July 06, 2002
July 05, 2002
Off with his head!
Alex Bensky writes:"Glad to see there are no hard feelings. None on this side--you started up with us, we won, happens to a lot of people, we're cool now. No disgrace to lose out to Americans, of course.It's worth remembering, when reading the description of the poverty, hopelessness and inertia that characterize the alternate America of Bring the Jubilee, that the current relative vigour of life in the West is unusual in history.On the subject of books about a different outcome to the Revolution, I strongly recommend For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga, by Robert Sobel, which is on Evelyn Leeper's list. Except for the subtitle and copyright page it purports to be more or less a freshman college history of North America after we lose the Revolution (not that that was in the cards, of course). Pretty much plausible and I like it a lot. It's one of my two favorite alternate history books, the other being Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee.
The LA Examiner is Ken Layne and Matt Welch's new baby. Although the story is a grim one, I am glad to see that they are quick off the mark. The BBC website has now caught up.
In a sense there's nothing more to say about the killer. Just another one of the enemy. Good shooting from the El Al security guy, though. But I do hope they catch the "prankster" and reduce him to poverty.
New kids.
Ain't No Bad Dude welcomes some new left wing bloggers. Of the four he lists, I liked the Rittenhouse Review best, in particular the spiky responses to readers' letters. Sadly this blog won't be coming out until further notice due to a death in the author's family. Also mentioned were Max Speak, whose focus on individual senators and Congressmen meant that a non-American like me felt rather lost, Lean Left and Vaara. Welcome, boys. Nats says come on in and join us.
Tony Harnden
admiringly profiles US gun-control advocate Sarah Brady in the Telegraph. It's certainly OK by me if for the writer to record that she and her husband are brave and determined people who have overcome many trials. But an article about US gun control that ignores the passing of concealed-carry laws in many states, and the success of these laws, and the recent Supreme Court decision that the second amendment means what it says, and the rising trend of gun ownership coupled with falling violent crime; that talks as if the argument is all over - well, that's a disgrace to the profession of journalism.LATER. I was too harsh there. Harnden is no worse than many. It is a disgrace to the profession of (British) journalism that they are ignoring one of the biggest social stories in the last ten years, but the disgrace falls to the whole profession and not to Harnden in particular. Every other criminological trend that comes to us from America is reported. Zero-tolerance, they know about; tagging they know about. But to find out about the justified popularity of concealed-carry you have to be a gun nut to start with.
July 04, 2002
If you'd all had proper afternoon tea, none of this mess would have happened,
as 1066 And All That so wisely observed. Just teasing. I know it was A Good Thing, really. So, to celebrate Independence Day, here's a little essay by Harry Harrison about his "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" , an alternative world where the American Revolution met its proper end. ;-). In recompense to his US readers, Harrison later wrote another very pro-American one called the Stars And Stripes Forever where Prince Albert died too soon to use his tact to defuse a confrontation with Lincoln, but I am far too patriotic to read the ones where Britain loses. In any case my husband says it ignores the existence of HMS Warrior which at that time would have wiped the sea floor with any other ship in the world.Actually, according to Evelyn Leeper's list there are six what-if books that have the Colonists losing.
One I liked is The Two Georges. It's set in a present so felicitous as to have a diner on an airship remark, concerning these newfangled aeroplanes, that if travellers are in that much of a hurry they probably have not properly thought out the reasons for their journey. The plot concerns a not-very-credible racist/aristocratic conspiracy to kill the King while he visits his loyal American subjects, but the joy of the book lies in the cute touches. For instance Royal American Mounted Police flags fly at half mast outside police stations over the whole North American Union whenever one officer is killed. Sadly, that wouldn't be practicable in either the America or the Britain of our sorry excuse for a reality.
But perhaps things aren't so bad after all. Evelyn Leeper, in the link above, quotes Mark Keller as saying:
The most popular in French was "What if Napoleon had not been defeated?" which Keller said usually resulted in a better world than we have, while most American alternate histories show things as being worse. When someone in the audience asked why, Mark Olson replied, "We look at this as the best of all possible worlds, but the French know it isn't, because most people speak English."
Oops,
a Blogger glitch meant that the above post appeared twice. The same duplication seems to have struck Junius's case against the Euro and Public Interest's musings on Hugo Young. My turn to tell that Briffa man about his bugs, hah!Update: bug now stomped on in the Public Interest.
I'd just like to pick up
on one point from Moira Breen's fisking of Anatole Kaletsky. She writes:"Reviled red-zoners never have creditable reasons for holding opinions contrary to a Clintonite or a Kaletsky. Support for Israel, for example, is never a reasoned support, it's "unstinting", entirely without reservation on any point whatever of Israeli policy, utterly mindless. "That woman's been reading my mind again. Back when I wrote this post on British gun control I had, I really had, originally finished it with something very like this:
"Ah, she would say that. She's an American, and everyone knows what they're like." While it is conceded that even Americans might hold their opinions on tort reform, the Moldavian National Debt, or the care and feeding of lemurs as a result of argument or observation; it is well known that the only possible reason for supporting gun ownership is genetic. The Second Amendment is considered to be a part of American culture in the same sense of the word "culture" that describes ritual scarification and female circumcision.Then Blogger ate my final edit, and I was in a hurry and let it go.
July 03, 2002
Are you worthy
to read Patrick Crozier's other blog, This Blog Has No Title, Just Words And A Loon? It is very select. You can't even get there from UK Trasport Blog, although, mysteriously, the converse is not true.
Voice of hope.
I don't agree with every word written by Omar Karsou in this Telegraph opinion column. In particular, the writer persists in skirting round the morality of terror killing. Mr Karsou's heart is in the right place. He regrets the fact that Palestinians have become synonymous with suicide bombings and violence, and says "we have to put our house in order first," yet seems to mean by this no more than the acquisition of a liberal democratic government: an admirable proposal in itself, certainly, and a means of prizing the coming generation free from the clutches of the death cult - but denouncing and stopping terrorism comes waaaay before all that.Nor, sadly, do I belive believe there is anything like a silent majority of moderate and peace-loving Palestinians.
But, perhaps there might be one day. This is a start:
"Our legitimate cause was eventually hijacked by the despotic rule of the Palestinian Authority and by those who want to speak through violence."
Read. Hope. Think good thoughts about post World War II Germany.
The Great Open Source Giveaway!
As someone who barely knows what an operating system is, let alone whether Lunix or whatever you call it is a good one, I do not want to involve myself in technical discussions. Back, back you fiends! Go and join the Libertarian Alliance Forum which is full to the brim of people steeped in such lore, although the way they keep grading each others' papers as C++ is a little schoolmarmish.I am, however, delighted to participate in spreading this meme; an "open source" article about open source products. Here is the recursive bit that really caught my interest:
"And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist and AlterNet have agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means you can copy it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play around with it as long as you, too, release your version under a copyleft and abide by the other terms and conditions in the licence. We also ask that you inform us of any use you make of the article, by e-mailing copyleft@newscientist.com.Won't it be interesting to see how far it gets? How far would this model be replicable, once the novelty has worn off? The parallels with blogging versus newspapers are obvious."One reason for doing so is that by releasing it under a copyleft, we can print the recipe for OpenCola without violating its copyleft. If nothing else, that demonstrates the power of the copyleft to spread itself. But there's another reason, too: to see what happens. To my knowledge this is the first magazine article published under a copyleft. Who knows what the outcome will be? Perhaps the article will disappear without a trace. Perhaps it will be photocopied, redistributed, re-edited, rewritten, cut and pasted onto websites, handbills and articles all over the world. I don't know -- but that's the point. It's not up to me any more. The decision belongs to all of us.
"THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/coplyleft/dsl.txt "
July 02, 2002
And now for the News.
Dodgeblog reports:"Tony Blair has decided to send government "hit squads" to take over and "improve" under-performing blogs. It involves setting up a well-funded (at taxpayer expense) commission to determine why UK blogs are not performing well in the tables. This will involve MPs, ministers, and "experts", while not including any bloggers. They need to have hearings, "fact-finding" trips to successful blogging nations, and a full-time staff. Funds needed for this project will be in excess of £50 million over a 5 year period. Rumours that this commission is Peter Mandelson's way back into government have been denied by Alastair Campbell."
"Change and decay all around I see..."
Running down my links list, Ken Layne, Matt Welch, Glenn Reynolds, Bjørn Stærk and now Damian Penny have all gone off for longer or shorter periods. Jay Zilber, and Iain Dale have not posted for weeks; Myria and Muslimpundit have not posted for months.Aha! Now is my chance to take over the world. I just hope there's someone left to listen to my victory speech.
Courage, mon brave.
Paul Wright on the endurance demanded of a devoted dad. Tim Blair, look to your laurels, there's a another turbo-charged and very funny Ozblogger coming up behind.
There is a serious point
to be made about the way that treatment of Conservative peccadillos when they were in power was harsher than their treatment of Labour peccadillos now. There is. Really. Does anyone remember Stephen Milligan? He was a Conservative MP who accidentally killed himself while practising Autoerotic Asphyxia, back in February 1994. He certainly behaved oddly, and, as it turned out, with fatal foolishness. But, since his sexual behaviour concerned himself alone, the nearest he came to betraying a trust was in failing to present all sides of his character in his election leaflets. Few MPs would pass the test if the bar were set that high.So Stephen Milligan was not unfaithful to wife or partner, and was an ordinary MP - being Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Arms Minister, Jonathan Aitken, scarcely counts as cabinet office. Yet we all knew about him and his plastic bag before his body was in the coffin. No privacy for him. Normal practice in these cases is to await the inquest before releasing details of the death; but some copper wanted a moment of fame and spread the word by issuing an absurdly coy note that spoke of "unusual circumstances" and acted like a magnet to the press.
Stephen Byers, however, was unfaithful, was a big league minister when he shagged this woman, and is in every respect a better candidate for press attentions and serious discussion of What This Says About The Level of Judgement Expected From Those Entrusted With High Authority. But in this case, only the tabloid readers get any fun. Either publicize them all or none of 'em.
Captain Heinrichs
gives Byers the benefit of the doubt:"Byers left his socks on till last"
1. In consideration for the lady who perhaps prefered warmed peds;
2. His big toe(s) is(are) his best feature(s) and he was prolonging her anticipatory wait (there was fourspiele involved);
3. His pedicure was booked for the morrow;
4. Contrary to the news report, no sleeping was involved; he was reducing the time required for dressing following their Act of Congress;
5. An Animal Magnet has his own rules.
July 01, 2002
Scandal!
Peter Briffa learns from The News of the World that Stephen Byers had his wicked way with a Labour party activist in a Cardiff hotel room. The deed took place at a conference devoted to Local Government and Women, and Stephen took the last half of the title literally. It's a good thing Peter braves the papers that more sensitive bloggers avoid, because we certainly heard nothing about it from the quality press. Yet whenever a minister, or even an ex-minister, erred in the days of Major's government, even the qualities would be on the case in no time flat. Odd, that. Perhaps it is their firm and unbending views on the sacredness of the marriage vow that leads to this peculiar omission: Mr Byers and the lady with whom he shares his life are not married, and hence his crime was (as Mr Briffa, ever just, pointed out when I e-mailed him on the subject) infidelity, but not adultery.Mr Briffa's commentary on the News of the World's story is frank. But even he could not bear to allude to one particular detail. A thing so cheap, so tacky, so sordid that I scarcely dare sully these pages with an account of it.
Byers left his socks on till last.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
The headline to this Sydney Morning Herald article on child abuse distorts the facts, so anxious is it to avoid even seeming to criticize the working class or the unemployed. You will often see the same distortion elsewhere - I first noticed it on a series of British posters purporting to have been written by a policewoman and condemning child abuse that ran sometime around 1994.The Sydney Morning Herald headline reads, "Children at risk: rich suburbs no protection, figures show." That is what they would like you to think: that middle/upper class and working class/unemployed parents are equally likely to abuse their children. However the actual state of affairs is stated in the very first line of the article:
"A surge of child abuse reports in some of Sydney's wealthiest suburbs has dented the stereotype that child attacks and domestic violence are the sole province of the poor or disadvantaged."In other words, the incidence of child abuse among upper/middle class parents is not zero, and we are told that it is rising in the Sydney suburbs. The fact remains that, in Sydney as elsewhere, child abuse is rarer among richer than among poorer parents. As the article says,
"...And while most of the more affluent areas started from a relatively low base compared with traditionally difficult or disadvantaged areas..."To fight child abuse you must understand it. Any serious discussion of child abuse must acknowledge its correlation with one parent families, with unemployment, and with poverty. You don't have to be against welfare, as I am, to make this connection: many honest socialists quite see the point and, indeed, centre their arguments upon it. This headline-writer prefers delicately to close his or her eyes.
Building working scale models of steam engines and steamboats
is a solitary, creative, practical, typically British pastime. So of course the EU want to destroy it.
"I love work. I could sit and watch it for hours."
Join in the hypnotic pleasure of watching the Scottish Parliament building go up via The Scotsman's webcam. As I type this the crane on the right is swinging round. Funny way your clouds move up there in Scotland, though. All jerky. I reckon the earth rotates in a specially wobbly way that far north. Something to do with the way they precess their equinoxes, you know.If you prefer to people-watch, the street scenes from Glasgow and Edinburgh also provide addictive fun. This is Buchanan Street.
Dawson
is 39 today! His first birthday greeting of the day almost certainly came from the protean wisdom of Protein Wisdom, who is the latest to acquire one of those swanky new domain things and does not appear to need sleep, judging from the time he sent the e-mail.
"Blair will quit if Britain backs Euro."
Did I read that right? Yes, but it was said by Roy Hattersley, so I don't have to believe it.
While England Slept.
Alan Judd expresses my befuddled, yet slowly waking outrage over the way the European arrest warrant has become law by stealth.