Belgian justice

The BBC reports that a Belgian court has sentenced Nizar Trabelsi to 10 years in prison. The Tunisian is the key figure in a group of 18 Al-Qaeda members convicted of plotting to attack US troops on a military base in 2001.

A second Tunisian - Tarek Maroufi - was sentenced to six years in prison for organising the recruitment of al-Qaeda volunteers in Europe.
Another 16 suspects received shorter sentences for a series of lesser offences - and five defendants were acquitted.

The sentences look lenient to me but the BBC explains:

Correspondents say the relatively modest prison terms reflect the fact that Belgium has no specific anti-terrorism laws. Trabelsi was charged with attempting to destroy public property, illegal arms possession and membership in a private militia.

As far as Belgian law is concerned then: Trabelsi and his friends are not terrorists who plotted to murder US troops; they are vandals who wanted to damage public property, they just happened to have weapons and Al-Qaeda is nothing but a private militia.

Unbelievable.

Can you manage?

The Guardian takes a look at the practice of some top British companies and public sector organizations employing American senior managers rather than home-grown executives, and concludes:

David Blaine isn't the only high-profile American who makes us wonder whether we should embrace his effrontery or chuck eggs.

On the way to that conclusion, the Guardian also gets in a few sideswipes at “American capitalism”. Nevertheless, the article does highlight the differences in style and approach between managers in the US and Britain.

The money quote for me came from Bob Kiley, London’s commissioner for transport and a native of Minneapolis.

"Americans will lose patience with individuals who don't seem to be moving aggressively to solve problems, and then they'll make changes. There's more patience in Britain. But a problem that's allowed to fester is going to be a worse problem six or 12 months later."

I think Kiley’s being polite when he uses the word “patience”. In my experience, it’s not patience; it’s more a fatalistic resignation of responsibility. I wouldn’t say British managers are resistant to change; it’s just that most of the time, they don’t really want to be bothered with it.

Academic heresy

On Sunday, I came across this article from the Times Higher Education Supplement reporting the case of research scholar Mark Sagoff, whose submission to a scientific journal last month was rejected by the reviewers.

Sagoff, thinks he’s being blacklisted because his views are seen as heretical:

He felt that the established line was influenced by aesthetic, cultural and spiritual arguments to conserve native ecosystems. These were valid reasons but should be acknowledged as non-scientific arguments.

While he supported efforts to prevent the spread of known pests, Dr Sagoff argued against a general presumption among ecologists that non-native species were "guilty until proven innocent" and observed that this was not supported by research.

Personally, as a non-native inhabitant of Europe, I think he’s got a point. But don’t take my word for it, go ask the ruddy ducks.

Having just slaughtered thousands more ruddy ducks in a so-called trial cull, DEFRA, the environment ministry, is poised to attempt to wipe out virtually the entire UK population of these beautiful birds.

Why are they doing this? It's because the ruddy ducks, like myself, are North American interlopers breeding with native varieties of their species and creating “impure” hybrids.

Ruddy ducks are being targeted because some have reportedly spread from the UK to Spain where they are mating with the endangered white-headed duck. The result of this mating is an 'impure' hybrid, which some conservation groups don't like.

That's conservationist thinking in a nutshell: all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Butterflies and Wheels

I didn’t blog yesterday, partly because I was busy on other things but mostly because every time I came on-line, I went straight to Butterflies and Wheels.

On Sunday, Normblog posted an enthusiastic review of B & W and so, like A E Brain, I went to have a look. Now I find I can’t stay away. It’s like Norm wrote: “the place is an online cornucopia; it's a palace full of treasure.”

Alan Brain dipped into B & W and came up with a quiz about taboos and moral intuitions. I don’t normally do quizzes but I thought I’d give this one a go. My results:

Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.00.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.00.
Your Universalising Factor is: -1.

According to the blurb, this makes me "fully permissive". I’m not sure my friends and family would agree with that. I’m regarded as being pretty judgmental around here, particularly by the boys.

Anyway, there’s plenty more on B & W to look at.

There’s an interview with Peter Stringer, whose book “Animal Liberation” caused quite a stir when it came out in the seventies. Here he’s talking about the left and evolutionary psychology.

Singer argues that the left’s utopianism has failed to take account of human nature, because it has denied there is such a thing as a human nature. For Marx, it is the "ensemble of social relations" which makes us the people we are, and so, as Singer points out, "It follows from this belief that if you can change the ‘ensemble of social relations’, you can totally change human nature."

Talking about evolutionary psychology; there’s also an interview with Steven Pinker, in which he discusses reactions to EP and its application in the political sphere. Pinker’s view, summarized by B & W, is that “an excessively optimistic view of human plasticity can lead to social engineering, coercion, and genocide”.

If that all sounds too serious, there’s also fun to be had at B & W. Check out the Fashionable Dictionary. It's a hoot.

Enlightenment
Sinister, destructive period of history which had a 'project' to dominate nature, prefer reason to superstition, and stop going to church. All a big mistake, but postmodernism will fix it.

I’ve got to start rationing myself to short visits at B & W, otherwise I could end up spending all day there.

Who's counting?

Well, I have been, and on Tuesday I was somewhat relieved to find I’m not the only one. Natalie Solent has been counting too.

One, two, three, four.

What’s going on?

Contrast and compare

Michael J Totten graphically makes the point that you need to consider what kind of activities a person is engaged in before you call them simply an “activist”.

The BBC regrets

Yesterday, the Hutton inquiry heard counsels’ closing statements.

The Guardian, which has provided excellent coverage throughout the inquiry, focused, in one report, on the words of Jeremy Gompertz, the barrister acting for the Kelly family.

Gompertz described the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan as an "unreliable" witness who was not to be trusted.

Firstly, he claimed Gilligan's chronology of events was "irreconcilable with the physical evidence" yielded by his personal electronic organiser after it was examined by experts.

He said Gilligan had also said things that were irreconcilable with material he had produced in preparing his broadcasts on May 29, the broadcast themselves and the article in the Mail on Sunday he wrote on June 1.

Thirdly, he criticised Gilligan for losing his manuscript notes of his meeting with Dr Kelly in the Charing Cross hotel.

His final charge was that Gilligan had proved himself to be an "unreliable historian in other respects", including the changes in his accounts of a number of meetings.

In an accompanying article, the Guardian also reported on the closing statement by Andrew Caldecott, the BBC’s counsel. These words of Caldecott’s stood out for me.

The BBC regrets the inclusion of these statements [by Gilligan]. The BBC also accepts that Downing Street should have been notified before the broadcast.

Why has it taken a parliamentary committee, the death of a government scientist and a judicial inquiry for the BBC to admit it was wrong? In my opinion, had it done so at the outset, Dr Kelly would almost certainly still be alive.

Reckless speculation aside, it is clear that this is not just a story about bad journalism (Gilligan), but also poor editorial control (Sambrook), detached management (Dyke) and lack of oversight (Davies).

We now know that Gavyn Davies and the rest of the BBC's board of governors backed Gilligan not because they had fully investigated the matter and come to a considered judgement, but because, as Davies told the Hutton inquiry, the governors believe they had a "public duty" to stand up to the government.

The BBC governors have a duty to oppose political interference from the government, but this was nothing of the sort. The government’s criticism of Gilligan’s report was not an attack on the BBC’s independence but on its credibility. Testimony to the Hutton inquiry has revealed that, in this instance at least, the BBC’s desire to stand up to the government, particularly on Iraq, overrode concerns about accuracy and impartiality.

I was astonished back in July when the governors decided to give their unequivocal backing to Gilligan's story, a decision which led to the release of this statement from Gavyn Davies on July 6.

In summary, the Governors are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the BBC upholds the highest standards of impartiality and accuracy. We are wholly satisfied that BBC journalists and their managers sought to maintain impartiality and accuracy during this episode.

The words of Andrew Marr may yet come back to haunt the BBC. On July 20, the BBC's political editor wrote:

But if it turned out that Mr Gilligan was wrong - because that is the accusation being made in effect, that he sexed up what Dr Kelly said and broadcast an inaccurate report, and then the whole weight of the BBC hierarchy, right up to the governors swung behind him and his judgement - if that turned out to be wrong - and I say if - that would be extremely serious for the BBC all the way up.

Indeed it would be.

Meme Watch

Can anyone tell me where the idea that methane is destroying the ozone layer comes from?

I’ve seen it mentioned in a few places now, but I haven’t been able to find the source.

Thing is, the idea doesn’t accord with anything I understand about what goes on up in the stratosphere. Is there a scientific paper out there somewhere that’ll show me how methane promotes ozone depletion?

Come on people! Help me out here. Mail me a link.

Hubble bubble trouble

Normblog has a link to a Guardian article that reports dire consequences for humankind as a result of new theories about the nature of the universe.

The final twist in this saga is that almost all multiverse theories predict the existence of infinitely many duplicate cosmic regions, including duplicate Earths and duplicate Guardian readers. There will also exist all possible variations on this theme.

The Guardian article is by Paul Davies, who writes a lot of “popular science” stuff. He knows what he’s talking about and he usually writes well, but this piece looks like a dog’s dinner to me. I suspect it’s been trimmed to fit by someone at the Guardian.

I had as much difficulty making sense of it as Norm Geras did. To me it seemed like some weird conflation of Guth's bubble universes, the anthropic principle and the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

I was half expecting Schrodinger’s cat to turn up at some point.

Then, about two thirds of the way through the article, I spotted Max Tegmark’s name and I started to smile. Don’t get me wrong, Tegmark is a highly reputable cosmologist; he publishes a lot of papers and is well respected, but he also has a lively sense of humour.

Davies’ piece for the Guardian looks to be based on an article Tegmark wrote for Scientific American back in May.

It’s one of his “wacky ones”.

The Learning Zone

If you read my post on race in America below, you’ll know that a number of bloggers have been exploring the issue in both posts and comments.

It started with this post by Dean Esmay, where he talks about racism in Chicago but the subject widened out in the comments and a number of bloggers got involved.

I’ve been amazed at the response (there were more than forty comments to Dean’s post and over a dozen trackbacks), and by the range of perspectives the discussion now encompasses. People have been swapping comments and links, trawling their archives for relevant material and writing directly about their personal experiences.

There’s a lot of stuff out there, but there was one piece that particularly caught my attention.

Cobb returned to the comments at Dean’s World to post a link to an article by Glenn C Loury. I’m grateful that he took the time and trouble to do so, because Loury’s essay is the clearest exposition of the problem I’ve come across.

What is sometimes denied, but what must be recognized is that this is, indeed, a race problem. The plight of the underclass is not rightly seen as another (albeit severe) instance of economic inequality, American style. These black ghetto dwellers are a people apart, susceptible to stereotyping, stigmatized for their cultural styles, isolated socially, experiencing an internalized sense of helplessness and despair, with limited access to communal networks of mutual assistance. Their purported criminality, sexual profligacy, and intellectual inadequacy are the frequent objects of public derision. In a word, they suffer a pariah status. It should not require enormous powers of perception to see how this degradation relates to the shameful history of black-white race relations in this country.

There are some things he writes that I don’t agree with, such as when he says:

The dream that race might some day become an insignificant category in our civic life now seems naively utopian.

Some of us still believe in that dream, and I think most people would like to believe in it. It’s certainly a long way off, but I’m still trying to work towards it and I’m not yet ready to be labelled naïve.

I could take issue with a number of other small points but that would just be quibbling. I’m in full agreement with much of what Loury writes here.

I also agree with his criticisms of affirmative action. I remain opposed to it and, in contrast to Loury, I support Proposition 54. But there are two things we clearly agree on: affirmative action only slaps at the problem and Proposition 54 won't help to solve it.

I have only ever said this once before; I don’t use the words lightly: Go read the whole thing.

Blogspot blues

Monday, Kelley over at suburban blight kindly linked one of my posts in the Cul-de-Sac, her weekly round up of postings from across the blogosphere.

Kelley’s linked to a number of my posts over the last few months and I’m always grateful for the readers who come take a look. This week, she linked to a post I wrote about poetry, apple pie and pilau rice (I have eclectic tastes).

Thanks for the link Kelley, and thanks to anyone who clicked on it, but unfortunately links to my site, other than to the homepage, aren’t working. My archives are inaccessible, they have been for a couple of days now, and I can’t create archive links for any new posts I put up.

What’s the point in blogging if no one can link to your posts?

What’s the point in writing stuff if other people can’t read it?

Those are rhetorical questions; please don’t answer them. What I’d really like to know is:

Will my archive links ever return?

Is there anything I can do to help restore them?

What caused the problem in the first place?

How can I prevent it happening again?

UPDATE
The links to my archives are back! Except for August. How? Why?
I want out: Moveable Type and a site of my own. I'm dreaming of course, but one day...

Father’s day

A client of mine had his day in court yesterday.

The Child Support Agency, which is the organisation responsible for child support enforcement in the UK, was seeking a Liability Order against him for unpaid child maintenance.

The CSA got the Order. The judge accepted my client’s written submissions and listened to what he had to say, but he had no power to do anything other than grant the Order.

The next step is recovery proceedings. It’s likely they’ll send the bailiffs round to his house, they may also register the debt, which would affect his credit rating, or they could put a charge on his property. They can even do this:

Committal Action - Proving before a Magistrate that a non-resident parent has "wilfully refused or culpably neglected" to pay the debt owed to the Agency. This can result in the Non Resident Parent being committed to prison for up to 42 Days or, as an alternative the withdrawal of their driving licence.

My client is the “Non Resident Parent” in this case but, as he told the judge in court, they can send him to prison if they like but he’s not paying. He means it.

Usually, coming across the bare facts of a case like this, it’s pretty easy to come to a judgement. I think most people would probably say that my client deserves everything he’s got coming to him.

I’d agree, if it wasn’t for the fact that this man has been fully supporting his children; even the CSA accepts that. They also accept that the money he paid out for his kids falls within the definition of a “voluntary payment”, which is allowable as a deduction against the child maintenance assessment.

But here’s the rub: the children’s mother has refused to confirm that the clothes and other items were purchased by their father, and because of this the CSA will not deduct what he’s spent on his kids from the money he owes in maintenance..

Still with me? Okay, then here’s the detail.

My client’s case centres on a batch of store receipts for clothes, shoes and other essential items, which he purchased for the children as part of a voluntary arrangement with their mother.

The CSA accepts that the receipts confirm that the items were purchased for the children during contact with their father. And the CSA accepts that the items were returned to the mother’s house with the children. The problem is, the children’s mother refuses to confirm that the items were returned with the children and as far as the CSA are concerned if she won’t confirm it, they won’t accept that the payments he made are deductible against his assessment.

You know what really annoys the guy? Individuals working for the CSA recognise that the mother is not telling the truth; they’ve had the opportunity to check the receipts against the clothes in the kids' wardrobes. The only clothes the kids had were the ones their father had bought for them. The receipts and credit card statements are pretty clear, you can match up items of expenditure with individual pieces of clothing. There’s a paper trail a mile wide. The CSA has seen it all, twice, and accepts it for what it is. But because the children’s mother denies the fact, they’ve ruled against him.

I’m not a lawyer, I’m a citizens' advocate, so I don’t really know if he has a legal argument but he certainly has a moral one, and the sum of money involved is not trivial.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter whether his case is legal or moral, good or bad, because the CSA, unfettered by diligence or due process, has made its decision. That decision has been made on behalf of the Secretary of State; there is no right of appeal. My client could, of course, take action in the High Court to have the decision overturned. If he could afford to do so, I'm sure he would, but he doesn't have much money; what little he has, he spends on his kids.

It’s always sobering to be reminded that access to justice for the redress of grievances is not a right but a privilege allowed only to those who can afford it.

The forgotten Few

Second Son, he’s eight, told me something yesterday when I picked him up from school.

They’ve been covering World War Two in their history lessons. He thinks this is great because he knows more about it than anyone else in the class, including the teacher I think.

Yesterday, she was telling them about the Blitz and the damage the German bombing raids had done. This is pretty much how he told it to me:

The teacher’s going on about the raids:

Wave upon wave of German bombers… blah blah… attacking our cities night after night… blah blah blah… virtually unopposed… blah blah… defenceless families huddled in their shelters... blah blah blah… terrible destruction… blah blah… the horror of war.

And all the time, my boy’s trying to add in the stuff she’s missing out:

They used to put up barrage balloons… we had anti-aircraft guns that could hit them … at night they’d have these big searchlights… it’s not like we were completely defenceless …they sent up planes to try and intercept them.

I think the teacher had been trying to carry on regardless, but when the Big Fella’s got something to say, he’s going to say it. He’s not pushy but he is persistent.

So anyway, the teacher finished up in time to catch what he’d been saying about sending up planes to intercept the German bombers. “Planes?” she said. “Oh yes, but not many, we only had a few.”

On the way home he said “You know Dad, I don’t think she really knew what she was talking about.” No son, neither do I.

UPDATE
Second Son read this post today and asked me to add something.

He wants you to know that during the war the pilots of Britain’s Fighter Command were sometimes referred to as “The Few”. This came about after Churchill gave a speech to the House of Commons, in which he praised them for their service, saying: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

By the end of October 1940, these “few” had won the Battle of Britain. That victory didn’t stop the bombing of British cities, but it reduced the threat considerably by making large-scale daylight raids too costly an undertaking for an already depleted Luftwaffe.

The teacher didn't know that.

Token American

I’m not going to comment much on the Faith Fippinger story except to say that if being a human shield isn’t illegal, it ought to be.

Den Beste's take on it pretty much reflects how I feel about the BBC’s latest report on the case. I’ve been following the story for a while, and I thought this FindLaw article from Julie Hilden in August provided a good summary of the arguments.

Of course, now that the BBC has run the story, I’m sure that as the only American in my immediate social group I’m going to be asked what I think about it. I'm usually pleased to be asked my opinion but sometimes it gets tedious.

One of the problems with being an American abroad is that, on occasion, you’re liable to be held personally responsible for the actions of your government and assorted fellow citizens. I often find myself the token American in such situations, although "scapegoat" might more accurately describe it.

My various accusers, who are by their own estimation “reasonable people”, will usually allow me an escape clause: If I’m ready and willing to condemn the Bush administration, all of American foreign and domestic policy (since the year dot) and admit that my country is indeed the source of all evil in the world, then I may escape censure.

Of course, depending on the company I’m in, I might also be required to accept that all Americans are stupid, shallow people, uniquely ignorant of the wider world and a threat to the survival of life as we know it. This is somewhat problematic for me and occasionally for the boys, who sometimes get the same kind of treatment from their peers at school and, once or twice, from their teachers too.

When it’s just me and not my kids, I don’t have to confront it - I could easily walk away. Or I could just ignore it and pretend I’m not American. English educated and coached in voice - believe me, I can do the accent. If you met me for the first time and didn’t know I was American, I'm pretty sure you’d never guess. That goes double for the boys: Mac’s family are English and the boys were all born here, so for all intents and purposes they are English. They don’t have to identify with the States and I guess I don’t have to either. But we do.

British people mostly assume quite naturally that I'm English and are often genuinely surprised when I tell them I’m not and that I wouldn’t necessarily want to be. On hearing this, some have remarked, quite brusquely, that if I’m so fond of America perhaps I should go back there. Over the years, I’ve heard so many variations on “Yankee go home”, I’m surprised I haven’t gone.

I liked England as child and very much looked forward to visiting. But when I finally arrived to go to school here I was made to feel distinctly unwelcome. It seemed, at times, the only choice I had was total exclusion or complete assimilation.

Even now, people who know me well profess that they find it hard to understand why I don’t just become British, with all the supposed benefits it would bring. Strangely, I don’t see any benefits at all. And even if there were some obvious gain to be had from it, abandoning my nationality would mean turning my back on a family heritage and a tradition of service that are a big part of who I am.

Anyway, like I said, I haven't exactly been welcomed with open arms, so perhaps it's not surprising I don't want to join the gang. Yes, I pass freely as an Englishman but it’s really only an act. And I can't keep it for long; after a while, it starts to feel like a straight-jacket.

I guess I could try harder to fit in, and I’m not really trying to stand out, but I’m not English. I‘m an American and I'm proud of it.

Mellow fruitfulness

Autumn in England is full of it, according to Keats.

He’s right. Yesterday we picked cooking apples from our neighbor’s tree and today we went “blackberrying” along the River Frome. Tonight, we had blackberry and apple pie with fresh cream.

Mac makes the best short crust pastry I’ve ever tasted, so it’s not surprising the boys and I overdid it a little with dessert this evening. I won’t be posting again today. Instead, once the boys are in bed, Mac and I plan to settle down on the sofa with a bottle of wine and watch a movie.

Before I go, I just thought I’d post one of the recipes I used today. Hey, if Eugene Volokh can post a recipe, why can’t I?

I cooked chicken tikka with a mint raita (the boys love it), cauliflower masala and pilau rice. Now, some people might think apple pie wouldn’t go with that. They’re wrong. Apple pie goes with everything.

Here’s the recipe I used for the rice.

Pilau Rice

275g/10oz basmati rice
50g/2oz of unsalted butter
1 large onion finely sliced
2-4 cloves of garlic peeled and finely chopped
8 whole cloves
8 green cardamoms, split open at the top of each pod
2 cinnamon sticks, 2 inches long broken up
8 whole peppercorns
1 tsp ground turmeric
570ml/20fl oz water
1 tsp of salt
1 heaped tsp of butter
1 oz of seedless sultanas
1 oz flaked almonds

Wash the rice and soak in cold water for 30 minutes and drain well.

Melt the butter over a medium heat and fry the onions until they are soft (approx 5 mins).

Add the garlic, cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon and peppercorns. Stir and fry until the onions are golden brown (2-3 mins).

Add the rice and turmeric, stir and fry for 1-2 minutes, reduce the heat to low, stir and fry for a further 2-3 mins.

Add the water and the salt bring to the boil, cover and simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes without lifting the lid.

Remove the pan from the heat and leave covered and undisturbed for a further 10-12 minutes.

Melt the 1 tsp of butter over a gentle heat and fry the sultanas until they change colour and swell up (approx 1 min) keep to one side.

In the same fat fry the almonds until they are lightly browned.

Mix the almonds and the sultanas in with the rice and serve.

It’s time consuming but very tasty.

The Lady Eve

Our favorite movie …

Roger Ebert in the Chicago-Sun Times:

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' ``The Lady Eve,'' and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

… now available on dvd.

Race in America

The discussion that followed Dean Esmay’s excellent post about racism in Chicago looks to have topped out at forty-two comments, but discussions have been continuing in and between other blogs.

Inspired by the discussion, and Cobb’s observation that “If you can't write a 1000 word essay on the topic of whiteness, the subject of race-consciousness is out of your reach”, Ms Lauren at feministe has suggested that people might like to write an essay and post it, so others can see their thoughts on the subject.

the suggested questions are aimed specifically at whitefolks, but please feel free to expound on the subject if you are of another race or ethnicity.

1. what does it mean to be white? what does it mean to be White?
2. how has whiteness affected your worldview?
3. how has whiteness affected your educational experience?
4. how has whiteness affected your experience with authority?
5. how has whiteness affected your experiences with people of other races and ethnicities?

A thousand words on my skin tone? I couldn't do it; it's just not that relevant. But then, to tell you the truth, the phrase “race-consciousness” has only negative connotations in my family. So I’m at a loss when people use it to mean something positive. I'm not criticizing, just saying I don't understand.

I pretty much agree with what Liminel Liberal says in this post and I can certainly identify with her when she says:

Maybe I need to get out of this diverse city for a while. Figure out what everyone's talking about.

What I’d like to figure out, is what people mean when they talk about race. I know what I mean when I use the word, but I often get the strong impression that other people give it a different meaning or use the word in a way I find hard to understand and accept.

I’m not saying there isn’t a problem with race in America, there clearly is. I understand that prejudice and discrimination exist and that they promote inequality and social exclusion. I am not blind to the very real difficulties that large numbers of Americans face on a daily basis when confronted with the ignorance and bigotry of some of their fellow citizens.

I was fascinated by the breadth of experience and diversity of views represented in the comments to Dean’s post. I’m interested to hear more of what people have to say, and I’ll be following the links from feministe to see what’s been written in response to Ms Lauren’s initiative.

UPDATE
My compliments, and apologies, to Negroplease, who caught an earlier version of this post which was edited for focus and clarity. The earlier version included a list of questions around the definition of race. On reflection, I didn't think they were particularly helpful. I was writing directly to Blogger so I don't have a saved version of the original post. If anyone's interested, and I can remember all of them, I'd be pleased to include them in another update.

Surprising news

Eugene Volokh posts a recipe for salmon quesadilla.

Josh Chafetz has it for dinner.

Yasser Arafat walks out on "unfair" interview with ABC’s Bob Woodruff.

John Humphrys says business people are "the real villains".

Football player takes the field for San Jose State with only one foot.

New Scientist reports giant guinea pigs once roamed the earth.

Florida band's stage show to include suicide.

Anti-war Muslim group claims responsibility for Labour’s by-election defeat.

Sky News reports that men can shop for over an hour before cracking.

Poetry corner

This year will be the tenth anniversary of National Poetry Day in the UK. To mark the event the Poetry Society is asking for nominations for Poetry Landmarks of Britain.

Why? It may sound romantic, but many visitors from abroad think of Britain as having a rich tradition of poetry, and some even travel here because of it. Apart from the odd blue plaque, though, those of us living here may not be able to easily point to the nearest 'poetry landmark'. The Poetry Society decided that given the theme of "Britain" for this year's National Poetry Day, the most important contribution it could make would be to collate and publish a contemporary and historical map of Britain's Poetry Landmarks.

I thought it sounded very romantic and I was keen to send in a few nominations, until I realised the kind of places the Poetry Society people are thinking of:

A poetry landmark could include poetry publishers, venues which host poetry readings, poetry festivals, poetry-friendly organisations that promote poetry, poetry-active libraries and bookshops, schools, historical and contemporary poets of note, poetry as public art, and so on.

Offices and civic buildings; how romantic!

They’re just looking for places to put more blue plaques. This is not “poetry as public art”, it’s architectural history; poetry reduced to a guided tour of tired old buildings. Where’s the romance in that? And where’s the imagination?

Anyway, here are the nominations I was thinking of: “Lines written in Kensington Gardens” and “Dover Beach” from Matthew Arnold, and the churchyard at Stoke Poges where Gray composed his elegy.

In all three works the poet seeks refuge from “the madding crowd” either in a city park, on a beach at night or in a country churchyard. And in each poem, it's the impressions these special places make upon the poet that draw him on to contemplate life’s larger questions. Visiting these places, even today, you can still be touched by the same impulse that compelled the poets’ words. Why, you can almost hear the Muse!

Black and white

I've been thinking a lot recently about race and social identity, prejudice and discrimination; so I was interested to see this article by Brent Staples in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune.

White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race connections after centuries of denial. But the attitudes of some Native Americans have not evolved in the same way. Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes have employed discriminatory policies to prevent black members from receiving tribal benefits - and to strip them of the right to vote in tribal elections.

I was shocked when I read this, and surprised I hadn't come across the story before.

It reminds me of a conversation I once had with a friend's father. He's an old man now and he's seen it all. “All this talk about human rights is fine,” he said, “but tell me, how human do you have to be?"

UPDATE
Talking about black and white: I missed this post by Dean Esmay from earlier in the week about racism in Chicago in the '70s and '80s. The comments, there were thirty-eight last time I looked, are also well worth reading and if you're especially interested (and I'm going to get all normative here and tell you that you should be) then check out the trackbacks as well.