'Nother Solent

A point of etymology.

Moira Breen writes:

May I make a slight etymological clarification on my obscure slang? "Bawk" does indeed carry the connotation of regurgitation, but I used it to refer to the Globe writers, not my reaction to them. Although, now that I think about it, "bawk" is an excellent onomatopoeic representation of
the sound of barfing, in this case it signifies that sound a chicken makes. Think not "hurl" but "BAAAAWK! Bawk bawk bawk BAAAWK!".

"To bawk" is semantically related to, but has a shade of meaning different from, the verb "to chickenhead", which means "to speak in a fashion that suggests to the listener that one considers oneself quite expert and worth listening to on a subject concerning which one actually has nothing to say that is not trite or ill-informed." I speculate that this was derived from observations of strutting chickens, and that back-and-forth thing they do with their necks.

"To bawk" has the connotation of "to sloganeer", "to thoughtlessly regurgitate received wisdom". Thus, auto-bawking refers to the ability to non-selectively access and deliver the content of one's neural database of unreflective bumpersticker political beliefs, at the drop of a topic, regardless of the pertinence of any specific point.

Storm Warning.

I have, I learn, been appointed as "site of the week" at the People's Republic of Seabrook. But I don't think "Northstar"(Jack Cluth) is much concerned about arranging my munificent state pension and honorary Order of Seabrook with oak leaf cluster right now. He's in the eye of the storm.

Actions have consequences.

Alex Bensky writes on abortion:

"...the pro-abortion groups often repeat the mantra about a woman's right to control her body. But if the sex that leads to the pregnancy is consensual, hasn't the woman already made a choice about what to do with her body? From that choice certain consequences may flow. At what point should a woman have to take responsibility for her freely chosen acts?"

Captain J M Heinrichs writes on abortion:

"No problem, except that if a woman is to exercise that control intelligently, then I would expect her to make the decision before rather than after the act. The latter is less a choice than birth control: because she forgot.

But, I'm just a guy, and we have no part of the decision process, do we?

Brian Linse wrote on abortion:

"I found your post on late term abortions very interesting. I was wondering how you would approach the problem of a woman who was seeking a late term abortion for reasons pertaining to her own physical health. Natural child birth and cesarian delivery are both considerably more dangerous to the mother than an abortion (unless there's new theory on this that I've missed) and if we posit a case where a woman is informed by her doctor that he has discovered a medical condition that will make carrying to term dangerous, then at what stage, if at all, does the fetus gain equal rights to the mother? I think this situation illustrates the problem of granting an unborn fetus equal rights to its mother. Just a thought..."

I wrote back:

"I suppose I would say that the fetus gains rights on a sliding scale from zero at conception to full rights at the moment of birth. Of course, in the heartbreaking scenario you describe, so many other factors are in play (and without time to think about them either) that no such neat solution can be offered. But in human affairs there is nothing particular to abortion about situations where no one can exactly say what they would do."

I'm not absolutely sure I agree with myself about that sliding scale. Too neat, as I said, and too mechanistic. I feel I ought to be against abortion full stop, and not only because I call myself a Catholic (albeit one with temptations to indifferentism) - but, as I said earlier I just can't muster the right feelings for very early term abortions. But perhaps it is best not to try and sort these things out during bouts of insomnia.

James Lileks seems a generally happy kinda guy. That's why it cuts like a knife when he isn't.

"They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we’re going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash."

"I lied: I'm not 90% back."

I confess I had not come across the blog written by Daniel Taylor, the Dreaded Purple Master until now. When I did come across it I was riveted. You reading this - you're a blogger, right? Or a reader of blogs? Or a news junkie? Anyway, you swim in a river of words. News for you: sometimes that river runs dry.

"At the moment, I have a blind spot that covers one third to one half of my field of vision.

Again, because the brain extrapolates so well, as incredible as it sounds, I don’t usually notice it. The ophthalmologist made me see it by the simple expedient of having me focus on a spot on a piece of graph paper and asking me if there appeared to be any gaps in the grid.

Good God Almighty. Most of the right side of it was gone."

What does it take to make the spring bubble up again - at least to some extent?

"So here I am, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, staring blankly at the front page. God help me if I am intellectually stymied by the AJC.

The headlines I could stagger through with difficulty, if at all. I noticed, though, that the text of the stories was easier to manage. Only proper names, especially unfamiliar ones, stumped me completely.

The therapist, bless her, realized we were onto something, and had me turn to an interior page – as it happened, an op-ed page featuring an analysis of the recent primary election, specifically the defeat of Congressional incumbent Cynthia McKinney at the hands of newcomer Denise Majette. It was relatively small print in a relatively narrow space line.

I rolled right through it. Halleluiah!"

That may just be the most useful thing to come out of Cynthia McKinney's term of office. I very much hope that Mr Taylor's recovery continues.

NOTE: Blogger glitch time again. The number in the link is, honestly, that of the post mentioned above. For some reason it currently takes you to Mr Taylor's next post down. From experience I judge that this link will start taking you to the right post in a day or so.

A rare event, but worthwhile:

MCJ praises a column by Nicholas Kristof. The Kristof column paints a heart-wrenching picture of depopulation in the Midwest, accelerated by the effects of subsidies.

"Yet Stewart Switzer, a 17-year-old senior, says that if he could go back in a time capsule and talk to his great-great-grandpa when he was settling here a century ago, his message would be: Don't stop here. Keep on going."

Should we keep

just a little bit of snobbery in order to provide material for comedy? Discuss. And while you're thinking about it, here's absolutely the last Essex Girl joke I shall print:

An Essex girl goes to the council to register for child benefit.
"How many children?" asks the council worker.
"10" replies the Essex girl.
"10?!!" says the council worker. "What are their names?"
"Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne and Wayne", she explains.
"Doesn't that get confusing?" asked the council worker.
"Naah..." says the Essex girl, "it's great because if they are out playing in the street I just have to shout WAYNE, YER DINNER'S READY or WAYNE GO TO BED NOW and they all do it..."
"What if you want to speak to one individually?" says the perturbed council worker.
"That's easy," says the Essex girl... "I just use their surnames."

Yes, I live in Essex. And we were very fond of our Ford Capri. Why do you ask?

Insight.

Rod Dreher writes in The Corner about the way a conscientious initial rejection of bigotry can become entwined with acceptance of the entire liberal (US sense) programme. A similar process happens worldwide. Britain sold its ancient rights in order to get rid of snobbery. While I think that was a devil's bargain that need never have been made, I do not deny that the impulse to jettison class discrimination was good.

Blogger wasn't working last night, and in my fury I fell into dark commerce with the Machinery of Night on a closely related subject. Scroll down to the post earlier that started it. I could give you the link to the earlier post, too, but instead I'm going to insist you scroll down yourselves. It's for your own good, you know.

"But we didn't go to this Kroger. It might have different things! I like looking at things! Can we stop at this Kroger, Niles?"

At last I understand.

"The forces wielded by the Joint Chiefs Of Staff at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia are not aligned with the collective good of this Nation, this World, or this Earth. The building is negatively aligned with its ‘head’ facing South. The Pentagon Building needs to be taken down because it is misaligned, because it is not the target of terrorists, it is actually a magical edifice specifically created to wreak the terror of Black Magick on the planet. It is the Global Police Force Station for all ‘stupid white men’ around the planet, the Central Clearing Zone for industrial society’s most advanced and ‘scientific’ machines of death."

- The Ring Of Power: The Second Part of A Gnostic Astrologer's View Of The Twenty-First Century by Francis Donald Grabau.

What a waste of a good mind. You start off as a perfectly ordinary, sensible, workaday Gnostic Astrologer, then you read Michael Moore and look what happens.

Cats do not like Ardennes pâté.

Note to self: next time by cat food in good time.

The Sudeten Germans? Remind me, who were they?

Jim Bennett has unfortunately allowed himself to be distracted from his real work of dissecting the historico-cultural minutae of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. I blame the influence of that Iain Murray myself, who is just as frivolous, going on about how Britain can really help Europe when he could be compiling the Most Cruel and Tragick Historie of My Lorde the Bishop of Sodor. Instead of concentrating on the Great Task, Mr Bennett too, has been writing on world affairs of all things. In 'What were they thinking?' he starts off by discussing the Titanic and then moves on to an interesting parallel: the Palestinians seen as Sudeten Germans.

Of course, it's also worth remembering the fate of the Sudeten Germans. After World War II, they were forcibly expelled into Germany, and nobody really cared about them at that point.

May I make clear to my more critical readers that I do not want the Palestinians to share the fate the Sudeten Germans. I want them not to.

There are two more Bennett UPI columns up as well. One widely-blogged one about Tranzis and one about, surprisingly, folk songs. Here's a byway of history:

... Cultural nationalists steeped in Turner expected to find a body of work shaped by two centuries of life in the highland frontier. To their amazement, they found that the Appalachian Borderers had preserved perfectly a body of hundreds of ballads from the British Border region, singing most un-republicanly of lords and ladies, knights and minstrels, many little changed from centuries before they were brought over.

Bawk!

"Bawk" is a term new to me. Moira Breen wanted to do it, whatever it is, all over a Boston Globe article. It said:

The ambassador talked about how the Arab world has "tried to learn so much from the United States." But he wondered what could be learned from a country "where there are complaints about the ability to hold fair elections, where elections are decided by the judiciary, and where there are issues about ballot boxes as well."

He offered the description of the 2000 US presidential election good-naturedly, but the message stuck. Hours later, many guests left chattering about seeing democracy from new perspectives.

Moira said:

I stand in awe. It's masterful to be able to fit so many levels and types of bullshit into so few words - and the final grace note of the newly enlightened sheep! (American democracy and Arab "democracy". Butter? Margarine? No difference!)

Mugabe lobbyist Ari-Ben Menashe has abruptly severed all connections to the tyrant. I hope that he has decided to reform his wicked ways and return to respectable employment as a spy.

Greek terror suspect gives himself up. Remarkable what one can do with a little effort. For years these November 17 guys killed with impunity. Eventually it became an international embarrassment. Someone leans on the police and zap! The wily terrorists fall like cards, even going so far as to catch themselves so as to save the police further trouble.

One more thing. What was a painter of religious icons doing among these Marxist fanatics?

Opening shots.

Iraqi air defence site attacked by US.

The same bug has struck again.

So I can't correct that bad link below. Here's the real Indian Express story.

I don't know whether Tamil Nadu has better or worse statistics for infants killed by water-borne infections than the rest of India. I assume most mothers there use cloth nappies, but perhaps disposables are beginning to penetrate that market. Either way, both washing and disposal are going to impact the water system somehow. In either case the impermeable quality of plastic would be very useful in keeping soiled stuff separate from clean stuff. This might save lives.

The dreaded inability-to-edit lurgy has struck down the previous post.

I continue here. Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board Chairperson Sheela Rani Chunkath says brightly, "The only inconvenience for the public may be that they will have to carry their own cloth bags while shopping.Doing this is not something new for Indians; we used to do this 20 years ago and we can do it again now." So no nappy sacks or rain hats for the people of Tamil Nadu. Nappy sacks matter; a major cause of infant death in India is water-borne infections, as this Indian Express article mentions.

Old bags.

Libertarian Parent in the Countryside describes with pride the many-sided relationship of the Briton and his carrier bag. Citizens of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have no opportunity to show their igenuity in a similar manner. The state government has banned certain types of plastic bag.

Lost in translation.

Have you ever wondered how to really get across the nuances of an Essex Girl joke to a speaker of Hausa or Cantonese? Help is at hand from this page on intercultural joke translation from a delightful site discussing half-baked ideas. I have changed pointy brackets to square ones to avoid getting Blogger in a tiz.

[joke type="q&a" form="essexgirl"
[question]How does an
[subject locale="essex" sex="girl]Essex girl[/subject]
[premise]
[action]turn the light off [/action]
[occasion]after sex[/occasion]?
[/premise]
[/question]
[answer]
[subject]She [/subject]
[twist supposition="location" target="bed" destination="car"]closes the
[localisation source="UK"]Capri[/localisation]
[object]door[/object]
[/twist]!
[/answer]
[/joke]

Go on, laugh.

Simpson, guns & videotape.

I've posted some comments on Biased BBC. Here's a sample:

"Even anti-gun organizations acknowledge the fact that New York with its decades of tight gun control has a very high murder rate is something that their side must explain, not ignore. The prestigious BBC that boasts of its many researchers and its 'mission to explain' ought to know and ought to tell this highly relevant fact."

Hello me.

Just put in a new hit counter.

I'm miles behind on the e-mail. Why not visit repeatedly to see if I've got to yours yet?

The deaf student rejected

by Oxford describes her experiences. First she gains my sympathy: "Why Oxford? First university I heard of in Russia. I fell under its magic spell." Then she loses it: "Public-school boys are much better coached and prepped than state-school ones – don't let them win!"

A strange clarion call. Are there really Oxford candidates who are unmoved by love of knowledge or worldly ambition when applying for a place, but who will leap up and put their heart and soul into their task when reminded that the real reason for all this effort is to deprive some rupert of the place he would otherwise have had?

It's very odd to hear a former resident of the Soviet Union coming out with what I would have thought was a specifically British-bred type of class-envy. I wonder how and when she picked that up, and how deep it runs. Perhaps she's just supplying the Indy readers with what she thinks they want to hear. I hope so; there's an undercurrent of better humour running under the most of the article, and it would be a pity for this to be submerged forever by the bad effects of sudden fame.

Final quick question, Anya: how about public-school girls? Must we work as hard at stopping them winning?

"Well, it destroys the value of almost all of their hardware investments."

David Janes on Ultra Wide Band, and why makers of wireless, LAN and WAN equipment are trying to kill UWB while they still can.

Greece has banned all, you heard me, all online games.

Actually

, that was the toned-down version.

There's stupidity.

I don't know whether Mrs Akwana Walker is stupid or not. Clearly she is sufficiently well adapted to modern state education to play the system, but as "well adapted" is a description that can justly be applied to a tapeworm, adaptation cannot be proof of intelligence. If she is stupid, that would be sad, but not her fault.

There's simple ignorance. Undoubtedly, Mrs Akwana Walker is ignorant. But that, too, might be through circumstances that are cause for regret rather than censure. Nor need we exaggerate the extent of her ignorance. Many English-speaking people do not know what "niggardly" means. Many English-speaking people might balk when they first hear the word for fear that it has something to do with the rightly-shunned racial insult "nigger". So far it's all quite understandable.

And there's wilful ignorance. Malicious ignorance. Pig-ignorance, the country people used to call it, the self-satisfied ignorance of a pig wallowing in mud. It is a description that is most unfair to pigs. That innocent creature might like mud-wallowing but he doesn't try to drag others down into the mud with him, and he bears no malice to those with different tastes. In contrast Mrs Walker strives to ensure that her child grows up as addicted to victimhood as she is, and even though she now knows "niggardly" is not a racial insult, still does her best to get the teacher who tried to widen her child's vocabulary fired.

Brendan O'Neill weighs into the abortion debate.

Late term abortions are certainly very unpleasant, but they are also extremely rare. Surely we can assume that any woman who would put herself through a late-term abortion must have very good cause - rather than denouncing her as a murderer.

The ordinary, uncontentious crime of murder is also extremely rare. Can we therefore assume that any man or woman who would put themselves through the unpleasantness and mess of committing one and then avoiding or facing the courts must have very good cause and should be left undenounced?

But Solent raises an interesting question - the difference between the 'bundle of cells' that few of us sympathise with and the well-formed fetus that could possibly survive outside of the womb. However, in her distinction between these two 'potential humans', Solent misses the crucial thing they have in common - both are still part of a woman's body.

The idea that a developed fetus is part of a woman's body in the same sense that her kidneys are is completely untenable in medical terms, a fact which any doctor, however pro-abortion, would admit instantly. Your argument rests on the attempt to fit a situation into a language-category that does not cover it. I quite see that a fetus is a good deal nearer to being part of her body than St Paul's Cathedral is, but the fact is that a fetus cannot be neatly described as "part" or "not part" of her body, except by the crudity of the law. The law often must employ crude dividing lines as a matter of practicality. The question is where they fall.

Many anti-abortionists claim that late-term abortion is unadulterated murder because the fetus could survive outside of the womb. After all, they argue, crassly, we wouldn't kill a one-day old baby just because his mother didn't want him - so why would it have been okay to kill him or her just weeks earlier?

What's crass about this argument? Is it not cause for questioning when a life and death decision depends on a difference of external circumstances, unrelated to the deservingness of the one to be killed?

The difference is that a one-day-old baby can be cared for without interfering with a woman’s body against her will – a fetus cannot.

Yes it can. Do nothing and it's cared for fine. The insertion of needles, hands, knives, and vacuum cleaners into a woman's body is necessary to kill the fetus, not to leave it alive. You object to inteference in a woman's body against her will. There is no interference.* All that remains is her will, and the question of whether her will should be granted.

If we give rights to the fetus, if we talk about fetuses having souls (such nonsense), then we reduce women to little more than vessels.

It's her soul that makes her more than a vessel - as it is every man and woman's soul that makes them more than a temporary assemblage of biological components. If the reader does not believe in immortal souls then replace the words with a phrase such as "humanity" or "human ability to possess rights" or "potential to make moral judgements" and the argument will do as well. A pregnant woman is a vessel. Tough on her sometimes, but that's the deal biology offers. She is not, of course, just a vessel. But the very thing, whatever you call it, that makes her more than a vessel is the same thing that makes the fetus within her more than just her property.

We rob women of their rights in the name of granting rights to the fetus.

This talk of "robbing women of their rights", and the next two sentence too, assumes what you set out to prove, that hers are the only rights that matter.

Abortion has always been about whether you support a woman’s right to control her reproductive life and, ultimately, her own body. The new debates about whether fetuses have souls may look like interesting theological discussions, but they can also be another way of denying women basic rights and choices.

Yes, if a female is killed before she can grow up then she is denied the chance to a reproductive life, and a more basic right even than that: the control and continuing existence of her own body. It is equally scandalous that aborted males are denied their chance to ever make any choices whatsoever, never mind basic ones.

*I talk about "interference" because Brendan does. I'm not getting into the Acts versus Omissions debate here.

The Dutch don't hate the Euro so much as all that.

Paul Ibsch writes, "It looks like the Telegraph doubled the 44% mentioned below and added 10% for good luck. The 38% mentioned in the last paragraph of this Telegraaf report refers to the April figure."

Nederlander verlangt
naar gulden terug

door Nolly Speijers AMSTERDAM -

Een toenemend aantal Nederlanders heeft heimwee naar de gulden. In plaats van dat de euro na maandenlang gebruik aan sympathie wint, groeit juist de afkeer van deze Europese muntsoort. Dit ondanks het feit dat men de euro op vakantie wel makkelijk vindt. Dat blijkt uit de euro-vakantie-enquête van het Nibud, de pagina Over Geld van De Telegraaf en RTL-nieuws, die de afgelopen maand is gehouden en waaraan 4431 mensen hebben meegedaan. Daarin geeft 44% van de mensen aan de gulden heel erg te missen.

- That last sentence just has to be something about 44% of the respondents missing the Guilder -

In aprilbedroeg het aantal mensen dat sterk terugverlangde naar de gulden, nog 38%.

And it's no use hoping that the two stories refer to different polls. Even without speaking Dutch, I can see that the two articles both speak of a sample of 4,431.

Sheesh. 44% disliking the Euro up from 38% in April still shows an interesting trend, but it isn't nearly as exciting as 98%. An embarrassing slip on the part of the Telegraph. Can we charitably assume that their correspondent at The Hague had been making a commendable but overenthusiastic attempt to immerse himself in Dutch culture?

China blocks Google.

I can spell "ninety".

But I can't edit that last post. I was going to wonder some more about the fact that Holland is prosperous, stable, at the heart of Europe geographically, historically and philosophically, and still ninety eight percent of the Dutch (if the poll is valid) don't like the Euro now they have it.

They nearly all speak perfect English. Honorary Anglosphere?

Ninety Eight .

A Dutch poll finds that's the percentage of Dutch respondents who would like their Guilders back.
Anyone miss that? Nintey eight per cent. Why isn't this bigger news?

Sleep easy, dear friends. If you can

. There is an illuminating debate at Post Politics in response to Susanna Cornett's graphic comparison of terrorists to "ordinary" sadistic killers that I posted earlier (linked to within the PP post also). Ram Ahluwalia writes, "it is precisely the fact that the pleasure derives from a goal and a specific enemy that sets the terrorist apart from the remorseless sociopath." Follow the link to see Susanna Cornett's reply.

The Champion of Fun!

That's how Hunter S. Thompson describes himself. Talk about cool, writing for Rolling Stone magazine and all. And all that 'gonzo' stuff - don't you feel a little thrill inside because you know what it means? Now Tim Blair says he's even more of a cult figure than we thought.

Just not a very nice cult.

On a point of theology,

a gentleman called Ossian writes to correct me:

In "olden days," it was not assumed that the souls of the unbaptized infant went to Hell but to a theologoumenon which was termed Limbo, where they enjoyed at best a natural happiness but not the Beatific Vision. The Roman Church taught that one was not condemned to Hell if through no fault of one's own one had not heard and accepted the Gospel.

Point taken - but the fear that the unbaptized would go to hell was widespread, even if it the official doctrine was and is that we don't really know what happens to unbaptized innocents (but we do know that God is merciful). Many an inquisitor or persecutor has convinced himself that he was doing good because of this fear.

More discussion back where it started, on the Edge of England's Sword.

"Brick Dust In the Wind"

John Weidner does something unusual: he thinks about the people of Iraq and Iran. He argues that the West's history of surrender to terrorism has not just - not even mostly - harmed Westerners, but has killed thousands upon thousands of Iraqis and Iranians.

The rot didn't start with Jimmy Carter, though. It started when Edward Heath capitulated to hijackers by freeing Leila Khaled.

Blogger ate a previous version of this post, and then devoured a whole series of posts marked "test" for dessert. If it ever spews it up again, you'll see two similar posts, and you'll know why.

Evil Blogger, what did you do with my post?

Tsujigiri.

. Mark Sloboda used to translate Japanese for a living. He writes,

I wasn't familiar with the term (it doesn't come up naturally in computer science or robotics) so I checked my giant general purpose Japanese-Japanese dictionary, and to my surprise the term was there, with a brief comment about the practice being outlawed at the beginning of the Edo period.

It's hard work, this getting older business. As soon as I get used to repeatedly finding that much that I thought history is myth I start finding out that my favourite myths are history.

Cutsey anecdote true after all?

Alan McCallum of Amax weblog writes:

About "Did you know that there is a single Japanese word meaning "to try out one's sword by taking the head of a passing stranger"? No, neither did I know it, because it is just the sort of cutsey anecdote that is likely to be completely fraudulent. "

I heard this in Mary Midgely's essay 'Trying out one new sword' in 'Vice & Virtue in Everyday Life', eds Christina Sommers and Fred Sommers. Midgely said the word is " ... tsujigiri, literally "crossroads-cut" ".

Scroll down Amax for discussion of the awfulness of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ("If his guests get any colder Mr Fregus will be into resurrections") , the prospect of a new force in Australian politics ("The new Democrat off-shoot party could be called The DemoCats. Think of all the fence sitting they do"), and yet more theology, but this time from the atheist point of view. Though Mr McCallum does admit, and even provide evidence for, the existence of hobgoblins and faeries. His examples seemed pretty conclusive to me.