February 02, 2002
Last night I passed 25,000
on the hit counter. Admittedly Nos. 24,992 - 25,000 were all my husband clicking in and out. Then we hit the magic number and tried to print out the page for posterity. That was the moment the man from Porlock struck, in the form of a real external hit, so the British Museum will just have to one day launch an appeal to save for the nation the page recording hit no. 25,001.After that great effort, silence. Sorry for the lack of posts today, lack of replies to e-mails, and yet another apology in advance for the probable lack of posts tomorrow. It's just one of those weekends.
February 01, 2002
Two new links.
The very different Midwest Conservative Journal and Airstrip One join the links column. BTW those little line-spaces every five links do not mean anything. They carry no ideological message. Nor are they there to stop one link biting another, or indeed mating to produce little linkittens. I just read somewhere that the mind cannot conceive at one instant of any number greater than five.
The Conspiracy Theory Premier League
has suffered a major upset, according to the sports commentary at the MCJ:'Rhodesians the world over were ecstatic. "It hasn't sunk in yet," one of them told the Editor in the victorious Rhodesian locker room while spraying champagne in all directions. "But we did it! Nobody thought we could knock off the Jews but we did! We're number one!'
Chickens home to roost.
Iain Murray on Edge of England's Sword asks whether the hysterical reporting of conditions in Camp X-ray may have already have helped kill kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl.I do not say that the Mirror could have known that a specific "reprisal" would take place, still less that they wanted it to. Yet it is not so very hard to guess that irresponsibility when dealing with violent people can have fatal results. In 1990 Iranian-born Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was hanged by Iraq for espionage. Iraq may have been influenced by a well known hoaxer active at that time saying Bazoft was a spy.
On reflection
my earlier SOTU post saying that Bush "knows what sells" comes across as accusing the President of duplicity. That wasn't my intention. I think the public George W. Bush is a simplification and sometimes a distortion of the infinitely complex real man, but that's true of us all. The point I intended to make is that he knows his audience and is aware of his own appeal.
Yes, Professor, there is a brutal Afghan winter.
Hey, so we had to wait a few months, but I always said this would happen someday. Fisk! Pilger! To work!
A bureacrat with a sense of humour
is Mr Shawn Dearn, a spokesman for the Canadian Federal Identity Program. First remind yourselves about the controversy over why that smokers' rights website was forbidden to use the Canadian flag. (The link takes you to last week's archives. Scroll straight down to the very bottom to find the relevant post.) Then see what Mr Dearn had to say:"[The flag symbol] is not to be confused with the Canadian flag, even though they are remarkably similar," he said.Glad that's been cleared up. (Thanks to Ranting and Roaring who gives us another cute baby pic - that's baby pic not babe pic, you Samizdata-maddened maniacs, and with whom I will probably end up arguing about abortion some day.)The flag symbol is two red stripes (or black if printed on a black-and-white printer) with an 11-point maple leaf centred between the stripes, Mr Dearn said.
The national flag, on the other hand, is two red stripes with a white square containing an 11-point red maple leaf in the centre.
The difference arises only when the two are printed on non-white paper, or when words are placed next to the flag.
Incidentally, the day I wrote my earlier post I bunged an e-mail to the Canadian authorities citing it and asking if they cared to comment. No reply yet.
Another difference between the UK and US systems
is the route to power. In Britain the stages are MP - Junior Minister - Proper Long Trousers Minister - Prime Minister. Yeah, there may be a few aristos and cronies who tiptoe into the Cabinet but it is next to inconceivable that the top job would go to anyone who had not followed the right path. Not so in the US, according to Sean McCray:"I also have a theory that members of Congress cannot get elected President, only Governors. Congress votes on too many things, and people vote for different reasons on a bill. A person can support the main idea of a bill, but be against the amendments attached to it. These things allow for a Congressional voting record to easily be used by an opponent."- from Next Right, via Dawson.com
That chap Warren over at
Unremitting Verse might be able to turn his pen to any subject, even the Euro, but I bet he didn't know that the original "Pop goes the Weasel" refers to people pawning their fox-furs. Actually not even I know that it does, but that little unverifiable factoid is one of the many bits of trivia that fill up my brain and deprive me of the necessary single-mindedness for becoming President, Mighty She-Elephant of the War Host or any similar top management job.
"SOTU"
was the heading of an e-mail from Fritz Anderson. I spent a minute thinking, "isn't that a soya paste that vegetarians put in casseroles? Is this some political comment?" before finally figuring it out. Anyway, Mr Anderson writes,"I had thought the State of the Union address was almost exactly analogous to Speech from the Throne at the State Opening of Parliament. Is that not a big deal in the UK?"So I had to hit myself on the head all over again. Of course it is. Why didn't I think of that? Yet some tattered remnant of my once-proud point yet remains.
The main difference is that, no, it's not that big a deal except among chatterers like us. Perhaps that simply reflects the fact that Her Maj merely reads a prepared speech, and despite being one of her more self-consciously loyal subjects I have to say that it's a good thing she's queen and all because she'd never make a living on the stage. There is no performance angle. In contrast the chap reading the TOFU has to have at least enough star quality to get elected. While I grant that Bush Junior's crown is to some degree inherited, I'm not one of those who thinks his "Just Plain Folks" persona reflects any lack of either brains or knowledge of how to project himself. No sir, old Dubya has a pretty good idea of what sells among plain folks. Put another way, his father first made himself Head Spook and then Total Head Honcho and it's not unreasonable to suppose the son has inherited a good many of the qualities that propelled his father to the top.
Two wrap up, while the two speeches are both formally addressed to parliaments of various types, the President is an awful lot more worried about how it'll sell to the cameras than the Queen is. One could make some tediously democratic point at this juncture. I, however, prefer to dream of the glorious days to come when the Queen will once again don the terrifying war-blue of her ancestors and ride out to battle on her bronze chariot, its wheels bearing cruel spikes with which to mow down the bravest of her enemies. For does not Elizabeth bear the blood of Boadicea?
The answer to that is, yes, but in dilute measure. One can't imagine Boadicea (I refuse to use the pathetically correct version "Boudicca") being late for the first time in 50 years because her chariot was stuck behind a learner driver.
January 31, 2002
Francophiles, speak out
. Both Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal are having mild guilt attacks over all this cheese-eating surrender monkeys stuff. He says he quite likes the French and "I'm going to write something nice about them first chance I get." My sentiments exactly. I go to France whenever I can. But the French elite, venal yet pompous, do not make our task easy. How often do we get to read about the magnificent not-very-secret society of French gourmets who feast on unpasteurized milk, fragrant blue cheese and forbidden cuts of meat in defiance of all regulations? I can't even find a link. But they do exist.Here, as second prize, is a very old article by Jim* Henley in the Guardian saying the French aren't as Europhile as we think. Actually it is a pretty sound analysis, but I was looking for something far more quick, French and lively than mere politics.
*TWHACK SELF ON HEAD / CORRECTION
The real Jim Henley writes,
"I've actually been blogging long enough now that I had to ask myself, "Did I write something nice about the French?" Then I worried that there was someone at the Guardian trying to live off my reputation. (I mean, they're pretty stupid at the Guardian, right?) But apparently the byline on the article is Jon Henley, who is likely deeply jealous that I registered highclearing.com before he did."My typing fingers obviously just think that "Jim" goes with "Henley" better than "Jon" does. It's sort of a compliment if you think about it.
Bell, book and a word from the mayor.
One of Damianation's readers sent him a CNN story about a village that officially expelled Satan from the community. Wish it was that easy, guys. I am reminded of the Kipling short called "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat." That story has a surprisingly modern starting point: two motorists (oh, for that age of empty roads!) are caught in a dishonest speed-trap run for profit by the local authorities. In revenge they manouevre the yokels into making their village famous for its folly.
Feel better now?
These are the instructions given to airport security screeners in the US. Aren't you relieved that they are told "personnel may not rely on generalized stereotypes or attitudes or beliefs about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity."There is no excuse for insulting behaviour towards Arab or Moslem travellers. There is no excuse for ignoring the fact that there are other fanatics than Moslem ones, and that Moslem terrorists will try to use non-Arab agents when they can. But what does it take for the Department of Transportation to admit that it is not a belief but a fact that, at this time, 90% of the world's terrorists are Arabs and Moslems? Two big smoking holes in a major city?
From this side of the Atlantic
it seems odd - admirable, but odd - the way Americans pay so much attention to the State of the Union speech. After the tragedies and dramas of last year it is natural that this year's speech will be watched carefully, but even in the piping years of peace it seems that ordinary Americans will sit and watch the speech on TV. In this country as soon as a Party Political Broadcast comes on they have to beef up the National Grid to cope with the surge of power required by millions of kettles being put on to boil. I believe that was literally true in the days when all channels had them simultaneously. Of course a Party Political isn't comparable to the State of the Union, but that's the point - what is? No one say the Queen's speech on Christmas Day. I always put it on out of respect, and loyally half listen while I pig the rest of the pudding in another room. It is sincere and can be moving in a stilted way, but were not talking policy content here, are we?Anyway, it's very impressive the way Americans take it so seriously. Like the dude does.
January 30, 2002
Anglosphericalsceptical Emmanuel Goldstein
writes that his column on antiwar.com is taking a break, at least for the next few months. Meanwhile Airstripone.blogspot.com has mutated into a team effort, possibly under the influence of spores carried by my fellow Samizdatan David Carr.
The brothers have Labour over a financial barrel.
A possible explanation for the upsurge in union militancy from Ian McWhirter writing in the Glasgow Herald. (You have to press "opinion".) He believes that the requirement to disclose large donations has put off businesses who don't want to be accused of cronyism. That in turn has made Labour more dependent on the unions.
To think that I supported
the European Economic Community. To think that I was bored by the European Community. And now I loathe and fear the European Union. Why? Because of this sort of mindless destruction of the environment. The EU has a venereal disease. It can't even stop itself from harming the causes it most affects to love.(Also covered in The Edge of England's Sword and Samizdata, and no wonder.)
Scary stuff.
While my flowing locks bedecked the pillow, the ether fizzed hot with talk of someone denouncing Sulli. for alleged Krugmanesque practices. By the time I had finished my cornflakes and had taken my morning dose of the dread drug gfi, and hence was finally able to face the world, Tony Adragna had already caught the ball From Left Field and was in the process of hurling it back.
SPLASH!
The long promised new look to Dawson.com has arrived, courtesy of Stacey of Sekimori Design who has a designer blog (well it would be, wouldn't it?) in which she shocked me to the core by admitting that she doesn't like Thunderbirds.The very first post of the New Dawsonian Era mentions me calling his new design "the wave of the future". Which, worryingly, it is. The worry does not come from any dislike of resting my eyes on a surfer's dream. I'm just worried that the standard has moved up again. For a while there I thought I was poised on the cutting edge of technology for having figured out how to change the background colours. Oh well, balancing on the cutting edge gives you stripy feet.
5,4,3,2,1...
Midwest Conservative Journal And she's off! Unlinkable no more! Thanks to Myria and Geoffrey Barto, gurus of of the ancient and puissant art of Hut Mul.
French lessons for us monkeys
Geoffrey Barto of Turkeyblog which used to live here but now lives here chimes in with a more scholarly interpretation of the dreaded Simpson's phrase that I discovered yesterday."I'm not a native speaker of French, but the de reddition construction, while meaning "of surrender" doesn't feel quite right (maybe you should check with Matt Welch's wife).[Um, if you know the lady personally, perhaps you might like to ask this particular question, Geoffrey. - NS]
To offer something a little more out-there, may I suggest "singes capitulards caséivores" - monkeys tending-to-surrender eating-cheese (like carnivores eat meat; I doubt that this word exists, but the roots are there to make it). Alternatively, singes capitulards qui mangent du fromage or singes capitulards, mangeurs de fromage.Just to warn of the dangers of what too much free time can turn up, man-eating is mangeur d'hommes, but also anthropophage (Greek roots; I had to use Latin since I don't know the Greek word for cheese).
I'd be curious to know what a native speaker of French would come up with."
Since I rather think the answer to that would be "a smack round the ear - Comme ca!" I rather think that the issue must forever remain unsolved. Je me rends. Unless any French readers would care to let us know the equivalent insults for those boorish Anglophones?
Oh, yes. The wicked Christopher Johnson of the unlinkable (though I have been sent some useful hints {which worked, see above}) Midwest Conservative Journal, who started all this, has confessed that he does not speak French but used translation software. Wow, this is cool. Interesting that, though it gave far from a perfect result this time, translation software has definitely reached the stage of being useful. What changes will come to the world when the curse of Babel is finally lifted? What towers will we build?
January 29, 2002
Yes, I know, you are amazed that people who didn't know all about both phenomenon and site are even allowed out any more. But it's new to me and I love it. This is funny spell-checking for the 21st century. Talking of which, Christopher Johnson of MCJ asks, 'Are spell-checkers intelligent life forms? Juno's didn't like "McAuliffe." [Democratic party chairman.] It suggested "Malice."'
Three things I found out in the last 24 hours that everybody else has known about for ages
.1. Control-F.
2. Cleverer hit counters than wot I got can tell what search criteria people used to find your blog. Deeply, deeply embarrassing.
3. The phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - see previous post and this Goldberg article.
For one brief moment
I thought I had successfully linked to the Midwest Conservative Journal. But no. I've tried various stragegies of leaving in and editing out those two pesky squares, and it still doesn't work. You'll have to go via Samizdata (who have mysteriously called me a "posh blog stop". Posh? Essex girl me?) if you want to see Your Editor calling the EU the League of Nations and sundry other jibes, such as "vous fromage mangeant des singes de reddition." Ah, French, the language of diplomacy. Quite possibly that means "cheese-eating surrender-monkeys," but it may not because the French-English online dictionary I consulted warned me that la reddition was a new submission and had not been checked. It is nice to see a dictionary being built up, apparently, word by word by anyone who happens to pass by and feels so inclined, like modern day barn-raising.No one seems to have voted for Canadian whisky as being the best in his little poll. Isn't that sad?
A seven year old boy
was stabbed by Palestinian infiltrators according to the Jerusalem Post. Clicking the Arab Terror button gets an equivalent of "Portraits of Grief."
An Author's Tale.
John Weidner of Random Jottings says he was touched by this Telegraph article on author Patrick O'Brian. I confess I was more saddened and disturbed, perhaps because I had no idea of O'Brian's double life. We delude ourselves that we know an author because we know his books.I lost touch with O'Brian's work when after the birth of my first child my fiction consumption went down almost to zero and stayed that way for several years. I put this change in the habits of a lifetime down to tiredness and hormones. But "episodic fiction-reading impotence" has other triggers than just having a baby. There was a discussion in the Libertarian Alliance Forum on the subject and several courageous male sufferers came forward. Others told harrowing tales of the reverse condition, describing solitary sixteen-hour book orgies after traumas such as redundancy.
Don't worry. Following temporal therapy, in the last year or so I started reading again. And, profound though his moral failings appear to have been, O'Brian's books are on the list.
January 28, 2002
I stand refuted
by Alan M. Carroll, who writes, "On the other hand, one may think back to the Rigoberta Menchu incident, where many did say "although the content of the book was refuted, it's still true". (This is all about my pedantic objections to the misuse of the word "refute".)
Also from Instapundit
"PUNDITGATE STRIKES BRITAIN, at least according to this report from The Guardian. This sounds far worse than anything involving Enron, I have to say.I'd like to know more about who's getting money from what organizations. And I'd like to see the inquiry expanded to foundations and the like, whose nonprofit status is treated as proof of moral cleanliness in Washington -- but which shouldn't be. There's a lot of agenda-advancing money out there, I think, and it should be smoked out."
Does the pun in "smoked out" mean that the Prof was joking when he said it sounded "worse than Enron"? I hope so. Scruton would escape horsewhipping under my proposed system, since it was always obvious to me what he would say about ciggies and I am not half as shocked that he seeks to be paid for saying it as I am by the amount. It's so low. The Guardian article is not quite clear, but if the £4.5 - 5.5k per month was not just for placing articles but also for
"...assisting the multinational - the world's third-largest cigarette combine and manufacturer of brands such as Camel and Winston - on everything from education and licensing to dealing with the World Health Organisation."then it's pretty measly.
OK, OK, I'm being a little too easy on Scruton here. He seems to have annoyed the Financial Times enough for them to drop him, so clearly they did not feel he was dealing with them properly. Though he made no secret that he was a consultant for Japan Tobacco, I can see their irritation that Scruton sought to break the usual convention that a columnist is only paid by one master, the newspaper, when a story by him appears in that paper. Perhaps the Club Committee ought to drop a stiff hint in the professor's ear about disclosure. If consultancy fees that substantially add to a pundit's income are going to become commonplace we need a new set of habits. But Scruton escapes, as Krugman does not, the charge of hypocrisy.
By the way, if Clive Bates does not get a salary for being a director of ASH, then I shall apologise handsomely for calling him, as I do call him, "a grimy hack for the anti-smoking industry." The Guardian's headline-writer, a grimy hack for the newspaper industry, was also no doubt paid well for falsely stating Scruton was promoting smoking per se, rather than smokers' rights.
Regrettably, I have not been paid to write this.
From Instapundit's FAQ
: "While I'm at it, a surprisingly large number of people don't know how to use the "find in page" feature that most browsers have. Control-F, or clicking on "Edit" and selecting "find" will let you search for an individual word on a page. It's very useful, but I'm amazed how many people don't know about it."Including me, until this moment.
Times columnist Matthew Parris
got a bit of stick from warbloggers for pessimistic predictions that didn't come to pass. Never mind. In the domestic sphere he is one of the best. This article on the NuLab way of dealing with crises shows how Parris does it. Click the link to read some darkly comic lines, but the part that made me most angry was this:"I listened to the Health Secretary on the Today programme at the start of the week. Alan Milburn had been invited to discuss a directive issued by a Civil Service health chief in the South East telling staff the region was heading for an overspend and must make urgent cuts, no matter how painful. What, asked the interviewer, did Mr Milburn make of that? Oh, said the Secretary of State, no problem: they can get the shortfall from other regions which may be underspent. Thus in 30 seconds, to extricate himself from a temporary tight spot on the radio, a Health Secretary kicks away an entire financial discipline, undermines the woman tasked to enforce it, and cheats those regions which do succeed in keeping within their limits. After that interview, everyone in the health service will be taking their spending limits just a fraction less seriously."
Parris is wrong about the "just a fraction less seriously" - the peverse incentives are much more serious than that. But if you want to know by what mechanism things fall apart, there it is described.
A grim end.
US forces storm a Kandahar hospital where wounded International Taliban were left stranded by the fall of the regime that brought them to Afghanistan. They decided to barricade themeselves in, waiting for... what, I wonder? Anyone want to tell me they'd have been worse off on the beach in Cuba?It's surprising that this seige, which has been running for months, was successfully kept out of the public eye.
UPDATE: Robert A. Carroll writes, "I dunno where you are, but there were quite a few stories about the terrorists holed-up in the hospital. I'd bet I heard about them once a week, on average." Oops. Ignorance revealed. Too much time blogging, I suppose..... In retrospect I now realise that the tail-end of one news story I heard did refer to the seige.
Hidden glories of the Midden
. John Weidner writes, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation would be well advised to hire him for the defence: "I think 'midden' is used in archaeology for the village trash-heaps and dumps that are of great interest to excavators. Perhaps someone read about treasures of some primitive culture being found in a midden, and assumed it was some sort of art gallery."
Through the keyhole.
There are fascinating pictures of AintNoBadDude's party for LA bloggers. The Dude himself has little round glasses and a cute little flick in his hair. Ooooh, I just knew he would. But I always sort of thought he had black hair. And a lightning-bolt scar... Apart from that the biggest surprise is the unaccountable failure of various bloggers to wear their "props" 24 hours a day. Matt Welch: no hat. I love that hat! Ken Layne: no hat and no trenchcoat. You're not going to tell me that anyone with a typeface like that doesn't wear a trenchcoat.
Inappropriate Words
. I've just noticed that what I wrote below ties in with Moira Breen's understandably peeved response to the misuse of words. My own peeve of the month is people who think "refute" means "deny" or "argue against" rather than "disprove". It was funny but also sad to hear someone on the radio say, "Dr X may have refuted what I said, but I know it's true."
January 27, 2002
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation
has a page giving publicity to websites of interest to Aborigines. It's called "the Midden." Why? Is there some culturally specific metaphor - something about where the flies all go to socialize, perhaps - of which I am ignorant, or did some enthusiastic young thing at ABC convince herself that it meant sorta like "central meeting place" rather than its official meaning of "pile of manure"?That came out sounding nastier than I really intended. From what I could see there was nothing I would confidently describe as crappy about the actual aboriginal material, although much of it had the laboured, wheezy tone of a culture being muffled by subsidy. I just want to know who thinks up these names and why.
Dear Old Oom Krugman
Some thought-provoking words in defence of Paul Krugman from Mind Over...There's a ping-pong match here between two views as to whether Krugman's profession as an economist should have have given him any special insight when paying in the now famous Enron $50k cheque to his bank account. Mark Steyn says, "he of all people should know it doesn't come out of thin air." The Zilber response is, "Honestly, Andrew [addressed to Andrew Sullivan], do you really ever expect to convince an economist to apologize for his own market value?"
The resolution? Krugman's arrogance - I won't go so far as to say 'crime' - lay in taking the tone of a fearless giant-killer and defender of the peasantry while stashing an enormous cheque from Giant Plc. The phrase "It's Just Not Done, Old Chap" has covered a lot of folly over the years, but it also served to keep many a soul on the straight and narrow. If it is the "done thing" nowadays for columnists to act like this then it's about time they were all horsewhipped on the steps of their clubs.
If Krugman had been happy to tell the world, "I'm a superstar, and paid to match" all along he wouldn't look such a rat now.
Don't just scroll down to find your own name
in the "Hiawatha for our times" in Unremitting Verse. Read all of it. Go on. Get yourself some culture.
Blairey bait: Glenn Sacks, one of us.
OK, I didn't set this up, it just happened, right? I jus' goes and checks out Tim Blair, an' he disses Glenn Sacks an' there's all these links, see, and one of them is really great and makes me say that can a guy who writes this be all bad?This is how it feels to be Charlie Brown seeing a smile spread across Lucy's face as his foot leaves the ground to kick the ball.