateful while the Parisians were rapacious, cunning, indifferent to whether they were cheating Germans or Americans. The British people were brave, resourceful, quaint, reserved, dull. The Dutch were regarded as simply wonderful in every way (but the average GI never was in Holland, only the airborne).

The story ends up thus: Wonder of wonders, the average GI found that the people he liked best, identified most closely with, enjoyed being with, were the Germans. Clean, hard-working, disciplined, educated, middle-class in their tastes and life-styles (many GIs noted that so far as they could tell the only people in the world who regarded a flush toilet and soft white toilet paper as a necessity were the Germans and the Americans), the Germans seemed to many American soldiers "just like us".

Loose end

Ok, so I'm sitting here at three in the morning trying to make an anagram out of INSOMNIA and I'm thinking there's got to be a better way of wasting my time. Apart from blogging, obviously.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

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 goodbyes.
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

Family life

Mac and I are quite strict parents. Of course, the boys didn’t realize how strict we were until they started school and had the opportunity to confer with their peers.

Son: “Hey, Dad, the other kids at school are allowed chocolate cereal for breakfast all the time and not just three times a year like us.”
Me: “What do you mean three times a year? You’re only allowed chocolate cereal twice a year: Christmas and birthdays.”
Son: “No! Remember - Cousin John got you to agree we could have it at Thanksgiving as well.”
Me: “Oh, right. So, three times a year. What’s wrong with that?”
Son: “Well, the other boys….”
Me: “... don’t live in this house. If they did, they’d have chocolate cereal twice a year."
Son: "THREE TIMES!"
Me: "What!? I didn’t know your friends celebrated Thanksgiving."
Son: "They don’t."
Me: "There you go then - it’d be twice a year."
Son: "But… Oh, never mind."

Milestones

Blogging for over four years with more than 200,000 unique visits to the site. No, not me, Zoe Brain.

I must admit, when I first started blogging, I had no idea what was going to happen a few years down the track. If someone had told me 4 years ago, when I started blogging, what was going to happen, I would have wondered what weird parallel Universe they came from. But as I've found out, this one is one of the weirder ones.

Ain't that the truth.

African encounter

An American writes:

[W]hat would I not have given for a bit of friendly wilderness, where unseen, I might vent my joy in some mad freak, such as idiotically biting my hand, turning a somersault or slashing at trees in order to allay those exciting feelings that were well-nigh uncontrollable. My heart beats fast, but I must not let my face betray my emotions, lest it shall detract from the dignity of a white man appearing under such extraordinary circumstances.

So I did that which I thought was most dignified. I pushed back the crowds, and, passing from the rear, walked down a living avenue of people, until I came in front of the semicircle of Arabs, in front of which stood the white man with his grey beard. As I advanced slowly towards him I noticed he was pale, looked wearied, had a grey beard, wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it, had on a red-sleeved waistcoat and a pair of grey tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob - would have embraced him, only that he being an Englishman, I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing - walked deliberately up to him, took off my hat, and said: "Dr Livingstone, I presume."

From Stanley's account of the meeting, quoted in Niall Ferguson's "Empire".

Shattering images

Via Pootergeek's other blog: This website, featuring the work of photographer Martin Klimas, has some arresting images.

Klimas takes porcelain figurines, drops them and then photographs them as they smash to pieces. Creative destruction: I like it.

Falsehoods and popular prejudice

That's what they're teaching my 12 year old at an English state school. Thankfully, he's having none of it.

Here's my top five from his list of "Guess what they tried to teach us in school, today."

1. England conquered America.

2. The moon landings were a hoax.

3. Schizophrenia is the same thing as split personality disorder.

4. Children inherit only about five characteristics from their parents.

5. There are 52 states in the USA.

The thing is, in most cases the Big Fella has tried to point out how and why they were wrong, but the teachers just won't listen: their ignorance is unassailable.

Random quote

I don’t want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I get stoned. And then commit adultery.

Ibn Warraq

Random picture

The laughing candidate

Hillary Clinton is just scary.

Poker for bloggers

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 9525796

A glimpse of the beach

This summer, driving back to Calais from our holiday in the Charente, we made a detour to visit Omaha Beach.

There wasn't much there: sea, sand, dunes, some children playing, a couple walking their dog - a peaceful summer's day.

The tide was in, so we just walked the margin. Mac took her shoes off and strolled in the water. "Hey, Hon!" I said, "Now you can say you waded ashore at Omaha Beach." She gave me a weak smile. I smiled too.

Up ahead, the boys were playing in the surf.

Beyond belief

From BBC News:

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

Twisted logic

Norm Geras notes that The Columbia Coalition Against the War didn't protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University on the grounds that to do so would be seen as pro-war.

It's not a position with which he has any sympathy:

The message in effect is: moderate or silence your criticisms of some reactionary theocrat and/or murderous thug, for otherwise you give aid and comfort to the warmongers of the right. Should you enquire of such experts in the intricacy of political positioning whether they ought, then, to moderate their criticisms of Bush, Cheney and co, so as not to make life more comfortable for the Ahmadinejads and Hezbollahs of this world, you would find them reeling in shock at so flagrant a misunderstanding of the nature of their democratic obligations.

Indeed.

Ancient freedoms

From "Rubicon, The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic" by Tom Holland:

Prior to the cataclysm of 146 [the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC] there had been some confusion among the Greeks as to the precise definition of "freedom". When the Romans claimed to be guaranteeing it, what did this mean? One could never be sure with barbarians, of course: their grasp of semantics was so woefully inadequate. All the same, it did not take a philosopher to point out that words might be slippery and dangerously dependent on perspective. And so it had proved. Roman and Greek interpretations of the word had indeed diverged. To the Romans, who tended to regard the Greeks as fractious children in need of the firm hand of a pater familias, 'freedom' had meant an opportunity for the city states to follow rules laid down by Roman commissioners. To the Greeks, it had meant the chance to fight each other.

Our local high street

"If you can't buy it on Gloucester Road, you probably don't need it."

Well, that's what I always say. Now, I learn from the Independent that Gloucester Road is "one of the last traditional high streets in Britain".

I always knew we were blessed.

Old school news

According to yesterday's Guardian, someone tried to blow up one of the teachers at my old school by planting a nail bomb in their car.

It exploded outside the Prep at the end of the school day. Luckily no-one was hurt.

Random quote

Religion is for people who don't like hard questions.

Spud (age 9)

Random picture

Health issues

A letter in yesterday's Times (not online) from Norman Simmons (Emeritus Consultant in Microbiology) suggests a novel way to reduce hospital-acquired infections:

Sir, All items of clothing worn in hospitals, including trousers,
carry bacteria. The Health Secretary's decision to banish long-sleeved white coats from hospitals (report, Sept 17) brings to mind work carried out by the Public Health Laboratory Service several years ago. Researchers found that the least spread of bacteria from surgeons occurred if they were naked and lightly oiled.

Culture schlock

When I was a kid I moved from Santa Monica to Liverpool.

In the Sixties, Santa Monica was full of color.



Liverpool was black and white.



But worse, much worse than the lack of color, there was no Gilligan's Island!

Achtung Deutsche

What's up with Blogger? Every time I publish a post I get the option to "Blog anzeigen (in einem neuen Fenster)".

And I do. Of course I do.

Busy doing nothing

Ok, I admit it, I've been taking it easy. Ever since we got back from France I've been enjoying myself doing not very much at all.

There has been the occasional crisis, of course, life is not without its little ups and downs. But, on the whole, all my problems have been small ones - which makes a change.

One of the small problems has been an infestation of Araneus diadematus [or should that be Araneus diadematii?]. They moved into the house while we were away and they're still all over the place.

We don't kill spiders - mosquitoes, fleas and clothes moths we'll happily do away with but most other things, well, it's live and let live. They don't bother us, we don't bother them.

Except in France: for some reason, every time the boys saw a creepy crawly over there, they wanted to gas it. The second night we were there the Big Fella found an insect in his room and got all overexcited. "Dad! Dad! Come quick! There's a bug in my room with more legs than sense!" I went and looked: "It's only a centipede. Leave it alone."

He wasn't entirely convinced - as far as he was concerned it looked far too exotic to be benign - but he let it be. Admirable self-restraint in a 12 year-old - when he was small he used to eat ants. They taste quite sour, reportedly.

Holiday reading

We’re leaving for France today (two weeks in the Charente) and very much looking forward to it. Rest, relaxation and a lot of reading will be the order of the day.

Here are five books I’ll be taking with me:

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, the figure-skating string theorist.

The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong - the Guardian reviewed it last year.

Londonistan by Melanie Phillips.

What’s Left by Nick Cohen (Oliver Kamm gave it a positive review, Johan Hari didn’t and Cohen‘s response features in the Summer 2007 issue of Dissent.)

Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland.

Blogging from Baghdad

Michael Totten reports from Baghdad In the Wake of the Surge.

I donned my helmet and vest, hopped into the backseat of a Humvee, and headed into the streets of the city with two dozen of the first infantry soldiers deployed to Iraq for the surge. The 82nd Airborne Division is famous for being ready to roll within 24 hours of call up, so they were sent first.

The surge started with these guys. Its progress here is therefore more measurable than it is anywhere else.

Conservative Christian, Right Wing Republican...

Spud, my 9 year-old, keeps singing this Todd Snider tune.

Could be I'm raising a hippy.

BBC culture

From the Telegraph: Former Newsnight producer Anthony Jay on the culture of "media liberalism" at the BBC:

We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run, and yet with no involvement in the process or power to do anything about it. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, yet having good arts degrees from reputable universities, we were convinced that Britain's problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge. We ignored the tedious practicalities of getting institutions to adopt and implement ideas.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world. We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. Some people called us arrogant; looking back, I am afraid I cannot dispute the epithet.

Robot attack squadron

From USA Today:

The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It is outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there is no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

Ok, so it's not really a "robot attack squadron" as USA Today calls it, but it is the future of military aviation.

Lt. Gen. Gary North (commander of air operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) is quoted as saying: "With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home."

Croc crocs

Meghan O'Rourke at Slate attacks the latest footwear fad:

"A Croc is not a shoe; it is a Tinkertoy on steroids."

She's clearly not impressed by the "ground-breaking orthotic technology".

Bush & Co

Gregory Djerejian lets rip at the Bush Administration in "The Libby Commutation Sullies America":

The commutation of Lewis Libby’s sentence presents yet another fetid example of the Bush Administration treating the Executive Branch merely as vehicle for governance by quasi-autocratic fiat. There are reasons, after all, that the Framers attempted to inject constitutional checks and balances, not only to escape the legacy of monarchical England, but also because they realized concentrated power too often corrupts terribly. The gross over-reaching of the Executive Branch in the Bush Administration, in areas ranging from detainee treatment, to a politically inspired putsch of federal prosecutors, to the Vice-President’s primitively brazen ‘argument’ his office is not even a part of the Executive Branch, all have conspired to badly shake the public’s trust in our system of government.

Sounds about right to me.

Visiting Parris

Matthew Parris writing in yesterday's Times on Britain's "underclass":

Anatole Kaletsky was right to argue on these pages last week that what he called the “underclass” in Britain is one of knottiest problems a new British prime minister faces. It becomes ever clearer that it is falling behind. Politicians and experts call for “ladders out” for the poorest.

Have we considered the possibility that these ladders may be the problem, not the solution? There are already ladders out. There have never been more. People who can climb have climbed them. Those who are left cannot climb. They represent an expensive nuisance, disproportionate to their numbers, but they can be fenced and contained.

The barbarian onslaught that overheated commentary thinks they threaten will be easily repulsed. They are more pathetic than fearsome. They are irrelevant. That is the tragedy.

Whatever happened to One Nation Conservatism?

The Big Bounce

Not with a Bang but with a Bounce.

From Psychorg:

New discoveries about another universe whose collapse appears to have given birth to the one we live in today will be announced in the early on-line edition of the journal Nature Physics on 1 July 2007 and will be published in the August 2007 issue of the journal's print edition.

"My paper introduces a new mathematical model that we can use to derive new details about the properties of a quantum state as it travels through the Big Bounce, which replaces the classical idea of a Big Bang as the beginning of our universe," said Martin Bojowald, assistant professor of physics at Penn State.

Loop Quantum Gravity is looking more and more like a promising alternative to String Theory.

Independence Day

From July 11, 2003

Out and about

Last weekend we took the boys over to The American Museum in Bath.

They had a number of special events organised including a display by The Crown Forces of 1776: scarlet coats, Brown Besses and a short six-pounder that seemed to shake the whole valley each time it was fired.

When we arrived the Red Coats were already drawn up on the lawn in front of the Great House engaged in diverse drills. Second Son, his blood up and a sparkle in his eye, suggested we go stand in the tree line and take pot shots at them.

Unfortunately we’d left our Kentucky Long Rifles at home.

Lacking the wherewithal to harass and impede the enemy’s maneuvers we retired to the terrace for a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

Modern life

In the past ten days, our car's been scratched up, someone put one of our windows through and last night three guys ripped off our front gate.

Of course, that's one of the problems with living in England: it's hard to tell if you've become the focus of a sustained campaign of low level intimidation or just the random violence of drunken yobs.

Yesterday and today

Two car bombs defused in London and an attack on Glasgow airport - looks like it's going to be a long hot summer.

Spam and socialism

Neo-neocon explains why her blog automatically rejects comments that include the word "socialism".

[T]he fact [is] that (as most of you may have figured out by now) the word “cialis” is embedded in the word “socialism.”

I currently have blocked about fifty drug names on this site; if I hadn’t done so, there might be upwards of a fifty or so pharmaceutical spam comments here a day. Cialis, of course, is one of them, and the unintended consequence of blocking Cialis is to block socialism.

Lol.

Going, going, gone

Boris Johnson writing in today's Telegraph on Blair's departure:

You know what, I decided about lunchtime yesterday that I couldn't take any more. The whole thing was turning into a blubfest of nauseating proportions. First we had the Pyongyang-style standing ovation, in which hundreds of hypocritical parliamentarians clapped their hands sore in celebration of Tony Blair - when a great many of them have spent the past 10 years actively trying to winkle him out of Downing Street, a group that includes many on his own side, and above all his successor.

Then poor Margaret Beckett was so overwhelmed that she started to weep, and had to be "comforted" by John Reid, a procedure that is surely enough to make anyone snap out of it. And then we had the cavalcade moving off to the Palace, and what with the hushed tones of the newscasters and the thudding of the television helicopters overhead, the whole thing started to remind me of Diana's funeral.

Heh.

Downtime

Yesterday it was blog maintenance, today it's body maintenance - 4 hours at the hospital and they're still no nearer to finding out what's wrong with me.

Maintenance

I'm up-loading the archives from my old blog site (and making a poor fist of it) so you might see a whole load of random posts from years ago appearing here on the front page.

Aplogies for any confusion.

A guest for dinner

One of Mac's nephews has recently moved to Bristol after finishing university, so last month we invited him round for dinner. Turns out he's in cahoots with the "Fairford Two" (and assorted crusties) and despite (because of?) a First in Philosophy, he's about as gormless as they come.

Still, I managed to take it all with good grace, though I couldn't help guffawing when he started quoting Chomsky. Luckily, I was cooking that evening so I had plenty of opportunities to absent myself from the pre-dinner conversation.

All in all, I feel sorry for him, not because of his views or the people they've led him to associate with, but because underneath that thin veneer of studied radicalism you could sense the fear and confusion of a young man uncertain about his place in the world and not knowing what to make of his life.

Having said that, next time he calls me "bourgeois" I think I'll clout him.

Sights of the seventies

Pootergeek notes that the afro is making a comeback. Most of the guys I know who haven't shaved it all off are wearing cornrows or 'locks but a few of the kids have started sporting afros.

Whatever next - leisure suits?

Wet Wimbledon

It's the first day of Wimbledon and, yep, it's raining. Surprise, surprise.

Judging by the weather forecast, some play might be possible tomorrow but the rest of the week looks like a wash out.

Lessons in tolerance

According to the Observer:

Pakistan has told Britain that Salman Rushdie's knighthood breaches a United Nations resolution aimed at calming tensions between different religions, The Observer has learnt. The highly unusual warning was made during a meeting with the British High Commissioner in Pakistan and reveals the extent to which senior Pakistani politicians fear the award will damage relations between the countries.

Pakistan’s approach to religious tolerance is set out in the latest report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are a particular focus for concern as they are often used “by extremists to intimidate members of religious minorities and others with whom they disagree.”

“Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are inherently arbitrary, and they de facto restrict freedom of speech and other freedoms guaranteed by international human rights norms,” said Felice D. Gaer, Commission Chair. “These insidious laws lend themselves to misuse and abuse, resulting frequently in severe violations of freedom of religion or belief in Pakistan.”

[…]

The blasphemy laws are one of the many ways in which the government of Pakistan severely violates the internationally guaranteed right to religious freedom. Other abuses include the laws violating the rights of the Ahmadi community, the persistent sectarian violence targeting Shi’as, Christians, Ahmadis, and Hindus, and the Hudood ordinances, which violate the rights of women in Pakistan.

[For more on the discrimination faced by Ahmadis in Pakistan see here.]

Hmm, maybe I've got it wrong but it doesn’t look like Pakistan is overly interested in calming tensions between different religions.

Glastonbury Festival

It's 20 years since I went to the Festival; I've only been the once. I was working security on Stage 2. It wasn't an onerous job - most of the festival goers I came across were too out of it to even think about causing any trouble. And I was working with a good bunch of people, so I generally had a good time. But the Festival itself left me cold.

All in all, I think Stephen Pollard gets it about right:

Do you long to free yourself from the shackles of convention? Do you gaze into space, bemoaning the fact that your life is one long obligation to family, work and friends? Are you panting with anticipation at the thought of this week’s Glastonbury Festival, knowing that for just a few days in the year you will be free to be yourself, free to commune with Nature and free to indulge in the hedonism you think life should really be about?

Then grow up.

Read the rest.

Double take

The Neural Correlate Society (just the name makes me want to join) has announced the winner of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest:

The leaning tower illusion.

It's a doozy.

Movie trivia

Do you ever find yourself wondering whatever happened to Dolores Hart? No, thought not. Just me, huh.

I recently watched “Where the Boys Are” - it’s a hoot (well, as much of a hoot as a dated and stilted teen movie from the early sixties can be) and I found myself asking whatever happened to the female lead. Hart was good looking, personable and a talented actress, but apart from a couple of films she made in the late fifties playing opposite Elvis Pressley, I couldn’t recall seeing her in anything else. So what happened?

I figured death, drink or debauchery had cut short her career, but no - turns out, at 25 she gave up acting to become a Roman Catholic nun, eventually becoming Prioress of a Benedictine Abbey in Connecticut. Not really what I expected!

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), “she’s the only nun to be an Oscar-voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”

Back to basics

First things first: What’s happening with some of the folks on my blogroll?

Scott over at the Daily Ablution hasn’t posted for over a month (look who’s talking!). Clive Davis has gone corporate and now blogs at the Spectator (which takes the shine off a little) and Mr Smash has been recycling his posts from the Sandbox – all very poignant but what’s going on?

On the plus side: Norm is still posting with his usual vim and vigour, Gregory Djerejian continues fighting the good fight (see Torture Corrupts, Absolutely) and Ophelia Benson (whose Notes and Comment I read religiously) has been on top form - well, she's had a lot of material to work with recently.

As for the rest, the standout for me is Zoe Brain. You never know where life is going to take you and life has taken Zoe to some strange places over the last couple of years. It's to her immense credit that she's managed to blog through the experience with her dignity intact. In her own words:

Mention "transsexuality" on any blog or forum, and lots of ugly opinions crawl put of the woodwork, mostly based on ignorance and misinformation. In my experience, most people are basically good. It's because they're good that they have such strong opinions in matters of morality, ethics, and the health of Society. Point them towards the facts, cure their ignorance, and you don't have to worry about changing their attitudes. Their consciences will do the work for you.

Not everyone can be reached that way: but if you respond to insults, abuse and derision in a calm, dignified and forgiving way, for every active participant in the dialogue, there's likely a dozen of readers who will favourably impressed by your civility, and unimpressed by the self-evident unintelligent bigotry.

Keep it up Zoe.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

Why I haven’t been blogging:

Abusive e-mails I can take, but when someone goes to the trouble to track down your home address and telephones you on a daily basis to let you know that they have “concerns” about your blog before hanging up – well, that’s just freaky. And I don’t mind telling you it weirded me out for a while there.

Medical update

Well, turns out, it wasn’t just a bad back. A doctor’s appointment led to a battery of tests followed by an urgent surgical referral. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile….

Laid up

I've been meaning to post regularly. Honest I have. But a bad back has kept me away from the keyboard.

I blame my height - at 6'6" I have what my doctor calls "a large perpendicular moment about the base of the spine". In other words, I have a long back. And right now it hurts like hell.

Excuse me while I reach for a couple more painkillers.

Panic in Illinois

From the Chicago Tribune:

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

So much for freedom of speech.

(Actually, I expect that someone somewhere in Illinois will eventually stumble across a copy of the Constitution and notice the First Amendment. But I'm not holding by breath.)

Cookery books

My top three recipe books.

1. Step by Step Indian Cookbook by Mridula Baljekar. Favorite recipes: Onion Bhajiyas, Kofta Bhuna, Chicken Korma, Keema Mattar.

2. The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces by Diane Seed. Favorites: Trenette al Pesto, Spaghetti Maria Grazia, Pasta alla Primavera, Pasta con le Fave al Proscuitto.

3. Supercookery! edited by Isabel Moore, for Lamb Ragout, Hoppin' John, Fenouils a la Grecque.

Gun nuts

Clive Davis would like a “grown-up debate” on gun control.

Fat chance.

National Union of Jokers

So, a British journalist is kidnapped by Palestinians and the NUJ responds by voting to boycott Israel!

Adloyada has a link-filled post setting out the background.

Home cooking

This weekend, I've mostly been chilling with the boys. No 1 Son arrived Friday, and he and the Big Fella cooked the family dinner: Szechuan Chicken and Aubergines in Black Bean Sauce. And very nice it was too!

I'm keen to ensure that all the boys can cook before they leave home and they’re rising to the challenge.

But teaching them to clean up after themselves, now that’s a different matter.

Virginia Tech

With so much media attention focused on the killer, it's easy to overlook the fallen. From today's Times: "The victims, their worlds and lives cut tragically short."

Painting by numbers

A domain coloring of Log(z).



From "Visualizing complex-valued functions in the plane" at MAA Online.

Poetry corner

Called to mind

For some (strange and possibly unknowable) reason, reading the tributes to Kurt Vonnegut Jr put me in mind of one of the poems of Edwin Brock.

Five Ways To Kill A Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

So it goes.

Easy listening

Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour - I've heard people talking about it but I only just got round to listening to it.

Highly recommended: the man's a natural DJ.

Go Bob!

Daily Tao

You can get it here.

Family life

I spend a lot of my time shopping and cooking for the family. The Big Fella is 12 now and, over the last couple of years, his tastes have really branched out. Here are his top five home-cooked meals:

Chicken Fajitas
Kofta Bhuna
Jerk Chicken
Felafel
Chicken Korma

Looking at that list, I've got to wonder how well we're integrating. I mean, it's not very British, is it? Though to be fair, the Big Fella is also very fond of roast lamb and Toad in the Hole.

[You might want to Google that last one - I had no idea what it was until the first time Mac cooked it.]

Anonymize your blog

The BBC shows you how.

Since I closed down my old site a year ago, I haven't had any more phone calls from people with Middle Eastern accents complaining they had "issues" with my blog. And that's a Good Thing.

But I could have avoided the problem entirely if I'd followed the Beeb's advice. And yes, occassionally those phone calls still worry me - they know where I live.

Anti-Americanism at the BBC

It looks like they might be starting to take anti-Americanism a little more seriously at the BBC.

The US is perceived by many as an international bully, a modern day imperial power. At this critical moment in history, Washington correspondent Justin Webb challenges that idea.

He argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact. His three part series takes him to Cairo, Caracas and Washington but it begins where anti-Americanism began - in Paris.

I think it's a shame the series won't be examining the roots of British anti-Americanism. But still, it's a start.

1781 and all that

Via Harry's Place, I learn that the Oxford Union will shortly be debating the motion: "This House Regrets the Founding of the United States of America".

Cornwallis surrendered more than 200 years ago, guys. Get over it!

Alternative history

Over the last couple of weeks, a number of US commentators have expressed surprise (and, in some cases, dismay) at the lack of outrage in Britain over the capture of their sailors and marines by the Iranians.

Today, Greg Djerejian imagines the reaction in the US if the captured personnel had been Americans.

It's not flattering.

Neo-neocon

I promised myself a while back that if I ever started blogging again I'd add Neo-neocon to my blog links.

Job jobbed.

Knut job

Looks cute, don't he?

But don't be taken in. Never judge a bear until you've heard him talking to his agent. Pootergeek has the lowdown.

Hundertwasser's toilet

This is Mac's favorite toilet.

It's 11,000 miles away in New Zealand and the picture shows the mensroom; so, it's neither convenient nor appropriate. But it does look good.

A scanner obliquely

According to Norm:

"Sometimes a person can scan the news and feel the world is only to be approached obliquely, if at all."

Sometimes?

Oops

My apologies to Natalie Solent. Who, for some reason, had been listed in my blog links as Natalie Nolent.

Oh dear.

Coward's deal

From last week’s Sunday Times, AA Gill imagines Noel Coward presenting .

Deal or No Deal

I see him walking on like Mr Bridger from the Italian Job, doing
that funny little Queen Mother wave: “Too kind, too fearfully kind. You’re mocking me with kindness. Please, please, no more. Madam,” he would say, "you are Deirdre. Deirdre – how charming. Now I see you in the light, I realise you couldn’t be anything other than a Deirdre – a name you have utterly, utterly made your own. I forbid anyone else ever to be called Deirdre.

“Now, Deirdre - Dear, dear Deirdre – promise me, whatever pitiful little nest egg you take away from this farrago, you won’t do a thing with your hair. You will promise me, Deirdre, won’t you? You will leave it just the way it is. It’s so blissfully, blissfully you.

“Now, Deirdre, which numbered box do you wish to broach? Sixteen? The common little man with the appalling necktie? You think he’s hiding a fortune, Deirdre? He’s certainly ugly enough. I have always found wealth to be nature’s consolation for Medusan hideosity. Well, common little man, reveal the contents of your cartouche. Oh, Deirdre, the wretched little man has purloined your dreams. If that’s the damnable banker again, tell him I’m entertaining and unavailable. The impertinence of tradesmen.”

Howdy

I thought I'd pretty much given up blogging but...

Well busy

Being well is great but it sure is time-consuming. When I was ill, I had all the time in the world (and no inclination to do anything with it). Now, I'm tied up with life again, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

I don't want much of an extension- an additional three or four hours would be enough. Yep, a 28 hour day would do it.

Three years later...

Ok, so I accidentally deleted my Movable Type installation (don't ask, it's a long story) and I'm back posting here at Blogspot.

Update
Erm..., intermittently. (But you knew that already. Right?)

I'm back

Can't believe I haven't posted for the last three months!

Mind you, it's not like I haven't been busy. Mac and I have been working to stitch the family back together and, having finally got my health back, I've been doing some consultancy work - as well as shopping, cooking, cleaning and looking after the boys.

Still, it's good to be back.