Essay research

From an essay on Julius Caesar at Cheathouse:

The Emperor Julius Caesar is perhaps most famous as the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. His rise from a humble birth as a peasant boy to Emperor is a tale of bravery, adversity and ultimately triumph through faith.

Julius Caesar was born as Groyxo Gaul in 54BC into an immigrant family in the back streets of Rome. Neither parent was rich. The French historian Robert Kilroi-Silc noted: "Sa mere etait un hamster et son pere etait comme des baies de sureau."

His mother was a hamster?

No, it's not the work of some demented student. As blogger Alun explains, it's an attempt to figure out how bad a paper needs to be before it's rejected by an online essay bank. Obviously, the limit has not yet been reached and further research is needed.

(Link via the highly recommended Carnival of Bad History at Bora's Science and Politics blog.)

Addiction and recovery

A couple of posts over at Dean’s World - from Dean Esmay and Scott Kirwin - got me thinking about addiction and recovery. Dean was highly critical of Alcoholics Anonymous (though he’s since moderated those criticisms) and I just wanted to share my experience.

A couple of years ago, funded by the local authority, I took a busload of recovering addicts down to Cornwall for a week by the sea. Most of them had multiple addictions, usually alcohol and cocaine, and none of them had been clean longer than twelve weeks.

The idea was they’d get a week in the water with a surfing instructor, early morning exercises on the dunes and group work in the evenings. All in all, it worked well - the few incidents we had were emotional rather than physical confrontations. And, by the end of the week, some of the guys were even managing to stay on their boards. I got a lot out of it (quite apart from a week’s surfing), as did my co-worker, and I know the guys from the hostel enjoyed it.

Was it worth it? Probably not. Chances are, after twelve months, seven out of ten of them will be using again. In two years’ time, maybe one of them will still be clean. Even if they all managed it, I doubt any would credit their recovery to a week’s surfing in Cornwall.

But who knows? I’ve seen stranger things. One bunch of addicts I worked with had replaced heroin with cycling, and pedalled their way to recovery. They stayed clean and, along the way, founded a charity that provides accommodation for people in recovery - they kicked-off their fund-raising drive by cycling coast to coast across the States.

Another guy I know had a whole range of addictions. He quit them all one by one: heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol. He got through it because he found his vocation in life – painting model soldiers. Now, he does it for a living. He’s been clean twenty years, has raised a family and is as happy as any man I know.

Not one of the people I know who’ve come back from addiction would say that going to AA meetings was what got them through. It helped for sure, and they’ll tell you that they couldn’t have got through without it. But on top of that, there’s something each of them discovered, something they could connect with outside themselves that made it worthwhile for them to choose not to drink or use drugs again.

I know that every one of them would recommend AA/NA to someone who suspected they had a problem with alcohol or drug abuse. I’m not a big fan of the twelve step program but it works – if you want it to.

Torture and abuse

Via the Belgravia Dispatch: In a thoroughgoing and well documented post, John Henke at QandO argues the case against torture. And makes an observation as to its causes:

Widespread torture doesn't simply, oops, "just happen". In the isolated instances in which it does happen, it is the result of a very major breakdown in the command structure. As Dale Franks wrote: "Since there are no bad troops, only bad leadership, I have to wonder how complicit the chain of command is..." Indeed, that is the question: if the discipline breaks down so terribly at one place, the problem may well be at a local level. If discipline is breaking down at a lot of Military Intelligence detention centers across the globe over the course of years, then the chain of command is implicitly broken all the way to the top.

Alternately, they might be "just following orders".

I'd say probably a bit of both. And it's got to stop.

Common people

Jarvis Cocker ain't got nothing on this guy!

With thanks to Dean Esmay, who has the lyrics and an audio link.

Sunday roundabout

Normblog is polling the top ten movie stars.

Over at A E Brain, a young artist announces his presence to the world.

There's politics and Doctor Who at Biased BBC.

Oxblog highlights the organic adventures of Ham Solo and Chewbroccoli.

There's a little cold turkey at The Daily Bread but no caffeine for Jackie.

Roger L Simon asks what "fair and balanced" means. Lots of people tell him.

There's a blog western going on via Suburban Blight.

And finally,

VodkaPundit discovers Henry Raddick.

English manners

Ever had one of those elevator experiences that leaves you wishing you'd taken the stairs? An American in London just did, and she has an observation about English men. It seems they don't have the good manners she expected:

This comes as quite a shock to me, as somewhere in the back of my mind, for no specific reason, I was anticipating gentlemanly manners beyond compare.

It's a common misconception and stems, I think, from the pervasive notion of the English Gentleman. It's nonsense, of course. In general, I've found that one can only reliably expect impeccable manners from those Englishmen who ride bicycles while wearing scarves and carrying umbrellas.

There aren't a lot of them about.

Breathless in Bristol

My weekend away got cut short. After just one night under canvas, my health deteriorated to such an extent I had to come home. Mac and the boys are still in the Gower.

Summer is always a difficult time of year for me: my asthma worsens and, at times, becomes life threatening. Our family vacations usually involve at least one medical emergency - I'm always the culprit.

Last summer, we had to cut short our time in France after I got sick. By the time we made it to the ferry, I was halfway to hypoxia. Maybe a little more than halfway - I can remember feeling deliriously pleased that I had enough French to ask: "Y a-t-il un docteur à bord?"

In any case, they responded with admirable haste, and I was hustled off to sickbay, where I spent the next several hours improving my French in the company of a very charming nurse.

Sadly, there were no French lessons for me when I got back to Bristol yesterday, just the NHS. Now, mostly recovered but with the family still away, I'm left rattling around the house on my own.

Expect some blogging.

Treasured memories

Mac and I are taking the two young ones camping this weekend.

Young ones? Who am I trying to kid!? They're 7 and 10 now - big boys. And my eldest is 16. How did that happen? Sometimes, it seems like the years have just flown by. And it won't be long now 'til they're all grown up and gone.

Here's another father thinking on the same subject as his son approaches his thirteenth birthday.

It seemed just a moment ago when he was a little boy. Now, in just a few days, Jackson would become a teen-ager. The time was not far off when he will be too big a kid for me to kiss him goodnight. The time was not far off when he will not be down the hall at all.

"There will come a time – and terribly sooner than I would realize – when I would give anything to have Jackson down the hall, in his room, waiting for me to come and kiss him goodnight. I would give anything to have a time machine, to be able to come back in time to just this moment right now, to be able to have him there in his bed in his room, to kiss him good night just one more time.

I don't imagine this weekend will be the last time the boys and I go camping together. But I do know that many of the things I, too often, take for granted today are tomorrow's treasured memories.

Catch 'em while you can.

(With thanks to Joe Katzman at Winds of Change for the link.)

Poetry corner

Punks and poets

The Academy of American Poets has recently overhauled its website Poetry.org, which is where I found an article by Chad Davidison called Got Punked: Rebellious Verse.

The title caught my eye, and I was looking forward to reading it. As it happens, it's way too cerebral for my liking.

Punk, though it celebrated its own death, is constantly reborn. Poetry, too, is continually redefining itself, continually resisting its own intelligence. Iggy Pop pops up in Jim Jarmusch films. Ziggy Stardust might be dead, but Bowie isn’t. And the artistic androgyny Bowie embodied? What better way to represent Keatsian "negative capability" or Eliotic "extinction of personality"? Punk lives long enough to annihilate itself, then repeats the feat like a god at the center of a harvest myth.

Mmm. I'm guessing Davidson's never seen a punk poet like John Cooper Clarke in action.

The Rough Guide to Rock described Clarke's high-speed delivery as being "based on the rhythms of rock and amphetamine sulphate rather than any conventional poetic metre" - that about captures it. Stark and direct, it was "the verbal equivalent of the headlong musical thrill of punk."

John Cooper Clarke is better heard than read: if you get the chance to see him live, take it - it's an experience. In the meantime, try "Beasley Street".

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
... a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter is your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
on the edge of Beasley street

Like they say, read the whole thing.

Talking religion

There's a lively discussion going on over at Harry's Place following this post from David T about attacks on religious belief.

[T]o take a position of absolute condemnation in relation to any mainstream religious ideology is rarely anything other than disproportionate and phobic.

I think he's right. And there's a fine example of a disproportionate and phobic response in the comments - one commenter recommends the desecration of religious books as a kind of shock therapy for believers, on the grounds that:

Most religion is a form of mental illness, and the sooner that here and now, in the 21st century, that the mental illness corcerned is wiped out or cured, the better humankind will be.

Funny really, that's kind of like the way some people feel about socialism.

Planet Monbiot

Via the Daily Ablution. George Monbiot channeling the spirit of environmentalism in yesterday's Guardian:

Everything we thought was good turns out also to be bad. It is an act of kindness to travel to your cousin's wedding. Now it is also an act of cruelty. It is a good thing to light the streets at night. Climate change tells us it kills more people than it saves. We are killing people by the most innocent means: turning on the lights, taking a bath, driving to work, going on holiday. Climate change demands a reversal of our moral compass, for which we are plainly unprepared.

Thankfully, the ancient sages, long ago, addressed such questions. As Lao Tzu might have said:

Give up washing,
Renounce illumination,
And it will be 10,000 times better for everyone.

Give up holidays,
Renounce mobility,
And people will rediscover global harmony and love.

Or something.

Fisking fashion

Hugh Green at Most Sincerely Folks has done a fine fisk on an article from Marie Claire magazine about Muslim women and the burqa.

He realizes it's a hopeless exercise:

Railing against the opinions on head covering expressed in the column of a women’s magazine that makes quite a lot of money advertising shampoos and cosmetics is a bit like railing against the characters in an episode of Dynasty for a lack of moral agency.

Hopeless or not, it's highly readable.

What's that noise?

My afternoon blogging session was briefly interrupted a few minutes ago when I heard some shouting from the street.

By the time I got downstairs, Mac was already on the phone to the police. A violent assault was taking place right in front of the house.

Outside, two cars (both full of young men) were pulled over. One of the drivers was out of his vehicle and lashing violently at the other driver, who having half-opened his door, was struggling to protect himself.

It didn't stop there. The guy returns to his vehicle, brings out a steel nightstick and starts swinging it into the front of his victim's car. Just bashing it in! And all the time, he's screaming obscenities at the top of his voice.

Then, like it never happened, he gets back in his car and drives away.

Just thought I’d share that with you. Got to wonder what Dave would make of it all.

Critical malfunction

I just don't understand it.

Michele makes a list of "The Definitive, Never Snobby, Unpretentious, Ridicule-Ready ASV 100 Movies of All Time". And she leaves out "My Cousin Vinny"!

What was she thinking?

Hypocritical correctness

Marcus Brigstocke, writing in today's Guardian, says that the "straight, white, able-bodied, Christian, PC-phobic majority" should stop going on about political correctness.

Accusations of politically correct thought control have become a pathetic and transparent excuse for lazy racists, sexists and Islamophobes the land over. Challenging PC has become a game of chicken for bigots - daring each other to run out into the busy PC motorway and say something stupid before dashing back for cover.

Let's stand that on its head (we'll get nearer the truth):

Accusations of racism, sexism and Islamophobia against those who criticize political correctness have become a pathetic and transparent excuse for lazy media elites the world over. Defending PC has become a game of chicken for idiots - daring each other to run out into the busy mainstream and shout some insults before dashing back for cover.

There are valid and cogent criticisms of political correctness, particularly in so far as it impinges on freedom of speech. Ignoring these issues and resorting to name-calling does nothing to advance discussion. But then maybe I'm taking Brigstocke too seriously. After all, he's a joker not a thinker.

But, while I'm at it, what really rankles about Brigstocke's piece is that, after condemning racists and bigots in his opening paragraphs, he goes on to use a couple of pretty offensive characterizations in writing about his fellow Europeans.

In pursuing his point, Brigstocke imagines "some greasy, lank-haired French lad called Didier [...] wearing his rucksack on his front" and "some piggy-faced blond boy called Heinrich [who] came and ate everything in your fridge". Is that really the politically correct way to talk about one's neighbors?

Rank hypocrisy or postmodern humor? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Blaming Lucas

Why has the latest Star Wars trilogy been such a disappointment?

Smash has the answer.

Life, liberty & psychiatry

I spent my time as an undergraduate studying psychology, sociology and philosophy. It didn't get me very far - I was majoring in Accounting and Finance. After two years at college, bored with my course, I took a sabbatical and got a job as a nursing assistant on the psychiatric ward of a large general hospital.

The ward was designed to be a short-stay unit - none of the patients were supposed to spend longer than six months there. The idea being, within that time, the patient would be either discharged or transferred to long-term care. In reality, many of the patients had been on the ward for over a year, but none of the nurses had been there longer than six months. When I left to go back to university, I was the longest serving member of staff on the unit.

The place was understaffed, the nurses were undertrained and inexperienced, the doctors all but invisible, and the whole set-up was poorly resourced. Hardly an environment conducive to the relief of mental distress.

I suspect the lack of funding for psychiatric services is due, at least in part, to the social stigma attached to mental illness. Even today, the pervasive prejudice towards people with psychological problems seriously distorts public responses to mental health issues.

As an example, do a search for "schizophrenic" on BBC News and you'll get a list of murder reports, not news of recent medical advances or human interest stories. Or look at the way ASBOs are being used to manage the "anti-social" behavior of people with mental conditions. As the Observer reported on Sunday, some sufferers are in danger of being jailed if they publicly display symptoms.

Or take the Human Rights Act, which recognizes "the right to liberty and security of person" but explicitly denies that right to "persons of unsound mind" - a clause the British government seems keen to take advantage of with its proposals to ban people with mental health problems from leaving their homes.

It's like an old friend of mine once said: Human rights are a fine thing in principle. But how human do you have to be to get them?

Foreign affairs

Last week, the Big Fella was explaining some board game to his friends at school. "It's great!" he tells them. "And you get to play Uncle Joe." Blank faces from his friends, so my boy elucidates: "Uncle Joe! You know - Stalin." More blank looks. The Big Fella was flummoxed.

Friday after school, still astonished by it all, he says to me: "How can anyone get to be ten years old and not know who Stalin was!?"

He's got a point. They've all heard of Hitler. Why does Stalin get a pass?

Schlock horror

What is going on at the Social Affairs Unit?

First, Orac at Respectful Insolence points out some anti-evolutionary posturing from history professor William D. Rubinstein.

Then, S J Masty pops up claiming Hollywood is to blame for Abu Ghraib and for rampant police brutality in the US - seems it all started with "Death Wish".

The abuses carried out by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib are not a one-off. Such abuses are widespread and are a product of the culture fostered by American movies and cop shows, which glorify law breaking by the "righteous" in order to achieve "justice".

Focussing on police brutality in the US, Masty says he knows of "no American who denies that a nasty, unnecessarily authoritarian and bullying cop-culture is afoot across America". (Really? Not one?) And...

My elderly relatives, retired to Florida, [...] now complain that every 82-year-old, retired gynaecologist pulled over for a burned-out tail-light on his Oldsmobile is handcuffed, manhandled, hit or kicked, and occasionally knocked to the ground once or twice for good measure. Once noticed by the police, he becomes a "perp" and forfeits his rights.

Staid, middle-aged doctors in Michigan are afraid to write letters to newspapers complaining about local government for fear of being persecuted by the state, mostly by police or regulatory investigators. Accurate or not, their fear is genuine.

"Accurate or not"!? Is he kidding? Read it all - it's the worst piece of schlock I've come across in a long time.

I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought the Social Affairs Unit was a think tank. Obviously not.

What a picture

Oliver Kamm provides an extract from Christopher Hitchens's portrait of George Galloway in today's Independent.

It's not pretty.